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 Voltaire 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 9240274261 66 
 
VOLTAIRE. 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 The Life of Richard Cobden. 2 volumes, 
 
 demy 8vo, price 32J. 
 
 Rousseau. Large crown, 8vo, <js. 
 
 Critical Miscellanies. First Series. Large 
 crown 8vo, ts. 
 
 Diderot and the Encyclopcedists. Large 
 
 crown 8vo, \2,s. 
 On Compromise. Crown 8vo, 3/. 6^. 
 Struggle for National Education. 8vo, 3^. 
 
 Critical Miscellanies. Second Series. Demy 
 8vo, 14^. 
 
 Chapman & Hall, Limited, ii, Henrietta Street, W.C. 
 
*-^ 
 
 
 VOLTAIRE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN MORLEY. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited, 
 
 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 
 1882. 
 
 {.All rights reserved.) 
 
A'///- 
 
 •^s- 
 
 :UNiVERSITY| 
 \LiBRARV 
 
NOTE. 
 
 The edition to which the references are made in the following 
 pages is that published by Baudouin in 1826, in seventy-five 
 volumes. This edition is to be distinguished from that known 
 as the first Baudouin edition, published 1824-34, in ninety-seven 
 volumes. The extent of the difference between them, which is 
 entirely in favour of the more voluminous form, may be seen 
 in M. Querard's Bibliographie Voltairienne (p. 107). The large 
 number of complete and elaborate editions of Voltair e's works, 
 which were undertaken and executed in the years between the ' 
 overthrow of the Empire and the overthrow of the Monarchy in \ 
 1830, is one of the most striking facts in the history of books. 
 
 1872. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 V Preliminary. 
 
 PACK 
 
 "Importance of Voltaire's name ...,,.. i 
 
 ' Catholicism, Calvinism, and the Renaissance ..... i 
 
 Voltairism the Renaissance of the eighteenth century ... 3 
 
 His power the result of his sincerity, penetration, and courage . . 5 
 
 ■different tempers proper for diflFerent eras . - ... 8 
 
 iVoltaire's freedom from intellectual cowardice . ... 9 
 
 !And from worldly indifference to truth and justice . . -9 
 
 Reason and humanity only a single word to him . . . . ii 
 • His position towards the purely literary life . . . . .12 
 Enervating regrets that the movement had not a less violent leader . 14 
 
 The share of chance in providing leaders 14 
 
 Combination of favourable circumstances in Voltaire's case . . 16 
 
 Occasion and necessity of the movement 17 
 
 Age of Lewis xiv. entirely loyal to its own ideas . . . .18 
 
 Subsequent discredit of these ideas . . . . . . .19 
 
 Preparation for abandonment of the old system by Descartes and 
 
 Bayle 21 
 
 Voltaire continues the work, not wholly to the disadvantage of the 
 
 old system 22 
 
 No ascetic element in the Voltairean revolt 23 
 
 Why primarily an intellectual movement 25 
 
 The hostile memory of Christians for it . . . . .26 
 
 Comte's estimate of it -27 
 
 ,iThe estimate of culture ....... .28 
 
 Some pleas on the other side ........ 29 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 English Influaices. 
 
 Significance of the journey to England 
 
 His birth and youthful histoiy .... 
 
 Ninon de I'Enclos, Chaulieu, and the Regency . 
 Manner of life from 1716 
 Affront from the Chevalier de Rohan 
 Leaves France ..... 
 
 Had previously been no more than a vague esprit fort 
 Le Pour et le Contre .... 
 
 Freethinking a reality in England . 
 
 Al^ondorcet's account of the effect of England upon Voltaire 
 VSocial and political consequence of men of letters 
 y^Evil effect of this in France .... 
 
 i' Freedom of speech ...... 
 
 Newton's discoveries .... 
 
 /Their true influence on Voltaire 
 Locke ........ 
 
 ^Profound efiect of Lockian common-sense on Voltair( 
 Contrast between social condition of England and Fr 
 Voltaire's imperfect appreciation of the value and 
 popular government .... 
 
 Confounds two distinct conceptions of civil liberty 
 A confusion shared by most of his countrymen . 
 The Church of England ... 
 The Quakers . ... 
 
 Voltaire's diligence in study of English Uterature 
 And in mastering one side of the deistical controversy 
 Through the influence of the deists on Voltaire, the genius of 
 testantism entered France .... 
 
 Limited consistency of Voltaire's philosophy . 
 \ English deism contrasted with that of Leibnitz and with the atheism 
 of D'Holbach 
 
 ance . 
 working 
 
 of 
 
 Pro 
 
 PAGE 
 32 
 
 33 
 34 
 36 
 38 
 39 
 41 
 41 
 42 
 42 
 43 
 43 
 44 
 47 
 48 
 
 49 
 SI 
 S3 
 
 Si 
 S7 
 57 
 59 
 60 
 62 
 63 
 
 66 
 67 
 
 68 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Literature. 
 
 Most just way of criticising character .... 
 
 Some traits in Voltaire .... 
 
 Acquaintance with the Marquise du Chatelet ... 
 
 Her character ' * C 
 
 74 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Voltaire's placableness »(, 
 
 His money transactions . . . , . . • • ■ 77 
 
 The life at Cirey go 
 
 His attempts in physical science %. 
 
 Literature his true calling g^ 
 
 Qualities of his style 85 
 
 Significance of literature as a profession . . .... go 
 
 Voltaire's dramatic art gi 
 
 Not deliberately art with a purpose gi 
 
 His plays a prolongation of the tradition of the great age of Lewis xrv. g3 
 
 ''His criticism on Hamlet ......... gj 
 
 Merits of the French classic drama ....... gy 
 
 Voltaire compared with Corneille and Racine ..... gg 
 
 His ideas of dramatic renovation loi 
 
 His Roman subjects . . . . . . . . .102 
 
 His enlargement of dramatic themes 103 
 
 Failure in comedy 104 
 
 Arising from want of deep humour ....... 105 
 
 The Pucelle : offends two modern sentiments 106 
 
 Its true significance .......... 107 
 
 i> Peculiarity of the licence of the eighteenth century .... 108 
 
 1 Sophisms by which it was defended 108 
 
 I Contempt for the middle ages 1 10 
 
 The Henriade iii 
 
 CHAPTER IV, ^ 
 Berlin, 
 
 Death of Madame du ChStelet 114 
 
 Voltaire and the court . . . . - . . . . 1 14 
 
 He goes to Berlin 116 
 
 Character of literary activity in PiTissia 116 
 
 The two movements of which Voltaire and the king were chiefs . 117 
 
 Character of Frederick the Great 120 
 
 Breaking up of the European state-system in 1740 . . . .124 
 
 The first shock in 1733 .124 
 
 Frederick raises international relations into the region of real matter . 125 
 
 The situation defined 126 
 
 JTwo conceptions of progress 128 
 
 From which of them the result of the Seven Years War is seen to be 
 
 truly progressive . '3° 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Jesuits . . ■ 
 
 Their repulse after the humiliation of Austria . 
 Frederick's probable unconsciousness of the ultimate bearings 
 policy .......-• 
 
 His type of monarchy ....... 
 
 He sprang doubly from the critical school 
 
 Other statesmen affected by this school .... 
 
 Injustice of stamping Voltaire's influence as merely destructive 
 Frederick the Great and France .... 
 
 Voltaire's life at Berlin . . ... 
 
 Maupertuis ..... 
 
 Collision between him and Voltaire . 
 
 The Diatribe of Doctor Akakia 
 
 Voltaire's departure from Berlin ..... 
 
 The Frankfort episode .... . . 
 
 Unfortunate revelations in the Hirschel affair . 
 Relations between Frederick and Voltaire henceforth 
 Voltaire fears to return to Paris ..... 
 
 Geneva .......... 
 
 The critical school not specially inserisible to the picturesque 
 Voltaire buys Ferney (1758) 
 
 of his 
 
 PAGE 
 
 130 
 131 
 
 132 
 134 
 135 
 136 
 137 
 139 
 140 
 142 
 143 
 143 
 145 
 146 
 148 
 149 
 
 151 
 152 
 
 IS3 
 154 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Relinon. 
 
 (i) Conditions of the Voltairean attack. 
 
 Two elements underlying Voltaire's enmity to Christianity 
 
 Failure of Catholicism as a social force 
 
 Xftility of Protestantism in softening the transition . 
 i. Compared with repression of free debate in France . 
 /U Voltaire did not assail modem theosophies 
 yrhe good inextricably bound up with the bad in the old system 
 
 Jesuits and Jansenists ...... 
 
 Voltaire declared the latter to be the worst foes 
 
 Morellet's Manual for Inquisitors .... 
 
 A reflex of the criminal jurisprudence of the time 
 
 Cases of Rochette, Calas, and Sirven 
 
 Of La Barre ........ 
 
 Fervour pf Voltaire's indignation .... 
 
 Protests against cynical acquiescence 
 
 JDisappointment of the philosophers, and their courage 
 
 156 
 157 
 i'58 
 158 
 160 
 161 
 162 
 164 
 164 
 165 
 166 
 167 
 167 
 168 
 170 
 
CONTENTS. xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The reactionary fanaticism a proof of the truth of Voltaire's allegations 171 
 
 Necessity of transforming spiritual basis of thought . . . . 1 72 
 
 Voltaire's abstention from the temporal sphere 1 72 
 
 His chief defect as leader of the attack 1 74 
 
 Crippling his historic imagination . . . . . . -175 
 
 The just historic calm impossible, until Voltaire had pressed a previous 
 
 question 176 
 
 (2) His method. 
 
 His instruments purely literaiy and dialectical . . . . . 1 79 
 Leaves metaphysics of religion, and fastens on alleged records . .180 
 The other side fell back on the least worthy parts of their system . i8i 
 Hence the narrow and literal character of Voltaire's objections . . 182 
 His attack essentially the attack of the English deists . . 1 84 
 
 Rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical records . -185 
 In doctrine ........... 186 
 
 Argument from comparison with other myths 187 
 
 His neglect of primitive religions ..... . 1S7 
 
 His conviction that monotheism is the first religious form . . 188 
 
 Difficulties which he thus passed over .... .190 
 
 Hume's view 192 
 
 Voltaire did not assail the general ideas of Christianity . . 192 
 
 Such as the idea of evil inherent in matter . . . . .194 
 
 And the idea of a deity as then conceived 195 
 
 Hence the acerbity of the debate 196 
 
 And the want of permanence in Voltaire's writings compared witli 
 
 Bossuet or Pascal 197 
 
 His criticism on Dante ......... 198 
 
 (3) His apfroximaiion to a solution. 
 
 Voltairean deism 
 
 Never accepted by the mass of men .... 
 
 Nor is it likely to be accepted by them . 
 
 Voltaire's imperfect adherence to the deistical idea . 
 
 Reasons for this ....... 
 
 UDoes not accept belief in the immortality of the soul 
 'Asserts less than Rousseau, and denies less than Diderot 
 
 A popular movement begun by Bayle's Dictionary . 
 
 Compromising method of Rousseau .... 
 
 Voltaire's view of an atheistical society . 
 
 His belief in the social sufficiency of an analytic spirit 
 
 Synthesis necessary, but more than one is possible . 
 
 198 
 200 
 201 
 202 
 203 
 206 
 207 
 20S 
 209 
 209 
 210 
 
 211 
 
xu 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 History. 
 
 Extraordinary activity in historical composition in the eighteenth 
 
 century ....••••••• 
 
 (Explanation of it 
 
 Circumstances under which Voltaire thought about the philosophy 
 
 ofhistoiy. .....•• 
 
 The three historical styles .... 
 
 Voltaire's, histories of two kinds .... 
 
 Rousseau's disregard for history .... 
 
 Voltaire's acute sense ...... 
 
 His diligence in seeking authentic materials 
 
 Throws persons and personal interests into the second place 
 
 Changed view of the true subject matter of history . 
 
 War always an object of Voltaire's antipathy . 
 
 His distrust of diplomacy ...... 
 
 Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History 
 
 Introduction to the Essay on Manners .... 
 
 Irrational disparagement of the Jews . . 
 Panegyric on the Emperor Julian ..... 
 
 False view of the history of the church .... 
 
 Avoids the error of expressing barbarous activity in terms of 
 
 zation ........ 
 
 Real merit of Voltaire's panorama .... 
 
 He was not alive to the necessity of scientifically studying the con- 
 
 ' ditions of the social union .... , . 
 
 civili- 
 
 213 
 214 
 
 215 
 
 216 
 217 
 
 2l8 
 
 219 
 220 
 
 221 
 222 
 224 
 227 
 228 
 229 
 230 
 231 
 232 
 
 233 
 
 234 
 235 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 Ferney. 
 
 His life at Ferney 237 
 
 Madame Denis •••••..... 2^7 
 
 - His vast correspondence _ _ 240 
 
 Consulted by Vauvenargues, Chastellux, Turgot, and others . . 240 
 
 Complaisance of his letters . . ••.... 242 
 
 Sophistical defence of the practice of denying authorship . . . 244 
 Voltaire's just alarm for his ovm safety . . . . . .24.1; 
 
 His Easter communion of 1 768 •■..., 2di; 
 
 Further proceedings with the Bishop of Annecy . . , . 247 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 xui 
 
 Voltaire made temporal father of the Capucins of Gex 
 I Voltaire's influence on Rousseau .... 
 « Difference between their respective schools 
 
 Their rivalry represents the social dead-lock of the time 
 * Voltaire the more far-sighted of the two . 
 \ Two signal effects of Rousseau's teaching . 
 
 Diderot and the Encyclopjedia .... 
 
 Voltaire's constant efforts to secure redress for the victims 
 
 Calas, Sirven, La Barre ...... 
 
 Count Lally .... ... 
 
 Admiral Byng ... ... 
 
 His interest in the pretended liberation of Greece 
 
 In the partition of Poland 
 
 In the accession of Turgot to power . , , , 
 
 Visit to Paris and death .... . . 
 
 ofi 
 
 rong 
 
 PAGE 
 248 
 
 254 
 255 
 257 
 257 
 258 
 258 
 259 
 260 
 260 
 261 
 
Ta juei' yap <To>(f>povo)v TjOr) <7<^oSpa {xxv evXa^rj <cat 
 SUaia Koi a-ioT'qpia, BpLp.vrrjTO'; Se Kai Ttvos LTap-orrfToi 
 ofetas Kal TrpaKTiKrj^ ivSeirai ... to. S" avSpeld ye av 
 •jrpos /iev ro 8iKaiov Kai eiXajSes iKeivwv iTriSeicTTepa, to 
 8' ei/ Tais ■TTpd^Ecri Stai^epoi'TftJS l'cr;!^€t. ■jrcti'Ta Se KaXius 
 ytyvecrOai. to. Trept ras 7roX£ts, roiJTOti' /a^ irapayevoixivoiv 
 afi^oiv, aSvvarov. — Politiais, 31 1 A. 
 
 iroTcpov Tois avSpeiovs Oappakiovs Xeyeis, rj aXXo 
 Ti; Kai iras ye, e^'?, €^' a ol -n-oWot cpofimvTa^ livcu. 
 — Protagoras, 349 e. 
 
VOLTAIRE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY. 
 
 When the right sense of historical proportion is more fully 
 developed in men's minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out 
 like the names of the great decisive movements in the European 
 advance, like the Revival of Learning, or the Reformation. The 
 existence, character, and career of this extraordinary person 
 constituted in themselves a new and prodigious era. The 
 peculiarities of his individual genius changed the mind and 
 spiritual conformation of France, and in a less degree of the 
 whole of the West, with as far-spreading and invincible an effect 
 as if the work had been wholly done, as it was actually aided, 
 by the sweep of deep-lying collective forces. A new type of 
 belief, and of its shadow, disbelief, was stamped by the im- 
 pression of his character and work into the intelligence and 
 feeling of his own and the following times. We may think 
 of Voltairism in France somewhat as we think of Catholicism 
 or the Renaissance or Calvinism. It was one of the cardinal 
 liberations of the growing race, one of the emphatic manifesta- 
 tions of some portion of the minds of men, which an immediately 
 foregoing system and creed had either ignored or outraged. 
 Christianity originally and generically at once awoke and 
 
2 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 satisfied a spiritual craving foi' a higher, purer, less torn and 
 fragmentary being, than is permitted to sons of men on the 
 troubled and corrupt earth. It disclosed to them a gracious, 
 benevolent, and all-powerful being, who would one day redress 
 all wrongs and recompense all pain, and who asked no more 
 from them meanwhile than that they should prove their love 
 of him whom they had not seen, by love of their brothers whom 
 they had seen. Its great glory was to have raised the moral 
 dignity and self-respect of the many to a level which had 
 hitherto been reached only by a few. Calvin, again, like some 
 stern and austere step-son of the Christian God, jealous of the 
 divine benignity and abused open-handedness of his father's 
 house, with word of merciless power set free all those souls 
 that were more anxious to look the tremendous facts of neces- 
 sity and evil and punishment full in the face, than to reconcile 
 them with any theory of the infinite mercy and loving-kindness 
 of a supreme creator. Men who had been enervated or help- 
 lessly perplexed by a creed that had sunk into ignoble optimism 
 and self-indulgence, became conscious of new fibre in their 
 moral structure, when they realized life as a long wresthng 
 with unseen and invincible forces of grace, election, and fore- 
 destiny, the agencies of a being whose .ways and dealings, 
 whose contradictory attributes of unjust justice and loving vin- 
 dictiveness, it was not for man, who is a worm and the son 
 of a wprm, to reconcile with the puny logic of human words, 
 or the shallow consistency of human ideas. Catholicism was 
 a movement of mysticism, and so in darker regions was the 
 Calvinism which in so many important societies displaced it. 
 Each did much to raise the measure of worth and purify tlie 
 spiritual self-respect of mankind, and each also discouraged 
 and depressed the liberal play of intelligence, the cheerful 
 energizing of reason, the bright and many-sided workings of 
 fancy and imagination. Human nature, happily for us, ever 
 presses against this system or that, and forces ways of escape 
 for itself into freedom and light. The scientific reason urgently 
 seeks instruments and a voice ; the creative imagination uncon- 
 
PRELIMTNAR Y. 3 
 
 sciously takes form to itself in manifold ways, of all of which 
 the emotions can give good account to the understanding. 
 Hence the glorious suffusion of light which the ardent desire 
 of men brought over the face of Europe in the latter half of the 
 fifteenth century. Before Luther and Calvin in their separate 
 ways brought into splendid prominence their new ideas of moral 
 order, more than two generations of men had almost ceased to 
 care whether there be any moral order or not, and had plunged 
 with the delight of enchantment among ideas of grace and 
 beauty, whose forms were old on the earth, but which were full 
 of seemingly inexhaustible novelty and freshness to men, who 
 had once begun to receive and to understand all the ever- 
 living gifts of Grecian art and architecture and letters. If the 
 Reformation, the great revival of northern Europe, was the 
 enfranchisement of the individual from bondage to a collective 
 religious tradition that had lost its virtue, the Renaissance, the 
 earlier revival of southern Europe, was the admission to partici- 
 pate in the noblest collective tradition of free intellect which 
 the achievements of the race could then hand down. 
 
 Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of 
 the eighteenth century, for that name takes in all the serious 
 baitings apd shortcomings of this strange movement, as well 
 as all its terrible fire, swiftness, sincerity, and strength. The 
 rays from Voltaire's burning and far-shining spirit no sooner 
 struck upon the genius of the time, seated dark and dead Kke 
 the black stone of Memnon's statue, than the clang of the 
 breaking chord was heard through Europe, and men awoke in 
 new day and more spacious air. The sentimentalist has pro- 
 claimed him a mere mocker. To the critic of the schools, 
 ever ready with compendious label, he is the revolutionary 
 destructive. To each alike of the countless orthodox sects 
 his name is the symbol for the prevailing of the feates of hell. 
 Erudition figures him as shallow and a trifler; culture condemns 
 him for pushing his hatred of spiritual falsehood much too 
 seriously; Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a 
 demon from the depths of the pit. The plain men of the earth. 
 
4 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 who are apt to measure the merits of a philosopher by the 
 strength of his sympathy -rffith existing sources of comfort, 
 would generally approve the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he 
 would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau's transportation 
 than that of any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey 
 these many years, and that the difiference between him and 
 Voltaire was so slight, that ' it would be difficult to settle the 
 proportion of iniquity between them.' Those of all schools and 
 professions who have the temperament which mistakes strong 
 expression for strong judgment, and violent phrase for grounded 
 conviction, have been stimulated by antipathy against Voltaire 
 to a degree that in any of them with latent turns for humour 
 must now and then have even stirred a kind of reacting sym- 
 pathy. The rank vocabulary of malice and hate, that noisome 
 fringe of the history of opinion, has received many of its most 
 fulminant terms from critics of Voltaire, along with some from 
 Voltaire himself, who unwisely did not always refuse to follow 
 an adversary's bad example. 
 
 Yet Voltaire was the very eye of eighteenth-century illumi- 
 nation. I^ was he who-conveyed to his generation in a multi- 
 tude of forms the consciousness at once of the power and the 
 rights of human intelligence. Another might well have said 
 of him what he magnanimously said of his famous contem- 
 porary, Montesquieu, that humanity had lost its title-deeds, and 
 he 'had recovered them. The four score volumes which he 
 wrote are the monument, as they were in some sort the instru- 
 ment, of a new renascence. They are the fruit and represen- 
 tation of a spirit of encyclopaedic curiosity and productiveness. 
 Hardly a page of all these countless leaves is common form. 
 Hardly a sentence is there which did not come forth alive 
 from Voltaire's own mind, or which was said because some one 
 else had said it before. His works as much as those of any 
 man that ever lived and thought are truly his own. It is not 
 given, we all know, even to the most original and daring of 
 leaders to be without precursors, and Voltaire's march was 
 prepared for him before he was born, as it is tor all mortals. 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 5 
 
 Yet he impressed on all he said, on good words and bad alike, 
 a marked autochthonic quality, as of the self-raised spontaneous 
 products of some miraculous soil, from which prodigies and 
 portents spring. Many of his ideas were in the air, and did not 
 belong to him peculiarly ; but so strangely rapid and perfect 
 was his assimilation of them, so vigorous and minutely penetra- 
 tive was the quality of his understanding, so firm and indepen- 
 dent his initiative, that even these were instantly stamped with 
 the express image of his personality. In a word, Voltaire's 
 work from first to last was alert with unquenchable life. Some 
 of it, much of it, has ceased to be alive for us now in all that 
 belongs to its deeper significance, yet we recognise that none 
 of it was ever the dreary still-birth of a mind of hearsays. 
 There is no mechanical transmission of untested bits of current 
 coin. In the realm of mere letters, Voltaire is one of the 
 little band of great monarchs, and in style he remains of the 
 supreme potentates. But literary variety and perfection, how- 
 ever admirable, like all purely literary qualities, are a fragile 
 and secondary good which the world is very willing to let die, 
 where it has not been truly begotten and engendered of living 
 forces. 
 
 Voltaire was a stupendous power, not only because his 
 expression was incomparably lucid, or even because his sight 
 was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw many new X 
 things, after which the spirits of others were unconsciously 
 groping and dumbly yearning. Nor was this all. Fontenelle 
 was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one of 
 those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the 
 din, turmoil, and danger, of the great battle. Voltaire was 
 ever in the front and centre of the fight. His life was not a 
 mere chapter in a history of literature. He never counted 
 truth a treasure to be discreetly hidden in a napkin. He made 
 it a perpetual war-cry and emblazoned it on a banner that was 
 many a time rent, but was never out of the field. 
 
 This is the temper which, when the times are auspicious, 
 and the fortunes of the fight do not hurry the combatant to 
 
6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 dungeon or stake, raises him into a force instead of leaving him 
 tlie empty sLadow of a literary name. There is something in 
 our nature which leads men to listen coolly to the most eager 
 hints and pregnant inuendoes of scepticism, on the lips of 
 teachers who still in their own persons keep adroitly away from 
 the fiery darts of the officially orthodox. The same something, 
 perhaps a moral relish for veritable proofs of honesty, perhaps 
 a quahty of animal temperament, drives men to grasp even a 
 crudity with fervour, when they see it wielded like a battle-axe 
 against spiritual oppression. A irian is always so much more 
 than his words, as we feel every day of our lives ; what he says 
 has its momentum indefinitely multiplied, or reduced to nullity, 
 by the impression that the hearer for good reasons or bad 
 happens to have formed of the spirit and moral size of the 
 speaker. There are things enough to be said of Voltaire's 
 moral size, and no attempt is made in these pages to dissemble 
 in how much he was condemnable. It is at least certain 
 that he hated tyranny, that he refused to lay up his hatred 
 privily in his heart, and insisted on giving his abhorrence a 
 voice, and tempering for his just rage a fine sword, very fatal 
 to those who laid burdens too hard to be borne upon the 
 conscience and life of men. Voltaire's contemporaries felt this. 
 They were stirred to the quick by the sight and sound and 
 thorough directness of those ringing blows. The strange and 
 sinister method of assault upon religion which we of a later day 
 watch with wondering eyes, and which consists in wearing the 
 shield and device of a faith, and industriously shouting the cry 
 of a church, the more effectually to reduce the faith to a vague 
 futility, and its outward ordering to a piece of ingeniously re- 
 ticulated pretence ; this method of attack might make even 
 the champions of prevailing beliefs long for the shrewd thrusts, 
 the flashing scorn, the relentless fire, the downright grapples, ' 
 with which the hated Voltaire pushed on his work of ' crushing 
 the Infamous.' If he was bitter, he was still direct. If he was 
 often a mocker in form, he was always serious in meanino- and 
 laborious in matter. If he was unflinching against theology, he 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 7 
 
 always paid religion respect enough to treat it as the most 
 important of all subjects. The contest was real, and not our 
 present pantomimic stage-play, in which muffled phantoms of 
 debate are made to gesticulate inexpressible things in por- 
 tentously significant silence. The battle was demoralized by 
 its virulence. True ; but is this worse than to have it de- 
 moralized by cowardice of heart and understanding, when each 
 controversial man-at-arms is eager to have it thought that he 
 wears the colours of the other side, when the theologian would ) 
 fain pass for rationalist, and the free-thinker for a person with ) 
 his own orthodoxies if you only knew them, and when philo- 
 sophic candour and intelligence are supposed to have hit their 
 final climax in the doctrine that everything is both true and . 
 false at the same time ? 
 
 A man like Montaigne, as has been said, could slumber 
 tranquilly on the pillow of doubt, content to live his life, leaving ■ 
 many questions open. Such men's meditations, when com- 
 posed in the genial literaiy form proper to them, are naturally 
 the delight of people with whom the world goes fairly well 
 materially, who have sensibility enough to be aware that there 
 ate unseen lands of knowledge and truth beyond the present, 
 and destinies beyond their own; but whose sensibility is not 
 intense and ardent enough to make wholly unendurable to them 
 unscrutinizing acquiescence in half-thoughts and faint guesses,, 
 and pale unshapen embryos of social sympathy. There are 
 conjunctures when this mingling of apprehension and ease, of 
 aspiration and content, of timorous adventure and reflective 
 indolence, is the natural mood of even high natures. The great 
 tides of circumstance swell so tardily, that whole generations 
 that might have produced their share of skilful and intrepid 
 mariners, wait in vain for the full flood on which the race is 
 borne to new shores. 
 
 Nor assuredly is it well for men that every age should mark 
 either a revolution, or the slow inward agitation that prepares 
 the revolution, or that doubters and destroyers should divide 
 between them all admiration and gratitude and sympathy. The 
 
8 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 violent activity of a century of great change may end in a 
 victory, but it is always a sacrifice. The victory may more 
 than recompense its cost. The sacrifice may repay itself a 
 thousand-fold. It does not always repay itself, as the too 
 neglected list of good causes lost, and noble effort wasted, so 
 abundantly shows. Nor in any case is sacrifice ever an end. 
 Faith and order and steady strong movement are the con- 
 ditions which everything wise is directed to perfect and con- 
 solidate. But for this process of perfection we need first the 
 meditative, doubting, critical type, and next, the dogmatic 
 destroyer. ' In counsel it is good to see dangers,' Bacon said ; 
 * and in execution not to see them, except they be very great' 
 There are, as history instructs us, eras of counsel and eras of 
 execution ; the hour when those do best who walk most warily, 
 feeling with patience and sagacity and painstaking for the new 
 ways, and then the hour of march and stout-hearted engage- 
 ment. 
 
 Voltaire, if he adroitly or sagely preserved his buckler, felt 
 that the day was come to throw away the scabbard; that it 
 was time to trust firmly to the free understanding of men for 
 guidance in the voyage after truth, and to the instincts of 
 uncorrupted benevolence in men for the upholding of social 
 justice. His was one of the robust and incisive constitutions, 
 to which doubt figures as a sickness, and where intellectual 
 apprehension is an impossibility. The old-fashioned nomen- 
 clature puts him down among sceptics, because those who had 
 the official right to affix these labels could think of no more 
 contemptuous name, and could not suppose the most audacious 
 soul capable of advancing even under the leadership of Satan 
 himself beyond a stray doubt or so. He had perhaps as little 
 J of the sceptic in his constitution as Bossuet or Butler, and was 
 much less capable of becoming one than De Maistre or Paley. 
 This was a prime secret of his power, for the mere critic and 
 I propounder of unanswered doubts never leads more than a 
 handful of men after him. Voltaire boldly put the great ques- 
 \ tion, and he boldly answered it. He asked whether the sacred 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 9 
 
 records were historically true, the Christian doctrine divinely 
 ; inspired and spiritually exhaustive, and the Christian church a 
 vf \ holy and beneficent organization. He answered these question/- 
 for himself and for others beyond possibility of misconception. 
 The records were saturated with fable and absurdity, the 
 doctrine imperfect at its best, and a dark and tyrannical super- 
 stition at its worst, and the church was the arch-curse and infamy. 
 Say what we will of these answers, they were free from any 
 taint of scepticism. Our lofty new idea of rational freedom as 
 freedom from conviction, and of emancipation of understanding 
 as emancipation from the duty of settling whether important 
 propositions are true or false, had not dawned on Voltaire. 
 
 He had just as little part or lot in the complaisant spirit of 
 the man of the world, who from the depths of his mediocrity 
 and ease presumes to promulgate the law of progress, and as 
 dictator to fix its speed. Who does not know this temper of 
 the man of the world, tjiat worst enemy of the world P^^is 
 inexhaustible patience of abuses that only torment others ; his 
 apologetic word for beliefs that may perhaps not be so precisely 
 true as one miglit wish, and institutions that are not altogether 
 so useful as some might think possible ; his cordiality towards 
 progress and improvement in a general way, and his coldness 
 or antipathy to each progressive proposal in particular; his 
 pygmy hope that life will one day become somewhat better, 
 punily shivering by the side of his gigantic conviction that i* 
 might well be infinitely worse^To Voltaire, far different from 
 this, an irrational prejudice-Iras not the object of a polite 
 coldness, but a real evil to be combated and overthrown at j 
 every hazard. Cruelty was not to him as a disagreeable dream 
 of the imagination, from thought of which he could save himselr 
 by arousing to sense of his own comfort, but a vivid flame 
 burning into his thoughts and destroying peace. Wrong-doing 
 and injustice were not simple words on his lips ; they went as 
 knives to the heart ; he suffered with the victim, and consumed V 
 with an active rage against the oppressor. 
 
 Nor was the coarse cruelty of the inquisitor or the poli- 
 
10 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 J tician, who wrought iniquity by aid of the arm of flesh, the only 
 kind of injury to the world which stirred his passion. He had 
 imagination enough and intelligence enough to perceive thai 
 they are the most pestilent of all the enemies of mankind, the 
 sombre hierarchs of misology, who take away the keys of know- 
 ledge, thrusting truth down to the second place, and discrown- 
 ing sovereign reason to be the serving drudge of superstition oir 
 social usage. The system which threw obstacles into the way 
 of publishing an exposition of Newton's discoveries and ideas 
 was as mischievous and hateful to him, as the darker bigotry 
 which broke Calas on the wheel because he was a Protestant. 
 To check the energetic discovery and wide propagation of scien- 
 tific truth, he rightly held to be at least as destructive in the 
 long run to the common weal, as the unjust extermination of 
 human life; for it is the possession of ever more and more 
 truth that makes life ever better worth having and better worth 
 preserving. And must we not admit that he was right, and that 
 no age nor school of men nor individual has ever been mortally ' 
 afraid, as every good man is afraid, of inflicting any wrong on 
 his fellow, and has not also been afraid of extinguishing a 
 single ray from the great sun of knowledge ? 
 
 i' It is well enough to say that in unscientific ages, like the 
 twelfth century for instance, the burner of books and the tor- 
 mentor of those who wrote them, did not feel either that he 
 was doing an injustice to man or a mischief to truth. It is 
 hard to deny that St. Bernard was a good man, nor is it needful 
 that we should deny it ; for good motives, owing to our great 
 blindness and slow enlightenment, have made grievous havoc 
 in the world. But the conception of justice towards heretics 
 did not exist, any more than it existed in the "mind of a low 
 type of white man towards a black man, or than the concep- 
 tion of pity exists in the mind of a sportsman towards his 
 
 ' prey. These were ages of social cruelty, as they were ages of 
 intellectual repression. The debt of each to his neighbour was 
 as little felt, as the debt of all to the common faculties and 
 inteUigence. Men owed nothing to man, but everything to the 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 1 1 
 
 gods. All the social feeling and intellectxial effort and human 
 energizing which had made the high idea of God possible and 
 real, seehied to have expended themselves in a creation which 
 instantly swallowed them up and obliterated their recollection. 
 The intelligence which by its active straining upwards to the 
 light had opened the way for the one God, became itself forth- 
 with identified with the chief of the devils. He who used his '' 
 reason was the child of this demon. Where it is a duty to 
 worship the sun, it is prfetty sure to be a crime to examine the 
 laws of heat. The times when such was the tmiversal idea '/ 
 of the rights of the understanding, were also the times when 
 human life was cheapest, and the tiny bowl of a man's hap- 
 piness was spilt upon the ground with least compunction. 
 
 The companionship between these two ideas of disrespect 
 for the rights of man, and disrespect for reason or the highest 
 distinction of man, has been an inseparable companionship. 
 The converse is unhappily only true with a modification, for 
 there have been too many men with an honourable respect for a 
 demonstration and a proper hospitality towards a probabilitj-, 
 who look on the rights of man, without disrespect indeed, but 
 also without fervour. To Voltaire reason and humanity were ' 
 but a single word, and love of truth and passion for justice but 
 one emotion. None of the famous men who have fought that 
 they themselves might think freely and speak truly, have ever 
 seen more clearly that the fundamental aim of the contest wasu 
 that others might live happily. Who has not been touched by 
 that admirable word of his, of the three years in which he 
 laboured without remission for justice to the widow and de- 
 scendants of Galas : ' During that time not a smile escaped me 
 ■without my reproaching myself for it, as for a crime.' Or by his 
 sincere avowal that of all the words of enthusiasm and admira- 
 tion which were so prodigally bestowed upon him on the 
 occasion of his last famous visit to Paris in 1778, none went 
 to his heart like that of a woman of the people, who in reply to 
 one asking the name of him whom the crowd followed, gave 
 answer, ' Do you not know that he is the preserver of the Calas ? ' 
 
12 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 TKe same kind of feeling, though manifested in ways of 
 much less unequivocal nobleness, was at the bottom of his 
 many efforts to make himself of consequence in important poli- 
 tical business. We know how many contemptuous sarcasms, 
 have been inspired by bis anxiety at various times to perform 
 diplomatic feats of intervention between the French govern- 
 ment and Frederick the Second. In 1742, after his visit to 
 the Prussian king at Aix-la-Chapelle, he is supposed to have 
 hinted to Cardinal Fleury that to have written epic and drama 
 does not disqualify a man for serving his king and country on 
 the busy fields of affairs. The following year, after Fleury's 
 death, when French fortunes in the war of the Austrian succes- 
 sion were near their lowest, Voltaire's own idea that he might 
 be useful from his; intimacy with Frederick, seems to have been 
 shared by' Amelot, the secretary of state, and at all events he 
 aspired to do some sort of active, if radically futile, diplo- 
 matic work. In later times when the tide had turned, and 
 Frederick's star was clouded over with disaster, we again 
 find Voltaire the eager intermediary with Choiseul, pleasantly 
 comparing himself to the mouse of the fable, busily striving 
 to ftee the lion from the meshes of the hunter's net. 
 
 The man of letters, usually unable to conceive loftier ser- 
 vices to mankind or more attractive aims to persons of capacity 
 than the composition of books, has treated these pretensions 
 of Voltaire with a supercilious kind of censure, which teaches 
 us nothing about Voltaire, while it implies a particularly shallow 
 idea alike of the position of the mere literary life in the scale 
 of things, and of the conditions under which the best literary 
 work is done. To have really contributed in the humblest 
 degree, for instance, to a peace between Prussia and her enemies 
 in 1759, would have been an immeasurably greater performance 
 for mankind than any given book which Voltaire could have 
 written. And, what is still better worth observing, Voltaire's 
 books would not have been the powers they were, but for this 
 . constant desire of his to come into the closest contact with 
 the practical affairs of the world. He who has never left the 
 
PRELIMINARY. 13 
 
 life of a recluse, drawing an income from the funds and living 
 in a remote garden, constructing past, present, and future, 
 out of his own consciousness, is not qualified either to lead 
 mankind safely, or to think on the course of human affairs 
 correctly. Every page of Voltaire has the bracing air of the ^ 
 life of the world in it, and the instinct which led him to seek 
 the society of the conspicuous actors on the great scene was 
 essentially a right one. The book-writer takes good advantage 
 of his opportunity to assure men expressly or by implication 
 that he is their true king, and that the sacred bard is a mightier 
 man than his hero. Voltaire knew better. Though himself 
 perhaps the most puissant man of letters that ever lived, he 
 rated literature as it ought to be rated below action, not because 
 written speech is less of a force, but- because the speculation 
 and criticism of the literature that substantially influences 
 the world, make far less demand than the actual conduct oi 
 great affairs on qualities which are not rare in detail, but are 
 amazingly rare in combination, — on temper, foresight, solidity, 
 daring, — on strength, in a word, strength of intelligence and 
 strength of character. Gibbon rightly amended his phrase, 
 when he described Boethius not as stooping, but rather as 
 rising, from his life of placid meditation to an active share in 
 the imperial business. That he held this sound opinion is 
 quite as plausible an explanation of Voltaire's anxiety to know 
 persons of station and importance, as the current theory that 
 he was of sycophantic nature. Why, he asks, are the ancient 
 historians so full of light ? ' It is because the writer had to 
 do with public business ; it is because he could be magistrate, 
 priest, soldier ; and because if he could not rise to the highest 
 functions of the state, he had at least to make himself worthy 
 of them. I admit,' he concludes, ' that we must not expect 
 such an advantage with us, for our own constitution happens 
 to be against it ; ' but he was deeply sensible what an advantage 
 it was that they thus lost.^ 
 
 In short, on all sides, whatever men do and think was 
 • (Ew'res, xxxv. p. 214. 
 
14 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 real and alive to Voltaire. H- Whatever had the quality of 
 interesting any imaginable temperament, had the quality of 
 interesting him. There was no subject which any set of men 
 have ever cared about, which, if he once had mention of it, 
 Voltaire did not care about likewise. And it was just because 
 _ he was so thoroughly alive himself, that he filled the whole 
 era with life. The more closely one studies the various move- 
 ments of that time, the more clear it becomes that, if he was 
 not the original centre and first fountain of them all, at any 
 ■V rate he made many channels ready and gave the sign. He 
 was the initial principle of fermentation throughout that vast 
 commotion. We may deplore, if we think fit, as Erasmus 
 deplored in the case of Luther, that the great change was 
 not allowed to work itself out slowly, calmly, and without vio- 
 lence and disruption. These gi-aceful regrets are powerless, 
 and on the whole they are very enervating. Let us make our 
 account with the actual, rather than seek excuses for self- 
 indulgence in pensive preference of something that might have 
 been. Practically in these great circles of affairs, what only 
 might have been is as though it could not be ; and to know 
 this may well suffice for us. It is not in human power to choose 
 the kind of men who rise from time to time to the supreme 
 control of momentous changes. The force which decides this 
 immensely important matter is as though it were chance. We 
 cannot decisively pronounce any circumstance whatever an 
 accident, yet history abounds with circumstances which in our 
 present ignorance of the causes of things are as if they were 
 accidents. 
 
 In this respect history is neither better nor worse than the 
 latest explanation of the origin and order of the world of 
 organized matter. Here too we are landed in the final resort 
 at what is neither more nor less than an accident. Natural 
 selection, or the survival of the fittest in the universal struggle 
 for existence, is now held by the most competent inquirers to be 
 the principal method to which we owe the extinction, preserva- 
 tion, and distribution of organic forms on the earth. But the 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 
 
 IS 
 
 appearance both of the forms that conquer and of those that 
 perish still remains a secret, and to science an accident and a 
 secret are virtually and provisionally the same thing. In a 
 word, there is an unknown element at the bottom of the 
 varieties of creation, whether we agree to call that element a 
 volition of a supernatural being, or an undiscovered set of facts 
 in embryology. So in history the Roman or Italo-Hellenic 
 empire, rising when it did, was the salvation of the West, and 
 yet the appearance at the moment when anarchy threatened 
 rapidly to dissolve the Roman state, of a man with the power 
 of conceiving the best design for the new structure, seems to 
 partake as much of the nature of chance, as the non-appearance 
 of men with similar vision and power in equally momentous 
 crises, earlier and later. The rise of a great constructive chief 
 like Charlemagne in the eighth century can hardly be enough 
 to persuade us that the occasion invariably brings the leader 
 whom its conditions require, when we remember that as con- 
 cerns their demands the conditions of the end of the eighth 
 century were not radically different from those of the beginning 
 of the sixth, yet that in the earlier epoch there arose no successor 
 to continue the work of Theodoric. We have only to examine 
 the origin and fundamental circumstances of the types of civil- 
 ization which rule western communities and guide their advance, 
 to discern in those original circumstances a something in- 
 scrutable, a certain element of what is as though it were 
 fortuitous. No science can as yet tell us how such a variation 
 from previously existing creatures as man had its origin ; nor, 
 any more than this, can history explain the law by which the 
 most striking variations in intellectual and spiritual quality 
 within the human order have had their origin. The appearance 
 of the one as of the other is a fact which cannot be further 
 resolved. It is hard to think in imagination of the globe as 
 impeopled by man, or peopled, as it may at some remote day 
 come to be, by beings of capacity superior enough to extinguish 
 man. It is hard also to think of the scene which western 
 Europe and all the vast space which the light of western Europe 
 
i6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 irradiates, might have offered at this moment, if nature or the 
 unknown forces had not produced a Luther, a Calvin, or a 
 Voltaire. 
 
 It was one of the happy chances of circumstance that there 
 arose in France on the death of Lewis xiv. a man with all 
 Voltaire's peculiar gifts of intelligence, who added to them an 
 incessant activity in their use, and who besides this enjoyed 
 such length of days as to make his intellectual powers effective 
 to the very fullest extent possible- This combination of physical 
 and mental conditions so .amazingly favourable to the spread 
 of Voltairean ideas, was a circumstance independent of the 
 state of the surrounding atmosphere, and was what in the 
 phraseology of prae-scientific times might well have been called 
 providential. If Voltaire had seen all that he saw, and yet been 
 indolent ; or if he had been as clear-sighted and as active as he 
 was, and yet had only lived fifty years, instead of eighty-four, 
 Voltairism would never have struck root.^ As it was, with his 
 genius, his industry, his longevity, and the conditions of the 
 time being what they were, that far-spreading movement of 
 destruction was inevitable. 
 
 Once more, we cannot choose. Those whom temperament 
 or culture has made the partisans of calm order, cannot attune 
 progress to the stately and harmonious march which would best 
 please them, and which they are perhaps right in thinking would 
 lead with most security to the goal. 
 
 Such a liberation of the human mind as Voltairism can only 
 be effected by the movement of many spirits, and they are only 
 the few who are moved by moderate, reflective, 9,nd scientific 
 trains of argument. The many need an extreme type. They 
 are struck by what is flashing and colossal, for they follow 
 imagination and sympathy, and not the exactly disciplined 
 intelligence. They know their own wants, and have dumb 
 feeling of their own better aspirations. Their thoughts move in 
 the obscurity of things quick but unborn, and by instinct they 
 push upwards in whatever direction the darkness seems break- 
 
 ' See Comte's Philosophie Positive, v. 520. 
 
PRELIMINARY. 17 
 
 ing. They are not critics nor analysts, but when the time is 
 ripening they never fail to know the word of freedom and of 
 truth, with whatever imperfections it may chance to be spoken, f, 
 No prophet all false has ever yet caught the ear of a series ^ 
 of generations. No prophet all false has succeeded in separ- 
 ating a nation into two clear divisions. Voltaire has in effect for 
 a century so divided the most emancipated of western nations. 
 This IS beyond the power of the mere mocker, who perishes 
 like the flash of lightning; he does not abide as a centre of 
 solar heat. 
 
 There are more kinds of Voltaireans than one, but no one 
 who has marched ever so short a way out of the great camp 
 of old ideas is directly or indirectly out of the debt and out of 
 the hand of the first liberator, however little willing he may be 
 to recognise one or the other. Attention has been called by 
 every writer on Voltaire to the immense number of the editions 
 of his works, a number probably unparalleled in the case of any 
 author within the same limits of time. Besides being one of 
 the most voluminous book-writers, he is one of the cheapest. 
 We can buy one of Voltaire's books for a few halfpence, and 
 the keepers of the cheap stalls in the cheap quarters. of London 
 and Paris will tell you that this is not from lack of demand, but 
 the contrary. So clearly does that light burn for many even 
 now, which scientifically speaking ought to be extinct, and for 
 many indeed is long ago extinct and superseded. The reasons 
 for this vitality are that Voltaire was himself thoroughly alive 
 when he did his work, and that the movement which that work 
 began is still unexhausted. 
 
 How shall we attempt to characterize this movement ? The 
 historian of the Christian church usually opens his narrative 
 with an account of the depravation of human nature and the 
 corruption of society which preceded the new religion. The 
 Reformation in like manner is only to be understood after we 
 have perceived the enormous mass of superstition, injustice, 
 and wilful ignorance, by which the theological idea had become 
 .so incrusted as to be wholly incompetent to guide society, 
 
 c 
 
i8 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 because it was equally repugnant to the intellectual perceptions 
 and the moral sense, the knowledge and the feelings, of the 
 best and most active-minded persons of the time. The same 
 sort of consideration explains and vindicates the enormous 
 power of Voltaire. France had outgrown the system that had 
 brought her through the middle ages. The further develop- 
 ment of her national life was fatally hindered by the tight 
 bonds of an old order, which clung with the hardy tenacity of a 
 thriving parasite, diverting from the roots all their sustenance, 
 sating into the tissue, and feeding on the juices of the living 
 tree. The picture has often been painted, and we need not 
 try to paint it once more in detail here. The whole power 
 and ordering of the 'nation were with the sworn and chartered 
 foes of light, who had every interest that a desire to cling to 
 authority and wealth can give, in keeping the understanding 
 subject. 
 
 And, what was more important, there had been no sign 
 made in the nation itself of a consciousness of the immense 
 realms of knowledge that lay immediately in front of it, and still 
 less of any desire or intention to win lasting possession of 
 them. That intellectual curiosity which was so soon to produce 
 such amazing fruits was as yet unstirred. An era of extra- 
 ordinary activity had just come to a close, and die creative and 
 artistic genius of France had risen to the highest mark it attained 
 until the opening of our own century. The grand age of 
 Lewis XIV. had been an age of magnificent literature and un- 
 surpassed eloquence. But, in spite of the potent seed which 
 Descartes had sown, it had been the age of authority, protec- 
 tion, and patronage. Consequently all those subjects for which 
 there was no patronage, that is to say the subjects which 
 ' could add nothing to the splendour and dignity of the church 
 and the pageantry of the court, were virtually repressed. This 
 ought not to blind us to the real loftiness and magnanimity 
 of the best or earlier part of the age of Lewis xiv. It has 
 been said that the best title of Lewis xiv. to the recollection 
 of posterity is the protection he extended to Molierej and 
 
PRELIMINAR y. 1 9 
 
 one reason why this was so meritorious is that Molifere's work 
 had a markedly critical character, in reference both to the 
 devout and to the courtier. The fact of this, undoubtedly 
 the most durable work of that time, containing critical quality, 
 is not of importance in reference to the generally fixed or 
 positive aspect of the age. For Moliere is only critical by 
 accident. There is nothing organically negative about him, 
 and his plays are the pure dramatic presentation of a peculiar 
 civilization. He is no more a destructive agency because he 
 drew hypocrites and coxcombs, than Bossuet was destructive 
 or critical because he inveighed against sin and the excess 
 of human vainglory. The epoch was one of entire loyalty to 
 itself and its ideas. Voltaire himself perceived and admired 
 these traits to the full. The greatest of all overthrowers, he 
 always understood that it is towards such ages as these, the too 
 short ages of conviction and self-sufficience, that our endeavour 
 works. We fight that others may enjoy ; and many generations 
 struggle and debate, that one generation may hold something 
 for proven. 
 
 The glories of the age of Lewis xiv. were the climax of a 
 set of ideas that instantly afterwards lost alike their grace, their 
 usefulness, and the firmness of their hold on the intelligence of 
 men. A dignified and venerable hierarchy, an august and 
 powerful monarch, a court of gay and luxurious nobles, all lost 
 their grace, because the eyes of men were suddenly caught and 
 appalled by the awful phantom, which was yet so real, of a 
 perishing nation. Turn from Bossuet's orations to Boisgiiil- 
 lebert's Detail de la France; from the pulpit rhetorician's courtly 
 reminders that even majesty must die, to Vauban's pity for the 
 misery of the common people ; ^ from Corneille and Racine to 
 La Bruyfere's picture of ' certain wild animals, male and female, 
 scattered over the fields, black, livid, all burnt by the sun, 
 bound to the earth that they dig and work with unconquerable 
 pertinacity; they have a sort of articulate voice, and when 
 
 ' Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found in Les Economistes 
 Financiers du XVIIIibne SiicL, published by Guillaumin, 1851. 
 
 <. 
 
20 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 they rise on their feet, they show a human face, and, in fact, 
 are men.' The contrast had existed for generations. The 
 material misery caused by the wars of the great Lewis deepened 
 the dark side, and the lustre of genius consecrated to the glorifi- 
 cation of traditional authority and the order of the hour 
 heightened the brightness of the bright side, until the old 
 contrast was suddenly seen by a few starded eyes, and the 
 new and deepest problem, destined to strain our civilization to 
 a degree that not many have even now conceived, came slowly 
 into pale outline. 
 
 There is no reason to think that Voltaire ever saw this gaunt 
 and tremendous spectacle. Rousseau was its first voice. Since 
 him the reorganization of the relations of men has never faded 
 from the sight either of statesmen or philosophers, with vision 
 keen enough to admit to their eyes even what they dreaded 
 and execrated in their hearts. Voltaire's task was different and 
 ypreparatory. It was to make popular the genius and authority 
 of reason. The foundations of the social fabric were in such 
 a condition that the touch of reason was fatal to the whole 
 structure, which instantly began to crumble. Authority and 
 use oppose a steadfast and invincible resistance to reason, so 
 long as the institutions which they protect are of fair practicable 
 service to a society. But after the death of Lewis xiV., not 
 only the grace and pomp, but also the social utility of spiritual 
 and political absolutism passed obviously away. Spiritual abso- 
 luysm was unable to maintain even a decent semblance of 
 uAity and theological order. Political absolutism by its material 
 costliness, its augmenting tendency to repress the application 
 of individual energy and thought to public concerns, and its 
 pursuit of a policy in Europe which was futile and essentially 
 meaniingless as to its ends, and disastrous and incapable in 
 its choice of means, was rapidly exhausting the resources of 
 national well-being and viciously severing the very tap-root of 
 <iiational life. To bring reason into an atmosphere so charged, 
 4vas, as the old figure goes, to admit air to the chamber of 
 ,the mummy. And reason was e.\actly what Voltaire brouflu ; 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 2 1 
 
 too narrow, if we will, too contentious, too derisive, too un- 
 mitigatedly reasonable, but still reason. And who shall measure 
 the consequence of this difference in the history of two great 
 nations ; that in France absolutism in church and state fell 
 before the sinewy genius of stark reason, while in England it 
 fell before a respect for social convenience, protesting against 
 monopolies, benevolences, ship-money ? That in France specu- 
 lation had penetrated over the whole field of social inquiry, 
 before a single step had been taken towards application, while 
 in England social principles were applied, before they received 
 any kind of speculative vindication? That in France the first 
 effective enemy of the principles of despotism was Voltaire, f)oet, 
 philosopher, historian, critic ; in England, a band of homely 
 squires ? 
 
 Traditional authority, it is true, had be6n partially and 
 fatally undermined in France before the time of Voltaire, by 
 one of the most daring of thinkers, and one of the most acute 
 and sceptical of scholars, as well as by writers so acutely care- 
 less as Montaigne, and apologists so dangerously rational as 
 Pascal, who gave a jank and consistency to doubt even in 
 showing that its seas were black and shoreless. Descartes's 
 Discourse on Method had been pubhshed in 1637, and Bayle's 
 Thoughts on the Comet, first of the series of critical onslaughts 
 on prejudice and authority in matters of belief, had been pub- 
 lished in 1682. The metaphysician and the critic had each 
 pressed forward on the path of examination, and had each 
 insisted on finding grounds for belief, or else showing the 
 absence of such grounds with a fatal distinctness that made 
 belief impossible. Descartes was constructive, and was bent 
 on reconciling the acceptance of a certain set of ideas as to 
 the relations between man and the universe, and as to the 
 mode and composition of the universe, with the logical reason. 
 Bayle, whose antecedents and environment were Protestant, 
 was careless to replace, but careful to have evidence for what- 
 ever was allowed to remain. No parallel nor hint of equality 
 is here intended between the rare genius of Descartes and 
 

 22 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 the relatively lower quality of Bayle. The one, however higl 
 a place we may give to the regeneration of thought effected 
 by Bacon in England, or to that wrought by the brilliant group 
 .of physical experimentalists in Italy, still marks a new epoch 
 in the development of the human mind, for he had decisively 
 separated knowledge from theology, and systematically con- 
 stituted science. The other has a place only in the history 
 of criticism. But, although in widely different ways, and with 
 vast difference in intellectual stature, they both had touched 
 the prevailing notions of French society with a fatal breath. 
 
 The blast that finally dispersed and destroyed them came 
 not from Descartes and Bayle, but directly from Voltaire and 
 indirectly from England. In the seventeenth century the sur- 
 rounding conditions were not ripe. Social needs had not 
 begun to press. The organs of authority were still too vigorous, 
 and performed their functions with something more than the 
 mechanical half-heartedness of the next century. Long fami- 
 liarity with sceptical ideas as enemies must go before their 
 reception as friends and deliverers. They have perhaps 
 'never gained an effective hold in any community, until they 
 have found allies in the hostile camp of official orthodoxy, 
 and so long as that orthodoxy was able to afford them a 
 vigorous social resistance. Voltaire's universal talents made 
 one of the most powerful instruments for conveying these bold 
 and inquisitive notions among many sorts and conditions of 
 men, including both the multitude of common readers and 
 playgoers in the towns, and the narrower multitude of nobles 
 and sovereigns. More than this, the brilliance and variety of 
 his gifts attracted, stimulated, and directed the majority of the 
 men of letters of his time, and imparted to them a measure 
 of his own singular skill in conveying the principles of ration- 
 aHstic thought. 
 
 The effect of all this was to turn a vast number of per- 
 sonages who were officially inimical to free criticism, to be at 
 heart abettors and fellow-conspirators in the great plot. That 
 fact, combined with the independent causes of the incompetency 
 
PRELIMINARY. 23 
 
 of the holders of authority to deal with the crying social neces- 
 sities of the time,. left the walls of the citadel undermined and 
 undefended, and a few of the sacred birds that were still found 
 faithful cackled to no purpose. It has often been said that 
 in the early times of Christianity its influence gave all that 
 was truest and brightest in colour to the compositions of those 
 who were least or not at all affected by its dogma. It is more 
 certain that Voltaire by the extraordinary force of his per- 
 sonality gave a peculiar tone and life even to those who adhered 
 most staunchly to the ancient ordering. The champions of 
 authority were driven to defend their cause by the unusual I 
 weapons of rationality ; and if Voltaire had never written, 
 authority would never, for instance, have found such a soldier 
 on her side as that most able and eminent of reactionaries, 
 Joseph de Maistre. In reply to the favourite assertion of the 
 apologists of Catholicism, that whatever good side its^ss^ilaiits 
 may present is the product of the very teaching which they 
 repudiate, one can only say that there would be at least as 
 much justice in maintaining that the marked improvement 
 which took place in the character and aims of the priesthood 
 between the Regency and the Revolution,* was an obligation 
 unconsciously incurred to those just and liberal ideas which 
 Voltaire had helped so powerfully to spread. De Maistre 
 compares Reason putting away Revelation to a child who 
 should beat its nurse. The same figure would serve just as 
 well to describe the thanklessness of Belief to the Disbelief 
 which has purged and exalted it. 
 
 One of the most striking features of the revolution wrought 
 by Voltaire is that it was the one great revolt in history which , 
 contained no element of asceticism, and achieved all its vic- 
 
 * ' Je ne sais si, a tout prendre, et malgre les vices eclatants de quel- 
 quesuns de ses membres, il y eut jamais dans le monde un clerge plus 
 remarquable que le clerge catholique de France au moment ou la Revo- 
 lution I'a surpris, plus eclaire, plus national, moins retranche dans les 
 seules vertus privees, mieux pourvu de vertus publiques et en meme temps 
 de plus defoi: la persecution I'a bien montre.' — De Tocqueville, Anckn 
 RSgime, liv. ii. t. II. 
 
24 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 tories without resort to an instrument so potent, inflexible, 
 and easy, but so gravely dangerous. Such revolts are always 
 reactions against surrounding corruption and darkness. They 
 are the energetic protests of tlie purer capacities and aspirations 
 of human nature ; and as is the inevitable consequence of 
 vehement action of this sort, they seem for a while to insist on 
 nothing less than the extirpation of those antagonistic parts 
 which are seen to have brought life into such debasement. 
 With this stern anger and resolve in their hearts, men have 
 no mind to refine, explain, or moderate, and they are forced 
 by one of the strangest instincts of our constitution into some 
 system of mortification, which may seem to clear the soul of 
 the taint of surrounding grossness. In such exalted mood, 
 there is no refuge but in withdrawal from the common life into 
 recesses of private conscience, and in severest purification of 
 all desires. There are not many types of good men even in the 
 jeast ascetic or least reactionary epochs, to whom this ' mood, 
 and its passion for simplicity, self-applied rigour, minuce dis- 
 cipline, firm regulation, and veritable continence of life, do not 
 now and again recur, in the midst of days that march normally 
 on a more spacious and expansive theory. 
 
 There was, however, no tinge of ascetic principle in Vol- 
 tairism. Pascal had remarked that relaxed opinions are naturalljl 
 so pleasing to men, that it is wonderful they should ever be 
 displeasing. To which Voltaire had thus retorted : ' On the 
 contrary, does not experience prove that influence over men's 
 minds is only gained by ofiering 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 mai-vellous.'^ Voltaire's ascen- 
 dancy sprung from no appeal to those parts of human nature 
 ' Rem. sur les Pensdes de M. Pascil. Ouvi-a, xliii. p. 6S. 
 
PRELIMINAR V. 2 5 
 
 in which ascetic practice has its foundation. On the contrary, 
 full exercise and play for every part was the key of all his 
 teaching, direct and indirect. He had not Greek serenity 
 and composure of spirit, but he had Greek exultation in every 
 known form of intellectual activity, and this audacious curiosity 
 he made general. 
 
 Let us remember that Voltairism was primarily and directly 
 altogether an intellectual movement, for this reason, that it was 
 primarily and directly a reaction against the subordination of 
 the intellectual to the moral side of men, carried to an excess 
 that was at length fraught with fatal mischief Are our opinions 
 true, provably answering to the facts of the case, consistent 
 with one another ; is our intelligence radiant with genuine light 
 and knowledge ; and are we bent more than all else on testing 
 and improving and diffusing this knowledge and the instruments 
 for acquiring it ? The system to which this was the powerful 
 counter-formula, even in its least dark shapes, always reserved a 
 large class of most important facts from the searching glare of 
 that scrutiny which Voltairism taught men to direct upon every 
 proposition that was presented to them. 
 
 For many centuries truth had been conceived as of the 
 nature of a Real Universal, of which men had full possession by 
 the revelation of a supreme divinity. All truth was organically 
 one ; and the relations of men to something supernatural, 
 their relations to one another, the relations of outward matter, 
 were all comprehended in a single synthesis, within which, and 
 subject to which, alL intellectual movement proceeded. An 
 advancing spirit of inquiry dissolved this synthesis ; and the 
 philosophers, as distinguished from the steadfast and single 
 students of science, ceasing to take it for granted as an indis- 
 putable starting-point that truth was an assured possession, went 
 off on two different lines. Men of one cast of mind fell into 
 doubt whether truth was a reality after all, and the discovery of 
 it accessible to mankind. Thinkers of a different cast accepted 
 this doctrine of the impotence of the human understanding to 
 discover knowledge and prove truth, but they proceeded to 
 
2 6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 the retrograde inference that therefore the ancient tradition 
 of knowledge actually contains that approved truth, which 
 had just been pronounced unattainable. This oblique mode of 
 regaining a position of which they had been by their own act 
 dispossessed, was impossible for so keen and direct a spirit as 
 Voltaire's. However filled his mind may have been with the 
 false notions of the Tribe, of the Market, and above all of 
 the Cave, at all events it was more free than most, certainly 
 than most of those subalterns of the schools, from the Idols of 
 the Theatre, and from either kind of that twofold excess, ' one 
 sort of which too hastily constitutes sciences positive and 
 hierarchic, while the other presents scepticism and the pursuit 
 of a vague inquiry that has no hmit.' " 
 
 The consequence of this peculiarity, call it a destructive and 
 blind narrowness, or call it a wise and justly-measured openness 
 of mind, as we may choose, has been that Voltaire has been 
 condemned with unsparing severity by three of the most in- 
 fluential schools of modern opinion. Every one who has a ■ 
 system to defend is the enemy of the famous man who destroyed 
 the reigning system of his day, with engines that seem to point 
 with uncomfortable directness against all other systems. Every 
 one who thinks that we have turned over the last leaf of the 
 book of knowledge, whatever the inscription that he may find 
 written upon it, naturally detests the whole spirit and impulse 
 of one who felt all his life that he and his generation were the 
 first band of men who had shaken off their chains, and ascended 
 to the light of the sun and the contemplation of some portion 
 of an inexhaustible universe of realities. Hence, the partisans 
 of the Christian religion, in any of its forms, have dealt unre- 
 lenting contempt and hatred to the foe who did more than 
 any one else to reduce their churches, once so majestically 
 triumphant, to their present level, where they are forced under 
 various guises and with much obsolete pretension to plead for 
 the tolerance of rational men, on the comparatively modest 
 ground of social fitness. Their hostility, we may agree, is not 
 very astonishing, when we reflect on the provocation. 
 
 ' Novum Organum, § 67. 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 27 
 
 Many of those, however, who have least hope of any future 
 revival of the ancient creed, and who least regret its fall, are 
 even less hostile to the Jesuits than they are to Voltaire. (/ 
 Comte, for example, who elaborated a doctrine with a corres- 
 ponding system of life deduced from it, and the central prin- 
 ciple of whose method of social action and movement is to 
 destroy by replacing, has adjudged an empha:tically secondary 
 place to Voltaire's claims on our good-will.^ Nor ought this 
 seriously to surprise us, when we consider that Voltaire trusted ,\ 
 to the individual to replace for himself, by the motion of his own 
 faculties, the old collective tradition of action and belief; and 
 that he showed himself too keenly alive to the curses of that 
 empire of prejudice, authority, social fixity, which he devoted 
 his life to overthrowing, to lend any help to the restoration of ^- 
 a similar reign with changed watchwords. He is perhaps the 
 one great Frenchman who has known how to abide in patient 
 contentment with an all but purely critical reserve, leaving 
 reconstruction, its form, its modes, its epoch, for the fulness 
 of time and maturity of effort to disclose. It has been the 
 
 ' Some faiilt has been found with this passage by one or two private ^^ 1 \t^ 
 critics, as being not entirely just to the eminent thinker to whom it refers, 
 and to whom my own obligations du'ect and indirect are so numerous, 
 notwithstanding my final inability to follow him in his ideas of social 
 reconstruction, that the idea of adding to the sum of misrepresentation of 
 which Comte and his doctrines have been the victims, is particularly disa- 
 greeable to me. Here, therefore, is one passage in which Comte seems to 
 speak rather more warmly of Voltaire than the words in the text imply : 
 ' Toutefois, I'indispensable necessite mentale et sociale d'une telle elabora- 
 tion provisoire laissera toujours, dans I'ensemble de I'histoire humaine, une 
 place importante a ses principaux cooperateurs, et surtout i leur type le 
 plus eminent, auquel la posterite la plus lointaine assurera une position 
 vrainient unique ; parceque jamais un pareil office n'avait pu jusqu'alors 
 echoir, et pourra desormais encore moins appartenir a un esprit de cette 
 nature, chez lequel la plus admirable combinaison qui ait existe jusqu'ici 
 entre les diverses qualites secondaires de I'intelligence presentait si souvent 
 la seduisante apparence de la force et du genie' [Phil. Pos. v. 5'8)- 
 Against this we have to place the highly significant fact that Voltaire only 
 appears in the calendar as a dramatic poet, as well as the whole tehour 
 and spirit of Comte's teaching, namely, as he puts it in one place, that 
 ^ une pure critique ne pent jamais mcriter beaucoup d'eslime' [Politique Posi- 
 tive, iii. 547). 
 
28 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 fatal quality of the genius of his countrymen, from Descartes 
 down to Comte, to decline to rest on an uncompleted interpre- 
 tation of experience, and to insist on a hasty supplement of 
 unconcluded analysis by what is virtually an k priori synthesis. 
 Voltaire deserves no special praise for this abstention from a 
 premature reconstruction ; for it probably was not so much the 
 result of deliberate persuasion that we must wait on the time, 
 as of an inability to conceive of need for a cultus and a firm 
 ordering of our knowledge, as prime demands of human nature 
 and essential conditions of stable progress. Whatever value 
 we may set on this sage reserve, the fact that Voltaire had no 
 scheme for replacing the scheme which he destroyed, accounts 
 very amply for the disparagement of him by those who think 
 almost any fabric of common and Ordered belief better for men, 
 than the seeming chaos of intricate and multitudinous growths 
 which now overspread the field of European opinion. And 
 does it not involve us in a defective conception of the way in 
 which human progress accomplishes itself, to place in our 
 calendar of benefactors, supposing us to compose a calendar, 
 only those who have built up truth, to the exclu§ion of those 
 who have with pain and labour helped to demolish impudent 
 error? Has Jericho always fallen without the blasts from 
 the seven trumpets ? Is it sufficiently demonstrated from his- 
 tory that false opinions vanish spontaneously, without a direct 
 blow struck ; that a system of belief, corroborated in the breasts 
 of the multitude by all the authority of a long tradition, sanc- 
 tified to the powerful few by dignity or emolument, entrenched 
 ., with a strength that seems inexpugnable among the ordinances 
 I and institutions and unwritten usps of a great community, wilj 
 (straightway succumb from inherent want of life and courage ? 
 
 There is a third kind of opinion, that is as little merciful in 
 its own way as either of the two others, and this is the scientific 
 or cultured opinion. Objections from this region express 
 themselves in many forms, some of them calm and suggestive," 
 others a little empty and a little brutal. They all seem to come 
 tp something of this kind: that Voltaire's assault en religion, 
 
PRELIMINARY. ic) 
 
 being conducted without any smallest spark of the religious 
 spirit, was therefore necessarily unjust to the object of his 
 attack, and did the further mischief of engendering in all on J 
 whom his influence was poured out a bitterness and moral 
 temerity which is the worst blight that can fall upon the 
 character either of a man or a generation : that while truth is 
 relative and conditional, and while belief is only to be under- 
 stood by those who have calmly done justice to the history of its 
 . origin and growth, Voltaire carelessly, unphilosophically, and 
 maliciously, handled what had once possessed a relative truth, 
 as if it had always been absolutely false, and what had sprung 
 from the views and aspirations of the best men, as if it had had 
 its root in the base artifices of the worst : that what ought to 
 have gone on, and would have gone on, as a process of soft 
 autumnal dissolution, was converted by the infection of Voltaire 
 into a stained scene of passion and battle : that assuming to 
 possess and to furnish men with a broad criticism of life, he 
 left out of life its deepest, holiest, and most exalting elements, 
 as well as narrowed and depraved criticism, from its right 
 rank as the high art of stating and collating ideas, down to 
 an acrid trick of debate, a thing of proofs, arguments, and 
 rancorous polemic. 
 
 It is certain that there is much truth in this particular strain 
 of objection to Voltaire's power and his use of it, or else it 
 would not have found mouthpieces, as it has done, among some 
 of the finest spirits of the modem time. But it is the natural 
 tendency of the hour rather to exaggerate what weight there 
 really is in such criticism, which, though claiming to be' the 
 criticism of temperance and moderation and relativity, does not 
 as a matter of fact escape the fatal law of excess and absolute- . / 
 ness even in its very moderation and relativity. In estimating 
 an innovator's method, all depends on the time and the enemy ; 
 and it may sometimes happen that the time is so out of joint 
 and the enemy so strong, so unscrupulous, so imminently per- 
 nicious, as to leave no alternative between finally succumbing, 
 and waging a war of deliverance for which coming generations 
 
30 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 have to bear the burdens in feuds and bitterness ; between 
 abridging somewhat of the richness and. fulness of life, and 
 allowing it all to be gradually choked up by dust and enwrap- 
 ped in night. For let us not forget that what Catholicism 
 was accomplishing in France in the first half of the eighteenth 
 century, was really not anything less momentous than the slow 
 strangling of French civilization. Though Voltaire's spirit 
 may be little edifying to us, who after all partake of the freedom 
 which he did so much to win, yet it is only just to remember 
 what was the spirit of his foe, and that in so pestilent a pre- 
 sence a man of direct vision may well be eager to use such 
 weapons as he finds to his hand. Let the scientific spirit move 
 people to speak as it lists about Voltaire's want of respect for 
 things held sacred, for the good deeds of holy men, for the 
 sentiment and faith of thousands of the most worthy among 
 his fellows. Still there are times when it may be very ques- 
 tionable whether, in the region of belief, one with power and 
 with fervid honesty ought to spare the abominable city of the 
 plain, just because it happens to shelter five righteous. There 
 are times when the inhumanity of a system stands out so red 
 and foul, when the burden of its iniquity weighs so heavy, and 
 the contagion of its hypocrisy is so laden with mortal plague, 
 that no awe of dilettante condemnation nor minute scruple as 
 to the historic or the relative can stay the hand of the man 
 whose direct sight and moral energy have pierced the veil of 
 use, and revealed the shrine of the infamous thing. The most 
 noble of the holy men said long ago that ' the servant of the 
 Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, 
 patient, in xneekness instructing those that oppose themselves.' 
 ;^ The history of the churches is in one of its most conspicuous 
 aspects the histoiy of a prolonged outrage upon these words 
 by arrogant and blasphemous persons, ' pretending to draw a 
 sacred spirit from the very saint who uttered them. We may 
 well deplore that Voltaire's attack, and every other attack of 
 the same sort, did not take the fair shape prescribed by the 
 apostle to the servant of the Lord, of gentleness, patience, and.' 
 
PRELIMINARY. 31 
 
 the instruction of a sweet and firm example. But the partisans 
 of the creed in whose name more human blood has been 
 violently shed than in any other cause whatever, these, I say, 
 can hardly find much ground of serious reproach in a few 
 score epigrams. Voltaire had no calm breadth of wisdom. 
 It may be so. There are moments which' need not this calm 
 breadth of wisdom, but a two-edged sword, and when the 
 deliverers of mankind are they who ' come to send fire on 
 the earth.' 
 
33 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 KXGLISH INFLUENCES. 
 
 Voltairism may be said to have begun from the flight of its 
 foiinder from Farls to London. This, to borrow a name from 
 the most memorable instance of outward change marking inward 
 revolution, was the decisive hegira, from which the philosophy 
 of destruction in a formal shape may be held seriously to date. 
 Voltaire landed in England in the middle of May, 1726. He 
 was in the thirty-third year of his age, that earlier climacteric, 
 when the men with vision first feel conscious of a past, and 
 reflectively mark its shadow. It is then that they either press 
 forward eagerly with new impulse in the way of their high calL 
 ing, knowing the limitations of circumstance and hour, or else 
 fainting draw back their hand from the plough, and ignobly 
 leave to another or to none the accomplishment of the work. 
 The narrowness of the cribbed deck that we are doomed to 
 tread, amid the vast space of an eternal sea with fair shores 
 dimly seen and never neared, oppresses the soul with a burden 
 that sorely tries its strength, when the fixed limits first define 
 themselves before it. Those are the strongest who do not 
 tremble beneath this gray ghostly light, but make it the pre- 
 cursor of an industrious day. 
 
 The past on which Voltaire had to look back was full of 
 turmoil, contention, impatience, and restless production. 
 Frangois Marie Arouet was born in 1694, so feeble in con- 
 stitution .that, as in the case of Fontenelle, whose hundred 
 years surpassed even Voltaire's lengthy span, his life was long 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 33 
 
 despaired of. His father was a notary of good repute for 
 integrity and skill, and was entrusted with the management 
 of their affairs by several of the highest families in France. 
 His mother is supposed to have had some of the intellectual 
 alertness which penetrated the character of her son, but she 
 died when he was seven years old, and he remained alone 
 with his father until 1704, when he was sent to school. His 
 instructors at the College Louis-le-Grand were the Jesuits, 
 whose wise devotion to intellectual education in the broadest 
 sense thai: was then possible, is a partial set-off against their 
 mischievous influence on morals and politics. The hardihood 
 of the young Arouet's temper broke out even from the first, and 
 we need not inquire minutely what were the precise subjects 
 of education of a child, whom his tutor took an early oppor- 
 tunity of pointing out as the future coryphaeus of deism in 
 France. He used to say in after life that he had learnt nothing 
 worth learning. A lad who could launch infidel epigrams at 
 "his Jansenist of a brother," and declaim a poem in which 
 so important a hero as Moses figures as an impostor,^ was of 
 that originality of mental turn on whose freedom the inevitably 
 mechanical instruction of the school cannot be expected to 
 make any deep or decisive impression. The young of this 
 independent humour begin their education where those of less 
 energetic nerve hardly leave off, with character ready made. 
 
 Between a youth of bold, vivacious, imaginative disposition, 
 and a father of the temperament proper to a notary with many 
 responsibihties, there could be no sympathy, and the two were 
 not long in coming to open quarrel without terms. The son 
 was taken out by his godfather, the abbd Chateauneuf, into 
 that gay world which presently became the infamous world of 
 the regency, where extraordinary sprightliness and facility in 
 verse gained him welcome and patronage. We need waste 
 no words on the corruption and intellectual trifling of the 
 society into which Voltaire was thus launched. For shallow- 
 ness and levity, concealed by literary artifice and play of 
 ' J. B. Rousseau's Moisade. 
 
 D 
 
34 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 frivolous wit which only makes the scene more dreaiy or 
 detestable, it has never been surpaajed. There was bright- 
 ness in it, compared with the heavy brutality and things 
 obscene of the court of Lewis xv., but after all we seem to see 
 over the brightness a sort of foul glare, like the iridescence of 
 putrefaction, Ninon de I'Enclos, a friend of his mother's, was 
 perhaps the one free and honest soul with whom the young 
 Arouet had to do. Now extremely old, she still preserved 
 both her wit and her fine probity of intellect. She had always 
 kept her heart free of cant, from the time when she had 
 ridiculed, as the Jansenists of love, the pedantical women 
 and platonic gallants of the Hotel Rambouillet, down to her 
 rejection of Madame de Maintenon's offer of an invitation 
 to the court, on condition of her joining the band of the 
 devout. The veteran Aspasia, now over eighty, was struck by 
 the brilliance and dazzling promise of the young versifier, and 
 left him a legacy for the purchase of books. 
 
 The rest of the society into which Voltaire was taken was 
 saturated with a spirit of reaction against the austere bigotry 
 of the court, and bad and miserable as such austerity is, the 
 rebellion against it is always worse and more miserable still. 
 The licence seems not to have been of the most joyous sort, as 
 indeed licence protesting and defiant is not apt to be. The 
 abb^ Chaulieu, a versifier of sprightly fancy, grace, and natural 
 ease, was the dissolute Anacreon of the people of quality who 
 during the best part of the reign of Lewis xiv. had failed to 
 sympathise with its nobility and stateliness, and during the 
 worst part revolted against its gloom. Voltaire at twenty was 
 his intimate and his professed disciple.^ To this intimacy we 
 may perhaps trace that remarkable continuity of tradition be- 
 tween Voltaire and the grand age, which distinguishes him 
 from the school of famous men who were called Voltaireans, 
 and of whom the special mark was that they had absolutely 
 broken with the whole past of French history and literature. 
 Princes, dukes, and marquises were of Chaulieu's band. The 
 ^ QLuvres, Ixii. p. 45. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 35 
 
 despair and fury of the elder Arouet at such companions and 
 such folKes reproduce once more a very old story in the 
 records of youthful genius. Genius and fine friends reconcile 
 no prudent notary to a son's hatred for law and the desk- 
 Orgies with the Duke of Sully, and rhyming bouts with Chau- 
 lieu, have sunk into small size, for us, who know that they were 
 but the mischievous and unbecoming prologue of a life of 
 incessant and generous labour, but we may well believe that 
 such enormities bulked big in the vision of the father, as 
 portents of degradation and ruin. We have a glimpse of the 
 son's temper towards the profession to which his father had 
 tried so hard to bind him, in the ironical definition, thrown 
 out long afterwards, of an avocat as a man who, not having 
 money enough to buy one of those brilliant offices on which 
 the universe has its eyes fixed, studies for three years the 
 laws of Theodosius and Justinian so as to know the custom 
 of Paris, and who at length having got matriculated has the 
 right of pleading for money, if he has a loud voice. ** The 
 young Arouet did actually himself get matriculated and acquire 
 this right, but his voice proved so loud that his pleadings were 
 destined to fill wider courts than those of Paris. 
 
 Arouet the elder persuaded Chateauneuf 's brother, who was 
 a diplomatist, to take into his company the law-student who 
 had made verse instead of studying the laws of Theodosius. 
 So the youth went to the Hague. Here he straightway fell 
 into new misadventure by conceiving an undying passion, 
 that lasted several weeks; for a young countrywoman whom 
 he found in Holland. Stolen interviews, letters, tears, and 
 the other accustomed circumstances of a juvenile passion on 
 which the gods frown, were all discovered. The ambassador 
 sent the refractory boy back to his father, with full details 
 and documents, with results on the relations of the pair that 
 need not be described. 
 
 In the autumn of 1715 Lewis xiv. died, and the Regent 
 D'Orleans reigned in his stead. There presently appeared 
 ' Dictionnaire Philosoijliique, s.v. CEuvres, Hi. p. 378. 
 
36 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 some pungent lines, entitled Les fai vu, in which the writer 
 recounted a number of evil things which he had seen in the state 
 — a thousand prisons crowded with brave citizens and faithful 
 ■ subjects, the people groaning under rigorous bondage, the 
 magistrates harassing every town with ruinous taxes and un- 
 righteous edicts ; fai vu, dest dire tout, le Jesuite adori. The 
 last line ran that all these ills the writer had seen, yet was but 
 twenty years old/ Voltaire was twenty-two, but the authorities 
 knew him for a verse-writer of biting turn, so they treated 
 the discrepancy of age as a piece of mere prosopopceia, and 
 laid him up in the Bastile (17 16). As a matter of fact, he had 
 no hand in the offence. Even amid these sombre shades, where 
 he was kept for nearly a year, his spirit was blithe and its fire 
 unquenchable. The custom of Paris and the Codes were as 
 little handled as ever; and he divided his time between the 
 study of the two great epics of Greece and Rome, and the 
 preparation of what he designed to be the great epic of France. 
 He also gave the finishing strokes to his "tragedy of CEdipe, 
 which was represented in the course of the following year with 
 definite success, and was the opening of a brilliant dramatic 
 career,' that perhaps to a mortal of more ordinary mould might 
 alone have sufficed for the glory of a life. 
 
 The next six years he divided between a lively society, 
 mostly of the great, the assiduous composition of new plays, 
 and the completion of the Henriade. His fibre was gradually 
 strengthening. By the end of this period, the recklessness of 
 the boyish disciple of Chaulieu had wholly spent itself; and 
 although Voltaire's manner of life was assuredly not regular 
 nor decorously ordered, now nor for many years to come, if 
 measured by the rigid standard on which an improved society 
 properly insists, yet it was always a life of vigorous industry and 
 clear purposes. For a brief time his passion for the Marechale 
 de Villars broke the tenacity of his diligence, and he always 
 looked back on this interruption of his work with the kind of 
 remorse that might afflict a saint for a grave spiritual back- 
 
 * QLuvres, i. 513. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 37 
 
 sliding. He was often at the country seats of Sully, Villars, 
 and elsewhere, throwing off thousands of trifling verses, arranging 
 theatricals, enlivening festivals, and always corresponding in- 
 defatigably; for now and throughout his life his good sense and 
 good will, his business-like quality and his liking for his friends, 
 both united to raise him above the idle pretences and self- 
 indulgence of those who neglect the chief instrument of social 
 intercourse and friendly continuity. He preferred the country 
 to the town. 'I was born,' he says to one, 'to be a faun or 
 creature of the woods ; I am not made to live in a town.' To 
 another, ' I fancy myself in hell, when I am in the accursed 
 city of Paris.' ^ The only recommendation of the accursed city 
 was that a solitude was attainable in it, as in other crowded 
 spots, which enabled him to work better there than in the small 
 and exacting throng of country-houses. ' I fear Fontainebleau, 
 Villars, and Sully, both for my health and for Henry iv. ; I 
 should do no work, I should over-eat, and I should lose in 
 ■pleasures and in complaisance to others an amount of precious 
 time that I ought to be using for a necessary and creditable 
 task.'« 
 
 Yet there was even at this period much of that marvellous 
 hurrying to and fro in France and out of it,. which continued 
 to mark the longer portion of Voltaire's life, and fills it with 
 such a busy air of turmoil and confusion, explaining many 
 things, when we think of the stability of life and permanence 
 of outward place of the next bright spirit that shone upon 
 Europe. Goethe never saw London, Paris, nor Vienna, and 
 made no journey save the famous visit to Italy, and the march 
 at Valmy. Voltaire moved hither and thither over the face of 
 Europe like the wind, and it is not until he has passed through 
 half of his life that we can begin to think of his home. Every 
 association that belongs to his name recalls tumult and haste 
 and shrill contention with men and circumstance. We have, 
 however, to remember that these constant movements were the 
 price which Voltaire paid for the vigour and freedom of his 
 
 ' (Euvres, Ixii. pp. 86 and 89. ' lb. Ixii. p. 107. 
 
38 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 speech, in days when the party of superstition possessed the 
 ear of the temporal power, and resorted without sparing to 
 the most violent means of obliterating every hardy word and 
 crushing every independent writer. The greater number of 
 Voltaire's ceaseless changes of place were flights from injustice, 
 and the recollection of this may well soothe the disturbance 
 of spirit of the most fastidious zealot for calm and orderly 
 living. They were for the most part retreats before packs 
 of wolves. 
 
 In 1722 the elder Arouet died, to the last relentlessly set 
 against a son, not any less stubborn than himself, and unfor- 
 tunately a great deal more poetical. About the same time the 
 name of Arouet falls away, and the poet is known henceforth 
 by that ever famous symbol for so much, Voltaire ; a name for 
 which various explanations, none of them satisfactory, have 
 been offered, the latest and perhaps the least improbable 
 resolving it into a fanciful anagram.' 
 
 Industrious as he was, and eager as he was for rural delights 
 and laborious solitude, Voltaire was still pre-eminently social. 
 His letters disclose in him, who really possessed all arts, the art 
 of one who knew how to be graciously respectful to the social 
 superiors who took him for a companion, without forgetting 
 what was due to his own respect for himself. We are all 
 princes or poets, he exclaimed jubilantly on the occasion of 
 one of those nights and suppers of the gods. Such gay-hearted 
 freedom was not always well taken, and in time Voltaire's eyes 
 ^ were opened to the terms on which he really stood. ' Who is 
 \ the young man who talks so loudV called out some Chevalier 
 Rohan, at one of these sprightly gatherings at the house of the 
 Duke of Sully.* ^My lord J the young man replied promptly, 
 ^ he is one who does not carry about a great name, but wins 
 respect for the name he has.' A few days afterwards the high- 
 spirited patrician magnanimously took an opportunity of having 
 
 ' A.R.O.V.E.T., L(f). \{euni). 
 
 ' Chevalier appears to have been a title given by courtesy to the 
 cadets of certain great families. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 39 
 
 a caning inflicted by the hands of his lacl;eys on the poet 
 who had thrown away this lesson upon him. Voltaire, who 
 had at all events that substitute for true physical courage 
 which springs up in an intensely irritable and susceptive 
 temperament, forthwith applied himself to practise with the 
 small-sword. He did his best to sting his enemy to fight, 
 but the chevalier either feared the swordsman, or else despised 
 an antagonist of the middle class ; and by the influence of the 
 Rohan family the poet once more found himself in the Bastille, I 
 then the house of correction at the disposal and for the use 
 of the nobles, the court, and the clergy. Here for six months 
 Voltaire, then only representing a very humble and unknown 
 quantity in men's minds, chafed and fretted. The pacific Fleury, 
 as is the wont of the pacific when in power, cared less to 
 punish the wrong-doer than to avoid disturbance, knowing 
 that disturbance was most effectually avoided by not meddling 
 with the person most able to resent. The multitude, however, 
 when the day of reckoning came, remembered all these things, 
 and the first act of their passion was to raze to the ground 
 the fortress into which nearly every distinguished champion of 
 the freedom of human intelligence among them had at one 
 time or another been tyrannically thrown. 
 
 On his release Voltaire was ordered to leave Paris. A 
 
 clandestine visit to the city showed him that there was no hope 
 
 of redress from authority, which was in the hands of men whose 
 
 ,, pride of rank prevented them from so much as even perceiving, 
 
 much more from repairing, such grievance as a mere bourgeois 
 
 . could have : as if, to borrow Condorcefs bitter phrase, a de- 
 
 -5^cendant of the conquering Franks, like De Rohan, could have 
 
 lost the ancient right of life and death over a descendant of 
 
 the Gauls.' And this was no ironic taunt ; for while Voltaire 
 
 was in the Bastille, that astounding book of the Count of 
 
 Boulainvilliers was in the press, in which it was shown that the 
 
 feudal system is the master-work of the human mind, and that 
 
 the advance of the royal authority and the increase of the 
 
 ° CEuvres, iv. 18. 
 
40 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 liberties of the people were equally unjust usurpations of the 
 rights of the conquering Franks.^" 
 
 Voltaire was no patient victim of the practice which corre- 
 sponded to this trim historic theory. In a tumult of just indig- 
 nation he quitted France, and sought refuge with that stout and 
 free people, who had by the execution of one king, the deposi- 
 tion, of another, and the definite subjugation of the hierarchy, 
 won a full liberty of thought and speech and person. A' 
 modern historian has drawn up a list of the men of mark who 
 made the same invigorating pilgrimage. ' During the two 
 generations which elapsed between the death of Lewis xiv. and 
 the outbreak of the Revolution, there was hardly a Frenchman 
 of' eminence who did not either visit England or leam English ; ' 
 
 / while many of them did both.' " Among those who actually 
 came to England and mixed in its society besides Voltaire, 
 were Buffon, Brissot, Helvetius, Goumay, Jussieu, Lafayette, 
 Montesquieu, Maupertuis, Morellet, Mirabeau, Roland and 
 Madame Roland, Rousseau. We who live after Wordsworth, 
 Shelley, Byron, Scott, have begun to forget the brilliant group 
 of the Queen Anne men. They belong to a self-complacent 
 time, and we to a time of doubt and unsatisfied aspiration, and 
 the two spirits are unsympathetic. Yet they were assuredly a 
 band, from Newton and Locke down to Pope, of whom, 
 taking them for all the qualities which tliey united, in science, 
 correct judgment, love of letters, and taste, England has as 
 good reason to be proud as of any set of contemporary writers 
 in her history. 
 
 "~ Up to this moment Voltaire had been a poet, and his mind 
 had not moved beyond the region of poetic creation. He had 
 beaten every one once and for all on the ground of light and 
 graceful lyric verse, 'a kind of poetry,' says a French critic 
 whose word in such a matter we can hardly refuse to take, 
 ' in which Voltaire is at once with us the only master and the 
 only writer supportable, for he is the only one whom we can 
 
 1° Histoire de Tancien Gotmernement de la France (1727). 
 ^' Buckle's //ij^. of Civilization, i. 657-664. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 41 
 
 read.'^° He had produced three tragedies. His epic was 
 completed, though undergoing ceaseless laoour of the file. 
 Two lines in his first play had served to mark him for no friend 
 to the hierophants : 
 
 Nos pretres ne sont point ce qu'un vain peuple pense ; 
 Notre credulite fait toute leur science. '^ 
 
 And the words of Araspe in the same play had breathed the 
 full spirit of the future liberator : 
 
 Ne nous fions qu'a nous ; voyons tout par nos yeux : 
 Ce sont la nos trepieds, nos oracles, nos dieux. '* 
 
 Such expressions, however, were no more than the vague and 
 casual word of the esprit fort, the friend of Chaulieu, and the 
 rhymer of a dissolute circle, where religion only became tinged 
 with doubt, because conduct had already become penetrated 
 with licence. More important than such stray words was the 
 Epistle to Urania (1722), that truly masculine and terse pro- 
 test against the popular creed, its mean and fatuous and con- 
 tradictory idea of an omnipotent God, who gave us guilty hearts 
 so as to have the right of punishing us, and planted in us a 
 love of pleasure so as to torment us the more effectually by 
 appalling ills that an eternal miracle prevents from ever ending / 
 who drowned the fathers in the deluge and then died for the 
 children; who exacts an account of their ignorance from a 
 hundred peoples whom he has himself plunged helplessly into 
 this ignorance : 
 
 Je ne reconnais point a cette indigne image 
 
 I,e dieu que je dois adorer ; 
 
 Je croirais le deshonorer 
 Par une telle insulte et par un tel hommage. '^ 
 
 Though called The For and Against, the poet hardly tries to 
 maintain any proportion between the two sides of the argu- 
 ment. The verses were addressed to a lady in a state of un- 
 certainty as to belief, of whom there were probably more among 
 
 " Sainte-Beuve, Causeries, v. ill, " CEdipe, iv. sc. I. " lb. ii. v. 
 '* Le Pour et le Centre, ou Epitre i Urania. (Euvres, xv. pp. 399, 403. 
 
42 ; VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Voltaire's friends of quality than he can have cared to cure or 
 convert. Scepticism was at this time not much more than an 
 interesting fashion. 
 
 The dilettante believer is indeed not a strong spirit, but the 
 weakest, and the facts of life were by this time far too serious 
 for Voltaire, for that truth to have missed his keen-seeing eye. 
 It is not hard to suppose that impatient weariness of the poor 
 life that was lived around him, had as large a share as resent- 
 ment of an injustice, in driving him to a land where men did 
 not merely mouth idle words of making reason their oracle, 
 their tripod, their god, but where they had actually systematized 
 the rejection of Christianity, and had thrown themselves with 
 grave faith on the disciplined intelligence and its lessons. 
 Voltaire left a country where freedom of thinking was only an 
 empty watchword, the name for a dissipated fashion. It was 
 considered free-thinking if a man allowed himself to regard the 
 existence of the Five Propositions in Jansenius's book as a 
 thing indifferent to the happiness of the human race.^^ He 
 found in England that it was a far-spreading reality, moulding 
 not only the theological ideas, but the literature, manners, 
 politics, and philosophy, of a great society. Voltaire left 
 France a poet, he returned to it a sage. Before his flight, 
 though we do not know to what extent he may have read such 
 history as was then accessible, he had been actively produc- 
 tive only in the sphere of the imaginative faculties, and in 
 criticism of the form and regulation proper to be imposed upon 
 them. When he returned, while his poetic power had ripened, 
 he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of scientific reason, and, 
 what was not any less important, he had become alive to the 
 central truth of the social destination of all art and all know- 
 ledge. In a word, he was transformed from the penman into 
 the captain and man-at-arms. ' The example of England,' says 
 Condorcet, 'showed him that truth is not made to remain a 
 secret in the hands of a few philosophers, and a limited' number 
 of men of the world, instructed, or rather indoctrinated, by the 
 " Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire. (Etivres, iv. 20. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 43 
 
 philosophers ; smiling with them at the errors of which the 
 people are the victims, but at the same time making them- 
 selves the champions of these very errors, when their rank or 
 position gives them a real or chimerical interest in them, and 
 quite ready to permit the proscription, or even persecution, of 
 their teachers, if they venture to say what in secret they them- 
 selves actually think. From the moment of his return, Voltaire 
 felt himself called to destroy the prejudices of every kind, of 
 which his country was the slave."^' 
 
 It is not difficult to perceive the sorts of fact which would 
 most strike the exile's attention, though it would be rash to 
 suppose that things struck him in exact proportion to their real 
 weight and the depth of their importance, or that he detected 
 the connection subsisting among them at their roots. Perhaps 
 the first circumstance to press its unfamiliarity upon him was 
 the social and political consequence of the men of letters in 
 England, and the recognition givento the power of the pen. | 
 The patronage of men of genius in the~reign oF^Anne and "part 
 of the reign of the first George had been profuse and splendid. 
 The poet who had been thrown into prison for resenting a 
 whipping from .a nobleman's lackeys, found himself in a land 
 where Newton and Locke were rewarded with lucrative posts in 
 the administration of the country, where Prior and Gay acted 
 in important embassies, and where Addison was a Secretary of 
 State. The author of CEdip'e and the Henriade had to hang 
 ignobly about in the crowd at Versailles at the marriage of 
 Lewis XV. to gain a paltry pittance from the queen's privy 
 purse,^^ while in England Hughes and Rowe and Ambrose 
 Philips and Congreve were all enjoying amply endowed sine- 
 cures. The famihar intercourse between the ministers and the 
 brilliant literary group of that age has been often painted. At 
 the time of Voltaire's exile it had just come to an end with the 
 accession to supreme power of Walpole, who neither knew any- 
 thing nor cared anything about the literature of his own time. 
 
 17 Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire. CEuvres, iv. 20. 
 w Correspondence, 1725. CEuvres, Ixii. pp. 140-9. 
 
44 • VOLTAIRE. 
 
 But the usage was still new, and the men who had profited 
 and given profit by it were alive, and were the central figures 
 in the circles among which, Xoltaire was introduced by Boling- 
 
 _ broke. Newton died in 0.2]^, and Voltaire saw his death 
 mourned as a public calamity, and surrounded with a pomp 
 and circumstance in the eye of the country that could not have 
 been surpassed if he had been, not a geometer, but a king who 
 was the benefactor of his people.^' The author of Gulliver's 
 Travels was still a dignitary in the state church, and there was 
 still a large association of outward power and dignity with 
 literary merit. 
 
 In so far as we consider literature to be one of the purely 
 decorative arts, there can be no harm in this patronage of its 
 most successful, that is its most pleasing, professors by the 
 political minister ; but the more closely literature approaches to 
 being an organ of serious things, a truly spiritual -power, the 
 more danger there is likely to be in making it a path to 
 temporal station or emolument. The practical instinct, which 
 on some of its sides seems like a miraculously implanted 
 substitute for scientific intelligence in English politics, has led 
 us almost too far in preserving this important separation of 
 the new church from the functions and rewards of the state. 
 
 I The misfortunes of France since the Revolution have been due 
 to no one circumstance so markedly as to the predominance 
 which the man of letters has acquired in that country; and 
 this fatal predominance was 'first founded, though assuredly 
 not of set design, by Voltaire. 
 
 Not less amazing than the high honour paid to intellectual 
 eminence was the refugee from the city of the Bastille likely 
 to find the freedom with which public events and public per- 
 sonages were handled by any one who could pay a printer. 
 The licence of this time in press and theatre has only been 
 once or twice equalled since, and it has never been surpassed. 
 From Bolingbroke and Swift down to the author of The Golden 
 
 " Lettres surles Anglais, xv. CEuvres, xxxv. p. 114. Cf. also Lette: 
 xxiv. (pp. 197-202.) 
 
r\ 
 
 ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 45 
 
 Rump,'" every writer who chose to consider himself in oppo- 
 sition treated the minister with a violence and ferocity, which 
 neither irritated nor daunted that sage head, but which would 
 in France have crowded the lowest dungeons of the Bastille 
 with victims of Fleury's anger and fright. Such licence was 
 as natural in a country that had within ninety years gone 
 thro'dgh a violent civil war, a revolutionary change of govern- 
 ment and line, and a half suppressed dispute of succession, as 
 it would have been astonishing in France, where the continuity 
 of outward order had never been more than superficially rulBed, 
 even in the most turbulent times of the factious wars of the 
 League and the Fronde. No new idea of the relations between 
 ruler and subject had ever penetrated into France, as it had 
 done so deeply in the neighbouring country. No serious 
 popular issues had been so much as stated. As Voltaire wrote, 
 in the detestable times of Charles ix. and Henry in. it was only 
 a question whether the people should be the slave of the 
 Guises, while as for the last war, it deserved only hisses and 
 cpntempt ; for what was De Retz but a rebel without a purpose 
 and a stirrer of sedition without a name, and what was the 
 parliament but a body which knew neither what it meant nor 
 what it did not mean ? ^^ The apologies of Jesuit writers for 
 the assassination of tyrants deserve an important place in the 
 history of the doctrine of divine right; but they were theoretical 
 essays in casuistry for the initialed few, and certainly conveyed 
 no general principles of popular right to the many. 
 
 Protestantism, on the other hand, loosened the conception 
 of authority and of the respect proper for authority, to a degree 
 which has never been realised in the most anarchic movements 
 in France, whose anarchy has ever sprung less from a disrespect 
 for authority as Such, than from a passionate and uncom- 
 promising resolve in this or that group that the authority shall 
 be in one set of hailds and not another. Voltairism has proved 
 itself as little capable as Catholicism of inspiring any piece that 
 
 ^'' Lord Stanhope's Hist, of England, ii. 231 (ed. 1858). 
 ^' Lettres sur les Anglais, ix. (Ewvres, xxxv. p. 73. 
 
46 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 may match with Milton's Areopagitica, the noblest defence 
 that was ever made of the noblest of causes. We know not 
 whether ' Voltaire ever thought much as to the history and 
 foundation of that freedom of speech, which even in its abuse 
 struck him as so wonderful a circumstance in a country that still 
 preserved a stable and orderly society. He was probably 
 content to admire the phenomenon of a liberty so marvellous, 
 without searching very far for its antecedents. The mere 
 spectacle of such free, vigorous, many-sided, and truly social 
 and pubhc activity of intellect as was visible in England at 
 this time, was in itself enough to fix the gaze of one who 
 was so intensely conscious of his own energy of intellect, and 
 so bitterly rebellious against the system which fastened a gag 
 between his lips. 
 
 If we. would reahse the impression of this scene of free 
 speech on Voltaire's ardent spirit, we need only remember that, 
 when in time he returned to his own country, he had to wait 
 long and use many arts and suffer harassing persecution, before 
 he could publish what he had to say on Newton and Locke^ 
 and in other less important respects had to suppress much of 
 what he had most at heart to say. 'One must disguise at 
 Paris,' he wrote long after his return, ' what I could not say too 
 strongly at London ; ' and he vaunts his hardOiood in upholding 
 Newton against Rend Descartes, while he confesses that an 
 unfortunate but necessary circumspection forced him to try to 
 make Locke obscure.^^ Judge the light which would come into 
 such a mind as his, when he first saw the discussion and pro- 
 pagation of truth freed from these vile and demoralising affronts. 
 The very conception of truth was a new one, as a goddess not 
 to be shielded behind the shades of hierophantic mystery, but / 
 rather to be sought in the free tumult and joyous strife of 
 many voices, there vindicating her own majesty and marking 
 her own children. 
 
 Penetrating deeper, Voltaire found not only a new idea 
 of truth as a something rude, robust, and self-sufficient, but also 
 " Correspondence, 1732. Qiuvres, Ixii. p. 253, 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 47 
 
 what was to him a new order of truths, the triumphs of slow- 
 footed induction and the positive reason. France was the 
 hotbed of systems of the physical universe. The provisional 
 and suspensive attitude was intolerable to her impetuous genius, 
 and the gaps which scientific investigation was unable to fill, 
 were straightway hidden behind an artificial screen of meta- 
 physical phantasies. The Aristotelian system died harder in 
 France than anywhere else, for so late as 1693, while Oxford 
 and Cambridge and London were actually embracing the New- 
 tonian principles, even the Cartesian system was forbidden to 
 be taught by decrees of the Sorbonne and of the Council of 
 the King.^'' When the Cartesian physics once got a foothold, 
 they kept it as firmly as the system which they had found so 
 much difficulty in displacing. It is easy to believe that Vol- 
 taire's positive intelligence would hold aloof by a certain 
 instinct from physical explanations which were unverified and 
 incapable of being verified, and which were imbrangled with 
 theology and metaphysics. 
 
 We can readily conceive, again, the sensation of freshness 
 and delight with which a mind so essentially real, and so funda- 
 mentally serious, paradoxical as this may sound in connection 
 with the name of the greatest mocker that has ever lived, 
 would exchange the poetized astronomy of Fontenelle, excel- 
 lently constituted as Fontenelle was in a great many ways, for 
 the sure and scientific discoveries of a Newton. Voltaire, in 
 whatever subject, never failed to see through rhetoric, and for 
 rhetoric as the substitute for clear reasoning he always had an 
 aversion as deep as it was wholesome. Nobody ever loved 
 grace and form in style more sincerely than Voltaire, but he 
 has shown in a great many ways that nobody ever valued grace 
 and form more truly at their worth, compared with correctness 
 of argument and precision and solidity of conclusion. 
 
 Descartes, Fontenelle had said, ' essaying a bold flight, 
 insisted on placing himself at the source of all, on making him- 
 self master of the first principles of things by a certain number 
 
 ''^ Martin's Hist. _de France, vol. xiv. 265-7. 
 
48 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 of clear and fundamental ideas, having thus only to descend to 
 the phenomena of nature as necessary consequences ; Newton, 
 more timid or more modest, began his advance by resting on 
 phenomena in order to ascend to the unknown principles, 
 resolved to admit them, however the combination of the results 
 , might present them. The one starts from what he understands 
 clearly to discover the cause of what he sees : the other starts 
 from what he sees, to discover its cause, whether clear or 
 obscure.' Caution and reserve and sound method had achieved 
 a generalization more vast and amazing than the boldest flight, 
 or most resolute reasoning downwards from a clearly held con- 
 ception to phenomena, could possibly have achieved. This 
 splendid and unrivalled discovery was probably expounded to 
 Voltaire by Dr. Samuel Clarke, with whom he tells us that he 
 had several conferences in 1726,^* and who was one of the 
 ablest of the Newtonians. He had no doubt learnt the theory 
 of vortices from the Jesuits, and clear exposition was the only 
 thing needed to convert him to the new theory, which shines by 
 its own light, and must, in an unbiassed intelligence with the 
 humblest scientific quality, have extinguished every artificial 
 explanation. One of the truest, signs of the soundness of 
 Vdltaire's intellectual activity was that his glad reception of the 
 Newtonian doctrine of attraction did, not blind him to the signal 
 service and splendid genius of Descarte^ That loud-shouting 
 yet feeble-footedj enthusiasm, which can only make sure of 
 itself by disparaging the object of a counter-enthusiasm, had 
 no place in an intellect so emphatically sincere and self-pene- 
 trative. He'prefaces his account of the system of attraction 
 by a'liearty and loyal appreciation of the propounder of the 
 system of vortices.^' 
 
 The acquisition of the special theory of attraction was in 
 itself less important for Voltaire, than the irresistible impulse 
 ,vhich it would give to the innate rationality or positivity of his 
 own mind. It fitted him to encounter with proper freedom 
 
 '* Philosophie de Newton, Pt, i. c. i. CEuvres, xli. p. 46. 
 '* Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. CEuvres, xxxv. pp. 115-20. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 49 
 
 not only vortices, but that tremendous apparatus of monads, 
 sufficient reason, and pre-established harmony, with which 
 Leibnitz then overawed European philosophy. ' O Meta- 
 physics ! ' he cried, ' we have, then, got as far as they had in 
 the time of the earliest Druids ! ' '^ 
 
 Locke's essay impelled him further in the same path of 
 patient and cautious interrogation of experience ; for the same 
 method which established gravitation presided over the birth of 
 the experiential psychology. Newton instead of elaborating 
 a system of vortices, or another, out of his own consciousness, 
 industriously and patiently waited on the phenomena. Locke, 
 too, instead of inventing a romance of the soul, to use Voltaire's 
 phrase, sagaciously set himself to watch the phenomena of 
 thought, and ' reduced metaphysics to being the experimental 
 physics of the soul.' ^^ Malebranche, then the reigning philo- 
 sopher in France, 'astonished the reason of those whom he 
 delighted by his style. People trusted him in what they did 
 not understand, because he began by being right in what they 
 did understand; he seduced people by being delightful, as 
 Descartes seduced them by being daring, ?/hile Locke was 
 nothing more than sage.'^^ 'After all,' Voltaire once wrote, 
 ' we must admit that anybody who^ has read Locke, or rather 
 who is his own Locke, must find the Platos mere fine talkers, 
 and nothing more. In point of philosophy, a chapter of Locke 
 or Clarke is, compared with the babble of antiquity, what 
 Newton's optics are compared with those ■ of Descartes.' ^^ 
 It is curious to observe that De Maistre, who thought more 
 meanly of Plato than Voltaire did, and hardly less meanly than 
 he thought of Voltaire himself, cried out that in the study 
 of philosophy contempt for Locke is the beginning of know- 
 ledge.™ Voltaire, on the other hand, is enchanted to hear that 
 
 ^^ Philos. de Newton, Pt. i. c. ix. (Euvres, xli. p. 108. 
 
 " D'Alembert. 
 
 '^^ Dictionnaire Philosophique, s.v. Locke. (Euvres, Ivi. p. 447. 
 
 ^' Corr. 1736. (Euvres, Ixiji p. 29. 
 
 "> Soirees de St. itersbourg 6i:me Fentretien, i. 403. 
 
 E 
 
V 
 
 so VOLTAIRE. 
 
 his niece reads the great EngHsh philosopher, like a good father 
 who sheds tears of joy that his children are turning out well." 
 Augustiis published an edict de coercendo intra fines imperio, 
 and like him, Locke has fixed the empire of knowledge in order 
 to strengthen it.°* Locke, he says elsewhere, traced the develop- 
 ment of the human reason, as a good anatomist explains the 
 machinery of the human body : instead of defining all at once 
 what we do not understand, he examines by degrees what we 
 want to understand : he sometimes has the courage to speak 
 positively, but sometimes also he has the courage to doubt.™ 
 This is a perfectly appreciative account. Locke perceived the 
 hopelessness of defining things as they are in themselves, and 
 the necessity before all else of understanding the reach of the 
 human intelligence ; the impossibility of attaining knowledge 
 absolute and transcendent ; and the limitations of our thinking 
 and knowing faculties within the bounds of an experience that 
 rmiist always be relative. The doubt which Voltaire praised 
 in Locke had nothing to do with, that shivering mood which 
 receives overmuch poetic praise in our day, as the honest 
 J doubt that has more faith than half your creeds. There was no 
 ( question of the sentimental juvenilities of children crying for 
 light. It was by no means religious doubt, but philosophic ; 
 and it affected only the possibilities of ontological knowledge, 
 leaving the grounds of faith on the one hand, and practical 
 conduct on the other, exactly where they were. His intense 
 feeling for actualities would draw Voltaire irresistibly to the 
 writer who, in his judgment, closed the gates of the dream- 
 land of metaphysics, and banished the vaulting ambition of k 
 priori certainties, which led nowhere and assured nothing. 
 Voltaire's keen practical instinct may well have revealed to 
 him that men were most likely to attribute to the great social 
 problem of the improvement of mankind its right supremacy, 
 when they had ceased to concentrate intellectual effort on 
 
 " Corr. 1737; Ixiii. p. 154. 
 
 '^ Ih. p. 248. Cf. also Ixii. p. 276. 
 
 ^' Leltres sur les Anglais, xiv. QLtrjres, xx>;v. pp. 102-5. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 51 
 
 the insoluble ; and Locke went a long way towards showing 
 how insoluble those questions were, on which, as it chanced, 
 the most strenuous efforts of the intellect of Europe since the 
 decline of theology had been concentrated. 
 
 That he should have acquired more scientific views either 
 upon the origin of ideas, or the question whether the soul 
 always thinks, or upon the reason why an apple falls to the 
 ground, or why the planets remain in their orbits, was on the 
 whole very much less important for Voltaire, than a profound 
 and very vital sentiment which was raised to supreme promi- 
 nence in his mind, by the spectacle of these vast continents 
 of knowledge newly discovered by the adventurous yet sure 
 explorers of English thought. This sentiment was a noble 
 faith, none the less firm because it was so passionate, in the 
 ability of the relative and practical understanding to reach truth; 
 a deep-rooted reverence for it, as a majestic power bearing 
 munificent and unnumbered gifts to mankind. Hence the 
 vivacity of the annotations which about this time (1728) Vol- 
 taire affixed to Pascal's famous Thoughts, and which were re- 
 garded at that time as the audacious carpings of a shallow 
 poet against a profound philosopher. They were in truth the' 
 protest of a lively common sense against a strained, morbid, 
 and often sophistical, misrepresentation of human nature and) 
 human circumstance. Voltaire shot a penetrative ray through 
 the clouds of doubt, out of which Pascal had made an apology 
 for mysticism. Even if there were no direct allusions to Locke, 
 as there are, we should know from whom the \vriter had learnt 
 the art of insisting on the relativity of propositions, reducing 
 them to definable terms,"* and being very careful against those 
 slippery unobserved transitions from metaphor to reality, and 
 from a term used in its common sense to the same term in a 
 transcendental sense, by which Pascal brought the seeming con- 
 tradictions of life, and its supposed pettiness, into a light as 
 oppressively glaring as it ' was artificial. 'These pretended 
 oppositions that you call contradictions are necessary ingre- 
 " CEtivres, vol. xliii. p. 77- 
 
52 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 dients in the composition of man, who is, like the rest of 
 nature, what he is bound to be.'*^ And where is the wise man 
 who would be full of despair because he cannot find out the 
 exact constitution of his thought, because he only knows a few 
 attributes of matter, because God has not disclosed to him all 
 his secrets ? He might as well despair because he has not got 
 four feet and two wings.** This sage strain was the restoration 
 to men of their self-respect, the revival of that intelligence 
 which Pascal had so humiliated and thrust under foot. It 
 was what he had seen in England of the positive feats which 
 reason had achieved, that filled Voltaire with exultatioii in its 
 power, and confidence in the prospects of the race which pos- 
 sessed such an instrument. ' What strange rage possesses some 
 people, to insist on our all being miserable! They are like 
 \^ a quack, who would fain have us believe we are ill, in order to 
 sell us his pills. Keep thy drugs, my friend, and leave me my 
 health.' =7 
 
 From this there flowed that other vehement current in his 
 soul, of energetic hatred toward the black clouds of prejudice, 
 of mean self-love, of sinister preference of class or order, of 
 indolence, obstinacy, wanton fancy, and all the other unhappy 
 leanings of human nature, and vexed and fatal conjunctures of 
 circumstance, which interpose between humanity and the bene- 
 ficent sunbeams of its own intelligence, that central light of 
 the universe. Hence, again, by a sufficiently visible chain of 
 thought, his marked disesteem for far-sounding names of brutal 
 conquerors, and his cold regard for those outward and material 
 circumstances in the state of nations, which strike the sense, 
 but do not touch the inward reason. 'Not long ago,' he writes 
 once, 'a distinguished company were discussing the trite and 
 frivolous question, who was the greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, 
 / Tamerlane, or Cromwell. Somebody answered that it was 
 undoubtedly Isaac Newton. This person was right ; for if true 
 greatness consists in having received from heaven a powerfui 
 
 ^5 CEmifes, vol. xliii. p. 20. " p. 26. 
 
 f Corr. 1737. CEuvres, Ixiii. p. 248. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 53 
 
 understanding and in using it to enlighten oneself and all 
 others, then such an one as Newton, who is hardly to be met 
 
 with once in ten centuries, is in truth the great man 
 
 It is to him who masters our minds by the force of truth, not 
 to those who enslave men by violence ; it is to him who under- 
 stands the universe, not to those who disfigure it, that we owe 
 our reverence."^ This may seem trite to us, as the question 
 which suggested it seemed to Voltaire, but we need only reflect, 
 first, how new this was, even as an idea, in the France which 
 Voltaire had quitted, and, second, how in spite of the nominal 
 acceptance of the idea, in the England of our own time there is, 
 with an immense majority not only of the general vulgar but 
 of the special vulgar who presume to teach in press and pulpit, 
 no name of slight at once so disdainful and so sure of transfixing 
 as the name of thinker. -y\* 
 
 The discovery of the New World did not fire the imagination 
 and stir the thought of Europe more intensely, than the vision 
 of these new worlds of knowledge kindled the ardour of the/ 
 receptive spirit which had just come into contact with them. 
 But besides the speculative aspects of what he saw in England^ 
 Voltaire was deeply penetrated by the social differences be- 
 tween a country that had been effectively, if only partially, 
 transformed from feudalism, and his own, where feudalism had 
 only been transformed into a system more repressive than 
 itself, and more unfit to conduct a nation to the free and indus- 
 trious developments of new civilization. It is a remarkable 
 thing that though Voltdre's habitual companions or patrons had 
 belonged to the privileged class, he had been sufficiently struck. 
 by the evils incident to the privileged system to notice the 
 absence of such evils in England, and to make a clear attempt, 
 though an insufficient one, to understand the secret of the 
 English immunity from them. One of the worst curses of 
 France was the taille or capitation-tax, and the way in which 
 it was levied and assessed. In England, Voltaire noticed, the 
 peasant has not his feet bruised in wooden shoes, he eats white 
 '* Lettres sur les Anglais, xiii. OLuvres, xxxv. p. 9$. 
 
54 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 bread, is decently clad, is not terrified to increase the number 
 of his stock, or to roof his dweUing with tiles, lest his tax 
 should be raised next year. Again, he placed his finger on 
 one of the circumstances that did most to spoil the growth of a 
 compact and well-knit society in France, when he pointed to 
 the large number of farmers in England with five or six hun- 
 dred pounds sterling a year, who do not think it beneath them 
 to cultivate the earth which has made them rich, and on which 
 they live in active freedom^^' The profoundest modern inves- 
 tigator of the conditions of French society in the eighteenth 
 century has indicated the eagerness of every man who got 
 a little capital to quit the country and buy a place in a town, as 
 doing more harm to the progress of the agriculture and com- 
 merce of France than even the taille itself and the trade 
 corporations.*" 
 
 Voltaire perceived the astonishing fact that in this country 
 a man because he is a noble or a priest was not exempt from 
 paying certain taxes, and that the Commons who regulated 
 the taxes, though second to the Lords in rank, were above them 
 in legislative influence.*^ His acute sight also revealed to him 
 the importance of the mixture of ranks and classes in common 
 pursuits, and he records with admiration instances of the 
 -f-younger sons of peers of the realm following trade. ' Whoever 
 arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote province with 
 money to spend and a name in ac or ilk, can talk about " a 
 man like me, a man of my quality,"^ and hold a merchant 
 in sovereign, contempt. The merchant again so constantly 
 hears his business spoken of with disdain that he is fool enough 
 to blush for it ; yet I am not sure which is the more useful to 
 a state, a thickly-bepowdered lord who knows exactly what 
 time the king rises and what time he goes to bed, and gives 
 
 " Lettres, &c. x. CEiwres, xxxv. p. 8i. 
 
 " De Tocqueville's Ancien Rigime, liv. ii. c. 9, p. 137 (ed. 1866). 
 "^ (Euwes, xxxv. p. 80. 
 
 " Tlie reader of Zarf?;?- will remember the ' homme comme moi,' 3.nA his 
 ill luck at Babylon. (Euvres, lix. pp. 153-9. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 55 
 
 himself mighty airs of greatness while he plays the part of a 
 slave in a minister's ante-room; or the merchant who enriches -f- 
 his country, gives orders from his counting-house at Surat or 
 Cairo, and contributes to the happiness of the globe.'''' It is 
 easy to conceive the fury which these contrasts drawn from 
 English observation would excite among the personages in 
 France who happened to get the worst side in them, and there 
 was assuredly nothing surprising in the decree of the Parliament 
 of Paris (1734), which condemned the Letters on the English 
 to be publicly burnt, as scandalous and contrary ahke to good 
 manners and the respect due to principalities and powers. 
 
 The English reader of the Letters is naturally struck by 
 the absence of any adequate account of our political liberties 
 and free constitutional forms. There is a good chapter on 
 Bacon, one on inoculation, and several on the Quakers, but on 
 the civil constitution hardly a word of large appreciativeness. 
 Not only this, but there is no sign that Voltaire either set any 
 due or special value on the popular forms of the Hanoverian 
 time, or clearly understood that the liberty, which was so 
 amazing and so precious to him in the region of speculative 
 and literary activity, was the direct fruit of that general spirit 
 of freedom, which is naturally engendered in a people accus- 
 tomed to take an active part in the conduct of its own affairs. 
 Liberty in spirituals was adorable to him, but for liberty in 
 temporals he never seems to have had more than a very 
 distant and verbal kind of respect ; just because, with all 
 his unmatched keenness of sight, he failed to discover that 
 the English sturdiness in the matter of civil rights was the 
 very root and cause, not only of that material prosperity 
 which struck him so much, and of the slightness and move- 
 ableness of the line which divided the aristocracy from the 
 commercial classes, but also of the fact that a Newton and 
 a Locke Were inwardly emboldened to give free play to their 
 intelligence without fear of being punished for their conclusions, 
 and of the only less important fact that whatever conclusions 
 " Lettres sur les Anglais, xi. CEuvres, xxxv. p. 85. 
 
56 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 speculative genius might establish would be given to the world 
 without interposition from any court or university or official 
 tribunal, v Voltaire undoubtedly admired the English for their 
 parliament, because the material and superficial advantages 
 that delighted him were evidently due to the system, which 
 happened to be parliamentary. What we miss is any con- 
 sciousness that these advantages would not have been what 
 they were, if they had been conferred by an absolute sove- 
 reign ; any recognition that political activity throughout a nation 
 works in a thousand indirect but most potent ways, and is not 
 more to be prized for this, than for its direct and most palpable 
 consequences. In one place, indeed, he mentions that the 
 honour paid to men of letters is due to the form of govem- 
 ment, but his language betrays a wholly inadequate and incor- 
 rect notion of the true operation of the form of government. 
 ' There are in London,' he says, ' about eight hundred people 
 with the right of speaking in public, and maintaining the 
 interests of the nation. Some five or six thousand pretend 
 to the same honour in their turn. All the rest set themselves 
 up to judge these, and everybody can print what he thinks. 
 So all the nation is bound to instruct itself. All talk is about 
 the governments of Athens and Rome, and it becomes neces- 
 sary to read the authors who have discussed them. That 
 naturally leads to love of polite learning.'*' This is to confound 
 a very trivial accident of popular governments with theu: essence. 
 If culture thrives under them — a very doubtful position — it is 
 not because voters wish to understand the historical allusions 
 of candidates, but because the general stir and life of public 
 activity tends to commove the whole system. Political freedom 
 does not produce men of genius, but its atmosphere is more 
 favourable than any other to their making the best of their 
 genius in the service of mankind. 
 
 Voltaire, in this as in too much besides, was content with 
 a keen and rapid glance at the surface. The reader may re- 
 member his stpry of meeting a boatman one day on the 
 " Lett. Ang. xxi. ; xxxv. pp. 172, 172. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 57 
 
 Thames, who seeing that he was a Frenchman, with a too 
 characteristic kind of courtesy, took the opportunity of bawling 
 out, with the added emphasis of a round oath, that hs would 
 rather be a boatman on the Thames than an archbishop in 
 France. The next day Voltaire saw his man in prison with 
 irons on and praying an alms from the passers-by, and so asked 
 him whether he still thought as scurvily of an archbishop in 
 France. 'Ah, sir,' cried the man, 'what an abominable govern- 
 ment ! I have been carried off by force to go and serve in 
 one of the king's ships in Norway. They take me from my 
 wife and my children, and lay me up in prison with irons on 
 
 ■ my legs until the time for going on board, for fear I should run 
 away.' A countryman of Voltaire's confessed that he felt a 
 splenetic joy that a people who were constantly taunting the 
 French with their servitude, were in sooth just as much slaves 
 themselves ; but for my own part, says Voltaire, I felt a 
 humaner sentiment, I was afflicted at there being no liberty on 
 the earth. *^ 
 
 This is well enough as a comment on the abomination of 
 
 , impraesment ; yet we feel that there is behind it, and not here 
 only but generally in Voltaire, a sort of confusion between 
 two very distinct conceptions, that both in his day and ever 
 since have been equally designated by the common name of 
 civil liberty. The first of these ideas is a mere privative, 
 undoubtedly of sovereign importance, but still a privative, antj 
 implies absence, more or less complete, of arbitrary control 
 from without, of interference with individual action by au- 
 thority, of any pretension on the part of any organized body 
 to hinder any member of the society from doing or abstain- 
 ing from doing what may seem right in his own eyes, provided 
 he pays a corresponding respect to the freedom of his fellows. 
 Freedom in this sense Voltaire fully understood, and valued as 
 profoundly as it deserves to be valued. Political liberty, 
 however, has not only a meaning of abstention, but a mean- 
 ing of participation. If in one sense it is a sheer negative, 
 " Lettres sur les Anglais, i. ; xxxv. p. 31. 
 
5 8 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 and a doctrine of rights, in another sense it is thoroughly posi- 
 tive, and a gospel of duties. The liberty which has really made 
 England what it so delighted and stimulated and inflamed 
 Voltaire to find her, has been quite as much of the second 
 kind as of the first ; that liberty which consists in a national 
 habit of independent and watchful interest in the transaction of 
 the national affairs by the persons most concerned in them ; in 
 a general consciousness of the duty of having some opinion on 
 the business of the state ; in a recognition on the part of the 
 government that the balance of this opinion is necessary as a 
 sanction to any policy, to which the effective force of the state 
 is applied. It is true that this public participation in public 
 concerns has sometimes been very dark and blind, as it has 
 often been in the highest degree enlightened, but for good or 
 for evil it has been the root of the matter. 
 
 The great Frenchmen, who have been most characteristically 
 French, while valuing all and envying many of the best pro- 
 ducts of our hberty, may be said generally to have failed 
 entirely to detect that the salt of English character, in days 
 when it had more robustness than we can see just now, sprung 
 from the double circumstance of every man being at liberty 
 to have, and being inclined to take the trouble to have, an 
 opinion about the method and doings of his government ; and 
 of so many men being called upon in high capacity or low, 
 in an important function or an obscure one, to take an inde- 
 pendent and free share in controlHng or initiating the doings of 
 their government. Take Montesquieu, for example. He came 
 to England just when Voltaire quitted it, and studied carefully 
 those political facts which his countryman had so neglected. 
 Yet he saw no deeper 'into the spirit of our institutions than 
 to fix on the constitutional balance of powers as the great 
 secret of our freedom and order. And Montesquieu, in spite 
 of this, was wiser than most of his contemporaries, for he at 
 least saw the worth of constitutional freedom, if he failed to 
 see other ingredients of still more importance. French states- 
 men and publicists have been systematically blind to the great 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 59 
 
 truth that there is no royal road to national well-being, and 
 that nations will deliberately put away happiness from them- 
 selves, unless such happiness comes to them in a given way. 
 The Physiocrats, who were with all their shortcomings the most 
 nearly scientific social thinkers France possessed, could rise 
 to no higher conception of a national life than the supreme 
 authority of a wise and benevolent monarch, giving good gifts 
 to his subjects. Turgot, with all the breadth and sagacity of 
 his genius, when five and forty years after our present date he 
 came into power, austerely clung to the same disastrous idea of 
 passing reasoned laws, in the shape of the beneficial edicts of 
 an absolute power. Voltaire, in the same way, never rose 
 above the simple political conception of an eastern tale, a good- 
 tempered despot with a sage vizier. In politics, then, he, failed 
 to carry away from England the very essence and principle of 
 our institutions, with which it was so much more important that 
 his countrymen should be familiarized than that they should 
 follow inoculation. 
 
 It may at first sight be astonishing to find that, while 
 Voltaire was impressed only in a vague and general way with 
 the free variety of theological opinion which Protestantism had 
 secured for England, the sect which made a sort of mark on 
 his mind was that which conceived the idea that Christianity 
 has after all something to do with the type and example of 
 Christ. We know how laughable and monstrous the Quaker 
 scheme has appeared to people who have been steeped from 
 their youth upwards in elaborate systems of abstruse meta- 
 physical dogma, mystic ceremonies, hierarchic ordering, and 
 profuse condemnation of rival creeds. Voltaire's imagination 
 was struck by a sect who professed to regard the reUgion of 
 Christ as a simple and austere discipline of life, who repudiated 
 ritual, and held war for the worst of anti-christian practices. 
 The forms and doctrines of the established church of the 
 country he would be Ukely to take merely for so much of the 
 common form of the national institutions. He would simply 
 regard it as the English way of narrowing the mind and con- 
 
6o VOLTAIRE. 
 
 solidating the social order. Gibbon's famous sentence was not 
 , yet written, which described all religions as equally true in 
 1 the eyes of the people, equally false in the eyes of the philoso- 
 'i pher, and equally useful in the eyes of the statesman. But the 
 ' idea was the idea of the century, and Voltaire would justly 
 look upon the Anglican profession as a temporarily useful and 
 statesmanlike settlement. He praised its clergy for the superior 
 regularity of their manners. ' That indefinable being, who is 
 neither ecclesiastic nor secular, in a word, who is called abbe, 
 is an unknown species in England; the clergy here are all 
 prigs, and nearly all pedants. When they learn that in France 
 young men notorious for their debauchery, and raised to prefer- 
 ment by the intrigues of women, pursue their amours publicly, 
 amuse themselves by the composition of gallant verses, give 
 ' every day prolonged and luxurious suppers, and rise from them 
 to implore the enlightenment of the holy spirit, boldly caUing 
 themselves the successors of the apostles — why, then our Enghsh 
 thank God that they are Protestants.' ^ 
 
 If, however, in face of a young and lively French graduate, 
 bawling theology in the schools in the morning and in the 
 evening singing tender songs with the ladies, an Anglican 
 divine is a very Cato, this Cato is a downright gallant before 
 a Scotch presbyterian, who assumes a grave step and a sour 
 mien, preaches from the nose, and gives the name of harlot of 
 Babylon to all churches in which some of the ecclesiastics are 
 so fortunate as to receive an income of fifty thousand livres a 
 year. However, each man takes whatever road to heaven he 
 pleases. If there were one religion in England, they would 
 have to fear its despotism ; if there were only two, they would 
 cut one another's throats ; but there are thirty ; so they live 
 peaceably and happily together.*' 
 
 In the Quakers Voltaire saw something quite different from 
 
 the purely political pretensions and internecine quarrels of 
 
 doctrine of the ordinary worldly sects. It is impossible to say 
 
 how much of the kindhness with which he speaks of them is 
 
 ••' Lett. Ang. vi. ; xxxv. p. 62. •' lb. vii. pp. 62-5. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 6i 
 
 due to real admiration of their simple, dignified, and pacific 
 life, and how much to a mischievous desire to make their 
 praise a handle for the dispraise of overweening competitors. 
 On the whole there is a sincerity and heartiness of interest in 
 his long account of this sect, which persuades one that he 
 was moved by a genuine sympathy with a religion that could 
 enjoin the humane and peaceful and spiritual precepts of 
 Christ, while putting away baptism, ceremonial communion, 
 and hierophantic orders. The nobility of the social theories 
 of the Society of Friends would naturally stir Voltaire even 
 more deeply than their abstention from practices that were in 
 his eyes degrading superstitions. He felt that the repugnance 
 to lower the majesty of their deity, by taking his name upon 
 their lips as solemn ratification of their words, had-the effect of 
 elevating the dignity of man, by making his bare word fully 
 credible without this solemn ratification. Their refusal to com- 
 ply with the deferential usages of social intercourse, though 
 nominally based on the sinfulness of signs of homage to any 
 mere mortal, insinuated a consciousness of equality and self- 
 respect in that mere mortal who was careful to make no bows 
 and to keep his hat on in every presence. Above all, Voltaire, 
 who was nowhere more veritably modern or better entitled to 
 our veneration than by reason of his steadfast hatred of war, 
 revered a sect so far removed from the brutality of the military 
 regime as to hold peace for a first principle of the Christian 
 faith and religious practice. The reason why we do not go 
 to war, his Quaker says, is not that we are afraid of death, but 
 because we are not wolves, nor tigers, nor dogs, but Christian 
 men. 'Our God, who has "bidden us love our enemies and 
 suffer evil without complaint, assuredly has no mind that we 
 should cross the sea to go and cut the throats of our brothers, 
 because murderers in red clothes and hats two feet high enlist 
 citizens, making a noise -with two little sticks on an ass's skin 
 tightly stretched. And when, after victories won, all London 
 blazes with illuminations, the sky is aflame with rockets, and 
 the air resounds with the din of bells, organs, cannon, we 
 
62 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 mourn in silence over the slaughter that causes all the public 
 joy.' « 
 
 Voltaire, let us add, was no dilettante traveller constructing 
 views and deducing theories of national life out of his own 
 uninstructed consciousness. No German could have worked 
 more diligently at the facts, and we may say here, once for all, 
 that if it is often necessary to condemn him for superficiality, 
 this lack of depth seldom at any time proceeds from want 
 of painstaking. His unrivalled brilliance of expression blinds 
 us to the extreme and conscientious industry that provided 
 matter. The most illustrious exile that our free land has re- 
 ceived from France in our own times, and assuredly far more 
 of a giant in the order of imagination than Voltaire, has not 
 had intellectual curiosity enough to learn the language of the 
 country which has given him twenty years of shelter. Voltaire, 
 in the few months of his exile here acquired such an astonishing 
 mastery over English as to be able to read and relish an esoteric 
 book like Hudibras, and to compass the enormously difficult 
 feat of rendering portions of it into good French verse.^ He 
 composed an essay on epic poetry in the English tongue, and 
 he wrote one act of Brutus in English. 
 
 He read Shakespeare, and made an elaborate study of 
 his method. He declares that Milton does as much honour to 
 England as the great Newton, and he took especial pains not 
 only to master and appreciate the secret of Milton's poetic 
 power, but even to ascertain the minutest circumstances of 
 his life.'" He studied Dryden, ' an author who would have a 
 glory without blemish, if he had only written the tenth part of 
 his works.' '^^ He found Addison the first Englishman who had 
 ■ written a reasonable tragedy, and Addison's character of Gato 
 one of the iinest creations of any stage. ^^ Wycherley, Van- 
 
 ^' Lett. Ang. ii. ; xxxv. p. 42. 
 
 ■" CEuvres, vol. xxxv. p, 185. 
 
 =° Ess. sur la Poesie Epique. CEuvres, xiii. p. 445, and pp. 513-26. 
 
 ^^ CEuvres, xxxv. p. 155- 
 
 " lb. p. 159. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 63 
 
 brugh, and Congreve he esteemed more highly than most of 
 their countr}'meii do now. An act of a play of Lillo's was the 
 base of the fourth act of Mahomet. Rochester, Waller, Prior, 
 and Pope, he read carefully and admired as heartily as they 
 deserved. Long after he had left England behind, he places 
 Pope and Addison on a level for variety of genius with Machiavel 
 and Leibnitz and Fontenelle ; ^' and Pope he evidently for a 
 long while kept habitually by his elbow. Swift he placed before 
 Rabelais, calling him Rabelais in his senses, and, as usual, giving 
 good reasons for his preference; for. Swift, he says justly, .has 
 not the gaiety of Rabelais, but he has all the finesse, the sense, 
 the variety, the fine taste, in which the priest of Meudon was 
 wanting.'* In philosophy, besides Locke, there is evidence that 
 he read something of Hobbes, and something of Berkeley, and 
 something of Cudworth.''' Always, however, 'harassed, wearied, 
 ashamed of having sought so many truths and found so many 
 chimeras, I returned to Locke ; like a prodigal son returning to 
 his father, I threw myself into the arms of that modest man, 
 who never pretends to know what he does not know, who in 
 truth has no enormous possessions, but whose substance is 
 well assured.' ^^ 
 
 Nor did Voltaire limit himself to the study of science, philo- 
 sophy, and poetry. He plunged into the field of theology, and 
 mastered that famous deistical controversy, of which the seed 
 had been sown in the first half of the seventeenth century by 
 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the correspondent of Descartes and 
 the earhest of the English metaphysical thinkers." Lord 
 Herbert's object was to disengage from revelation both our 
 conceptions of the one supreme power, and the sanctions of 
 good and bad conduct. Toland, whom we know also that 
 
 [ " Corr. 1736. (Euvres, Ixiii. p. 4. lb. 60. 
 '* CEuvres, xxxv. pp. 189, 190. 
 
 " For Berkeley, see Corr. 1736 (CEuv. Ixiii. pp. 130, 164, &c.), and 
 for the other two see Le Philosophe Ignorant {Oluvres, xliv. p. 69 and 
 
 p. 47)- 
 
 " lb. p. 47- 
 
 " The De Verilale was published in 1624. 
 
64 , VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Voltaire read, aimed at disengaging Christianity from mystery, 
 and discrediting the canon of the New Testament. In 1724 
 Collins published his Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons 
 of the Christian Religion, of which we are told that few books 
 ever made a greater noise than this did at its first publication. 
 The press teemed with vindications, replies, and rejoinders to ' 
 Collins's arguments during the whole of Voltaire's residence in 
 England.'* His position was one which no modem freethinker 
 would dream of making a central point of attack, and which 
 hardly any modern apologist would take the pains to reply to. 
 He maintained that Jesus Christ and the apostles trusted to 
 the prophecies of the Old Testament for their credentials, and 
 then he showed, or tried to show, in various ways, that these 
 prophecies would not bear the weight which was thus laid upon 
 them. We may be sure that Voltaire's alert curiosity would 
 interest him profoundly in the lively polemical ferment which 
 this notable contention of Collins's stirred up. 
 
 Woolston's discourses, written to prove that the miracles of 
 the New Testament are as mythical and allegorical as the 
 prophecies of the old, appeared at the same time, and had an 
 enormous sale. Voltaire was much struck by this writer's coarse 
 and hardy way of deahng with the miraculous legends, and the 
 article on Miracles in the Philosophical Dictionary shows how 
 carefully he had read Woolston's book."*" We find references 
 to Shaftesbury and Chubb in Voltaire's letters and ejsewhere, 
 though they are not the references of an admirer,™ and Boling- 
 broke was one of the most influential and intimate of his friends. 
 It is not ton miirh to_ say that Bolingbroke w as the direct 
 pro genitor of Voltaire's opinions in r eligion, and that nearl y 
 every one of thej^ositiye articles in Voltaire's rath er moderate ly 
 sjze d creed was hel djin d inculcated b y that brilliant and dis- 
 qrdered^ genius. He did not alw a ys arcpp t^RnViagl^'^Ql^''' 
 
 =' See the list from 1725 to 1728 in Leland's View of the Deistual 
 Writers, i. 1 32-144. 
 
 '» (Euvres, Ivli. pp. 107-114. 
 
 ^^ Corr. 1736-7. CEuv. Ixiii. p. 60, p. 86, and p. 112. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 65 
 
 optimism, but even as late in the century as 1767 Voltaire 
 tHought it worth while_ to_borrow his name ibr a volume of 
 compendious_attack on the popular religion."'- Bolingbroke's 
 tone was peculiarly light and peculiarly well-bred. His infidelity 
 was strictly infidelity for the upper classes ; "^ ingenious, full of 
 literature, and elegantly supercilious. He made no pretence 
 to theological criticism in any sense that can be gravely ad- 
 mitted, but looked at the claims of revelation with the eye 
 of a polished man of the world, and met its arguments with 
 those general considerations of airy probability which go so 
 far' with men who insist on having plausible opinions on all 
 subjects, while they will not take pains to work to the bottom 
 of any. 
 
 Villemain's observation that there is not one of Voltaire's 
 writings that does not bear the mark of his sojourn in England, 
 is specially true of what he wrote against theology. It was the 
 English onslaught which sowed in him the seed of the idea, 
 and eventually supplied him with the argumentative instruments, 
 of a systematic and reasoned attack upon that mass of doctrinal 
 superstition and social abuse, which it had hitherto been the 
 fashion for even the strongest spirits in his own country to do 
 no more than touch with a cool sneer or a flippant insinuation, 
 directed to the private ear of a sympathizer. Who, born within 
 the last forty years, cried Burke, has read one word of Collins, 
 and Toland, and Chubb, and Morgan, and that whole race 
 who called themselves Freethinkers ? Who now reads Bohng- 
 broke ? Who ever read him through ? '^ This was very well, 
 but hundreds of thousands of persons born within those last 
 forty years had read Voltaire, and Voltaire had drawn from 
 the armoury of these dead and unread Freethinkers the 
 weapons which he made sharp with the mockery of his own 
 spirit. He stood o«i the platform which they had constructed, 
 to stretch forth his hand against the shrine and the image 
 
 " Examen Important de Milord Bolingbrocke. CEuvres, xliv. p. 89. 
 ^"^ See Lechler's Geschichte des Englischen Ddsmus, p. 396. 
 " Reflections. Works, i. 419 (ed. 1842). 
 
 F 
 
66 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 before which so many credulous generations had bowed downi 
 It was, in this most transformed shape among others that at 
 length, late and changed, but du-ectly of descent, the free and 
 protesting genius of the Reformation made its decisive entry 
 into France. 
 
 It is easy to cite proofs of the repudiation by Protestant 
 bodies of the Protestant principle, to multiply instances of the 
 narrow rigidity of their dogma, and the intolerance of their 
 discipline. This method supplies an excellent answer as against 
 Protestants who tax Catholics with the crime of persecution, 
 or the crime of opposing intellectual independence. It cannot,' 
 however, touch the fact that Protestantism was indirectly the 
 means of creating and dispersing an atmosphere of rationalism, 
 in which there speedily sprang up philosophical, theological, 
 and political influences, all of them entirely antagonistic to the 
 old order of thought and institution. The whole intellectual 
 temperature underwent a permanent change, that was silently 
 mortal to the most flourishing tenets of all sorts. It is futile 
 to ask for a precise logical chain of relations between the 
 beginning of a movement and its end ; and there is no more 
 direct and logical connection between the right of private 
 judgment and an experiential doctrine of psychology, than there 
 is between experiential psychology and deism. Nobody now 
 thinks that the effect is homogeneous with its cause, or that 
 there is any objective resemblance between a blade of wheat 
 and the moisture and warmth which fill and expand it. All 
 we can see is that the proclamation of the rights of free 
 judgment would tend to substitute reason for authority, and 
 evidence for tradition, as the arbiters of opinion; and that 
 the political expression of this change in the civil wars of the 
 middle of the seventeenth century would naturally deepen the 
 influence of the new principle, and produce the Lockian 
 rationalism of the end of that century, which almost in- 
 stantaneously extended from the region of metaphysics into the 
 region of theology. 
 
 The historian of every kind of opinion, and the student of 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 67 
 
 the great chiefs of intellectual movements, habitually do violence 
 to actual circumstances, by imparting too systematic a con- 
 nection to the various parts of belief, and by assuming an 
 unreal degree of conscious logical continuity among the notions 
 of individual thinkers. Critics fill in the frame with a com- 
 pleteness and exactitude that had no counterpart in the man's 
 own judgments, and they identify him with a multitude of 
 deductions from his premisses, which may be fairly drawn, but 
 which never at all entered into his mind, and formed no part 
 of his character. The philosophy of the majority of men is 
 nothing more shaped and incorporate than a little group of 
 potential and partially incoherent tendencies. To stiffen these 
 into a system of definite formulas is the most deceptive, as it 
 is the most common, of critical processes. A few persons, 
 with an exceptional turn for philosophy, consciously embody 
 their metaphysical principles with a certain detail in all the 
 rest of their thinking. With most people, however, even people 
 of superior capacity, the relation between their ground-system, 
 such as a critic might supply them with, and their manifesta- 
 tions of intellectual activity, is of an extremely indirect and 
 general kind. 
 
 Hence the untrustworthiness of those critical schemata, so 
 attractive for their compact order, which first make Voltaire 
 a Lockian sensationalist, and then trace his deism to his 
 sensationaHsm. We have already seen that ^ he was a deis t 
 before he came to England, just as Lord Herbert of Cherbury 
 was _a deisF. wno wrote Deiore .Loc ke was born. It was not 
 the metaphysical revolution of Locke which led to deism, but 
 the sort of way in which he thought about metaphysics, a way 
 which was immediately applied to theology by other people, 
 whether assailants or defenders of the current opinions. 
 Locke's was ' common-sense thinking,' and the fashion spread. 
 The air was thick with common-sense objections to Christianity, 
 as it was with common-sense ideas as to the way in which we 
 come to have ideas. There was no temperament to which 
 such an atmosphere could be so congenial as Voltaire's, ot 
 
/ 
 
 68 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 whom we cannot too often repeat, considering the vulgar 
 reputation he has for violence and excess, that he was in 
 thought the very genius of good sense, whether or no we fully 
 admit M. Cousin's qualification of it as superficial good sense. 
 It has been said that he always speaks of Descartes, Leibnitz,- 
 and Spinoza, like a man to whom nature has refused the 
 metaphysical sense.^ At any rate he could never agree with 
 them, and he never tried to find truth by- the roads which 
 they had made. It is true, however, that he shows no sign 
 of special fitness for metaphysics, any more than he did for 
 physical science. The metaphysics of Locke lay undeveloped 
 in his mind, just as the theory of evolution lies in so many 
 minds at the present time. There is a faint informal reference 
 of other theories to this central and half-seen standard. When 
 metaphysical subjects came before him, he felt that he had 
 this for a sheet-anchor, and he did not greatly care to keep 
 proving it again and again by continued criticism or exami- 
 nation. The upshot of his acquaintance with Locke was a 
 systematic adherence to common-sense modes of thinking';- 
 and he always betrayed the faults and shortcomings to which 
 such modes inevitably lead, when they are brought, to the 
 exclusion of complementary ideas, to the practical subjects that 
 comprehend more than prudence, self-interest, and sobriety; " 
 The subject that does beyond any other comprehend more 
 
 /than thfese elements is religion, and the substantial vices of 
 Voltaire's objections to religion first arose firom his familiarity 
 with the English form of deism, and his instinctive feeling for 
 its method. 
 
 V The deism of Leibnitz was a positive belief, and made the 
 existen ce of a supreme power an actual and iivn ig__o bJeLt--e f- 
 co nviction. The mark of this belief has remained on Germa n 
 specula tion throughout its r.onrse Anvm — to — "iir "wn '^■^'j 
 Englishdeism, on the 'Cont vary, was only a partirnlar W3y of 
 
 °' EncyclopMie Nouvelle de Jean Reynaud et Pierre Leroux, s.v. Vol- 
 taire, p. 736. De Maistre audaciously denies that Voltaire ever did more 
 than dip into Locke. Soirees, vi. 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCES. 69 
 
 repudiating Christianity. There was as little of God in it as/ 
 
 co uld well be. Its theory was that God ha d_grven each man 
 
 the li ght of reas on i n his own breast : t hat-byL-this reas,nn evpry 
 sche me of beli e f must be tried, and accepted or rejected ; and 
 
 th at the Christian scheme being so tried was in various ways 
 
 found wanting. The formula of some book of the eighteenth 
 century, that God created nature and nature created the\ 
 world, must be allowed to have reduced theistic conception to| 
 something like the shadow of smoke. The English eighteenth- 
 century formula was, theistically, nearly as void. The Being! 
 who set the reason of each individual on a kind of judicial/ 
 bench within the forum of his own conscience, and left him and 
 it together to settle belief and conduct between them, was i 
 tolerably remote and unreal sort of personage. His spiritua 
 force, according to such a doctrine, became very much as if i 
 had no existence. J 
 
 It was not to be expected that a sovereign dwelling in such 
 amazingly remote lands as this would continue long with un- 
 disputed authority, when all the negative forces of the time 
 had reached their full momentum. In England the reaction 
 against this strange absentee government of the universe took 
 the form which might have been anticipated from the deep 
 hold that Protestantism had won, and the spirituality which 
 had been engendered by Protestant reference to the relations 
 between the individual conscience and the mystic operations of 
 faith. Deism became a reality with a God in it in the great 
 Evangelical revival, terrible and inevitable, which has so deeply 
 coloured religious feeling and warped intellectual growth in 
 England ever since. In France, thought took a very different 
 and much simpler turn. Or perhaps it would be more correct 
 to say that it took no turn at all, but carried the godless deism 
 of the English school to its fair conclusion, and dismissed a 
 deity who only reigned and did not govern. The whole 
 movement had a single origin. There is not one of the argu- 
 ments of the French philosophers in the eighteenth century, 
 says a very competent authority, which cannot ,be found in the 
 
70 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 English school of the beginning of the century.® Voltaire, 
 who carried the English way of thinking about the supernatural 
 power into France, lived to see a band of trenchant and ener- 
 getic disciples develope principles which he had planted, into a 
 system of dogmatic atheism. The time came when he was 
 spoken of contemptuously as retrograde and superstitious : 
 ' Voltaire est bigot, il est dtiste? 
 
 *' Villemain's Coa^-J de Lit. Fran^aise, i. p. III. See also De Maistre, 
 Soiries de St. Fitersbourg, vi. p. 424. On the other hand, see Lanfrey's 
 VEglise et les Fhilosofhes du \%iime Slide, pp. gg, 108, &c. 1 
 
 "? 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 On the whole, the critic's task is perhaps less to classify a type 
 of character as good or bad, as worthy of so much praise or so 
 much censure, than to mark the material out of which a man 
 has his life to make, and the kind of use and form to which 
 he puts his material. To begin with, the bald division of men 
 into sheep and goats is in one sense so easy as not to be worth 
 performing, and in another sense it is so hard as only to be 
 possible for some being with supernatural insight. And even 
 were the qualities employed in the task of a rarer kind than 
 they are, the utility of the performance is always extremely 
 slight, compared with that other kind of criticism which dwells 
 less on the final balance of good or evil, than on the first innate 
 conditions of temperament, the fixed hmitations of opportunity, 
 and tlie complex interplay of the two with that character, 
 which is first their creature and then their master. It is less 
 the concern of criticism to pronounce its man absolutely rich or 
 absolutely poor, than to count up his talents and the usury of 
 his own which he added to them. Assuredly there ought to 
 be little condonation of the foibles, and none at all of the moral 
 obliquities, of the dead, because this would mean the demoral- 
 isation of the living. But it is seriously to overrate the power 
 of bald words and written opinion, to suppose that a critic's 
 censure of conduct which a thousand other agents, from the 
 child's hornbook up to the obvious and pressing dictates of 
 social convenience, are daily and hourly prescribing, can be 
 
72 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 other than a work of supererogation, which fixes the mind 
 on platitudes, instead of leading it on in search of special and 
 distinctive traits. 
 
 It would be easy to pour overflowing vials of condemnation 
 on many sides of Voltaire's character and career. No man 
 possessed of so much good sense ever fell so constantly into 
 the kinds of error against which good sense particularly warns 
 men. There is no more wearisome or pitiful leaf in the bio- 
 graphies of the great, than the tale of Voltaire's quarrels with 
 ignoble creatures ; with a wrecked soul, like J. B. Rousseau 
 (whom the reader will not confound with Jean Jacques) ; with 
 a thievish bookseller, like Jore ; with a calumnious jourhahst, 
 like Desfontaines ; with a rapacious knave like Hirschel ; and 
 all the other tormentors in the Voltairean history, whose names 
 recall vulgar, dishonest, and indignant pertinacity on the one 
 side, and wasteful, undignified fury on the other. That lesson 
 in the art of life which concerns a man's dealings with those 
 who have shown 'patent moral inferiority, was never mastered 
 by Voltaire. Instead of the silence, composure, . and austere 
 oblivion, which it is of the essence of strength to oppose 
 to unworthy natures, he habitually confronted the dusty creep- 
 ing things that beset his march, as if they stood valiant and 
 erect ; and the more unworthy they were, the more vehement 
 and strenuous and shrill was his contention with them. The 
 ignominy of such strife is clear. One thing only may perhaps 
 be said. His intense susceptibility to vulgar calumny flowed 
 from the same quality in his nature which made unbearable 
 to him the presence of superstition and injustice, those mightier 
 calumnies on humanity. The irritated protests against the 
 small foes of his person were as the dregs of potent wine, 
 and were the lower part of that passionate sensibility which 
 made him the assailant of the giant oppressors of the human 
 mind. This reflection does not make any less tedious to us 
 the damnable iteration of petty quarrel and fretting complaint 
 which fills such a space in his correspondence and in his 
 biographies, nor does it lessen our regret at the havoc which 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 73 
 
 this fatal defect of his quahties made with his contentedness. 
 We think of his consolation to a person as susceptible a? 
 himself : ' There have always been Frerons in literature ; but 
 they say there must be caterpillars for nightingales to eat, that 
 they may sing the better : ' and we wish that our nightingale 
 had devoured its portion with something less of tumult. But 
 it may do something to prevent us from giving a prominence, 
 that is both unfair and extremely misleading, to mere shadow, 
 as if that had been the whole substance. Alas, why after all 
 should men, from Moses do^^'nwards, be so cheerfully ready to 
 contemplate the hinder parts of their divinities ? 
 
 The period of twenty years between Voltaire's departure 
 from England and his departure for Berlin, although often 
 pronounced the happiest time of his life, is very thickly set 
 with these humiliating incidents. To us, however, they are 
 dead, because though vivid enough to Voltaire — and it is 
 strange how constantly it happens that the minor circumstance 
 of life is more real and ever-present to a man than his essential 
 and abiding work in it — they -were but transitory and acci- 
 dental. Just as it does little good to the understanding to 
 spend much time over tenth-rate literature, so it is little edifying 
 to the character to rake among the private obscurities of even 
 first-rate men, and it is surely a good rule to keep ourselves as 
 much as we can in contact with what is great. 
 
 The chief personal fact of this time was the connection 
 which Voltaire formed with the Marquise du Chatelet, and 
 which lasted from 1733 to 1749. She was to him that im- 
 portant and pecuhar influence which, in one shape or another, 
 some woman seems to have been to nearly every foremost 
 man. In Voltaire's case this influence was not the rich and 
 tender inspiration with which women have so many a time 
 sweetened the lives and glorified the thought of illustrious 
 workers, nor was he bound to her by those bonds of passion 
 which have often the effect of exalting the strength and 
 widening the range of the whole of the nature that is susceptive 
 of passion. Their inner relations hardly depended on anything 
 
74 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 more extraordinnry or more delicate than the sentiment of a 
 masculine friendship. Voltaire found in the divine Emily a 
 strong and active head, a keen and generous admiration for 
 his own genius, and an eagerness to surround him with the 
 external conditions most favourable to that steady industry 
 which was always a thing so near his own heart. They are 
 two great men, one of whom wears petticoats, said Voltaire 
 of her and of Frederick. It is impossible to tell what share 
 vanity had in the beginning of a connection, which probably 
 owed its long continuance more to use and habit than to any 
 deep-rooted sentiment. Vanity was one of the most strongly , 
 marked of Voltaire's traits, and to this side of him relations 
 with a woman of quality who adored his genius were no doubt 
 extremely gratifying. Yet one ought to do him the justice to 
 say that his vanity was only skin-deep. It had nothing in 
 common with the greedy egotism which reduces the whole 
 broad universe to a mere microcosm of pygmy self. The 
 vanity which discloses a real flaw in character is a loud and 
 tyrannical claim for acknowledgment of literary supremacy, apd 
 with it the mean vices of envy, jealousy, and detraction are 
 usually in company. Voltaire's vanity was something very 
 different from this truculent kind of self-assertion. It had a 
 source in his intensely sympathetic quality, and was a gay 
 and eager asking of assurance from others that his work gave 
 them pleasure. Let us be very careful to remember that it 
 never stood in the way of self-knowledge, — the great test of 
 the difference between the vanity that is harmless, and the 
 vanity that is fatuous and destructive. 
 
 It has been rather the fashion to laugh at the Marquise 
 du Chatelet, for no better reasons perhaps than that she, 
 being a woman, studied Newton, and liad relations called 
 tender with a man so little associated in common opinion with 
 tenderness as Voltaire. The first reason is disgraceful, and the 
 secoiid is perhaps childish. Everything goes to show that 
 Madame du Chatelet possessed a hardy originality of character, 
 of which society is so little likely to have an excess that we 
 
LITERATURE. 75 
 
 can hardly ever be thankful enough for it. There is probably 
 nothing which would lead to so rapid and marked an improve- 
 ment in the world, as a large increase of the number of women 
 in it with the will and the capacity to master Newton as 
 thoroughly as she did. And her long and sedulous affection 
 for a man of genius of Voltaire's excepti6nal quality, entitles 
 her to the not too common praise of recognizing and revering 
 intellectual greatness as it deserves. Her friendship for him 
 was not the semi-servile and feebly intelligent solicitude which 
 superior men have too often the wretched weakness to seek in 
 their female companions, but an imperial sympathy. She was 
 unamiable, it is true, and possessed neither the delicacy which 
 a more fastidious age requires in a woman, nor the sense of 
 honour which we now demand in a man. These defects, 
 however, were not genuinely personal, but lay in the manners 
 of the time. It was not so with all her faults. To the weak 
 and dependent she was overbearing, harsh, mean, and even 
 cruel. A fatuous caprice would often destroy the domestic 
 peace and pleasure of a week. But nothing was suffered to 
 impede the labour of a day. The industry of the house was 
 incessant. 
 
 It is said, and it was said first by one who lived with them 
 for some time, and has left a graphic account of the interior of 
 Cirey, that she made Voltaire's life a little hard to him.^ 
 There were many occasional storms and short sullen fits even 
 in these high regions of science and the finer tastes. Yet such 
 stormful scenes, with great actors as with small, are perhaps 
 more painful in description than they were in reality; and 
 Voltaire was less discomposed by the lively impetuosity of a 
 companion like Madame du Chatelet, than he would have 
 been by the orderly calm of a more precise and perfectly well- 
 regulated person. A man follows the conditions of his tempera- 
 ment, and Voltaire's unresting animation and fire might make 
 him feel a certain joy of life and freedom in the occasional con- 
 
 ' Madame de Grafigny. Cf. Desnoiresterres, Voltaire au CHteau de 
 Cirey, p. 246, &;c. 
 
76 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 tentiousness of a slightly shrewish temper. We cannot think 
 of him as ever shrinking, ever craving for repose, as some men 
 do as for 'a very necessity of existence. The health of your 
 friend, wrote Madame du Chitelet to D'Argental in 1739, is in 
 so deplorable a state that the only hope I have left of restoring 
 it is in the turmoil of a journey.^ A tolerably frequent agitation 
 was a condition of even such health as he had, to one of 
 Voltaire's nervous and feverish habit. 
 
 Let it be said that his restlessness never took a form which 
 involved a sacrifice of the happiness of other people. It was 
 never tyrannical and exigent. There are many, too many, 
 instances of his angry impatience with persons against whom he 
 thought he had cause of offence. There is not a single in- 
 stance in which any shadow of implacableness lurked for an 
 enemy who had repented or fallen into misfortune ; and if his 
 resentment was constantly aflame against the ignoble, it 
 instantly expired and changed into warm-hearted pity, when 
 the ignoble became either penitent or miserable. There are 
 many tales of the readiness with which his anger was appeased. 
 Any one will suffice as a type. On some occasion when ' 
 Voltaire was harassed by a storm of libels, and happened to 
 be on good terms with the police, a distributor of the libels was 
 arrested. The father, an old man of eighty, hastened to Vol- 
 taire to pray for pardon. All Voltaire's fury instantly vanished 
 at the first appeal ; he wept with the old man, embraced him, 
 consoled him, and straightway ran to procure the liberation of 
 the offender.^ An eye-witness related to Grimm how he 
 happened to be present at Ferney when Voltaire received 
 Rousseau's Lettres de la Montague, and read the apostrophe 
 relating to himself. His face seemed to take fire, his eyes 
 sparkled with fury, his whole frame trembled, and he cried in 
 terrible tones — ' The miscreant ! the monster ! I must have 
 him cudgelled— yes, I will have him cudgelled in his mountains 
 
 ^ Desnoiresterres, p. 257. 
 
 ' Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, p. 61. A graceful and dignified letter in 
 this kind is that to Fonney, May 12, 1752. CEuv. Ixv. p. 64. 
 
LITERATURE. 77 
 
 at the knees of his nurse.' ' Pray, cahn yourself/ said the by- 
 stander, ' for I know that Rousseau means to pay you a visit 
 and will very shortly be at Femey.' ' Ah, only let him come,' 
 replied Voltaire. ' But how will you receive him ? ' ' Receive 
 
 him I will give him supper, put him in my own bed, 
 
 and say. There is a good supper; this is the best bed in the 
 house ; do me the pleasure to accept one and the other, and 
 to make yourself happy here.'* One does not understand 
 the terrible man, without remembering always how much of 
 the hot generosity of the child he kept in his nature to the 
 last. When the very Jesuits were suppressed with circum- 
 stances of extreme harshness, he pitied even them, and took 
 one of their number permanently into his household."^ 
 
 The most important part of a man's private conduct after 
 that which concerns his relations with women and his family, 
 is generally that which concerns his way of dealing with money, 
 because money in its acquisition and its dispersion is the out- 
 ward and visible sign of the absence or of the presence of so 
 many inward and spiritual graces. As has often been said, it 
 is the measure of some of the most important of a man's 
 virtues, his honesty, his industry, his generosity, his self-denial, 
 and most of the other elements in keeping the difficult balance 
 between his care for himself and his care for other people. 
 Voltaire perceived very early in life that to be needy was to 
 be dependent; that the rich and poor are as hammer and 
 anvil ; that the chronicles of genius demonstrate that it is not 
 by genius that men either make a fortune or live happy lives. 
 He made up his mind from the beginning that the author of 
 the French epic would not share the poverty and straitened lives 
 of Tasso and Milton, and that he for his part would at any rate 
 be hammer and not anvil." I was so wearied, he wrote in 1752, 
 of the humiliations that dishonour letters, that to stay my 
 disgust I resolved to make what scoundrels call a great 
 
 * Grimm, Correspondance Litteraire, v. p. <,. * Qiuv. Ixv. p. 395. 
 " Correspondence. Also, Essai sur la Poesie Epique, c. vi. CEuvns, 
 xiii. p. 481. 
 
78 , VOLTAIRE. 
 
 fortune.' He used to give his books away to the printers, 
 He had a small fortune from his father j he is said to havt 
 made two thousand pounds by the English subscriptions to the 
 Henriade ; and he did not hide his talent in the ground, 
 but resorted skilfully to all sorts of speculations in stocks, army 
 contracts, and other authorized means of converting one livre 
 into two while you sleep. He lent large sums of money, pre- 
 sumably at handsome interest, to the Duke of Richelieu and 
 others, and though the interest may have been handsome, the 
 trouble of procuring it was often desperate.^ Yet after much 
 experience Voltaire came to the conclusion that though he 
 had sometimes lost money by bankers, by the devout, by the 
 people of the Old Testament, who would have had many 
 scruples about a larded capon, who would rather die than not 
 be idle on the sabbath, and not be thieving on the Sunday, yet 
 he had lost nothing by the great except his time." 
 
 It is easy to point a sneer at a high priest of humanity 
 jobbing in the funds. Only let us remember that Voltaire 
 never made any pretence of being a high priest of humanity; 
 that his transactions were substantially very like those of any 
 banker or merchant of to-day ; and that for a man who was 
 preaching new opinions it was extremely prudent to place 
 himself out of the necessity of pleasing booksellers or the pit 
 of the theatre on the one hand, and on the other to supply 
 himself with ready means of frequent flight from the ceaseless 
 persecutions of authority. Envious scribes in his lifetime 
 taunted him with avarice, and the evil association still clings to 
 his memory now that he is dead. One can only say that good 
 and high-minded men, who never shrank from withstanding 
 him when in fault, men like Condorcet for example, heard such 
 talk with disdain, and set it down to the disgraceful readiness 
 of men to credit anything that relieves them from having to 
 
 ' GLmres, Ixv. p. 91. 
 
 ' CoiT. with the Abbe Moussinot, 1737, and afterwards. (Euvres, IxiiL 
 pp. 122, 160, 176, &c. 
 
 ' Corr. 1752. (Euvres, Ixv. p. 115. 
 
LITERATURE. 79 
 
 admire." The people who dislike prudence in matters of 
 money in those "whose distinction is intellectual or spiritual, 
 resemble a sentimental lover who should lose his illusions at 
 sight of his mistress eating a hearty meal. Is their lot, then, 
 cast in the ethereal fluid of the interstellar spaces ? 
 
 At all events Voltaire had two important gifts which do 
 not commonly belong to the avaricious ; he was a generous 
 helper alike of those who had, and those who had not, a claim 
 upon him, and he knew how to bear serious losses with un- 
 broken composure. Michel, the receiver-general, became 
 bankrupt, and Voltaire lost a considerable sum of money in 
 consequence. His fluency of invective and complaint, which 
 was simply boundless when any obscure scribbler earned a 
 guinea by a calumny upon him, went no farther on the 
 occasion of this very substantial injury than a single splenetic 
 phrase, and a harmless quatrain : 
 
 Michel au nom de FEtemel, 
 Mit jadis le diable en deroute ; 
 Mais, aprfes cette banqueroute, 
 Que le diable emporte Michel ! 
 
 It has been fairly asked whether a genuine miser would content 
 himself with a stanza upon the man who had robbed him." 
 His correspondence with the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha shows him 
 declining to accept the thousand louis, which she had sent as 
 a fee for the composition of the Annales de I'Empire. 
 
 Much has been made of the bargaining which he carried on 
 with Frederick, as to the terms on which he would consent to 
 go to Berlin. But then the Prussian king was not one with 
 whom it was wise to be too nice in such affairs. He was the 
 thriftiest of men, and as a king is a person who lives on other 
 people's money, such thrift was in his case the most princely of 
 virtues. Haggling is not graceful, but it need not imply 
 avarice in either of the parties to it. The truth is that there 
 tvas in Voltaire a curious admixture of splendid generosity with 
 '• Vk de Voltaire, p. 37. " Desnoiresterres, p. 323, 
 
So VOLTAIRE. 
 
 virulent tenacity about half-pence. The famous quarrel witli 
 the President de Brosses about the fourteen cords of firewood 
 is a worse affair. Voltaire, who leased Tourney from him, 
 insisted that De Brosses had made him a present of the fourteen 
 cords. De Brosses, no doubt truly, declared that he had only 
 ordered the wood to be delivered on Voltaire's account. On 
 this despicable matter a long correspondence was carried on, 
 in which Voltaire is seen at his very worst; insolent, un- 
 dignified, low-minded, and untruthful. ^^ The case happily stands 
 alone in his biography. As a rule, he is a steady practitioner 
 of the Aristotelian fjLeyaXoirpi-ir^La, or virtue of magnificent ex- 
 penditure. 
 
 The truly important feature of the life which Voltaire led 
 at Cirey was its unremitting diligence. Like a Homeric goddess, 
 the divine Emily poured a cloud round her hero. There is a 
 sort of moral climate in a household, an impalpable, un- 
 seizable, indefinable set of influences, which predispose the 
 inmates to industry and self-control, or else relax fibre and 
 slacken purpose. At Cirey there was an almost monastic rule. 
 Madame Grafigny says that though Voltaire felt himself bound 
 by politeness to pay her a visit from time to time in her 
 apartment, he usually avoided sitting down, apologetically 
 protesting how frightful a thing is the quantity of time people 
 waste in talking, and that waste of time is the most fatal kind 
 of extravagance of which one can be guilty.^' He seems to 
 have usually passed the whole day at his desk, or in making 
 physical experiments in his chamber. The only occasion 
 on which people met was at the supper at nine in the evening. 
 Until then the privacy of the chamber alike of the hostess, 
 who was analysing Leibnitz or translating Newton, and of 
 the unofficial host, who was compiling material for the Sibcle 
 de Louis xiv., or polishing and repolishing Mahomet, or investi- 
 gating the circumstances of the propagation of fire, was sacredly 
 inviolable. 
 
 " Foisset's Correspond, de Voltaire avec De Brosses, etc., published in 
 1836. " Quoted in Desnoiresterres, p. 239. 
 
LITERATURE. 8i 
 
 The rigour of the rule did not forbid theatrical performances, 
 when any company, even a company of marionettes, came 
 mto the neighbourhood of the desolate Champagne chateau. 
 Sometimes after supper Voltaire would exhibit a magic lantern, 
 with explanatory comments after the showman's manner, in 
 which he would convulse his friends at the expense of his 
 enemies.^* But after the evening's amusement was over, the 
 Marquise would retire to work in her chamber until the morning, 
 and, when morning came, a couple of hours' sleep was the only 
 division between the tasks of the night and the tasks of the day. 
 Two splenetic women have left us a couple of spiteful pictures 
 of Madame du Chatelet, but neither of her detractors could 
 rise to any higher conception of intellectual effort than the fine 
 turn of phrase, the ingenious image, the keen thrust of cruel 
 satire, with which the polished idle of that day whiled away 
 dreary and worthless years. The translator of Newton's 
 Principia was not of this company, and she was wholly in- 
 different to the raillery, sarcasm, and hate of women whom 
 she justly held her inferiors. It is much the fashion to admire 
 the women of this time, because they contrive to hide behind 
 a veil of witty words the coldness and hoUowness of lives 
 which had neither the sweetness of the old industrious 
 domesticity of women, nor the noble largeness of some of 
 those in whom the Revolution kindled a pure fire of patriotism 
 in after days. Madame du Chatelet, with all her faults, was a 
 far loftier character than the malicious gossips who laughed at 
 her. ' Everything that occupies society was within her power, 
 except slander. She was never heard to hold up anybody to 
 laughter. When she was informed that certain people were 
 bent on not doing her justice, she would reply that she wished 
 to ignore it' This was surely better than a talent for barbing 
 epigrams, and she led a worthier life at Cirey than in that Paris 
 which Voltaire described so bitterly. 
 
 Li, tous les soirs, la troupe vagabonde, 
 D'un peuple oisif, appele le beau monde, 
 
 " Desnoiresterres, p. 242. 
 
82 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Va promener de re'duit en reduit 
 
 L'inquietude et I'ennui qui la suit. 
 
 Lk sont en foule antiques mijaur^es, 
 
 Jeunes oisons et begueules titrees, 
 
 Disant des riens d'un ton de perroquet, 
 
 Lorgnant des sots, et trichant au piquet. 
 
 Blondins y sont, beaucoup plus femmes qu'elles, 
 
 Profondement remplis de bagatelles, 
 
 D'un air hautain, d'une brayante voix, 
 
 Chantant, dansant, minaudant a la fois. 
 
 Si par hasard quelque personne honnete, 
 
 D'un sens plus droit et d'un goiit plus heureux, 
 
 Des bons ecrits ayant meuble sa t€te, 
 
 Leur fait I'afifront de penser i leurs yeux ; 
 
 Tout aussit6t leur brillante cohue, 
 
 D'etonnement et de colere ^mue, 
 
 Bruyant essaim de frelons envieux, 
 
 Pique et poursuit cette abeille charmante. " 
 
 It was not the fault of Madame du Chatelet that the life 
 of Cirey was not the undisturbed type of Voltaire's existence 
 during the fifteen years of their companionship. Many pages 
 might be filled with a mere list of the movements from place 
 to place to which Voltaire resorted, partly from reasonable fear 
 of the grip of a jealous and watchful government, partly from 
 eagerness to bring the hand of the government upon his 
 enemies, and most of all from the uncontrollable restlessness 
 of his own nature. Amsterdam, the Hague, Brussels, Berlin, 
 the little court of Luneville, and the great world of Paris, too 
 frequently withdrew him from the solitary castle at Cirey, 
 though he never failed to declare on his return, and with 
 perfect sincerity, that he was never so happy anywhere else. 
 If it was true that the Marquise made her poet's life a little 
 hard to him, it is impossible to read her correspondence without 
 perceiving that he, too, though for no lack of sensibiUty and 
 good feeling, often made life extremely hard for her. Besides 
 ■ their moral difference, there was a marked discrepancy in in- 
 tellectual temperament, which did not fail to lead to outward 
 manifestations. Voltaire was sometimes a little weary of Newton 
 
 " Epitre a Mdme. la Marquise du Chatelet, stu- la Calomnie. CEuwes, 
 :Lvii. p. 85. 
 
LITERATURE. 83 
 
 and exact science, while the Marquise was naturally of the 
 rather narrow turn for arid truths which too often distinguishes 
 clever women inadequately disciplined by contact with affairs. 
 She and Voltaire both competed for a prize offered by the 
 Academy for essays on the propagation of fire (1737). Neither 
 of them was successful, for the famous Euler was a competitor. 
 The second and third prizes were given to two obscurer persons, 
 because their essays were Cartesian, that is to say, they were 
 scientifically orthodox. The two philosophers of Cirey also 
 took part, and on different sides, in the obstinate physico- 
 mathematical controversy which Leibnitz had first raised 
 towards the close of the seventeenth century, as to the measure 
 of moving forces.^^ The Marquise, under circumstances of 
 equivocal glory and with much angry buzzing, with which 
 one has now no concern,^' published her analysis of Leibnitz 
 in 1740, and sided with him against Newton and Descajtes. 
 In the notice which Voltaire wrote of his friend's book he gave 
 a marvellously simple and intelligible account of the issue of 
 the special controversy of vis viva^ but he remained New- 
 tonian, and in 1741 presented a paper to the Academy of 
 Sciences, disputing the Leibnitzian view.^* 
 
 Voltaire was not merely one of those ' paper philosophers,' 
 whose intrusion into the fields of physical science its profes- 
 sional followers are justly wont to resent. He was an active 
 experimenter, and more than one letter remains, containing 
 instructions to his agent in Paris to forward him retorts, air- 
 pumps, and other instruments, with the wise hint in one place, 
 a hint by no means of a miser, ' In the 'matter of buying things, 
 my friend, you should always prefer the good and sound even if 
 a litrie dear, to what is only middling but cheaper.' ^" His cor- 
 respondence for some years proves the diligence and sincerity 
 
 '° See Whewell's Hist. Indue. Sci. bk. vi. c. v. 
 " Desnoiresterres, pp. 313-21. 
 
 " Exposition du Livre des Institutions Physiques. CEuvres, xlii, 
 pp. 196-206. 
 
 " CEuvres, xlii. p. 207, etc. 
 
 '"' Corr. 1737. CEuvres, Ixiii. p. 182. 
 
84 , VOLTAIRE. 
 
 of his interest in science. Yet it is tolerably clear that the man 
 who did so much to familiarize France with the most illustrious 
 of physicists, was himself devoid of true scientific aptitude. ' 
 After long and persevering labour in this region, Voltaire con- 
 sulted Clairaut on the progress he had made. The latter, with 
 a loyal frankness which Voltaire knew how to appreciate, 
 answered that even with the most stubborn labour he was not 
 likely to attain to anything beyond mediocrity in science, and that 
 he would be only throwing away time which he owed to poetry 
 and philosophy."^ The advice was taken ; for, as we have 
 abeady said, Voltaire's self-love was never fatuous, and the 
 independent search of physical truth was given up. There is 
 plainly no reason to regret the pains which Voltaire took in this 
 kind of inquiry, not because the study of the sciences extends 
 the range of poetic study and enriches verse with fresh images, 
 but because the number of sorts of knowledge in which a man 
 feels at home and is intelligently cognisant of their scope and 
 issues, even if he be wholly incompetent to assist in the pro- 
 gress of discovery, increases that intellectual confidence and 
 self-respect of understanding, which so fortifies and stimulates 
 him in his own special order of work. We cannot precisely 
 contend that this encyclopsdic quality is an indispensable 
 condition of such self-respect in every kind of temper. It 
 certainly was so with Voltaire. ' After all, my dear friend,' he 
 wrote to Cideville, 'it is right to give every possible form to our 
 soul. It is a flame that God has intrusted to us, we are bound 
 to feed it with all that we find most precious. We should 
 introduce into our existence all imaginable modes, and open 
 every door of the soul to all sorts of knowledge and all sorts of 
 feelings. So long as it does not all go in pell-mell, there is plenty 
 of room for everything.'^^ 
 
 To us, who can be wise after the event, it is clear that if 
 ever man was called not to science, nor to poetry, nor to 
 theology, nor to metaphysics, but to literature, the art, so hard 
 
 '^ Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, p. 43. 
 '^ Corr. 1737. CEuvres, Ivi. p. 42S. 
 
LITERATURE. 85 
 
 to define, of showing the ideas of all subjects in the double 
 light of the practical and the spiritual reason, that man was 
 Voltaire. He has himself dwelt on the vagueness of this much- 
 abused term, without contributing anything more satisfactory 
 towards a better account of it than a crude hint that literature, 
 not being a special art, may be considered a kind of larger 
 grammar of knowledge. ^^ Although, however, it is true that 
 literature is not a particular art, it is not the less true that 
 there is a mental constitution particularly fitted for its successful 
 practice. Literature is essentially an art of form, as distinguished 
 from those exercises of intellectual energy which bring new 
 stores of matter to the stock of acquired knowledge, and give 
 new forces to emotion and original and definite articulation to 
 passion. It is a misleading classification to call the work of 
 Shakespeare and Molifere, Shelley and Hugo, literary, just as 
 it would be an equally inaccurate, though more glaring piece 
 of classification, to count the work of Newton or Locke litera- 
 ture. To take another case from Voltaire, it would not be 
 enough to describe Bayle's Dictionary as a literary compilation; 
 it would not even be enough to describe it as a work of 
 immense learning, because the distinguishing and superior mark 
 of this book is a profound dialectic. It forms men of letters 
 and is above them.^* 
 
 What is it then that literature brings to us, that earns its 
 title to high place, though far from a highest place, among the 
 great humanizing arts ? Is it not that this is the master organon 
 for giving men the two precious qualities of breadth of interest 
 and balance of judgment; multiplicity of sympathies and 
 steadiness of sight ? Unhappily, literature has too often been 
 identified with the smirks and affectations of mere elegant dis- 
 persiveness, with the hollow niceties of the virtuoso, a thing of 
 madrigals. It is not in any sense of this sort that we can think 
 of Voltaire as specially the born minister of literature. AVhat 
 we mean is that while he had not the loftier endowments of the 
 
 " Diet. Phil. s.v. CEuvres, Ivi. p. 428. 
 '1 lb. p. 430. 
 
86 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 highest poetic conception, subtle speculative penetration, or 
 triumphant scientific power, he possessed a superb combination 
 of wide and sincere curiosity, an intelligence of vigorous and 
 exact receptivity, a native inclination to candour and justice, 
 and a pre-eminent mastery over a wide range in the art of 
 expression. Literature being concerned to impose form, to 
 diffuse the light by which common men are able to see the 
 great host of ideas and facts that do not shine in the bright- 
 ness of their own atmosphere, it is clear what striking gifts 
 Voltaire had in this way. He had a great deal of knqwledge, 
 and he was ever on the alert both to increase and broaden his 
 stock, and, what was still better, to impart of it to everybody 
 else. He did not think it beneath him to write on Hemistichs , 
 for the Encyclopaedia. 'Tis not a very brilliant task, he said, 
 but perhaps the article will be useful to men of letters and 
 amateurs ; ' one should disdain nothing, and I will do the word 
 Comma, if you choose.' ^^ He was very catholic in taste, being 
 able to love Racine without ignoring the lofty stature of Shake- 
 speare. And he was free from the weakness which so often 
 attends on catholicity, when it is not supported by true strength 
 and independence of understanding ; he did not shut his eyes 
 to the shortcomings of the great. While loving Molifere, he was 
 aware of the incompleteness of his dramatic construction, as 
 well as of the egregious farce to which that famous writer too 
 often descends.^" His respect for the sublimity and pathos of 
 Corneille did not hinder him from noting both his violence 
 and his frigid argumentation.^^ Does the reader remember that 
 admirable saying of his to Vauvenargues ; ' It is the part of a 
 man like you to have preferences, but no exclusions V^ To this 
 fine principle Voltaire was usually thoroughly true, as every 
 great mind, if only endowed with adequate culture, must 
 necessarily be. 
 
 '^ Corr. 1758. (Euvres, Ixxv. p. 50. 
 ^° Temple dii Goflt. CEuvres, xv. p. 99. 
 *' Corr. 1743. CEuvres, Ixiv. p. 119. 
 ^' CEuvres de Vauvenargues, ii. 252. 
 
LITERATURE. 87 
 
 Nul auteur avec lui n'a tort, 
 Quand il a trouve I'art de plaire ; 
 II le critique sans colere, 
 11 1'applaudit avec transport. '° 
 
 Thirdly, that circumfusion of bright light which is the highest 
 aim of speech, was easy to Voltaire, in whatever order of 
 subject he happened to treat. His style is like a translucent 
 stream of purest mountain water, moving with swift and 
 animated flow under flashing sunbeams. 'Voltaire,' said an 
 enemy, ' is the very first man in the world at writing down what 
 other people have thought' What was meant for a spiteful 
 censure, was in fact a truly honourable distinction. 
 
 The secret is incommunicable. No spectrum analysis can 
 decompose for us that enchanting ray. It is rather, after all, 
 the piercing metallic light of electricity, than a glowing beam 
 of the sun. We can detect some of the external qualities of 
 this striking style. We seize its dazzling simplicity, its almost 
 primitive closeness to the letter, its sharpness and precision, 
 above all, its admirable brevity. We see that no writer ever 
 used so few words to produce such pregnant effects.'" Those 
 whom brevity only makes thin and slight, may look with despair 
 on pages where the nimbleness of the sentence is in proportion 
 to the firmness of the thought. We find no bastard attempts 
 to reproduce in words deep and complex effects, which can only 
 be adequately presented in colour or in the combinations of 
 musical sound. Nobody has ever known better the true 
 limitations of the material in which he worked, or the scope 
 and possibilities of his art. Voltaire's alexandrines, his witty 
 stories, his mock-heroic, his exposition of Newton, his histories, 
 his dialectic, all bear the same mark, the same natural, precise, 
 and condensed mode of expression, the same absolutely faultless 
 
 ^' Temple du Goflt. (Euvres, xv. p. 100. 
 
 "> In some readings given before popular audiences in Paris in 1850, 
 it was found that Voltaire was only partially effective. 'Trop d'artifice,' 
 says Ste. Beuve, 'trop d'art nuit aupres des esprits neufs ; trop de simplicite 
 nuit aussi ; lis ne s'en <«tonnent pas, et ils ont jusqu'a un certain point besoin 
 d'etre etonnes.' (Causeries, i. 2I9.) 
 
88 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 knowledge of what is proper and permitted in every given kind 
 of written work. At first there seems something paradoxical in 
 dwelling on the brevity of an author whose works are to be 
 counted by scores of volumes. But this is no real objection. 
 A writer may be insufferably prolix in the limits of a single 
 volume, and Voltaire was quite right in saying that there are 
 four times too many words in the one volume of D'Holbach's 
 System of Nature. He maintains too that Rabelais might 
 advantageously be reduced to one-eighth, and Bayle to a 
 quarter, and there is hardly a book that is not curtailed in the 
 perfecting hands of the divine muses.'^ So conversely an 
 author may not waste a word in a hundred volumes. Style 
 is independent of quantity, and the world suffers so grievously 
 from the mass of books that have been written, not because 
 they are many, but because such vast proportion of their pages 
 say nothing while they purport to say so much. 
 
 No study, however, of this outward ease and swift com- 
 pendiousness of speech will teach us the secret that was 
 beneath it in Voltaire, an eye and a hand that never erred in 
 hitting the exact mark of appropriateness in every order of 
 prose and verse. Perhaps no such vision for the befitting in 
 expression has ever existed. He is the most trenchant writer 
 in the world, yet there is not a sentence of strained emphasis 
 or overwrought antithesis ; he is the wittiest, yet there is not a 
 line of bad buffoonery. And this intense sense of the appro- 
 priate was by nature and cultivation become so entirely a fixed 
 condition of Voltaire's mind, that it shows spontaneous and 
 without an effort in his work. Nobody is more free from the 
 ostentatious correctness of the literary precisian, and nobody 
 preserves so much purity and so much dignity of language with 
 so little formality of demeanour. It is interesting to notice the 
 absence from his writings of that intensely elaborated kind of 
 simplicity in which some of the best authors of a later time 
 express the final outcome, of many thoughts. The strain that 
 society has undergone since Voltaire's day has taught men to 
 
 " Temple du Gofit. CEuvres, xv. p. 95. 
 
LITERATURE. 89 
 
 qualify their propositions. It has forced them to follow truth 
 slowly along paths steep and devious. New notes have been 
 struck in human feeling, and all thought has now been touched 
 by complexities that were then unseen. Hence, as all good 
 vn-iters aim at simplicity and directness, we have seen the 
 growth of a new style, in which the rays of many side-lights are 
 concentrated in some single phrase. That Voltaire does not 
 use these focalising words and turns of composition, only 
 means that to him thought was less complex than it is to a 
 more subjective generation. Though the literature which 
 possesses Milton and Burke need not fear comparison with 
 the graver masters of French speech, we have no one to place 
 exactly by the side of Voltaire. But, then, no more has 
 France. There are many pages of Swift which are more like 
 one side of Voltaire than anything else that we have, and 
 Voltaire probably drew the idea of his famous stories from 
 the creator of Gulliver, just as Swift got the idea of the Tale 
 of a Tub from Fontenelle's History of Mero and Enegu (that 
 is, of Rome and Geneva). Swift has correctness, invention, 
 irony, and a trick of being effectively literal and serious in 
 absurd situations, just as Voltaire has ; but then Swift is often 
 truculent and often brutally gross, both in thought and in phrase. 
 Voltaire is never either brutal or truculent. Even amid the 
 licence of the Pucelle and of his romances, he never forgets what 
 is due to the French tongue. What always charmed him in 
 Racine and Boileau, he tells us, was that they said what they 
 intended to say, and that their thoughts have never cost any- 
 thing to the harmony or the purity of the language.*^ Voltaire 
 ranged over far wider ground than the two poets ever attempted 
 to do, and trod in many slippery places, yet he is entitled to 
 the same praise as that which he gave to them. 
 
 Unhappily, one of the many evil effects which have alloyed 
 
 the revolution that Voltaire did so much to set in motion, has 
 
 been both in his country and ours that purity and harmony of 
 
 language, in spite of the examples of the great masters who 
 
 '^ Corr. 1732. (Euvres, Ixii. p. 218. 
 
90 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 have lived since, have on the whole declined. In both 
 countries familiarity and slang have actually asserted a placf 
 in literature, on some pretence that they are real ; an assumed 
 vulgarity tries to pass for native homeliness, and, as though a 
 giant were more impressive for having a humped back, some 
 men of true genius seem only to make sure of fame by straining 
 themselves into grotesques. In a word, the reaction against a 
 spurious dignity of style has carried men too far, because the 
 reaction against the dignified elements in the old order went 
 too far. Style, after all, as one has always to remember, can 
 never be anything but the reflex of ideas and habits of mind, 
 and when respect for one's own personal dignity as a ruling and 
 unique element in character gave way to sentimental love of 
 the human race, often real, and often a pretence, old self 
 respecting modes of expression went out of fashion. And all 
 this has been defended by a sort of argument that might just 
 as appropriately have been used by Diogenes vindicating the 
 iilthiness of his tub against a doctrine of clean linen. 
 
 To follow letters, it is important to observe, meant then, or 
 at least after Voltaire's influence rose to its height, it meant dis- 
 tinctly to enter the ranks of the opposition. In our own time 
 the profession of letters is placed with other polite avocations, 
 and those who follow it for the most part accept the traditional 
 social ideas of the time, just as clergymen, lawyers, and 
 physicians accept them. The modern man of letters corresponds 
 to the ancient sophist, whose office it was to confirm, adorn, 
 and propagate the current prejudice. To be a man of letters 
 in France in the middle of the eighteenth century was to be 
 the official enemy of the current prejudices and their sophistical 
 defenders in the church and the parliaments. Parents heard 
 of a son's design to go to Paris and write books, or to mix 
 with those who wrote books, with the same dismay with which 
 a respectable Athenian heard of a son following Socrates. 
 The hyper-hellenistic collegian need not accuse us of instituting 
 a general parallel between Socrates and Voltaire. The only 
 point on which we are insisting is that each was the leader of 
 
LITERATURE. 91 
 
 the assault against the sophists of his day, though their tactics 
 and implements of war were sufficiently unlike. To the later 
 assailant the conditions of the time made the pen the most 
 effective instrument. The clergy had the pulpit and the con- 
 fessional, and their enemies had the press. 
 
 It was during the period of his connection with Madame 
 du Chatelet, that is in the active literary years between his 
 return from England and his removal to. Berlin, that Voltaire's 
 dramatic talent was most productive.^' He is usually considered 
 to hold the same place relatively to Corneille and Racine which 
 Euripides held relatively to ^schylus and Sophocles. It is not 
 easy to see what is the exact point of analogy on which the 
 critics agree, beyond the corresponding place in the order of 
 chronological succession, and such parallels are not really very 
 full of instruction. If we are to run any parallel at all, it must 
 be between the Greek and Racine. The differences between 
 Euripides and his predecessors are not those between Voltaire 
 and his predecessors. There may be one common peculiarity. 
 Each made the drama an instrument for the expression not 
 merely of passion, but of speculative and philosophical matter, 
 and this in each case of a sceptical kind in reference to the 
 accepted traditions of the time. But apart from the vast 
 superiority of the Greek in depth and passion and dramatic 
 invention, in Voltaire this philosophizing is very much more 
 indirect, insinuatory, and furtive, than in the marked sententious- 
 ness of Euripides. There are critics, indeed, who insist that 
 all Voltaire's poetic work is a series of pamphlets in disguise, 
 and that he ought to be classified, in that jargon which makes 
 an uncouth compound pass muster for a new critical nicety, as 
 a tendency-poet.^ To accept this would simply be to leave out 
 of account the very best of Voltaire's plays, including Mdrope, 
 
 '' The dates of the most famous of his tragedies are these : (Edipe, 
 1718; Brutus, 1730; Zaire, 1732; Mart de Cesar, 1735; Ahire, 1736; 
 Mahomet, 1741; Merope, 1743; Shtiramis, 1748; Tancride, 1760. 
 
 " Hettnerr, for instance : Literaturgeschichte des l?>ten Jahrhunderis, 
 ii. 227. 
 
92 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 S^miramis, Tancrfede, in which the most ingenious of men and 
 critics would be at a loss to find any tendency of the pam- 
 phleteering kind. Voltaire's ever-present sense of congruity 
 prevented him from putting the harangue of the pulpit or the 
 discourse of the academic doctor upon the tragic stage. If the 
 clergy found in 'Mahomet,' for instance, a covert attack on 
 their own religion, it was much more because the poet was 
 suspected of unbelief, than because the poem contained infidel 
 doctrine. Indeed, nothing shows so clearly as the strange 
 affright at this and some other pieces of Voltaire's, that the 
 purport and effect of poetry must depend nearly as much upon 
 the mind of the audience as upon the lines themselves. His 
 plays may be said to have led to scepticism, only because there 
 was sceptical predisposition in the mind which his public 
 brought to them ; and under other circumstances, if for instance 
 it had been produced in the time of Lewis xiv., the exposure 
 of Mahomet would have been counted a glorification of the 
 rival creed. Indeed, Pope Benedict xiv. did by-and-by accept 
 Voltaire's dedication of the play, whether in good faith or no 
 we cannot tell, on the express ground that it was an indirect 
 homage to Christianity. Men with a sense of artistic propriety 
 far inferior to Voltaire's, are yet fully alive to the monstrosity 
 of disguising a pamphleteer's polemic in the form of a pretended 
 drama. 
 
 In choice of subject Voltaire, we may believe, was secretly 
 guided by his wish to relax the oppressive hold of Teligious 
 prejudice. Religion, we cannot too fully realise, was the 
 absorbing burden of the time. There was no sort of know- 
 ledge, from geometry onwards, on which it did not weigh. 
 Whatever work Voltaire set himself to, he was confronted in it 
 by the Infamous. Thus in accordance with the narrow theory 
 of his time, he held Mahomet to be a deliberate and conscious 
 impostor, and in presenting the founder of one great religion 
 in this odious shape, he was doubtless suggesting that the same 
 account might be true of the founder of another. But the 
 suggestion was entirely outside of the play itself, and we who 
 
LITERATURE. 93 
 
 have fully settled these questions for ourselves, may read 
 ' Mahomet ' without suspecting the shade of a reference from 
 Mecca to Jerusalem, though hardly without contemning the 
 feebleness of view which could see nothing but sensuality, 
 ambition, and crime, in the career of the fierce eastern reformer. 
 The sentiments of exalted deism which are put into the mouth 
 of the noble Zopire were perhaps meant to teach people that 
 the greatest devotion of character may go with the most un- 
 flinching rejection of a pretended revelation from the gods. 
 This again is a gloss from without, and by no means involves 
 Voltaire in the offence of art with a moral purpose. 
 
 Zaire was the first play in which French characters appeared « 
 upon the tragic stage. The heroine, the daughter of Lusignan, 
 has been brought up, unconscious of her descent, in the 
 Mahometan faith and usage. Consider the philosophy of these 
 lines which are given to her : 
 
 La coutume, la loi plia mes premiers ans 
 A la religion des heureux musulmans. 
 Je le vois trop ; les soins qu'on prend de notre enfance 
 Forment nos sentimens, nos moeurs, notre croyance. 
 J'eusse ete pres du Gange esclave des faux dieux, 
 Chretienne dans Paris, musulmane en ces lieux. 
 L'instruction fait tout ; et la main de nos peres 
 Grave en nos faibles coeurs ces premiers caracteres, 
 Que I'exemple et le temps nous viennent retracer, 
 Et que peut-etre en nous Dieu seul peut effacer.*^ 
 
 This of course implied the doctrine of Pope's Universal 
 Prayer, and contains an idea that was always the favourite 
 weapon for smiting the over-confident votaries of a single 
 supernatural revelation. Locke, had asked whether ' the current 
 opinions and licensed guides of every country are sufficient 
 evidence and security to every man to venture his great con- 
 cernments on? Or, can these be the certain and infalhble 
 oracle and standards of truth which teach one thing in 
 Christendom, and another in Turkey? Or shall a poor 
 
 '^ Zaire, act i. so. I. 
 
94 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 countryman be eternally happy for having the chance to be 
 born in Italy ? Or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost because 
 he had the ill-luck to be born in England?'^ This was 
 exactly the kind of reasoning to which Zaire's lines pointed; 
 and Voltaire was never weary of arguing that the divine lay 
 outside of the multitudinous variety of creeds, which were 
 never more than local accidents. Neither, however, in Zaire 
 nor anywhere else is the law of perfect dramatic fitness violated 
 for the sake of a lesson in heterodoxy. With Voltaire tragedy 
 is, as all art ought to be, a manner of disinterested presentation. 
 This is not the noblest energy of the human inteUigence, but it 
 is truly art, and Voltaire did not forget it. 
 
 It would be entirely unprofitable to enter into any comparison 
 of the relative merits of Voltaire's tragedies, and those either 
 of the modern romantic school in his own country, or of the 
 master dramatists of our own. Every form of composition' ' 
 must be judged in its own order, and the order in which 
 Voltaire chose to work was the French classic, with its ap- 
 pointed conditions and fixed laws, its three unities, its stately 
 alexandrines, and all the other essentials of that special 
 dramatic form. Here is one of the many points at which we 
 feel that Voltaire is trying to prolong in literature, if not in 
 thought, the impressive tradition of the grand age. At the 
 same moment, strangely enough, he was giving that stir to the 
 opinion of his time, which was the prime agent in definitely 
 breaking the hold of that tradition. It is no infidelity to the 
 glorious and incomparable genius of Shakespeare, nor does it 
 mvolve any blindness to the fine creation, fresh fancy, and 
 noble thought and imagery of our less superb men, yet to 
 admit that there is in these limits of construction a concentra- 
 tion and regularity, and in these too contemned alexandrines a 
 just and swelling cadence, that confer a high degree of pleasure 
 of the highest kind, and that demand intellectual quahty only 
 less rare than that other priceless and unattainable quality of 
 having the lips touched with divine fire. It is said, however, 
 " Essay on Hum. Und. iv. 19, § 3. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 95 
 
 that such quality does not produce acting plays, but only 
 dramatic poems ; which is really laughable if we remember 
 first, that the finest actors in the world have been trained in 
 the recitation of these alexandrines, and second, that as large 
 and as delighted an audience used until within some twenty 
 years ago to crowd to a tragedy of Comeille or Racine, seen 
 repeatedly before, as to a bran-new vaudeville, never to be 
 seen again. 
 
 'We insist,' said Voltaire, 'that the rhyme shall cost 
 nothing to the ideas ; that it shall neither be trivial nor too far- 
 fetched; we exact rigorously in a verse the same purity, the 
 same precision, as in prose. We do not permit the smallest 
 licence ; we require an author to carry without a break all these 
 chains, and yet that he should appear ever free.'" He admitted 
 that sometimes they failed in reaching the tragic, through 
 excessive fear of passing its limits. He does justice, if some- 
 thing less than English justice, to the singular merits of our 
 stage in the way of action.^ Shakespeare, he says, ' had a 
 genius full of force and fertility, of all that is natural and all 
 that is sublime.' It is even the merit of Shakespeare — ' those 
 grand and terrible pieces that abound in his most monstrous 
 farces ■" — that has been the undoing of the Enghsh stage.''" 
 
 Even the famous criticism on Hamlet has been a good 
 deal misrepresented. Voltaire is vindicating the employment 
 of the machinery of ghosts, and he dwells on the fitness and 
 fine dramatic effect of the ghost in Shakespeare's play. ' I am 
 very far,' he goes on to say, 'from justifying the tragedy of 
 
 Hamlet in everything : it is a rude and barbarous piece 
 
 Hamlet goes mad in the second act, and his mistress goes 
 mad in the third ; the prince slays the lather of his mistress, 
 pretending to kill a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the 
 river. They dig her grave on the stage ; the gravediggers jest 
 
 " Discours sur la Tragedie, a Milord Bolingbrocke. CEuvres, ii. 
 p. 337- See also the preface to CEdipe. Jb. p. 73. 
 " CEuvres, ii. p. 339. 
 " Lett sur les Anglais, xix. CEuvres, x.xxv. p. 151. 
 
g6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 in a way worthy of them, with skulls in their hands ; Hamlet 
 answers their odious grossnesses by extravagances no less 
 disgusting. Meanwhile one of the characters conquers Poland. 
 Hamlet, his mother, and his step-father drink together on the 
 stage; they sing at table, they wrangle, they fight, they kill; 
 one might suppose such a work to be the fruit of the imagina- 
 tion of a drunken savage. But in the midst of all these rude 
 irregularities, which to this day make the English theatre so 
 absurd and so barbarous, there are to be found in Hamlet by 
 a yet greater incongruity sublime strokes worthy of the loftiest 
 geniuses. It seems as if nature had taken a delight in collecting 
 within the brain of Shakespeare all that we can imagine of what 
 is greatest and most powerful, with all that rudeness without 
 wit can contain of what is lowest and most detestable.'^" 
 
 If one were to retort upon this that anybody with a true 
 sense of poetry would sacrifice all the plays that Voltaire ever 
 wrote, his eight and twenty tragedies, and half-score of comedies, 
 for the soliloquy in Hamlet, or King Henry at Towton Fight, 
 or 'Roses, their sharp spines being gone,' there would be 
 truth in such a retort, but it would be that brutal truth, 
 which is always very near being the most subtle kind of 
 lie. Nature wrought a miracle for us by producing Shake- 
 speare, as she did afterwards in an extremely different way for 
 France by producing Voltaire. Miracles, however, have neces- 
 sarily a very demoralizing effect. A prodigy of loaves and 
 fishes, by slackening the motives to honest industry, must in 
 the end multiply paupers. The prodigy of such amazing 
 results from such glorious carelessness as Shakespeare's, has 
 plunged hundreds of men of talent into a carelessness most 
 inglorious, and made our acting stage a mock. It is quite 
 true that the academic rule is better fitted for mediocrity than 
 for genius ; but we inay perhaps trust genius to make a way for 
 itself. It is mediocrity that needs laws and prescriptions for 
 
 *" Introduction to Semiramis. CEuvres, v. p. 194. See also Du 
 Theatre Anglais (1761). lb. x. p. 88. Lettre h. I'Acad. Fran9. (1778), iv. 
 p. 186. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 97 
 
 its most effective fertilization, and the enormous majority even 
 of those who can do good work are still mediocre. We have 
 preferred the methods of lawless genius, and are left with 
 rampant lawlessness and no genius. The very essence of the 
 old French tragedy was painstaking, and painstaking has had 
 its unfailing and exceeding great reward. When people whose 
 taste has been trained in the traditions of romantic and 
 naturalistic art, or even not trained at all except in indolence 
 and presumption, yawn over the French alexandrines, let them 
 remember that Goethe at any rate thought it worth while to 
 translate Mahomet and Tancrfede. 
 
 An eminent German writer on Voltaire has recently declared 
 the secret of the French classic dramaturgy to be that the 
 drama was a diversion of the court. ' The personages have to 
 speak not as befits their true feelings, their character, and the 
 situation, but as is seemly in the presence of a king and a 
 court ; not truth, nature, and beauty, but etiquette, is the highest 
 law of the dramatic art.'*^ This may partially explain how 
 it was that a return to some features of the classic form, its 
 dignity, elevation, and severity, came to take place in France, 
 but no explanation can be at all satisfactory which reduces so 
 distinct and genuine a manner of dramatic expression to a 
 mere outside accident. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, treated 
 their tragic subjects as they did, with rigorous concentration 
 of action, stately consistency of motive, and in a solemn and 
 balanced measure, because these conditions answered to intel- 
 lectual qualities of their own, an affinity in themselves for 
 elegance, clearness, elevation, and a certain purified and 
 weighty wisdom. It is true that they do not unseal those 
 deep-hidden fountains of thought and feeling and music, which 
 flow so freely at the waving of Shakespeare's wand. We are 
 not swiltly carried from a scene of clowns up to some sublime 
 pinnacle of the seventh heaven, whence we see the dark abysses 
 that lie about the path of human action, as well as all its 
 
 " Volta.re: sechsVortrii^e. Von D. F. Strauss; p. 74- The same idea 
 is found in a speech of Wilhelm Melster, bk. iii. ch. 8. 
 
98 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 sweet and shadowed places. Only let us not unjustly suppose 
 that we are deciding tjie merits of the old French dramaturgy, 
 its severe structure and stately measure, by answering the 
 question, which no English nor German vnriter can. ever 
 seriously put, as to the relative depth and vision in poetic 
 things of Shakespeare and Voltaire. Nor can we be expected 
 to be deeply moved by a form of art that is so unfamiliar to us. 
 It is not a question whether we ought to be so deeply moved. 
 The too susceptible Marmontel describes how on the occasion 
 of a visit to Ferney, Voltaire took him into his study and 
 placed a manuscript into his hands. It was Tancrfede, which 
 was just finished. Marmontel eagerly read it, and he tells us 
 how he returned to the author, his face all bathed in tears. 
 'Your tears,' said Voltaire, 'tell me all that it most concerns 
 me to know.'^ The most supercilious critic may find this very ■ 
 Tancrfede worth reading, when he remembers that Gibbon ., 
 thought it splendid and interesting,^ and that Goethe found if 
 worth translating. One could hardly be convicted now of 
 want of sensibility, if all Voltaire's tragedy together failed to 
 bathe one's face in tears, but this is a very bad reason for 
 denying that it has other merits than pathos. 
 
 We cannot, indeed, compare the author of Zaire and 
 Tancrfede with the great author of Cinna and Polyeucte, any 
 more than in another kind we can compare Gray with Milton. 
 Voltaire is the very genius of correctness, elegance, and grace, 
 and if the reader would know what this correctness means, he 
 will find a most wholesome exercise in reading Voltaire's notes 
 on some of the most celebrated of Corneille's plays." But in 
 masculine energy and in poetic weightiness, as well as in 
 organ-like richness of music, Voltaire must be surely pro- 
 nounced inferior to his superb predecessor. There is a certain' 
 thinness pervading the whole of his work in this order, the 
 
 *'' Mem. de Afarmontel, liv. vii. ii. 245. For Diderot's criticism, see his 
 
 Mhnoireset CEitvr. InMites, i. 234 (1830). For D'Alembert's, cf. Voltaire's 
 (Euv. Ixxv. p. 118. 
 
 " Decline and Fall, c. 52, note 83. " CEuvres, vols. x. and xi. 
 
LITERATURE. 99 
 
 conception of character, the dramatic structure, and the measure 
 ahke. Undoubtedly we may frequently come upon weighty and 
 noble lines, of fine music and lofty sense. But there is on the 
 whole what strikes -one as a fatal excess of facility, and a 
 fatal defect of poetic saliency. The fluent ease of the verse 
 destroys the impression of strength. ' Your friend,' wrote 
 Madame du Chatelet once of her friend, 'has had a slight 
 bout of illness, and you know that when he is ill, he can do 
 nothing but write verses.'^ We do not know whether the 
 Marquise meant alexandrines, or those graceful verses of 
 society of which Voltaire was so incomparable a master. It is 
 certain that he wrote Zaire in three weeks and Olympic in 
 six days, though with respect to the latter we may well agree 
 with the friend who told the author that he should not have 
 rested on the seventh day. However that may be, there is 
 a quality about his tragic verse which to one fresh from the 
 sonorous majesty and dignified beauty of Polyeucte, or even 
 the fine gravity of Tartufe, vibrates too lightly in the ear. 
 Least of all may we compare him to Racine, whose two 
 great tragedies of Iphigdnie and Athalie Voltaire himself 
 declared to mark the nearest approach ever made to dramatic 
 perfection.^ There is none of the mixed austerity and tender- 
 ness, height and sweetness, grace and firmness, which blend 
 together with such invisible art and unique contrivance in 
 the poet whose verses taught Fdnelon and Massillon how to 
 make music in their prose. To this Voltaire could only have 
 access from without, for he lacked the famous master's internal 
 depth, seriousness, and veneration of soul. We know how little 
 this approach from without can avail, and how vainly a man 
 follows the harmonious grace of a style, when he lacks the 
 impalpable graces of spirit which made the style live. It is 
 only when grave thoughts and benignant aspirations and purify- 
 ing images move with even habit through the mind, that a 
 man masters the noblest expression. De Maistre, to whom 
 Voltaire's name was the symbol for all that is accursed, admitted 
 *^ Desnoiresterres, p. 342. " OLuvres, ix. p. 3S2. 
 
100 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 the nobleness of his work in tragedy, but he instantly took back 
 the grudged praise by saying that even here he only resembles 
 his two great rivals as a clever hypocrite resembles a saint.*' 
 Malignantly expressed, there is some truth in this. 
 
 It was one of the elements in the plan of dramatic reform 
 that sprang up in Voltaire's mind during his residence in 
 England, that the subjects of tragedy should be more mas- 
 culine, and that love should cease to be an obligatory ingre- 
 dient ' It is nearly always the same piece, the same knot, 
 formed by jealousy and a breach, and untied by a marriage; 
 it is a perpetual coquetry, a simple comedy in which princes 
 are actors, and in which occasionally blood is spilt for form's 
 sake.' ** This he counted a mistake, for, as he justly said, the 
 heart is but lightly touched by a lover's woes, while it is 
 profoundly softened by the anguish of a mother just about 
 to lose her son. Thus in Mdrope we have maternal sentiment 
 made the spring of what is probably the best of Voltaire's 
 tragedies, abounding in a just vehemence, compact, full of 
 feeling at once exalted and natural, and moving with a sus- 
 tained energy that is not a too common mark of his work. 
 It was the same conviction of the propriety of making tragedy 
 a means of expressing other emotions than that which is so apt 
 to degenerate into an insipidity, which dictated the composition 
 and novel treatment of the Roman subjects, Brutus and La 
 Mort de Ce'sar. Here the French drama first became in some 
 degree truly political. His predecessors when they handled a 
 historic theme, did so, not from the historic or social point 
 of view, but as the illustration, or rather the suggestion, of 
 some central human passion. In the Cinna of Corneille the 
 pohtical bearings, the moral of benevolent despotism which 
 Bonaparte found in it, were purely incidental, and were 
 distinctly subordinate to the portrayal of character and the 
 movement of feeling. In Brutus the whole action lies in the 
 region of great public affairs, and of the passions which these 
 affairs stir in noble characters, without any admixture of purely 
 " Soirks, 4ieme eiitretien. ^^ (Euvres, v. p. 189. 
 
LITERATURE. iot 
 
 private tenderness. In La Mort de Cdsar we are equally 
 in the heroics of public action. Rome Sauv^e, of which 
 the subject is the conspiracy of Catiline, and the hero the 
 most eloquent of consuls or men — a part which Voltaire was 
 very fond of filling in private representations, and with 
 distinguished success — is extremely loose and spasmodic in 
 structure, and the speeches sound strained even when put into 
 Cicero's mouth. But here also private insipidities are banished, 
 though perhaps it is only in favour of public insipidities. It 
 is impossible to tell what share, if any, these plays had in 
 spreading that curious feeling about Roman freedom and its 
 most renowned defenders, which is so striking a feature in 
 some of the great episodes of the Revolution. We cannot 
 suspect Voltaire of any design to stir political feeling. He 
 was now essentially aristocratic and courtly in his predilection, 
 without the smallest active ■vvish for an approach to political 
 revolution, if indeed the conception of a change of that kind 
 ever presented itself to him. He was indefatigable in admiring 
 and praising English freedom, but, as has already been said, it 
 was not the laudation of a lover of popular government, but 
 the envy of a man of letters whose life was tormented by 
 censors of the press and the lieutenant of police. Perhaps 
 the only approach to a public purpose in this fancy for his 
 Roman subjects was a lurking idea of arousing in the nobles, 
 for whom we must remember his dramatic work was above 
 all designed, not a passion for freedom from the authority of 
 monarchic government, but a passion of a more general kind 
 for energetic patriotism. Voltaire's letters abound with ex- 
 pressions of the writer's belief that he was the witness of an 
 epoch of decay in his own country. He had in truth far too 
 keen and practical and trained an eye not to see how public 
 spirit, political sagacity, national ambition, and even valour had 
 declined in the great orders of France since the age of the 
 grand monarch, and how much his country had fallen back in 
 the race of civilization and power. We should be guilty of 
 a very transparent exaggeration of the facts, if any attempt were 
 
102 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 made to paint Voltaire in the attitude and colours of one trans- 
 cendentally aspiring to regenerate his countrymen. But there is 
 no difficulty in believing that a man who had lived in England, 
 and knew so much of Prussia, should have seen the fatal 
 enervation which had come upon France, and that with 
 Voltaire's feeling for the stage, he should have dreamt, by 
 means of a more austere subject and more masculine treat- 
 ment, of reviving the love of wisdom and glory and devotion 
 in connection with country. In a word, the lesson of La 
 Mort de Cesar or of Brutus was not a specific admonition 
 to slay tyrants, or to execute stern judgments on sons, but a 
 general example of self-sacrificing patriotism and devoted 
 public honour. 
 
 It is often said that Voltaire's Romans are mere creatures of 
 parade and declamation, like the figures of David's paintings,** 
 and it is very likely that the theatre infected the French 
 people with that mischievous idea of the Romans, as a nation 
 of declaimers about freedom and the death of tyrants. The 
 true Roman was no doubt very much more like one of our 
 narrow, hard, and able Scotchmen in India, than the lofty 
 talkers who delighted the parterre of Paris or Versailles. 
 Unluckily for truth of historical conception, Cicero was, after 
 Virgil, the most potent of Roman memories, and a man of 
 words became with modern writers the favourite type of a 
 people of action. All this, however, is beside the question. 
 Voltaire would have laughed at the idea of any obligation to 
 present either Romans or other personages on the stage with 
 realistic fidelity. The tragic drama with him was the highest 
 of the imaginative and idealistic arts. If he had sought a 
 parallel to it in the plastic arts, he would have found one, not 
 in painting, which by reason of the greater flexibility of its 
 material demands a more exact verisimilitude, but in sculpture. 
 Considered as statuesque figures endowed with speech, Brutus, 
 Caesar, and the rest, are noble and impressive. We may 
 protest as vigorously as we know how against any assimilation 
 *" Strauss, p. 79. 
 
LITERATURE. 
 
 103 
 
 of the great art of action with the great art of repose. But 
 we can only criticize the individual productions of a given 
 theory, provided we for the moment accept the conditions 
 which the theory lays down. All art rests upon convention, 
 and if we choose to repudiate any particular set of conventions, 
 we have no more right to criticize the works of those who 
 submit to them, than one would have to criticize sculpture, 
 because marble or bronze is not like flesh and blood. Within 
 the conditions of the French classic drama, Voltaire's Romans 
 are high and stately figures. 
 
 Voltaire's innovations extended beyond the introduction of 
 more masculine treatment. Before his time romantic subjects 
 had been regarded with disfavour, and Corneille's Bajazet was 
 considered a bold experiment. Racine was more strictly classic, 
 and dramatists went on handling the same ancient fables, 
 ' Thebes, or Pelops' line, or the tale of Troy divine,' just as 
 the Greeks had done, or just as the painters in the Catholic 
 times had never wearied of painting the two eternal figures of 
 human mother and divine child. Voltaire treated the classic 
 subjects as others did, and if CEdipe misses all the depth 
 and delicate reserve and fateful gloom of the Greeks, 
 Merope at any rate breathes a fine and tragic spirit. But 
 his restless mind pressed forwards into subjects which 
 Racine would have shuddered at, and every quarter of the 
 universe became in turn a portion of the Voltairean stage. 
 L'Orphelin de la Chine introduces us to China and Genghis- 
 Khan, Mahomet to Arabia and its prophet, Tancrede to Sicily ; 
 in Zulime we are among Moors, in Alzire with Peruvians. 
 This revolutionary enlargement of subject was significant of a 
 general and very important enlargement of interest which 
 marked the time, and led presently to those contrasts between 
 the condition of France and the imaginary felicity and noble- 
 ness of wilder countries, which did so much to breed an 
 irresistible longing for change. Voltaire's high-minded Scythians, 
 generous Peruvians, and the rest, prepared the way along 
 with other influences for that curious cosmopolitanism, that 
 
104 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 striking eagerness ■ to believe in the equal virtuousness and 
 devotion inherent in human nature, independently of the religious V 
 or social form accidentally imposed upon them, which found 
 its ultimate outcome, first in an ardent passion for social 
 equality, and a depreciation of the special sanctity of the 
 current religion, and next in the ill-fated emancipating and 
 proselytizing aims of the Revolution, and in orators of the 
 human race. 
 
 It has usually been thought surprising that Voltaire, consum- 
 mate wit as he was, should have been so markedly unsuccessful 
 in comedy. Certainly no one with so right a sense of the 
 value of time as Voltaire himself had, will in our time waste 
 many hours over his productions in this order. There are a 
 dozen of them more or less, and we can only hope that they 
 were the most rapid of his writings. Lines of extraordinary 
 vivacity are not wanting, and at their best they offer a certain 
 bustling sprightliness which might have been diverting in actual 
 representation. Eut the key-note seems to be struck in farce, 
 rather than in comedy ; the intrigue, if not quite as slight as 
 in Molifere, is too forced ; and the characters are nearly all 
 excessively mediocre in conception. In one of the comedies, 
 Le D^positaire, the poet presented the aged patroness of 
 his youth, but the necessity of respec''-ig current ideas of the 
 becoming prevented him from making great character out 
 of even so striking a figure as Ninon de I'l, -'os. La Prude is 
 a version of Wycherly's Plaindealer, and js in respect of 
 force, animation^ and the genuine spirit of comedy, very 
 inferior to its admifitSle original. L'Indiscret is a sparkling 
 and unconsidered trifle, L'Ecossaise is only a stinging attack 
 on Fr^ron, and L'Enfant Prodigue, though greater pains were 
 taken with it, has none of the glow of dramatic feeling. The 
 liveliest of all is La Femme qui a Raison, a short comedy of 
 situation, which for one reading is entertaining in the closet, 
 and must be excellent on the stage. It is very slight, however, 
 and as usual verges on farce. 
 
 This inferiority of Voltaire's ought not to astonish any one 
 
LITERATURE. 105 
 
 who has reflected how much concentrated feeling and what 
 profundity of vision go to the production of great comedy, and 
 how in the mind of the dramatist, as in the movement of 
 human hfe, comedy Hes close to portentous tragedy. The 
 author of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme and L'Avare, was also 
 the creator of the Misanthrope, that inscrutable piece, where, 
 without plot, fable, or intrigue, we see a section of the polished 
 life of the time, men and women paying visits, making and 
 receiving compliments, discoursing upon affairs with easy light- 
 ness, flitting backwards and forwards with a thousand petty 
 hurries, and among these one strange, rough, hoarse, half-sombre 
 figure, moving solitarily with a chilling reality in the midst of 
 frolicking shadows. Voltaire entered too eagerly into the 
 interests of the world, was by temperament too exclusively 
 sympathetic and receptive and social, to place himself even in 
 imagination thus outside of the common circle. Without capa- 
 city for this, there is no comedy of the first order. Without 
 serious consciousness of contrasts, no humour that endures. 
 Shakespeare, Molifere, and even Aristophanes, each of them 
 unsurpassed writers of mere farce, were each of them, though 
 with vast difference of degree, master of a tragic breadth of vision. 
 Voltaire had moods of petulant spleen, but who feels that he 
 ever saw, much less brooded over, the dark cavernous regions 
 of human nature? Without this we may have brilliant 
 pleasantry of surprise, inimitable caricature, excellent comedy 
 of society, but of the veritable comedy of human character and 
 life, nothing. 
 
 In dazzUng and irresistible caricature Voltaire has no 
 equal. There is no deep humour, as in Don Quixote, or 
 Tristram Shandy, which Voltaire did not care for,^° or Richtefs 
 Siebenkas, which he would not have cared for any more than 
 De Stael did. He was too purely intellectual, too argumentative, 
 too geometrical, and cared too much for illustrating a principle. 
 But in Candide, Zadig, LTngfeu, wit is as high as mere wit 
 can go. They are better than Hudibras, because the motive 
 
 "' CEuvres, xviii. p. 250, 
 
io6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 is broader and more intellectual. Rapidity of play, infallible 
 accuracy of stroke, perfect copiousness, and above all a fresh 
 and unflagging spontaneity, combine with a surprising invention, 
 to give these stories a singular quality, of which we most 
 effectively observe the real brilliance, by comparing thein with 
 the too numerous imitations that their success has unhappily 
 invited since. 
 
 It is impossible to omit from the most cursory study of 
 Voltaire's work, that too famous poem which was his favourite 
 amusement during some of the best years of his life, which was 
 the delight of all who could by any means get the high favour 
 of sight or hearing of so much as a canto of it, and which is 
 now always spoken of, when it happens to be spoken of at 
 all, with extreme abhorrence. ^^ The Pucelle offends two 
 modern sentiments, the love of modesty, and the love of the 
 heroic personages of history. The moral sense and the historic 
 sense have both been sharpened in some respects since Vol- 
 taire, and a poem which not only abounds in immodesty,, and 
 centres the whole action in an indecency of conception, but 
 also fastens this gross chaplet round the memory of a great 
 deliverer of the poet's own country, seems to offer a double 
 outrage to an age when relish for licentious verse has gone out 
 of fashion, and reverence for the heroic dead has come in. 
 Still the fact that the greatest man of his time should have' 
 written one of the most unseemly poems that exist in any 
 tongue, is worth trying to understand. Voltaire, let us 
 remember, had no special turn, like Gibbon or Bayle, least of 
 all like the unclean Swift, for extracting a malodorous diversion 
 out of grossness or sensuality. His writings betray no irresistible 
 passion for flying to an indelicacy, nor any of the vapid 
 lasciviousness of some more modern French writers. The 
 Pucelle is at least the wit of a rational man, and not the prying 
 beastliness of a satyr. It is wit worse than poorly employed, 
 but it is purity itself compared with some of the nameless 
 
 " Commenced soon after 1730; published surreptitiously in 1755; 
 published by Voltaire himself in 1 762. 
 
LITERATURE. 107 
 
 abominations with which Diderot besmirched his imagination. 
 The Persian Letters contain what we should now account 
 passages of extreme licentiousness, yet Montesquieu was 
 assuredly no libertine. Voltaire's life again was never indecent 
 or immoderate from the point of view of the manners of the 
 time. A man of grave character and untarnished life, like 
 Condorcet, did not scruple to defend a poem, in which it is 
 hard for us to see anything but a most indecorous burlesque 
 of a most heroic subject. He insists that books which divert 
 the imagination without heating or seducing it, which by gay 
 and pleasurable images fill up those moments of exhaustion that 
 are useless alike for labour and meditation, have the effect of 
 inclining men to gentleness and indulgence. ' It was not such 
 books as the Pucelle that Gerard or Cle'ment used to read, or 
 that the satellites of Cromwell carried at the saddle-bow.' "^^ 
 
 The fact is that in amusing himself by the Pucelle, Voltaire 
 was only giving literary expression to a kind of view which 
 had already in the society of the time found for itself a 
 thoroughly practical expression. The people among whom he 
 lived had systematized that freedom from law or restraint in 
 the relations of the sexes, of which his poem is so vivid a re- 
 presentation. The Duke of Richelieu was the irresistible 
 Lovelace of his time, and it was deemed an honour, an honour 
 to which Madame du Chatelet among so many others has a 
 title, to have yielded to his fascination. A long and pro- 
 foundly unedifying chronicle might be drawn up of the 
 memorable gallantries of that time, and for our purpose it 
 might fitly close with the amour with Saint Lambert that led to 
 Madame du Chatelet's death. Of course, these countless gal- 
 lantries in the most licentious persons of the day, such as 
 Richelieu or Saxe, were neither more nor less than an outbreak 
 of sheer dissoluteness, such as took place among English people 
 of quahty in the time of the Restoration. The idle and 
 luxurious, whose imagination is uncontrolled by the discipline 
 of labour and purpose, and to whom the indulgence of their 
 
 '^ Vie de Voltaire, p. 89. 
 
io8 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 own inclinations is the first and single law of life, are always 
 ready to profit by any relaxation of restraint, which the moral 
 conditions of the moment may permit. 
 
 The peculiarity of the licence of France in the middle of 
 the eighteenth century is, that it was looked upon with com- 
 placency by the great intellectual leaders of opinion. It took 
 its place in the progressive formula. What austerity was to 
 other forward movements, licence was to this. It is not difficult 
 to perceive how so extraordinary a circumstance came to pass. 
 Chastity was the supreme virtue in the eyes of the church, the 
 mystic key to Christian holiness. Continence was one of the 
 most sacred of the pretensions by which the organized preachers 
 of superstition claimed the reverence of men and women. It 
 was identified, therefore, in a particular manner with that 
 Infamous, against which the main assault of the time was 
 directed. So men contended, more or less expressly, first, that 
 continence was no commanding chief among virtues, then that 
 it was a very superficial and easily practised virtue, finally that 
 it was no virtue at all, but if sometimes a convenience, 
 generally an impediment to free human happiness. These 
 disastrous sophisms show the peril of having morality made an 
 appendage of a set of theological mysteries, because the 
 mysteries are sure in time to be dragged into the open air of 
 reason, and moral truth crumbles away with the false dogmas 
 with which it had got mixed, 
 
 'If,' says Condorcet, 'we may treat as useful the design 
 to make superstition ridiculous in the eyes of men given to 
 pleasures, and destined, by the very want of self-control which 
 makes pleasures attractive to them, to become one day the 
 unfortunate victims or the mischievous instruments of that vile 
 tyrant of humanity ; if the affectation of austerity in manners, 
 if the excessive value attached to purity, only serves the 
 hypocrites who by putting on the easy mask of chastity can 
 dispense with all virtues, and cover with a sacred veil the vices 
 most pernicious to society, hardness of heart and intolerance : 
 if by accustoming men to treat as so many crimes faults from 
 
LITERATURE, 
 
 109 
 
 whicli honourable and conscientious persons are not exempt, 
 we extend over the purest souls the power of that dangerous 
 caste, which to rule and disturb the earth, has constituted itself 
 exclusively the interpreter of heavenly justice ; — then we shall 
 see in the author of the Pucelle no more than a foe to 
 hypocrisy and superstition.''^' 
 
 It helps us to realise the infinite vileness of a system, like 
 that of the Church in the last century, which could engender in 
 men of essential nobleness of character like Condorcet, an 
 antipathy so violent as to shut the eyes of their understand- 
 ing to the radical sophistry of such pleading as this. Let one 
 reflection out of many, serve to crush the whole of it. The key 
 to effective life is unity of life, and unity of life means as much 
 as anything else the unity of our human relations. Our identity 
 does by no means consist in a historic continuity of tissues, 
 but in an organic moral coherency of relation. It is this, which 
 alone, if we consider the passing shortness of our days, makes 
 life a whole, instead of a parcel of thrums bound together by 
 an accident. Is not every incentive and every concession to 
 vagrant appetite a force that enwraps a man in gratification of 
 self, and severs him from duty to others, and so a force of dis- 
 solution and dispersion ? It might be necessary to pull down 
 the Church, but the worst church that has ever prostituted the 
 name and the idea of religion cannot be so disastrous to society, 
 as a gospel that systematically relaxes self-control as being an 
 unmeaning curtailment of happiness. The apologists for the 
 Pucelle exhibit the doctrine of individualism in one of its 
 worst issues. ' Your proof that this is really the best of all 
 possible worlds is excellent,' says Candide for his famous last 
 word, 'but we must cultivate our garden.' The same principle 
 of exclusive self-regard, applied to the gratification of sense, 
 passed for a satisfactory defence of libertinage. In the first 
 form it destroys a state, in the second it destroys the family. 
 
 °' Vie de Voltaire, p. 88. On the same subject of chastity, cf. Con- 
 dorcet's Works, vi. p. 264, and pp. S^j-S j also a passage in his corres- 
 pondence, i. p. 221. 
 
110 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 It is easier to account for Voltaire's contempt for the 
 mediseval superstition about purity, than his want of respect 
 for a dehverer of France. The explanation lies in the convic- 
 tion which had such power in Voltaire's own mind and with 
 which he impregnated to such a degree the minds of others, 
 that the action of illiterate and unpolished times can have ho 
 life in it. His view of progress was a progress of art and 
 knowledge, and heroic action which was dumb, or which was 
 not expressed in terms of intellect, was to the eighteenth 
 century, and to Voltaire at least as much as to any other of 
 its leaders, mere barbaric energy. In the order of taste, for 
 instance, he can find only words of cool and limited praise for 
 Homer, while for the pohsh and elegance of Virgil his admira- 
 tion is supreme. The first was the bard of a rude tinie, while 
 round the second cluster all the associations of a refined and 
 lettered age. A self-devotion that was only articulate ia the 
 jargon of mystery and hallucination, and that was surrounded 
 with rude and irrational circumstance, with ignorance, brutality, 
 visions, miracle, was encircled by no halo in the eyes of a poet 
 who found no nobleness where he did not find a definite in- 
 telligence, and who rested all his hopes and interests on the 
 long distance set by time and civilization between ourselves 
 and such conditions and associations as belong to the name of 
 Joan of Arc. The foremost men of the eighteenth century 
 despise^ Joan of Arc, whenever they had occasion to think of 
 her, for the same reason which made them despise Gothic 
 architecture. 'When,' says Voltaire in one place, 'the arts 
 began to revive, they revived as Goths and Vandals ; what 
 unhappily remains to us of the architecture and sculpture of 
 these times is a fantastic compound of rudeness and filigree.','* 
 Just so, even Turgot, while protesting how dear to every 
 sensible heart were the Gothic buildings destined to the use of 
 the poor and the orphan, complained of the outrage done by 
 their rude architecture to the delicacy of our sight.^ Characters 
 
 •^ Essai sur la Poesie Epique. CEuvres, xiii. p. 474. 
 " (JEuvres, ii. p. 591. 
 
LITERATURE. in 
 
 like Joan of Arc ranked in the same rude and fantastic order, 
 and respect for them meant that respect for the middle age 
 which was treason to the new time. Men despised her, just 
 as they despised the majesty and beauty of the great church 
 at Rheims where she brought her work to a climax, or the 
 lofty grace and symmetry of the church of St Ouen, within 
 sight of which her life came to its terrible end. 
 
 Henry the Fourth was a hero with Voltaire, for no better 
 reason than that he was the first great tolerant, the earliest 
 historic indifferent. The Henriade is only important because 
 it helped to popularize the type of its hero's character, and so 
 to promote the rapidly growing tendency in public opinion 
 towards a still wider version of the policy of the Edict of 
 Nantes. The reign of Lewis xiv. had thrown all previous 
 monarchs into obscurity, and the French king who showed a 
 warmer and more generous interest in the happiness of his 
 subjects than any they ever had, was forgotten, until Voltaire 
 brought him into fame. It was just, however, because Henry's 
 exploits were so glorious, and at the same time so near in 
 point of time, that he made an indifferent hero for an epic 
 poem. 'He should never choose for an epic poem history,' 
 said Hume very truly, ' the truth of which is well known ; for 
 no fiction can come up to the interest of the actual story and 
 incidents of the singular life of Henry iv.'^^ These general 
 considerations, however, as to the propriety of the subject are 
 hardly worth entering upon. How could any true epic come 
 out of that age, or find fountains in that critical, realistic, and 
 polemical soul ? To fuse a long narrative of heroic adventure 
 in animated, picturesque, above all, in sincere verse, is an 
 achievement reserved for men with a steadier glow, a firmer, 
 simpler, more exuberant and more natural poetic feeling, than 
 was possible in that time of mean shifts, purposeless public 
 action, and pitiful sacrifice of private self-respect. Virgil was 
 stirred by the greatness of the newly-united empire, Tasso by 
 the heroic march of Christendom against pagan oppressors, 
 '' Burton's Life of David Hume, ii. 440. 
 
112 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Milton by the noble ardour of our war for public rights. 
 What long and glowing inspiration was possible to a would- 
 be courtier, thrust into the Bastille for wanting to fight a noble 
 who had had him caned by lackeys ? BesideSj an epic, of all 
 forms of poetic composition, most demands concentrated depth, 
 and Voltaire was too widely curious and vivacious on the 
 intellectual side to be capable of this emotional concentration. 
 But it is superfluous to give reasons why Voltaire's epic 
 should not-,, be a great poem. The Henriade itself is there, 
 the most indisputable of arguments. Of poems whose names 
 are known out of literary histories and academic catalogues, it 
 is perhaps 'the least worth reading in any language by any one 
 but a professional student of letters. It is less worth reading 
 than Lucan's Pharsalia, because it is more deliberately artificial 
 and gratuitously unspontaneous. Paradise Regained, which it 
 is too ready a fashion among us to pronounce dull, still contains 
 at least three pieces of superb and unsurpassed description, 
 never fails in grave majestic verse, and is at the worst free 
 from all the dreary apparatus of phantom and impersonation 
 and mystic vision, which have never jarred so profoundly with 
 sense of poetic fitness, as when associated with so political and 
 matter-of-fact a hero as Henry the Fourth. The reader has 
 no illusion in such transactions as Saint Lewis taking Henry 
 into heaven and hell, Sleep hearing from her secret caves, the 
 Winds at sight of him falling into Silence, and Dreams, children 
 of Hope, flying to cover the hero with olive and laurel. How 
 can we overcome our repugnance to that strange admixture of 
 real and unreal matter which presents us with a highly-coloured 
 picture of the Temple of Love, where in the forecourt sits Joy, 
 with Mystery, Desire, Complaisance, on the soft turf by hei 
 side, while in the inner sanctuary haunt Jealousy, Suspicion, 
 Malice, Fury; while the next canto describes 
 
 L'eglise touiours une et partout ^tendue, 
 Libre, mais sous im chef, adorant en tout lieu, 
 Dans le bonheur des saints, la grandeur de son Dieu. 
 Le Christ, de nos pechesvictime renaissante, 
 
LITERATURE. 113 
 
 De ses ^lus cheris nourriture vivante. 
 
 Descend sur les autels k ses yeux eperdus, 
 
 Et lui decouvre un Dieu sous un pain qui n'est plus. "' 
 
 Voltaire congratulated himself in his preface that he had 
 come sufficiently near theological exactitude, and to this qualifi- 
 cation, which is so new for poetry, the critic may add elegance 
 and flow; but neither elegance nor theological exactitude re- 
 conciles us to an epic that has neither a stroke of sublimity 
 nor a touch of pathos, that presents no grandeur in character, 
 and no hurrying force and movement in action. Frederick 
 the Great used to speak of Voltaire as the French Virgil, but 
 then Frederick's father had never permitted him to learn Latin, 
 and if he ever read Virgil at all, it must have been in some of 
 the jingling French translations. Even so, with the episodes of 
 Dido and of Nisus and Euryalus in our minds, we may wonder 
 how so monstrous a parallel could have occurred even to 
 Frederick, who was no critic, between two poets who have hardly 
 a quality in common. If the reader wishes to realise how 
 nearly insipid even Voltaire's genius could become when work- 
 ing in unsuitable forms, he may turn from any canto of the 
 Henriade to any page of Lucretius or the Paradise Lost. A 
 French critic quotes the famous reviewer's sentence, concluding 
 an analysis of some epic, to the effect that on the whole, when 
 all is summed up, the given epic was ' one of the best that had 
 appeared in the course of the current year;' and insists that 
 Voltaire's piece will not at any rate perish in the oblivion of 
 poetic annuals like these. If not, the only reason lies in that 
 unfortunate tenderness for the bad work of famous men, which 
 makes of so much reading time worse than wasted. ' The 
 unwise,' said Candide, 'value every word in an author of 
 repute.' 
 
 f Henriade, a. 485-491. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 BERLIN. 
 
 The Marquise du Chatelet died under circumstances that were 
 tragical enough to herself, but which disgust the grave, while 
 they give a grotesque amusement to those who look with 
 cynical eye upon what they choose to treat as the great human 
 comedy. In t 749 the friendship of sixteen years thus came to 
 its end, and Voltaire was left without the tie that, in spite 
 of too frequent breaking away from it, had brought him 
 much happiness and good help so far on the road. He was 
 now free, disastrously free as the event proved, to accept the 
 invitations with which he had so long been pressed to take up 
 his residence vrith the king who may dispute with him the 
 claim to be held the most extraordinary man of that century. 
 
 Neither credit nor peace followed Voltaire in his own land. 
 Lewis XV., perhaps the most worthless of all the creatures 
 that monarchy has ever corrupted, always disliked him. The 
 whole influence of the court and the official world had been 
 uniformly exerted against him. Many years went by before he 
 could even win a seat in the academy, a distinction, it may 
 be added, to which Diderot, hardly second to Voltaire in 
 originality and power, never attained to the end of his days. 
 Madame de Pompadour, the protectress of Quesnay, was 
 Voltaire's first friend at court. He said of her long afterwards 
 that in the bottom of her heart she belonged to the philosophers, 
 and did as much as she could to protect them.^ She had 
 known him in her obscurer and more reputable days, and 
 ' GZiivres, Ixxv. p. 266. 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 115 
 
 she charged him with the composition of a court piece (1745), 
 to celebrate the marriage of the dauphin. The task was satis- 
 factorily performed, and honours which had been refused to 
 the author of Zaire, Alzire, and the Henriade, were at once 
 given to the writer of the Princess of Navarre, which Voltaire 
 himself ranked as a mere farce of the fair. He was made 
 gentleman of the chamber and historiographer of France. He 
 disarmed the devout by the Pope's acceptance of Mahomet, 
 and by a letter which he wrote to Father Latour, head of his 
 former school, protesting his affection for religion and his 
 esteem for the Jesuits. Condorcet most righteously pronounces 
 that, in spite of the art with which he handles his expressions 
 in this letter, it would undoubtedly have been far better to give 
 up the academy than to write it.^ It answered its purpose, 
 and Voltaire was admitted of the forty (May 1746). This 
 distinction, however, was far from securing for him the 
 tranquillity which he had hoped from it, and worse libels 
 tormented him than before. The court sun ceased to shine. 
 Madame de Pompadour gave to CrAillon a preference which 
 Voltaire resented with more agitation than any preference of 
 Madame Pompadour's ought to have stirred in the breast of a 
 strong man. 
 
 We cannot, however, too constantly remember not to ask 
 from Voltaire the heroic. He was far too sympathetic, too 
 generously eager to please, too susceptible to opinion. OI 
 that stem and cold stuff which supports a man in firm march 
 and straight course, giving him the ample content of self- 
 respect, he probably had less than any one of equal promi- 
 nence has ever had. Instead of writing his tragedy as well as he 
 knew how, and then leaving it to its destiny, he wrote it as well 
 as he knew how, and then went in disguise to the cafe of the 
 critics to find out what his inferiors had to say about his work. 
 Instead of composing his court-piece, and taking such reward 
 as ofiered, or disdaining such ignoble tasks — and nobody knew 
 better than he how ignoble they were — he sought to catch 
 
 * Vie de Voltaire, p. 60. 
 
ii6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 some crumb of praise by fawningly asking of the vilest of men, 
 Trajan est-il content i Make what allowance we will for 
 difference of time and circumstance, such an attitude to such 
 a man, whether in Seneca towards Nero, or Voltaire towards 
 Lewis XV., is a baseness that we ought never to pardon and 
 never' to extenuate. Whether or no there be in the human 
 breast that natural religion of goodness and virtue which was 
 the sheet-anchor of Voltaire's faith, there is ?X least a some- 
 thing in the hearts of good men which sets a fast gulf between 
 them and those who are to the very depths of their souls 
 irredeemably saturated with corruption. 
 
 We may permit ourselves to hope that it was the conscious- 
 ness of the humiliation of such relations as these, rather than 
 the fact that they did not answer their own paltry purpose, that 
 made Voltaire resolve a second time to shake the dust of 
 his own country from off his feet. In July 1750 he reached 
 Potsdam, and was installed with sumptuous honour in the court 
 of Frederick the Great, twenty-four years since he had installed 
 himself with Mr. Falkener, the English merchant at Wands- 
 worth. Diderot was busy with the first volume of the Encyclo- 
 paedia, and Rousseau had just abandoned his second child in 
 the hospital for foundlings. If the visit to London did every- 
 thing for Voltaire, the visit to Berlin did nothing. There was 
 no Prussia, as there was an England. To travel from the 
 dominion of George 11. to the dominion of his famous nephew, 
 was to go from the full light of the eighteenth century back 
 to the dimness of the fifteenth. An academy of sciences, by 
 the influence of Sophie-Charlotte, and under the guidance of 
 Leibnitz, had been founded at Berlin at the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century ; but Frederick William had an angry con- 
 tempt for every kind of activity except drill and the preaching . 
 of orthodox theology, and during his reign the academy 
 languished in obscurity.^ The accession of Frederick 11. was 
 the signal for its reconsUtution, and the revival of its activity 
 
 ^ See the late C. Bartholmess's Hisloire Philosophique de rAcadhnie 
 de Prusse, bk. ii. 
 
BERLIN. 117 
 
 under the direction of Maupertuis. To the sciences of experi- 
 ment and observation, which had been its original objects, was 
 added a department of speculative philosophy. The court 
 was materialist, sceptical, Voltairean, all at the same time; 
 but the academy as a body was theologically orthodox, and it 
 was wholly and purely metaphysical in its philosophy. We may 
 partly understand the distance at which Berlin was then behind 
 Paris, when we read D'Alembert's just remonstrances with 
 Frederick against giving as subjects for prize-essays such meta- 
 physical problems as ' The search for a primary and permanent 
 force, at once substance and cause.' * 
 
 Whatever activity existed outside of the court and the 
 academy was divided between the dialectic of Protestant 
 scholasticism, and Wolfs exposition and development of 
 Leibnitz. In literature proper there arose with the accession 
 of Frederick a small group of essentially secondary critics, of 
 whom Sulzer was the best, without the vivid and radiant force 
 of either Voltaire or Diderot, and without the deep inspiration 
 and invention of those who were to follow them, and to place 
 Germany finally on a level with England and France. Leasing, 
 the founder of the modem German literature, was at this 
 time a youth of twenty-two, and by a striking turn of chance 
 was employed by Voltaire in putting into German his pleadings 
 in the infamous Hirschel case. It was not then worth while 
 for a stranger to learn the language in which Lessing had not 
 yet written, and Voltaire, who was a^ master of English and 
 Italian, never knew more German than was needed to curse a 
 postilion. "" Leibnitz wrote everything of importance in Latin or 
 French, the Berlin academy conducted its transactions first 
 in Latin, next and for many years to come in French, and one 
 of its earliest presidents, a man of special competence,^ pro- 
 nounced German to be a noble but frightfully barbarized 
 tongue. The famous Wolf had done his best to make the 
 tongue of his country literate, but even his influence was 
 unequal to the task. 
 
 * lb. i. 230. ' Corr. 1750. CEuvres, Ixiv. p. 447. " Jablonski. 
 
ii8 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Society was in its foundations not removed from the 
 mediaeval. The soldiers with whom Frederick won Zorndorf 
 and Leuthen, like the Russians and Austrians whom he 
 defeated on those bloody days,' were not more nor less than 
 serfs. Instead of philosophers like Newton and Lockej he 
 had to find the pride and safety of his country in swift rushing 
 troopers like Winterfield and Ziethen. A daring cavalry-charge 
 in season was for the moment more to Prussia than any theory 
 why it is that an apple falls, and a new method of drill much 
 more urgent than a new origin for ideas. She was concerned 
 not with the speculative problem of the causes why the earth 
 keeps its place in the planetary system, but with the practical 
 problem how Prussia was to make her place in the system of 
 Europe. Prussia was then far more behind France in all 
 thought and all arts, save the soldier's, than England was in 
 front of France. 
 
 Voltaire had nothing to learn at Berlin, and may we not 
 add, as the king was a rooted Voltairean long before this, 
 he had nothing to teach there? The sternest barrack in 
 Europe was not a field in which the apostle of free and refined ' 
 intelligence could sow seed with good hope of harvest. 
 Voltaire at this time, we have to recollect, was in the public 
 mind only a poet, and perhaps was regarded, if not altogether 
 by Frederick, certainly by those who surrounded him, as much 
 in the same order of being with Frederick's flute, fitted by 
 miracle with a greater number of stops. 'I don't give you 
 any news of literature,' D'Alembert wrote from Potsdam in 
 1763, 'for I don't know any, and you know how barren 
 literature is in this country, where no one except the king 
 concerns himself with it.' ' There is no particular disgrace 
 to Berlin or its king in this. Their task was very definite, and 
 it was only a pleasant error of Frederick's rather fantastic 
 youth to suppose that this task lay in the direction of polite 
 letters. The singer of the Henriade was naturally of different 
 quality and turn of mind from a hero who had at least as hard 
 
 ' CEuvres, Ixxv. p. 224. 
 
BERLIN. 119 
 
 an enterprise in his hand as that of Henry iv. Voltaire and 
 Frederick were the two leaders of the two chief movements 
 then going on, in the great work of the transformation of the 
 old Europe into the new. But the movements were in different 
 matter, demanded vasdy different methods, and, as is so often the 
 case, the scope of each was hardly visible to the pursuer of the 
 other. Voltaire's work was to quicken the activity and proclaim 
 the freedom of human intelligence, and to destroy the supre- 
 macy of an old spiritual order. Frederick's work was to shake 
 down the old political order. The sum of their efforts was 
 the definite commencement of that revolution in the faought 
 and the political conformation of the West, of which the 
 momentous local revolution in France must, if we take a suffi- 
 ciently wide survey before and after, be counted a secondary 
 phase. The conditions of the order which was established 
 after the confusion of the fall of the Roman power before the 
 imroads of the barbarians, and which constituted the Europe of 
 the early and middle ages, are now tolerably well understood, 
 and the historic continuity or identity of that order is typified 
 in two institutions, which by the middle of the eighteenth 
 ■century had reached very different stages of decay, and 
 possessed very diflferent powers of resisting attack. One was 
 the German Empire, and the other was the Holy Catholic 
 Church. Frederick dealt a definite blow to the first, and 
 Voltaire did the same to the second. 
 
 Those who read history and biography with a sturdy and 
 childish pre-conception that the critical achievements in the 
 long course of the world's progress must of necessity have 
 fallen to the lot of the salt of the earth, will find it hard to 
 associate the beginning of the great overt side of modern 
 movement with the two men who versified and wrangled 
 together for some two and a half years in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century at Berlin. It is hard to think of the old 
 state, with all its memories of simple enthusiasm and wild 
 valour and rude aspiration after some better order, finally 
 disappearing into the chaos for which it was more than ripe, 
 
120 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 under the impulse of an arch cynic. And it is hard, too, to 
 think that the civilizing reHgion which was founded by a Jew, 
 and first seized by Jews, noblest and holiest of their race, got 
 its first and severest blow from one who was not above using a 
 Jew to cheat Christians out of their money. But the fact 
 remains of the vast work which this amazing pair had to do, 
 and did. 
 
 The character of the founder of the greatness of Prussia, 
 if indeed we may call founder one rather than another member 
 of that active, clear, and far-sighted line, can have no attraction 
 for those who require as an indispensable condition of fealty 
 that their hero shall have either purity, or sensibility, or gene- 
 rosity, or high honour, or manly respect for human nature. 
 Frederick's rapidity and firmness of will, his administrative 
 capacity, his military talent, were marvellous and admirable 
 enough ; but on the moral side of character, in his relations to 
 men and women, in his feeling for the unseen, in his ideas of 
 truth and beauty, he belonged to a type which is not altogether 
 uncommon. In his youth he had much of a sort of shallow 
 sensibiHty, which more sympathetic usage might possibly have 
 established and to some small extent even deepened, but which 
 the curiously rough treatment that his pacific tastes and frivolous 
 predilections provoked his father to inflict, turned in time into 
 the most bitter and profound kind of cynicism that the world 
 knows. No cynic is so hard and insensible as the man who 
 has once had sensibility, perhaps because the consciousness 
 that he was in earlier days open to more generous impressions 
 persuades him that the fault of any change in his own view of 
 things must needs lie in the world's villany, which he has now 
 happily for himself had time to find out. SensibiUty of a true 
 sort, springing from natural fountains of simple and unselfish 
 feeling, can neither be corrupted nor dried up. But at its 
 best, Frederick's sensibility was of the literary and sesthetic 
 kind, rather than the humane and social. It concerned taste 
 and expression, and had little root in the recognition as at 
 
BERLIN. 12 1 
 
 first-hand of those facts of experience, of beauty and tenderness 
 and cruelty and endurance, which are the natural objects that 
 permanently quicken a sensitive nature. In a word, Frederick's 
 was the conventional sensibility of the French literature of the 
 time ; a harmless thing enough in the poor souls that only 
 poured themselves out in bad romance and worse verse, but 
 terrible when it helped to fill with contempt for mankind an 
 absolute monarch, with the most perfect military machine in 
 Europe ^t his command. Frederick is constantly spoken of as 
 a man typical of his century. In truth he was throughout his 
 life in ostentatious opposition to his century on its most re- 
 markable side. There has never been any epoch whose fore- 
 most men had such faith and hope in the virtues of humanity. 
 There has never been any prominent man who despised 
 humanity so bitterly and unaffectedly as Frederick despised it. 
 
 We know what to think of a man who writes a touching 
 and pathetic letter condoling with a friend on the loss of his 
 wife, and on the same day makes an epigram on the dead 
 woman^; who never found so much pleasure in a friendly act, 
 as when he could make it the means of hurting the recipient ; 
 whose practical pleasantries were always spiteful and sneering 
 and cruel. As we read of his tricks on D'Argens or Pollnitz, 
 we feel how right Voltaire was in borrowing a nickname for 
 him from a mischievous brute whom he kept in his garden. He 
 presented D'Argens with a house; when D'Argens went to 
 take possession he found the walls adorned with pictures of all 
 the most indecent and humiliating episodes of his own hfe. 
 This was a type of Frederick's delicacy towards some of those 
 whom he honoured with his friendship. It is true that, except 
 Voltaire and Maupertuis, most of the French philosophers 
 whom Frederick seduced into coming to live at Berlin, were 
 not too good for the corporal's horse-play of which they were 
 the victims. But then we know, further, what to think of a 
 man whose self-respect fails to proscribe gross and unworthy 
 companions. He is either a lover of parasites, which Frederick 
 
 ' Corr. 1750. (Euvres, Ixiv. p. 443. 
 
122 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 certainly was not, or else the most execrable cynic, the cynic 
 who delights in any folly or depravity that assures him how 
 right he is in despising ' that damned race.' 
 
 Frederick need not have summoned the least worthy French 
 freethinkers, men like D'Argens and La Mettrie and De 
 Prades, in their own way as little attractive in life and in 
 doctrine as any monk or Geneva preacher, tO' warrant him in 
 thinking meanly of mankind. If any one wants to know what 
 manner of spirit this great temporal deliverer of Europe was 
 of, he may find what he seeks in the single episode of the 
 negotiations at Klein-Schnellendorf in 1741. There, although 
 he had made and was still bound by a solemn treaty of alliance 
 with France, he entered into secret engagements with the 
 Hungarian Queen, to be veiled by adroitly pretended hostilities. 
 Even if, as an illustrious apologist of the Prussian King is 
 reduced to plead, this is in a certain fashion defensible, on tlie 
 ground that France and Austria were both playing with cogged 
 dice, and therefore the other dicer of the party was in self- 
 defence driven to show himself their superior in these excellent 
 artifices, there still seems a gratuitous infamy in hinting to the 
 Austrian general, as Frederick did, how he might assault with 
 advantage the French enemy, Frederick's own ally at the 
 moment.^ This was the author of the plea for political 
 morality, called the Anti-Machiavel, whose publication Voltaire 
 had superintended the year before, and, for that matter, had 
 done his best to prevent. Still, as Frederick so graciously 
 said of his new guest and old friend : ' He has all the tricks 
 of a monkey ; but I shall make no sign, for I need him in my 
 study of French style. One may learn good things from a 
 scoundrel: I want to know his French; what is his morality 
 to me ? ' And so a royal statesman may have the manners of 
 the coarsest corporal, and the morality of the grossest cynic, 
 and still have both the eye to discern, and the hand to control, 
 the forces of a great forward movement. 
 
 Frederick had the signal honour of accepting his position, 
 
 ^ Caiiyle's History of Frederick, bk. xiii. ch. 5. 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 123 
 
 and taking up with an almost perfect fortitude the burden which 
 ;t laid upon him. ' We are not masters of our own lot,' he 
 wrote to Voltaire, immediately after his accession to the throne ; 
 ' the whirlwind of circumstances carries us away, and we must 
 suffer ourselves to be carried away.'^" And what he said in 
 this hour of exaltation he did not deny nearly twenty years 
 later, when his fortunes seemed absolutely desperate. 'If I 
 had been born a private person,' he wrote to him in 1759, 
 ' I would give up everything for love of peace ; but a man is 
 bound to take on the spirit of his position.' ^^ 'Philosophy 
 teaches us to do our duty, to serve our country faithfully at 
 the price of our blood and our ease, to sacrifice for it our 
 whole existence.' ^^ Men are also called upon by their country 
 to abstain from sacrificing their existence, and if Frederick's 
 sense of duty to his subjects had been as perfect as it was 
 exceptionally near being so, he would not have carried a phial 
 of poison round his neck.^^ Still on the whole he devoted 
 himself to his career with a temper that was as entirely cal- 
 culated for the overthow of a tottering system, as Voltaire's 
 own. It is difficult to tell whether Frederick's steady attention 
 to letters and men of letters, and his praiseworthy endea- 
 vours to make Berlin a true academic centre, were due to 
 a real and disinterested love of knowledge, and a sense of its 
 worth to the spirit of man, or still more to weak literary vanity, 
 and a futile ideal of universal fame so far as his own productions 
 went, and a purely utilitarian purpose so far as his patronage of 
 the national academy was concerned. One thing is certain, 
 that the philosophy which he learnt from French masters, which 
 Voltaire brought in his proper person to Berlin, and to which 
 Frederick to the end of his days was always adding illustrative 
 commentaries, never made any impression on Germany. The 
 teaching of Leibnitz and Wolf stood like a fortified wall in the 
 face of the French invasion, and whatever eifective share 
 
 >» (Euvres de Voltaire, Ixxiii. p. 456. " lb. ^. 813. " lb. p. 807. 
 " For Voltaire's admirably expressed remonstrance, see Corn Oct. 1757. 
 CEuvres, Ixxiii. p. 768. 
 
124 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 French speculation had upon Germany, was through the 
 influence of Descartes upon Leibnitz. 
 
 The dissolution of the outer framework of the European 
 state-system, for which Frederick's seizure of Silesia was the 
 first clear signal, followed as it was by the indispensable sup- 
 pression of the mischievous independence, so called, of barbaric 
 and feudal Poland, where bishops and nobles held a people 
 in the most" oppressive bondage, can only concern us here 
 slightly, because it was for the time only indirectly connected 
 with the characteristic work of Voltaire's life. But, though 
 indirect, the connection may be seen at our distance of time to 
 have been marked and unmistakable. The old order and 
 principles of Europe were to receive a new impress, and the 
 decaying system of the middle age to be replaced by a polity 
 of revolution, which- should finally change the relations of 
 nations, the types of European government, and the ideas of 
 spiritual control. 
 
 In 1733 the war of the Polish succession between Austria 
 and Russia oii the one hand, and France and Spain on the 
 other, had given the first great shock to the house of Austria, 
 which was compelled to renounce the pretensions and territory 
 of the Empire in Italy, or nearly all of them, in favour of the 
 Spanish Bourbons, as well as to surrender Lorraine to Stanislas, 
 with reversion to the crown of France. We may notice in 
 passing, that it was at Stanislas' court of Lun^ville that 
 Voltaire and the Marquise du Chatelet passed their last days 
 together. The wars of the Polish succession were remarkable 
 for another circumstance. They were the first occasion of the 
 decisive interference of Russia in Western affairs, an only less 
 important disturbance of Europe than the first great interference 
 of Prussia a few years later. The falling to pieces of the old 
 Europe was as inevitable as, more than twelve centuries before, 
 had been the dissolution of that yet older Europe whose heart 
 had been not Vienna but Rome. Russia and Prussia were 
 not thfi only novel elements. There was a third from over the 
 sea, the American colonies of France and England. 
 
BERLIN. 125 
 
 Roman Europe had been a vast imperial state with slavery 
 for a base. Then after the feudal organization had run its 
 course, there was a long and chaotic transition of dynastic and 
 territorial wars, frightfully wasteful of humanity and worse than 
 unfruitful to progress. In vain do historians, intent on vindi- 
 cating the foregone conclusions of the optimism which a dis- 
 torted notion about final causes demands or engenders in them, 
 try to show these hateful contests as parts of a harmonious 
 scheme of things, in which many diverse forces move in a 
 mysterious way to a common and happy end. As if any good 
 use,, for instance, were served by the transfer, for one of the 
 chief results of the war of the Polish succession, of the Italian 
 provinces of the Empire of the Spanish Bourbons. As if 
 any good or permanent use were served by the wars which 
 ended in the Peace of Utrecht, when victorious England 
 conceded, and with much wisdom conceded, the precise point 
 which she had for so many years been disputing. From the 
 Peace of Westphalia to the beginning of the Seven Years War, 
 it is not too much to say that there was a century of purely 
 artificial strife on the continent of Europe, of wars as factious, 
 as merely personal, as unmeaning, as the civil war of the Fronde 
 was all of these things. In speaking roundly of this period, we 
 leave out of account the first Silesian War, because the issue 
 between Prussia and Austria was not decisively fought out until 
 the final death-struggle from 1756 to 1763. It v/as the entry 
 of Frederick the Great upon the scene, that instantly raised 
 international relations into the region of real matter and 
 changed a strife of dynasties, houses, persons, into a vital com- 
 petition between old forces and principles and new. The 
 aimless and bloody commotions which had raged over Europe, 
 and ground men's lives to dust in the red mill of battle, canie 
 for a time to an end, and their place was taken by a tre- 
 mendous conflict, on whose issue hung not merely the triumph 
 of a dynasty, but the question oi the type to which future 
 civilization was to conform. 
 
 In the preliminary war which followed immediately upon 
 
126 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 the death of Charles vi. in 1740, and which had its beginning 
 in Frederick's invasion of Silesia, circumstances partially 
 marched in the usual tradition, with France and Austria playing 
 opposite sides in an accustomed game. Before the opening of 
 the Seven Years War the cardinal change of policy and 
 alliances had taken place. We are not concerned with the 
 court-intrigues that brought the change about, with the intricate 
 manoeuvres of the Jesuits, or the wounded vanity of Bemis, 
 whose verses Frederick laughed at, or the pique of Pompadour, 
 whom Frederick declined to count an acquaintance. When 
 conflicting forces of tidal magnitude are at work, as they were 
 in the middle of the last century, the play of mere personal 
 aims and ambitions is necessarily of secondary importance ; 
 because we may always count upon there being at least one 
 great power that clearly discerns its own vital interest, and is 
 sure therefore to press with steady energy in its own special 
 direction. That power was Austria. One force of this kind 
 is enough to secure a universal adjustment of all the others in 
 their natural places. 
 
 The situation was apparently very complex. There were 
 in the middle of the century two great pairs of opposed 
 interests, the interests of France and England on the ocean 
 and in America, and the interests of Austria and Prussia in 
 central Europe. The contest was in each of the tWo cases 
 much more than a superficial affair of dynasties or division of 
 territory, to meet the requirements of the metaphysical diplomacy 
 of the balance of power. It was a re-opening in far vaster pro- 
 portions of those profound issues of new religion and old which 
 had only been dammed up, and not permanently settled, by the 
 great peace of Westphalia in 1648. In vaster proportions, 
 not merely because the new struggle between the Catholic and 
 Protestant powers extended into the new world, but because 
 the forces contained in these two creeds had been widened 
 and developed, and a multitude of indirect consequences, 
 entirely apart from theology and church-discipline, depended 
 upon the triumph ot Great Britain and Prussia. The Govern- 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 127 
 
 ments of France and Austria represented the feudal and 
 military idea, not in the strength of that idea while it was still 
 alive, but in the narrow and oppressive form of its decay. 
 No social growth was possible under its shadow, for one of its 
 essential conditions was discouragement, active and passive, of 
 commercial industry, the main pathway then open to an 
 advancing people. Again, both France and Austria repre- 
 sented the old type of monarchy, as distinguished alike from 
 the aristocratic oligarchy of England, and the new type of 
 monarchy which Prussia introduced into Europe, frugal, en- 
 couraging industry, active in supervision, indefatigable in im- 
 proving the laws. Let us not omit above all things the 
 splendid religious toleration, of which Prussia set so extra- 
 ordinarily early an example to Europe. The Protestants whom 
 episcopal tyranny drove from Salzburg found warm hospitality 
 among their northern brethren. While the professors of the 
 reformed faith were denied civil status in France, and subjected 
 to persecution of a medieval bloodiness, one Christian was 
 counted exactly as anotJier in Prussia. While England was 
 revelling in the infliction of atrocious penal laws on her Catholic 
 citizens, Prussia extended even to the abhorred Jesuit the 
 shelter which was denied him in Spain and at Rome. The 
 transfer of territory from Austria to Prussia meant the extension 
 of toleration in that territory. Silesia, for instance, no sooner 
 became Prussian, than the university of Breslau, whose advan- 
 tages had hitherto been rigidly confined to Catholics, was at 
 once compulsorily opened to Protestants and Catholics alike. 
 In criticizing Frederick's despotism let us recognize how much 
 enlightenment, how much of what is truly modern, was to be 
 found in the manner in which this despotic power was exercised, 
 long before the same enlightened principles were accepted in 
 other countries. 
 
 We cannot understand the issues of the Seven Years War, 
 nor indeed of the eighteenth century on any of its more 
 important sides, without tolerably distinct ideas about the ages 
 before and behind it, about the sixteenth century and the 
 
128 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 twentieth ; without ideas as to the conditions of the break-up 
 of the Catholic and the feudal organization, and, next, as to 
 the attitude proper to be assumed, and the methods to be 
 followed, in dealing with the more or less anarchic circum- 
 stances in which their break-up and its sequels leave us. 
 There are two ways of regarding these questions. You may 
 say, as Comte says, that the ultimate type of society, per- 
 fected on a basis of positive knowledge, will in the essential 
 features of its constitution correspond to the ancient or 
 mediaeval constitution which it replaces ; because that gave 
 the fullest possible satisfaction to those elements of human 
 nature which are deepest and permanent, and to those social 
 needs which must always press upon us ; that anything which 
 either seriously retards the dissolution of the old, or draws men 
 aside from the road which leads on to- the same organization 
 transformed, must therefore be an impediment in the way of 
 the new society, and a peril to civilization. Hence, they say, 
 the mischievousness of Protestantism, Voltairism, and all the 
 minor manifestations of the critical spirit, because they inspire- 
 their followers with a contempt, as mistaken towards the past 
 as it i-s pernicious to the future, for those fundamental princi- 
 ples of social stability and individual happiness, to which alone 
 we have to look for the establishment of a better order ; 
 because they give to the unguided individual judgment the 
 force and authority that can only come with safety from organi- 
 zation and tradition, that is from- a certain definite form of 
 shaping and expressing the common judgment ; and because, 
 moreover, they tend directly and indirectly to detach effort 
 from social aims and the promotion of the common weal, 
 to the attainment of mean and unwholesome individual am- 
 bitions. From this point of view, we should have to regard 
 the acquisition of colonies, for instance, which was one of the 
 chief objects of Lord Chatham's policy, as the mischievous 
 transfer, in the interests of commercial cupidity, of an activity, 
 hopefulness, and power, that ought to have been devoted to 
 the solution ot the growing social difficulties of Europe ; and 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 129 
 
 that ought to have been bent from a profoundly mean egotism, 
 in the nation and the traders whose interest was the key of the 
 pohcy, into a generous feeling for the public order. 
 
 There is, however, another and a very different way of 
 looking at all this. You cannot be sure, it is said, that the 
 method of social advance is to be a return upon the old frame- 
 work and the old lines ; to be sure of this implies an impatient 
 confidence that social forms have all been exhausted, or else 
 an unsupported assumption that the present transitory form is' 
 so full of danger to the stability of civilization, as to make the 
 acceptance of almost any firm order better than the prolonged 
 endurance of a social state which, on that theory, ought hardly 
 to be accounted much better than the social state of Bedouin 
 Arabs. Is it not far better and saier to refrain from committing 
 ourselves to a given type of social reconstruction, and to work 
 forward patiently upon the only principle that can be received 
 with entire assurance ; namely, that faithful cultivation of the 
 intelligence, and open-minded investigation of all that the 
 intelligence may present to us, is the only certain method 
 of not missing the surest and quickest road to the manifold 
 improvements of which the fundamental qualities of human 
 nature, as well as the relations of man in society, are sus- 
 ceptible ? There is no good ground for supposing that this 
 steadfast regard to the fmitlulness and variety of the individual 
 intelligence tends specially to lead to the concentration of 
 energy upon individual aims. For what lesson does free 
 intelligence teach us more constantly or more impressively 
 than that man standing alone is impotent, that every unsocial 
 act or sentiment tends to overthrow that collectivity of efibrt 
 to which we owe all, and, most important of all, that this 
 collectivity is most eifectively secured by the just culture of 
 the impulses and affections? No degree nor kind of organi- 
 zation could lead us further than this, and ought it not to be 
 the prime object and chief hope of those who think about 
 society, that this truth shall stand rooted in every one's own 
 reason ? If it does not so stand, you have no security for 
 
 K 
 
130 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 your spiritual organization, and if it does, then you have no 
 necessity. It is to the spread of this conviction, by the 
 ever-pressing consciousness of urgent social circumstances, 
 that we must look to suffuse industrial and egotistic energy 
 with a truly moral and social sentiment. 
 
 This is the point of view from which we may justly regard 
 the violent change that was the result of the Seven Years 
 War, as a truly progressive step. We cannot be as reasonably 
 sure that the old conditions of men's relations in society are 
 in whatever new shape destined to return, as we are sure 
 that it was a good thing to prevent a feudal and Jesuitical 
 government like Austria from retaining a purely obstructive 
 power in Europe, and a Jesuitical government like France 
 from establishing the same obstructive kind of power in 
 America. The advantages of the final acquisition of America 
 by Protestantism, and the decisive consolidation of Prussia, 
 were not without alloy. History does not present us with 
 these clean balances. It is not at all difficult to see the 
 injurious elements in this victory of the northern powers, 
 and nobody would be less willing than the present writer to 
 accept either the Prussian polity of Frederick, or the com- 
 mercial polity of England and her western colonies, as offering 
 final types of wholesome social states. But the alternative was 
 the triumph of a far worse polity than either, the polity of the 
 Society of Jesus. 
 
 Even those who claim our respect for the Jesuits as havinc 
 in the beginning of their course served the very useful purpos{ 
 of honestly administering that spiritual power which had fallei 
 from the hands of the Popes, who had mischievously enteret 
 the" ranks and followed the methods of temporal princes, di 
 not deny that within a couple of generations they became ; 
 dangerous obstacle to the continuity of European progress 
 Indeed it is clear that they grew into the very worst elemen 
 that has ever appeared in the whole course of Europea: 
 history, because their influence rested on a systematic con 
 promise with moral corruption. They had barely seized th 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 131 
 
 spiritual power in the Catholic countries, when it was perceived 
 that as aii engine of moral control their supposed power was 
 no power at all; and that the only condition on which they 
 could retain the honour and the political authority which were 
 needful to them, was that they should connive at moral 
 depravity. They had the education of the country in their 
 hands, and from the confessor's closet they pulled the wires 
 which moved courts. There was no counter-force, for the 
 mass of the people was dumb, ignorant, and fettered. Say 
 what we will of the need for a spiritual power, the influence 
 of the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth century was 
 cutting off the very root of civiUzation. This was the veritably 
 Infamous. And this was the influence which the alliance of 
 England and Prussia, a thing accidental enough to all appear- 
 ance, successfully and decisively checked, because the triumph 
 of the two northern powers was naturally the means of dis- 
 crediting the Jesuit intrigues in the court of Versailles and else- 
 where, and stripping them of those associations of political and 
 material success, which had hitherto stood to them in the stead 
 of true spiritual credit. 
 
 The peace of 1763 had important territorial consequences. 
 By the treaty of Paris between France, England, and Spain, 
 Great Britain was assured of her possessions on the other side 
 of the Atlantic. By the treaty of Hubertsburg between Austria, 
 Prussia, and Saxony, Prussia was assured of her position as an 
 independent power in Europe. These things were much. 
 But the decisive repulse of the great Jesuit organization was 
 yet more. It was the most important side of the same facts. 
 The immediate occasions of this repulse varied in different 
 Countries, and had their origin in different sets of superficial 
 circumstance, but the debility of the courts of Austria and 
 France was the only 'condition on which such occasions could 
 be seized. The very next year, after the treaties of Paris and 
 Hubertsburg, the Society of Jesus was suppressed in France, 
 and its property confiscated. Three years later it was expelled 
 from Spain. Within ten years from the peace of 1763 it was 
 
132 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 abolished by the virtuous Clement xiv. In Canada, where the 
 order had been extremely powerful," their authority vanished, 
 and with it the probability of establishing in the northern half 
 of the new world those ideas of political absolutism andtheo- 
 logical casuistry which were undoing the old. Whatever the 
 accidents which hurried the catastrophe, there were two general 
 causes which really produced it, the revolution in ideas, and 
 the revolution in the seat of material power. If this be a true 
 description of the crisis, we can see sufficiently plainly to what 
 an extent Voltaire and Frederick, while they appeared to them- 
 selves to be fellow-workers only in the culture of the muses, 
 were in fact unconsciously co-operating in a far mightier task. 
 When the war was drawing to an end, and Frederick was likely 
 to escape from the calamities which had so nearly overwhelmed 
 him and his kingdom in irretrievable ruin, we find Voltaire 
 writing to D'Alembert thus : ' As for Luc ' (the nickname 
 borrowed for the king of Prussia from an ape with a trick of 
 biting), ' though I ought to be full of resentment against him, 
 yet I confess to you that in my quality of thinking creature 
 and Frenchman, I am heartily content that a certain most 
 devout house has not swallowed Germany up, and that the 
 Jesuits don't confess at Berlin. Superstition is monstrously 
 powerful towards the Danube.' To which his correspondent 
 replied that he quite agreed that the triumph of Frederick was 
 a blessing for France and for philosophy. 'These Austrians, 
 are insolent capucins, whom I would fain see annihilated with 
 the superstition they protect.' '* Here was precisely the issue. 
 
 It would be a great mistake to suppose that Frederick 
 consciously and formally recognized the ultimate ends of his 
 policy. Such deliberate marking out of the final destination of 
 their work, imputed to rulers, churchmen, poets, is mostly a 
 figment invented by philosophers. Frederick thought nothing 
 at all about the conformation of the European societies in the 
 twentieth century. It was enough for him to make a strong 
 
 " Martin's Hist, de France, xv. p. 468. 
 •' Qiuvres, Ixxv. p. 207 and p. 210. 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 133 
 
 and independent Prussia, without any far-reaching vision, or 
 indeed without any vision at all, of the effect which a strong 
 and independent Prussia would finally have upon the readjust- 
 ment of ideas and social forces in western civilization. We 
 are led to a false notion of history, and of all the conditions of 
 political action and the development of nations, by attributing 
 to statesmen deep and far-reaching sight of consequences, 
 which only completed knowledge and some ingenuity enable 
 those who live after to fit into a harmonious scheme. ' Fate, 
 for whose wisdom I entertain all imaginable reverence, often 
 finds in chance, by which it works, an instrument not over 
 manageable.'^® And the great ruler, knowing this, is content 
 to abstain from playing fate's part, feeling his way slowly to the 
 next step. His compass is only true for a very short distance, 
 and his chart has marks for no long course. To make Prussia 
 strong was the aim of Frederick's life. Hence, although the 
 real destiny of his policy was to destroy the house of Austria, 
 he did not scruple in 1741 to offer to assist Maria Theresa 
 .with his best help against all the other invaders of the famous 
 Pragmatic Sanction, which they had solemnly sworn to uphold. 
 Afterwards and before the outbreak of the Seven Years War, 
 he sought the alliance of France, but happily for Europe, not 
 until after Kaunitz and Maria Theresa had already secured that 
 blind and misguided power, thus driving him into an alliance 
 with Great Britain. And so chance did the work of fate 
 after all. 
 
 It may be said that such a view of the operation of the 
 great forces of the world is destructive of all especial respect 
 and gratitude towards the eminent men, of whom chance and 
 fate have made mere instruments. What becomes of hero- 
 worship, if your hero after all only half knew whither he sought 
 to go, and if those achievements which have done such power- 
 ful service were not consciously directed towards the service- 
 able end? We can only answer that it is not the office of 
 history to purvey heroes, nor always to join appreciation of a 
 
 '« Goethe. 
 
134 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 set of complex effects with veneration for this or that performer. 
 For this veneration, if it is to be an inteUigent mood, implies 
 insight into the inmost privacy of aim and motive, and this 
 insight, in the case of those whom circumstance raises on a 
 towering pedestal, we can hardly ever count with assurance on 
 finding faithful and authentic. History is perhapd not less 
 interesting for not being distorted into a new hagiographa. 
 
 It is equally unwarranted to put into Frederick's mind 
 conscious ideas as to the type of monarchy proper for Europe 
 in the epoch of passage from old systems. Once more, he 
 thought of his own country and his own country only, in all 
 those wise measures of internal government which have been 
 so unjustly and so childishly thrust by historians into the 
 second place behind his exploits as a soldier, as if the civil 
 activity of the period between 1763 when peace was made, 
 and 1786 when he died, was not fully as remarkable in itself, 
 and fully as momentous in its results, as the mihtaiy activity 
 of the period between 1763 and 1740. There is in men of 
 the highest governing capacity, like RicheHeu, or Cromwell, 
 or Frederick, an instinct for good order and regular adminis- 
 tration. They insist upon it for its own sake, independently 
 of its effects either on the happiness of subjects, or on the 
 fundamental policy and march of things. If Frederick had 
 acceded to the supreme power in a highly civilized country, > 
 he would have been equally bent on imposing his own will 
 and forcing the administration into the exact grooves pre- 
 scribed by himself, and the result would have been as pestilent 
 there, as it was beneficial in a backward and semi-barbarous 
 country such as Prussia was in his time. This good internal 
 ordering was no more than a part of the same simple design 
 which shaped his external policy. He had to make a nation, 
 and its material independence in the face of Austria and 
 Russia was not more a part of this process, than giving it the 
 great elements of internal well-being, equal laws, just adminis- 
 tration, financial thrift, and stimulus and encouragement to 
 industry. Such an achievement as the restoration of the germs 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 135 
 
 of order and prosperity, which Frederick so rapidly brought 
 about after the appalHng ruin that seven years of disastrous 
 war had effected, is unmatched in the history of human govern- 
 ment. Well might he pride himself, as we know that he did, 
 on replacing this social chaos by order, more than on Ross- 
 bach or Leuthen. Above all, he never forgot the truth which 
 every statesman ought to have burning in letters of fire before 
 his eyes J I am the procurator of the foor. 
 
 It commits us to no general theorj' of government to recog- 
 nize the merits of Frederick's internal administration. They 
 constitute a special case, to be judged by its own conditions. 
 We may safely go so far as to say that in whatever degree the 
 social state of a nation calls for active government, whether, as 
 the people of the American Union boast of themselves, they 
 need no government, or whether, as is the case in Great Britain, 
 the wretched lives of the poor beneath the combined cupidity 
 and heartless want of thought of the rich cry aloud for justice, 
 in this degree it is good that the statesmen called to govern 
 should be in that capacity of Frederick's type, conceding all 
 freedom to thought, but energetic in the use of power as 
 trustees for the whole nation against special classes. To meet 
 completely the demands of their office, they should have, what 
 Frederick neither had, nor could under the circumstances of 
 his advent and the time be expected to have, a firm conviction 
 that the highest ultimate end of all kingship is to enable nations 
 to dispense with that organ of national life, and to fit them for 
 a spontaneous initiative and free control in the conduct of their 
 own affairs. 
 
 Let us be careful to remember that, if Frederick was a great 
 ruler in the positive sense, he sprang from the critical school. 
 The traditions of his house were strictly Protestant, his tutors 
 were Calvinistic refugees, and his personal predilections had 
 from his earliest youth been enthusiastically Voltairean. May 
 we not count it one of the claims of the critical philosophy 
 to a place among the leading progressive influences in western 
 history, that it tended to produce statesmen of this positive 
 
136 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 type ? I do not know of any period of corresponding length 
 that can produce such a group of active, wise, and truly positive 
 statesmen, as existed in Europe between 1760 and 1780. 
 Besides Frederick, we have Turgot in France, Pombal in Por- 
 tugal, Charles in. and D'Aranda in Spain. If Charles in. 
 was faithful to the old creed, the three greatest, at any rate, of 
 these extraordinary men drew inspiration from the centre of 
 the critical school. D'Aranda had mixed much with the Vol- 
 tairean circle while in Paris. Pombal, in spite of the taint of 
 some cruelty, in so many respects one of the most powerful 
 and resolute ministers that has ever held office in Europe, had 
 been for some time in England, and was a warm admirer of 
 Voltaire, whose works he caused to be translated into Portuguese. ' 
 The famous school of Italian publicists, whose speculations bore 
 such admirable fruit in the humane legislation of Leopold of 
 Tuscany, and had so large a share in that code with which the 
 name of the ever hateful Bonaparte has become fraudulently 
 associated, these excellent thinkers found their oracles in that 
 critical philosophy, of which we are so unjustly bidden to think 
 only in connection with shallow and reckless destruction. The ' 
 application of reason to the amelioration of the social condition 
 was the device of the great rulers of this time, and the father 
 and inspirer of this device was that Voltaire who is habitually 
 presented to us a mere mocker. 
 
 Psychologues like Sulzer might declare that the scourge of 
 right thinking was to be found in ' those philosophers, who, 
 more used to sallies of wit than to deep reasoning, assume 
 that they have overthrown by a single smart trope truths only 
 to be known by combining a multitude of observations, so 
 delicate and difficult that we cannot grasp them without the 
 aid of the firmest attention.' ^^ How many of these so-called 
 truths were anything but sophistical propositions, the products 
 of intellectual ingenuity run riot, without the smallest bearing 
 either on positive science or social well-being? And is it not 
 rather an abuse of men's willingness to take the profundity of 
 " Bartholmess, ii. iii. 
 
BERLIN. 137 
 
 metaphysics on trast, that any one who has formulated a meta- 
 physical proposition with due technicality of sounding words, 
 has a claim to arrest the serious attention of every busy passer- 
 by, and to throw on this innocent and laudable person the 
 burden of disproof? If Duns Scotus or St. Thomas Aquinas 
 had risen from the dead, Voltaire would very properly have 
 declined a bout of school dialectic with those famous shades, 
 because he was living in the century of the Encyclopaedia, 
 when the exploration of things and the improvement of institu- 
 tions had taken the place of subtle manipulation of unverified 
 words, important as that process had once been in the intellec- 
 tual development of Europe. He was equally wise in declining 
 to throw more than a trope or sprightly sally in the direction 
 of people who dealt only in the multiplication of metaphysical 
 abracadabras. It was his task to fix the eyes of men upon 
 action. In the sight of Lutheran or Wolfian conjurors with 
 words this was egregious shallowness. Strangely enough, they 
 thought it the climax of philosophic profundity to reconcile 
 their natural spiritualism with the supernatural spiritualism, of 
 the scriptures, and rationalistic theism with the historic theism 
 of revelation. ^^ Voltaire repudiated the supernatural and 
 pseudo-historic half of this hybrid combination, and in doing 
 so he showed a far profounder logic than the cloudiest and 
 most sonorous of his theologico-metaphysical critics. We may 
 call him negative and destructive on this account, if we please, 
 yet surely the abnegation of barren and inconsistent speculation, 
 and of fruitless effort to seize a vain abstract universality, was a 
 very meritorious trait in a man who did not stop here, but by 
 every means, by poetry, by history, by biography, and by the 
 manifestation of all his vivid personal interests, drew every one 
 who was within the sphere of his attraction to the consideration 
 of social action as the first fact for the firm attention of the 
 leaders of mankind. 
 
 It may be said that even from this side Voltaire was destruc- 
 tive only, and undoubtedly, owing to the circumstances of tlie 
 " See Bartholmess, i. 168. 
 
138 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 lime, the destructive side seemed to predominate in his social 
 influence. To say this, however, is not to bring an end to the 
 matter. The truth is that no negative thinking can stop at the 
 negative point. To teach men to hate superstition and injus- 
 tice is a sure, if an indirect, way of teaching them to seek after 
 their opposites. Voltaire could only shake obscurantist institu- 
 tions by appealing to man's love of light, and the love of light, 
 once stirred, leads far. He appealed to reason, and it was 
 reason in Frederick and the others, which had quickened and 
 strengthened the love of good order, that produced the striking 
 reforming spirit which moved through the eighteenth century, 
 until the reaction against French revolutionary violence arrested 
 its progress. It is one of the most difficult questions in all 
 history to determine whether the change from the old order to 
 the new has been dainaged or advanced, by that most memor- 
 able arrest of the work of social renovation in the hands of 
 sovereign and traditional governments, administered by wise 
 statesmen with due regard to traditional spirit ; and how far the 
 passionate efforts of those classes whose only tradition is a tra- 
 dition of squalor and despair, have driven the possessors of 
 superior material power back into obstructive trepidation. The 
 question is more than difficult, it is in our generation insoluble, 
 because the movement is wholly incomplete. But whether the 
 French outbreak from 1789 to 1794 may prove to have been 
 the starting-point of a new society, or only to have been a 
 detrimental interruption and parent of interruptions to stable 
 movement forwards, we have in either case to admit that there 
 was a most vigorous attempt made in all the chief countries in 
 Europe, between the middle of the century and the fall of the 
 French monarchy, to improve government and to perfect 
 administration ; that Frederick of Prussia was the author of the 
 most permanently successful of these endeavours ; and that 
 Frederick learnt to break loose from dark usage, to prefer equity 
 of administration, to abandon religious superstition, and to 
 insist on tolerance, from the only effective moral and intellec- 
 tual masters he ever had, first the French Calvinists, and tliea 
 
BERLIN. 139 
 
 the French critical school with Voltaire for chief. It is true, as 
 we shall presently see, that an important change in the spirit of 
 French writers was marked by the Encyclopaedia, which was so 
 much besides being critical. But then this famous work only 
 commenced in the year when Voltaire reached Berlin, and 
 Frederick's character had received its final shape long before 
 that time. 
 
 ^^'ith the exception of Voltaire, D'Alembert was the only 
 really eminent Frenchman whose work ever struck Frederick, and 
 we are even conscious, in comparing his letters to these two 
 eminent men, of a certain seriousness and deferential respect 
 towards the later friend, which never marked his relations with 
 Voltaire after the early days of youthful enthusiasm. Frederick's 
 admiration for France, indeed, has been somewhat over-stated 
 by French writers, and by those of our own country who have 
 taken their word for granted. 'Your nation,' Frederick once 
 MTOte to Voltaire, 'is the most inconsequent in all Europe. 
 It abounds in bright intelligence, but has no consistency in 
 its ideas. This is how it appears through all its history. 
 There is really an indelible character imprinted on it. The 
 only exception in a long succession of reigns is to be found 
 in a few years of Lewis xiv. The reign of Henry iv. was 
 neither tranquil enough nor long enough for us to take that 
 into account. During the administration of Richelieu, we 
 observe some consistency of design and some nerve in execu- 
 tion; but in truth they are uncommonly short epochs of 
 wisdom in so long a chronicle of madnesses. Again, France 
 has been able to produce men like Descartes or Male- 
 branche, but no Leibnitz, no Lockes, no Newtons. On the 
 other hand, for taste, you surpass all other nations, and I will 
 surely range myself under your standards in all that regards 
 deHcacy of discernment, and the judicious and scrupulous 
 choice between real beauties and those which are only 
 apparent. That is a great point in polite letters, but it is not 
 everything.' '^ Frederick, however, could never endure the 
 " CEuvres de Voltaire, Ixxiii. p. 836. 
 
140 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 least hint that he was not a perfect Frenchman in the order of 
 pohte letters. The article on Prussia in the Encyclopaedia was 
 .full of the most flattering eulogies of his work as a soldier and 
 an administrator, and even contained handsome praise for his 
 writings, but Diderot, the author of this part of the article, 
 delicately suggested that a year or two in the Faubourg St. 
 Honor^ would perhaps have' dispersed the few grains of Berlin 
 sand which hindered the perfect purity of note of that ad- 
 mirable flute. Frederick, who had hitherto been an ardent 
 reader of the Encyclopaedia, never opened another volume. 
 
 We can understand Voltaire's character without wading 
 through the slough of mean scandals which sprung up hke gross 
 fungi during his stay at Berlin. Who need remember that 
 Frederick spoke of his illustrious guest, as an orange of which, 
 when one has squeezed the juice, one throws away the skin? 
 Or how Voltaire retorted by speaking of his illustrious host, 
 whose royal verses he had to correct, as a man sending his dirty 
 linen to him to wash ? or, still worse, as a compound of Julius 
 Casar and the abbd Cotin ? Nor need we examine into stories, 
 suspicious products of Berlin malice, how Frederick stopped 
 his guest's supply of sugar and chocolate, and how Voltaire 
 put his host's candle-ends into his pocket. It is enough to 
 know that the king and the poet gradually lost their illusions, 
 and forgot that life was both too short and too valuable to 
 waste in vain efforts of making believe that an illusion is other 
 than it is. Voltaire took a childish delight in his gold key and 
 his star, and in supping as an intimate with a king who had 
 won five battles. His life was at once free and occupied, the 
 two conditions of happy existence. He worked diligently at 
 his Sifecle de Louis xiv., and diverted himself with operas, 
 comedies, and great entertainments, among affable queens, 
 charming princesses, and handsome maids of honour. Yet he 
 could not forget the saying, which had been so faithfully carried 
 to him, of the orange-skin. He declared that he was like the 
 man who fell from the top of a high tower, and finding himself 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 141 
 
 softly supported in the air, cried out, Good, if it only lasts.^ 
 Or he was like a husband, striving hard to persuade himself of 
 the fidelity of a suspected wife. He had fits of violent nos- 
 talgia. 'I am writing to you by the side of a stove, with 
 drooping head and heavy heart, looking on to the River Spree, 
 because the Spree falls into the Elbe, the Elbe into the sea, 
 and the sea receives the Seine, and our Paris house is near the 
 River Seine, and I say, Why am I in this palace, in this cabinet 
 looking into this Spree, and not in our own chimney-corner? 
 .... How my happiness is poisoned, how short is life ! What 
 wretchedness to seek happiness far from you; and what remorse, 
 if one finds it away from you.' ^^ This was to Madame Denis, 
 his niece ; but a Christmas in the Berlin barrack made even a 
 plain coquette in Paris attractive and homely. We may imagine 
 with what tender regrets he would look back upon the old days 
 at Grey. 
 
 Even in respect of the very mischief from which he had 
 fled, the detraction and caballing of the envious, he was hardly 
 any better off at Berlin than he had been at Paris. D'Argental, 
 one of the wisest of his friends, had forewarned him of this, and 
 that he had fled from enemies whom at any rate he never saw, 
 only to find other enemies with whom he had to live day after 
 day. This was exactly what came to pass. Voltaire often 
 compared the system of life at Berlin and Potsdam to that of 
 a convent, hall military, half literary. The vices of conventual 
 life came with its other features, and among them jealousy, 
 envy, and malice. The tale-bearer, that constant parasite of 
 such societies, had exquisite opportunities, and for a suscep- 
 tible creature like Voltaire, the result was wholly fatal. The 
 nights and suppers of the gods became, in his own phrase, 
 suppers of Damocles. Alexander the Great was transformed 
 into the tyrant Dionysius. The famous Diatribe of Doctor 
 Akakia, in the autumn oi 1752, brought matters to a climax, 
 because its publication was supposed to show marked defiance 
 of the king's wishes. 
 
 '° Corr. 1751. CEuvres, Ixiv. p. 524. '^ li. p. 453. 
 
142 ■ VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Maupertuis had been one of the earliest and most strenuous 
 Newtonians- in France, and had at his own personal risk helped 
 to corroborate the truth of the new system. In 1735 ^'^ ^e^l 
 for experimental science, which was so remarkable a trait in 
 this century of many-sided intellectual activity, induced the 
 academy of sciences to dispatch an expedition to take the 
 actual measure of a degree of meridian below the equator, and 
 the curious and indefatigable De la Condamine, one of the 
 most ardent men of that ardent time, with two other inquirers 
 went to Peru. In 1736 Maupertuis and Clairaut under the 
 same auspices started for the north pole, where, after under- 
 going the severest hardships, they succeeded in measuring their 
 degree, and verifying by observation Newton's demonstration 
 of the oblate figure of the earth, a verification that was further 
 completed by La Caille's voyage to the Cape of Good Hope in 
 1750.^^ Maupertuis commemorated his share in this excellent 
 work by having a portrait of himself executed, in which the 
 palm of a hand gently flattens -the north pole. He was ex- 
 tremely courageous and extremely vain. His costume was 
 eccentric and affected, his temper more jealous and arbitrary 
 than comports with the magnanimity of philosophers, and his 
 manner more gloomily solemn than the conditions of human 
 life can ever justify. With all his absurdities, he was a man 
 of real abilities, and of a solidity of character beyond that of 
 any of his countrymen at Frederick's court. I would rather 
 live with him, Frederick wrote to the princess Wilhelmina, than 
 with Voltaire; 'his character is surer,' which in itself was saying 
 little. But then, the moment he came into collision with Vol- 
 taire, his absurdities became the most important thing about 
 him, because it was precisely these which Voltaire was sure 
 to drag into unsparing prominence. In old days they had 
 been good friends, and a letter still remains, mournfully 
 testifying to the shallowness of men's sight into the roots of 
 their relations with others, for it closes by bidding Maupertuis 
 be sure that Voltaire will love him all the days of his Hfe.^ 
 " See Whewell's Hist. Ind. Sci. bk. vii. ch. 4, § 7. 23 ^„j,_ i^iv. p. 53. 
 
BERLIN. 143 
 
 The causes of theii collision were obvious enough. As Frederick 
 said, Of two Frenchmen in the same court, one must perish. 
 Maupertuis, from the heights of the exact sciences, probably 
 despised Voltaire as a scribbler, while Voltaire, with a heart 
 flowing over with gay vivacity, assuredly counted Maupertuis 
 arbitrary, ridiculously solemn, and something of an impostor. 
 The compliances of society, he said of the president of the 
 Berlin academy, are not problems that he is fond of solving. 
 Maupertuis acted to Konig, in the matter of an academic or 
 discoverer's quarrel, in a way that struck Voltaire, and all men 
 since, as tyrannical, unjust, and childish, all in one. He un- 
 happily wrote a book which gave Voltaire such an excuse for 
 punishing the author's injustice to Konig, as even Voltaire's 
 spleen could hardly have hoped for, and the result was the 
 wittiest and most pitiless of all the purely personal satires in 
 the world. The temptation was certainly irresistible. 
 
 Maupertuis, as has been said, was courageous and venture- 
 some, and this venturesomeness being uncorrected by the 
 severe discipline of a large body of accurate positive knowledge, 
 such as Clairaut and Lagrange .possessed, led him into some 
 worse than equivocal speculation. He was in the depths of the 
 metaphysical stage, and developed physical theories out of 
 abstract terms. Of some of these theories the worst that could 
 be said was they were wholly unproved. He advanced the 
 hypothesis, for instance, that all the animal species sprang from 
 some first creature, prototype of all creatures since. Others of 
 his theories were right in idea, but wrong in form, and with- 
 out even an attempt at verification. The famous principle of 
 the minimum of action, for example, in spite of the truth at 
 the bottom of it, was valueless and confused, until Lagrange 
 connected it with fundamental dynamic principles, generalized 
 it, and cleared the unsupported metaphysical notions out of 
 it.*' All this, however, was wise and Newtonic compared 
 with the ideas promulgated in the Philosophic Letters, on 
 which the wicked Akakia so swiftly pounced. Here were 
 " See Comte's Phil. Pos. i. 525-9. 
 
144, VOLTAIRE. 
 
 notions which it needed more audacity to broach, than to fac^ 
 the frosts and snows of Lapland ; strange theories that in a 
 certain state of exaltation of the soul one may foresee the 
 future ; that if the expiration of vital force could only be pre- 
 vented, the body might be kept alive for hundreds of years ; 
 that by careful dissection of the brains of giants, Patagoniati 
 and other, we should ascertain something of the composition of 
 the mind ; that a Latin town if it were established, and this 
 was not an original idea, would be an excellent means of teach- 
 ing the Latin language. Voltaire knew exactly what kind of 
 malicious gravity and feigned respect would surround this 
 amazing performance and its author with inextinguishable 
 laughter, and his thousand turns and tropes cut deep into 
 Maupertuis like sharpened swords. 
 
 Voltaire was not by scientific training competent to criticize 
 Maupertuis. This is true ; but then Voltaire had what in such 
 cases dispensed with special competence, a preternatural gift of 
 detecting an impostor, and we must add that here as in every 
 other case his anger was set aflame not by intellectual vapidity, 
 but by what he counted gross wrong. Maupertuis had acted 
 with despotic injustice towards Konig, and Voltaire resolved to 
 punish him. This is perhaps the only side of that world-famous 
 and truly wretched fray which it is worth our while to remember, 
 besides its illustration of the general moral that active interest 
 in public affairs is the only sure safeguard against the inhuman 
 egotism, otherwise so nearly inevitable and in any wise so 
 revolting, of men of letters and men of science. 
 
 Frederick took the side of the president of his academy, 
 and had Doctor Akakia publicly burnt within earshot of its 
 author's quarters.''" Voltaire had long been preparing for the 
 end by depositing his funds in the hands of the Duke of Wiir- 
 temberg, and by other steps, which had come to the king's 
 
 '^ It may be worth mentioning tliat there actually existed in the l6tli 
 century a French physician, who changed his real name of Sans-Malice into 
 Akakia, and left descendants so called. See M. Jal's -Dictionnaire Critique 
 de Bio^mphie et <V HUtmre, p. 19. (1869.) 
 
BERLIN. 145 
 
 ears, and had by no means smoothed matters. He sees now 
 that the orange has been squeezed, and that it is his business 
 of think of saving the skin. He drew up for his own instruc- 
 tion, he said, a pocket-dictionaiy of terms in use with kings : 
 My friend raea.T\s my slave; my dear friend latsxis that you are 
 more than indifferent to me ; understand by T will make you 
 Jiappy, I will endure you, as long as I have need of you; sup ivith 
 me to-night means I will make fun of you to-night}'^ Voltaire, 
 though lie had been, and always was, the most graceful of 
 courtiers, kept to his point, and loudly gave Frederick to 
 understand that in literary disputes he recognized no kings. 
 An act of tyranny had been committed towards Konig, who was 
 his friend, and nothing would induce him to admit either that it 
 was anything else, or that it was other than just to have held up 
 the tyrant to the laughter of Europe. 
 
 Frederick was profoundly irritated, and the terms in which 
 he writes of his French Virgil as an ape who ought to be 
 flogged for his tricks, a man worse than many who have been 
 broken on the wheel, a creature who may deserve a statue for 
 his poetry but who certainly deserves chains for his conduct, 
 seem to imply a quite special mortification and resentment. He 
 had no doubt a deep and haughty contempt for all these angers 
 of celestial minds. The cabals of men of letters, he wrote to 
 Voltaire, seemed to him the lowest depth of degradation.^' And 
 he would fain have flung a handful of dust on the furious 
 creatures. After three months of vain effort to achieve the 
 impossible, Voltaire being only moderately compliant, the king 
 in March 1753 gave him leave to depart, though with a sort 
 of nominal understanding for politeness' sake that there was to 
 be a speedy return. 
 
 Voltaire, however, was not a man in whose breast the flame 
 of resentment ever flickered away in politeness, until his adver- 
 sary had hum.bled himself. Though no one ever so systematic- 
 ally convinced himself each day for thirty years that he was on 
 
 '" Con-. 1752. (Eiivres, Ixv. p. 138. 
 *' Desnoiresterres, 39^ 
 
146 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 the very point of death, no one was less careful to measure, the 
 things that were worth doing from the point of view of a con- 
 ventional memento mori. Nobody spoke about dying so much, 
 nor thought about it so little. The first use he made of his 
 liberty was to shoot yet another bolt at Maupertuis from 
 Leipzig, more piercing than any that had gone before. 
 Frederick now in his turn abandoned the forms of politeness, 
 and the renowned episode of Frankfort took place. Voltaire, 
 on reaching Frankfort, was required by the Prussian resident in 
 the free city to surrender his court decorations, and, more 
 important than these, a certain volume of royal verse containing 
 the Palladium, a poem of indecencies which were probably 
 worse than those of the Pucelle, because an indecent German 
 is usually worse than an indecent Frenchman. The poems, 
 however, were what was far worse than indecent in Frederick's 
 eyes ; they were impolitic, for they contained bitter sarcasm on 
 sovereigns whom he might be glad to have, and one of whom 
 he did actually have, on his side in the day of approaching 
 storm. Various delays and unlucky mishaps occurred, and 
 Voltaire underwent a kind of imprisonment for some five weeks 
 (May 31 to July 7, 1753), under extremely mortifying and 
 humiliating circumstances. There was on the one part an 
 honest, punctual, methodic, rather dull Prussian subordinate, 
 anxious above all other things in the world, not excepting 
 respect for genius and respect for law, to obey the injunctions 
 of his master from Berlin. On the other part Voltaire, whom 
 we know; excitable as a demon, burning with fury against 
 enemies who were out of his reach now that he had spent all 
 his ammunition of satire upon them, only half understanding 
 what was said to him in a strange tongue, mad with fear lest 
 Frederick meant to detain him after all. It would need the 
 singer of the battle of the frogs and mice to do justice to this 
 five-weeks' tragi-comedy. A bookseller with whom he had had 
 feuds years before, injudiciously came either to pay his respects, 
 or to demand some trivial arrears of money ; the furious poet 
 and philosopher rushed up to his visitor and inflicted a stinging 
 
BERLIN. 147 
 
 box on the ear, while CoUini, his Italian secretary, hastily 
 offered this intrepid consolation to Van Duren, ' Sir, you have 
 received a box on the ear from one of the greatest men in the 
 world.' A clerk came to settle this affair or that, and Voltaire 
 rcshed towards him with click of pistol, the friendly Collini 
 again interfering to better purpose by striking up the hand that 
 had written M^rope and was on the point of dispatching a 
 clerk. We need not go into the minute circumstances of the 
 Frankfort outrage. Freytag, the subordinate, clearly over- 
 strained his instructions, and his excess of zeal in detaining and 
 harassing Voltaire can only be laid indirectly to Frederick's 
 charge. But Frederick is responsible, as every principal is, who 
 launches an agent in a lawless and tyrannic course. The 
 German Varnhagen has undoubtedly shown that Voltaire's 
 account, witty and diverting as it is, is not free from many mis- 
 representations, and some tolerably deliberate lies. French 
 writers have as undoubtedly shown that the detention of a 
 French citizen by a Prussian agent in a free town of the Empire 
 was a distinct and outrageous illegality.^ We, who are fortu- 
 nately not committed by the exigencies of patriotism to close 
 our eyes to either half of the facts, may with facile impartiality 
 admit both halves. Voltaire, though fundamentally a man of 
 exceptional truth, was by no means incapable of an untruth 
 when his imagination was hot, and Frederick was by no means 
 incapable of an outrage upon law, when law stood between him 
 and his purpose. Frederick's subordinates had no right to 
 detain Voltaire at all, and they had no right to allow them- 
 selves to be provoked by his impatience into the infliction of 
 even small outrages upon him and his obnoxious niece. On 
 the other hand, if Voltaire had been a sort of Benjamin 
 Franklin, if he had possessed a well-regulated mind, a cool and 
 gentle temper, a nice sense of the expedient, then the most 
 grotesque scene of a life in which there was too much of 
 grotesque, would not have been acted as it was, to the supreme 
 
 ^' Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et Fridiric, cc. 9 and 10. Carlyle's Frederick, 
 bk. xvi. cli. 12. 
 
148 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 delight of those miserable souls who love to contemplate the 
 follies of the wise. 
 
 Any reader who takes the trouble to, read the documents 
 affecting this preposterous brawl at Frankfort between a 
 thoroughly subordinate German and the most insubordinate 
 Frenchman that ever lived, — this adventure,*as its victim called 
 it, of Cimbrians and Sicambrians, — will' be rather struck by the 
 extreme care with which Frederick impresses on the persons 
 concerned the propriety of having Voltaire's written and signed 
 word for such parts o£ the transaction as needed official com- 
 memoration. In one place he expressly insists that a given 
 memorandum should be ^vritten by Voltaire's own hand from 
 top to bottom. This precaution, which seems so strange in a 
 king who had won five battles, dealing with the author of a 
 score of tragedies, an epic, and many other fine things, sprang 
 in truth from no desire to cast a wanton slight on Voltaire's 
 honour, but from the painful knowledge that the author of the 
 fine things was not above tampering with papers and denying 
 patent superscriptions. Voltaire's visit had not been of long 
 duration, before the unfortunate lawsuit with Abraham Hirschel 
 occurred. Of this transaction we need only say this much, 
 that Voltaire employed the Jew in some illegal jobbing in 
 Saxon securities ; that he gave him bills on a Paris banker, 
 holding diamonds from the Jew as pledge of honest Christian 
 dealing ; that his suspicions were aroused, that he protested 
 his bills, then agreed to buy the jewels, then quarrelled over the 
 price, and finally plunged into a suit, of which the issues 
 were practically two, whether Hirschel had any rights on one of 
 tlie Paris bills, and whether the jewels were fairly charged. 
 Voltaire got his bill back, and the jewels were to be duly 
 valued ; but the proceedings disclosed two facts of considerable 
 seriousness for all who should have dealings with him : first, 
 that he had interpolated matter to his own advantage in a docu- 
 ment already signed by his adversary, thus making the Jew to 
 have signed what he had signed not ; and second, that when 
 very hard pushed he would not swer\-e from a false oath, any 
 
BERLIN. 149 
 
 more than his great enemy the apostle Peter had done.^" 
 Frederick had remembered all this, just as every negotiator who 
 had to deal with Frederick remembered that the great king was 
 not above such infamies as Klein-Schnellendorf, nor such 
 meanness as filching away with his foot a letter that had slipped 
 unseen from an ambassador's pocket."" 
 
 And so there was an end, if not of correspondence, yet of 
 that friendship, which after all had always belonged rather to 
 the spoken order than to the deep unspeakable. There was 
 now cynical, hoarse-voiced contempt on the one side, and 
 fierce, reverberating, shrill fury on the other. The spectacle 
 and the sound are distressing to those who crave dignity and 
 admission of the serious in the relations of men with one 
 another, as well as some sense of the myriad indefinable rela- 
 tions which encompass us unawares, giving colour and perspec- 
 tive to our more definable bonds. One would rather that even 
 in their estrangement there had been some grace and firmness 
 and self-control, and that at least the long-cherished illusion 
 had faded away worthily, as when one bids farewell to a friend 
 whom a perverse will carries from us over unknown seas until 
 a far day, and we know not if we shall see his face any more. 
 It jars on us that the moon which has climbed into the night 
 and moved like sound of music over heath and woodland, 
 should finally set in a grey swamp amid the harsh croaking 
 of amphibians. But the intimacy between Frederick and 
 Voltaire had perhaps been always most like the theatre moon. 
 
 We may know what strange admixture of distrust, contempt, 
 and tormenting reminiscence, mingled with the admiration of 
 these two men for one another's genius, from the bitterness 
 which occasionally springs up in the midst of their most grace- 
 ful and amiable letters of a later date. For instance, this is 
 Voltaire to Frederick ; ' You have already done me ill enough ; 
 you put me wrong for ever with the king of France ; you made 
 
 2» See Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et Fridiric, T^-g. 124-53, including a fac- 
 simile of the fraudulently altered agreement. Also Carlyle's Frederick, bk. 
 xvL ch. 7. ^° Carlyle's Frederick, bk. xiii. ch. S- 
 
150 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 me lose my offices and pensions ; you used me shamefully at 
 Frankfort, me and an innocent woman who was dragged 
 through the mud and thrown into gaol ; and now, while honour- 
 ing me with letters, you mar the sweetness of this consolation 
 by bitter reproaches. . . . The greatest harm that your works 
 have done, is in the excuse they have given to the enemies of 
 philosophy throughout Europe to say, "These philosophers 
 cannot live in peace, and they cannot live together. Here is a 
 king who does not believe in Jesus Christ ; he invites to his 
 court a man who does not believe in Jesus Christ, and he uses 
 him ill ; there is no humanity in these pretended philosophers, 
 and God punishes them by means of one another." .... 
 Your admirable and solid wisdom is spoiled by the unfortunate 
 pleasure you have always had in seeing the humiliation of other 
 men, and in saying and writing stinging things to them; a 
 pleasure most unworthy of you, and all the more so as you are 
 raised above them by your rank and by your unique talents.' ^ 
 To which the king answers that he is fully aware how many 
 faults he has, and what great faults they are, that he does not 
 treat himself very gently, and that in dealing with himself he 
 pardons nothing. As for Voltaire's conduct, it would not 
 have been endured by any other philosopher. ' If you had not 
 had to do with a man madly enamoured of your fine genius, 
 you would not have got off so well with anybody else. Con- 
 sider all that as done with, and never let me hear again of that 
 wearisome niece, who has not so much merit as her uncle, with 
 which to cover her defects. People talk of the servant of 
 Moli^re, but nobody will ever speak of the niece of Voltaire.' 
 
 The poet had talked, after his usual manner, of being old 
 and worn out, and tottering on the brink of the grave. ' Why, 
 you are only sixty-two,' said Frederick, ' and your soul is full of 
 that fire which animates and sustains the body. You will bury 
 me and half the present generation. You will have the delight 
 of making a spiteful couplet on my tomb.' ^'^ Voltaire did not 
 make a couplet, but he wrote a prose lampoon on the king's 
 " CEuvres, Ixxiii. p. 830. (1760.) «= J'o. pp. 835-7, 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 151 
 
 private life, which is one of the bitterest h'bels that malice ever 
 prompted, and from which the greater part of Europe has been 
 content to boiTow its idea of the character of Frederick."* 
 This was vengeance enough even for Voltaire. We may add 
 that while Voltaire constantly declared that he could never 
 forget the outrages which the king of Prussia had inflicted on 
 him, neither did he forget to draw his pension from the king 
 of Prussia even in times when Frederick was most urgently 
 pressed.** It may be said that he was ready to return favours ; 
 ' If things go on as they are going now,' he wrote with sportive 
 malice, ' I reckon on having to allow a pension to the king of 
 Prussia.' *^ 
 
 It was not surprising that Voltaire did not return to Paris. 
 His correspondence during his residence at Berlin' attests in 
 every page of it how bitterly he resented the cabals of ignoble 
 men of letters, and the insolence of ignoble men of authority. 
 ' If I had been in Paris this Lent,' he wrote in 1752, 'I should 
 have been hissed in town, and made sport of at court, and the 
 Siecle de Louis xiv. would have been denounced, as smacking of 
 heresy, as audacious, and full of ill significance. I should have 
 had to go to defend myself in the ante-room of the lieutenant 
 of police. The officers would say, as they saw me pass. There 
 is a man who belongs to us. . . . No, my friend, qui bene latuit, 
 bene vixit.' "" With most just anger, he contrasted German 
 liberality with the tyrannical suspicion of his own government. 
 The emperor, he says, made no difficulty in permitting the 
 publication of a book in which Leopold was called a coward. 
 Holland gave free circulation to statements that the Dutch are 
 ingrates and that their trade is perishing. He was allowed to 
 print under the eyes of the king of Prussia that the Great 
 Elector abased himself uselessly before Lewis xiv., and resisted 
 him as uselessly. It was only in France where permission was 
 
 " Printed in vol. i. of the Baudouin edition, as Memoires four servir d, 
 laviedeM. Voltaire, p. 212. 
 
 '1 Con-. 1758. OLuvres, Ixxv. p. 80. " /5. p. 31. 
 
 »» Corr. Ixv. p. 23. Cf. also p. 83. 
 
152 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 refused for ati eulogy of Lewis xiv. and of France, and that, 
 because he had been neither base enough nor foolish enough to 
 disfigure his eulogy either by shameful silences or cowardly mis- 
 representations.*' The imprisonment, nine years before this, of 
 Lenglet Dufresnoy, an old man of seventy, for no worse offence 
 than publishing a supplement to De Thou's history, had made 
 a deep impression on Voltaire.'^ He would have been some- 
 thing lower than human if he had forgotten the treatment which 
 he had himself received at the hands pf the most feeble and 
 incompetent government that ever was endured by a civilized 
 people. 
 
 So he found his way to Geneva, then and until 1798 an 
 independent republic or municipality. There (1755) he made 
 himself two hermitages, one for summer, called the Ddlices, 
 a short distance from the spot where the Arve falls into the 
 Rhone, and the other near Lausanne (Monrion) for winter. 
 Here, he says, I see from my bed this glorious lake, which 
 bathes a hundred gardens at the foot of my terrace; which 
 forms on right and left a stream of a dozen leagues, and a calm 
 sea in front of my windows ; and which waters the fields of 
 Savoy, crowned with the Alps in the distance.'^ You write to 
 ,me, replied D'Alembert, from your bed, whence you command 
 ten leagues of the lake, and I answer you from my hole, whence 
 I command a patch of sky three ells long.* To poor 
 D'Alembert the name of the famous lake was fraught with evil 
 associations, for he had just published his too veracious article 
 on Geneva in the Encyclopedia, in which he paid the clergy 
 of that city the unwelcome compliment, that they were the 
 most logical of all Protestants, for they were Socinians ; and he 
 was now suffering the penalty of men who stir up angry hives. 
 
 The enjoyment which Voltaire had then and for twenty 
 
 " lb. p. 15. 
 
 " Corr. 1743. (Euv. Ixiii. p. 131. A very long and careful list of 
 the oppressions practised on writers in this reign is given in Mr. Buckle's 
 Hist, of Civilization, i. 675-681. 
 
 ^' Foisset's Corns, de Voltaire avec de Brasses; &c. p. 31S. Also Corr. 
 1757. CEuvres, Ixvi. pp. 1-50 passiro. *» (Euvres, Ixxv. p. 61, 
 
BERLIN. 
 
 153 
 
 years to come in his noble landscape, and wliicli he so often 
 commemorates in his letters, is a proof that may be added to 
 others, of the injustice of the common idea that the Voltairean 
 school of the eighteenth century were specially insensible to 
 the picturesque. Morellet, for instance, records his delight 
 and wonder at the Alps and the descent into Italy, in terms 
 quite as warm, if much less profuse, as those of the most 
 impressible modern tourist." Diderot had a strong sponta- 
 neous feeling for nature, as he shows not only in his truly 
 remarkable criticisms on the paintings of twenty years, but also 
 in his most private correspondence, where he demonstrates 
 in terms too plain, simple, and homely, to be suspected of 
 insincerity, the meditative delight with which the solitary con- 
 templation of fine landscape inspired him. He has no peculiar 
 felicity in describing natural features in words, or in reproducing 
 the inner harmonies with which the soft lines of distant hills, 
 or the richness of deep embosoming woodlands, or the swift 
 procession of clouds driven by fierce or cheerful winds, com- 
 pose and strengthen the sympathizing spirit. But he was as 
 susceptible to them as men of more sonorous word.*^ And 
 Voltaire finds the liveliest pleasure in the natural sights and 
 objects around him, though they never quickened in him those 
 brooding moods of egotistic introspection and deep-questioning 
 contemplation -in which Jean Jacques, Bernardin de St. Pierre, 
 and Senancour, found a sort of refuge from tlieir own desperate 
 impotency of will and of material activity. Voltaire never felt 
 this impotency. As the very apostle of action, how should he 
 have felt it? It pleased him in the first few months of his 
 settlement in new scenes, and at other times, to borrow some 
 of Frederick's talk about the bestial folly of the human race, 
 and the absurdity of troubling oneself about it ; but what was 
 a sincere cynicism in the king, was in Voltaire only a bit of 
 cant, the passing affectation of an hour. The dramatist whose 
 
 *^ Memoires, 1. ch. iii. p. 55- 
 
 *^ See for instance a letter to Mdlle. de Voland : Mhiwires, Correspond- 
 ance, ei Ouv. iiiidlks, i. 99. 
 
154 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 imagination had produced so long a series of dramas of situation, 
 the historian who had been attracted by such labours as those 
 of Charles xii. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia, as 
 well as by the achievements of the illustrious men who adorned 
 the age of Lewis xiv., proved himself of far too objective and 
 positive a temperament to be capable of that self-conscious 
 despair of action, that paralysing lack of confidence in will, 
 which drove men of other humour and other experience forlorn 
 into the hermit's caves of a new Thebaid. Voltaire's ostenta- 
 tious enjoyment of his landscape and his garden was only the 
 expansion of a seafarer, who after a stormful voyage finds 
 himself in a fair haven. His lines to Liberty* give us the 
 key-note to his mood at this time. He did not suppose that 
 he had got all, but he knew that he had got somewhat. 
 
 Je ne vante point d'avoir en cet asile 
 
 Rencontre le parfait bonheur : 
 II n'est point retire dans le fond d'un bocage ; ' 
 
 II est encore moins chez les.rois ; 
 
 II n'est pas meme chez le sage ; 
 De cette conrte vie il n'est point le partage ; 
 II y faut renoncer ; mais on peut quelquefois 
 
 Embrasser au moins son image. 
 
 "Tis a fine thing, is tranquillity,' he wrote; 'yes,' but ennui 
 is of its acquaintance and belongs to the family. To repulse 
 this ugly relation, I have set up a theatre.'** Besides the 
 theatre, guests were frequent and multitudinous. He speaks of 
 sometimes having a crowd of fifty persons at table.''^ Besides 
 Les Ddlices and Lausanne, he purchased from the President de 
 Brosses a life-interest in Tourney, and in the same year (1758) 
 he bought the lordship of Ferney, close by. He was thus 
 a citizen of Geneva, of Berne, and of France, ' for philosophers 
 ought to have two or three holes underground against the 
 hounds who chase them.' If the dogs of France should hunt 
 him, he could take shelter in Geneva. If the dogs of Geneva 
 began to bay, he could run into France. By-and-by this 
 
 *' L' Auteur arrivant i sa tene. (Euv. xvi 19 ^. 
 <* Coiir. 1757. (Euv. kvi, p. 38. " lb. p. 32. 
 
BERLIN. IS5 
 
 consideration of safety grew ■ less absorbing, and all was 
 abandoned except Ferney; a name that will always remain 
 associated with those vigorous and terrible assaults upon the 
 Infamous, which first definitely opened when Voltaire became 
 the lord of this little domain. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 RELIGION. 
 
 ♦ I. 
 
 i .. 
 
 lN>examining the Voltaireaii attack upon religion we have to 
 
 remember that it was in the first instaiice prompted, and 
 thfoughout its course stimulated and embittered, by antipathy 
 to, .'the external organization of the religion. It was not merely 
 disbelief in a creed, but exasperation against a church. Two 
 distinct elements lay at the bottom of "Voltaire's enmity to the 
 peculiar form of monotheism which he found supreme- around 
 him. One of them was the intellectual element of repugnance 
 to a system of belief that rested on miracles and mysteries ', 
 irreconcilable with rea-son, and was so intimately associated 
 with some of the most odious types of character and most . 
 atrocious actions in the Old Testament, which undoubtedly 
 contains so many of both. The other was the moral element 
 Granger against the expounders of this system, their intolerance 
 of light and hatted of knowledge, their fierce yet profoundly 
 contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of their 
 casuistry, their besotted cruelty. Of these two elements, the 
 second was, no doubt, if not the earlier in time, at least the 
 stronger in intensity. It was because he perceived the fruit 
 to be so deadly, that Voltaire laid the axe .to the root of the 
 tree. It .is easy to say that these poisonous Jesuitries and 
 black Jansenisms were no fruit of the tree, but the produce of 
 a mere graft, which could have been lopped off without 
 touching the sacred trunk. Voltaire thought otherwise, and 
 
RELIGION. TS7 
 
 whether he was right or wrong, it is only just to him to keep 
 constantly before us the egregious failure of Catholicism in 
 his day as a social force. This is a fact as to which there can 
 be no dispute among persons with knowledge enough and 
 mental freedom enough to be competent to have an opinion, 
 and Voltairism can only be fairly weighed if we regard it as 
 being in the first instance no outbreak of reckless speculative 
 intelligence, but a righteous social protest against a system 
 socially pestilent. It was the revival of the worst parts of this 
 system in the cruelty and obscurantism \yhich. broke out after 
 the middle of the centur)', that converted Voltaire into an 
 active assailant of belief. But for that, he would pretSy certainly 
 have remained tranquilly in the phase of deism of which some 
 of his early verses are the expression. Philosophy is truly, as 
 Callicles says in the GorgiaS) a most charming accomplishment 
 for a. man to follow at the right age, but to carry philosophy 
 too^ far is tl>e undoing of humanity. 
 
 Voltaire no doubt deUberately set himself to overthrow the 
 Catholic theology, as well as the ecclesiastical system which 
 was bound up with it, and he did so for the very sufficient 
 reason that it has always been impossible for men to become 
 indulgent in act, while they remained fanatical in belief. They 
 will not cease to be persecutors, he, said, until they have ceased 
 to be absurd.^ The object was to secure tolerance, and tolerance 
 could only be expected as the product of indifference, and 
 indifference could be spread most surely by throwing the fullest 
 light of reason and common sense on the mystical foundations 
 of revealed religion. To stop short at the inculcation of charity 
 and indulgence was to surrender the cause; for how should 
 the mere homilies of a secular moralist soften those whom the 
 direct injunctions of a deity and his inspired apostles, their own 
 acknowledged masters, failed to make charitable ? It was 
 essential that the superstitions in which intolerance had its 
 root should be proved detestable and ridiculous. When men 
 had learnt to laugh at superstition, then they would perceivb 
 
 ' Corr. QiuTj, Ixxv. p. 249. 
 
158 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 how abominable is the oppressive fanaticism which is its 
 champion. 
 
 It is hardly possible to deny the service which Protestantism ■ 
 rendered in preventing the revolution from Catholicism to 
 scientific modes of thought from being that violent, abrupt, and 
 irreconcilable breach, which we now observe in France and 
 Italy, when we remember that the cause of toleration was syste- 
 matically defended in England by men who as systematically 
 defended the cause of Christianity. The Liberty of Prophesy- 
 ing, in which the expediency of tolerance was based on the 
 difficulty of being sure that we are right, was written by one of 
 the most devout and orthodox divines ; while the famous 
 Letters on Toleration (1689), in which the truly remarkable 
 step is taken of confining the functions of civil government to 
 men's civil interests and the things of this world, were the work 
 of the same Locke who vindicated the Reasonableness of 
 Christianity.' The English Deists pressed home in a very 
 effectual way the deduction of universal freedom of speech from 
 the first maxims of Protestantism, and their inference was 
 practically admitted.* Hence there was no inseparable associa- 
 tion between adherence to the old religious ideas and the pro- 
 hibition of free speech in spirituals, and on the other han3 there 
 was no obligation on the part of those who claimed free speech 
 to attack a church which did not refuse their claim. 
 
 In France the strictly repressive policy of the church in the 
 eighteenth century, sometimes bloody and cruel as in the per- 
 secution of the Protestants, sometimes minutely vexatious as in 
 the persecution of the men of letters, but always stubborn and 
 lynx-eyed, had the natural effect of making it a point of honour 
 with most of those who valued liberty to hurl themselves upon 
 
 ' It was to the last-named book, one may suppose, that Voltaire refen-ed, 
 when he asked how it was that Locke, after having so profoundly traced 
 the development of the human understanding, could so degrade his own 
 understanding in another work. (Diet. Phil. s.v. Platon. CEuv. Ivii. 
 P- 369.) 
 
 ' See CoUins's Apology for Free Debate and Liberty of Writing, pre- 
 fixed to the Grmnds and Reasons of Christianity. 
 
RELIGION. 159 
 
 the religious system, of which rigorous intolerance was so 
 prominent a characteristic. The Protestant dilution of the 
 theological spirit seems thus to be in the long run a more 
 effective preparation for decisive abandonment of it, than its 
 virulent dissolution in the biting acids of Voltairism, because 
 within limits the slower these great transformations are in accom^- 
 plishing themselves, the better it is for many of the most 
 precious and most tender parts of human character. Our 
 present contention is that the attitude of the religionists left no 
 alternative. It is best that creeds, like men who have done the 
 work of the day, should die the slow deaths of nature, yet it is 
 counted lawful to raise an armed hand upon the brigand who 
 seeks the life of another. 
 
 Voltaire to the end of his course contended that the church 
 only was to blame for the storm which overtook her teaching in 
 the later years, when his own courageous attack had inspired a 
 host of others, less brilliant but not any less embittered, to 
 throw themselves on the reeling enemy. The cause of the 
 inundation of Europe by the literature of negativism and repu- 
 diation was to be sought first of all in the fierce theolog ical 
 disputes which revolted th e best oj^jhejaity. Of this violent 
 revulsion of feeling Voltaire fiimseU°~was the great organ. He 
 furnished its justification, and nourished its fire, and invested it 
 with a splendid lustre. Even when with the timidity of extreme 
 age he seemed to deprecate the growing ferocity of the attack, 
 he still taunted the clerical party with their own folly in allow- 
 ing a mean and egotistic virulence to override every considera- 
 tion of true wisdom and policy. ' Now,' he wrote in 1768, 'a 
 revolution has been accomplished in the human mind, that 
 nothing again can ever arrest. They would have prevented 
 this revolution, if they had been sage and moderate. The 
 quarrels of Jansenists and Molinists have done more harm to 
 the Christian religion, than could have been done by four 
 emperors like Julian one after another.' "^ 
 
 It caimot be too often repeated that the Christianity which 
 ' Coir. 1768. CEuv. Ixx. p. 140, 
 
i6o VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Voltaire assailed was not that of the Sermon on the Mount, for 
 there was not a man then alive more keenly sensible than he 
 was of the generous humanity, which is there enjoined with a 
 force that so strangely touches the heart, nor one who was on 
 the whole, in spite of constitutional infirmities and words which " 
 were far worse than his deeds, more ardent and persevering in 
 its practice. Still less was he the enemy of a form of Christian 
 profession which now fascinates many fine and subtle minds, 
 and which starting from- the assumption that there are certain 
 inborn cravings- in the human heart, constant, parofound, and 
 inextinguishable, discerns in- the long religious tradition an 
 adequate- proof that the mystic faith in the incarnation, and in 
 the spiritual facts which pour like rays from that awful centre, 
 are the highest satisfaction which a divine will has as yet been 
 pleased to establish for all these yearnings of the race of men. 
 This graceful development of belief, emancipated from dogma 
 and reducing so many substantial bodies to pale shades, so 
 many articles once held as solid realities to the strange tenuity ■ 
 of dreams, was not the Christianity of Voltaire's time, any more 
 than it was that of the Holy Office. There was nothing resem- 
 bling the present popularity of a treatment which gives generals 
 so immfense a preponderance over particulars — somewhat to the 
 neglect of the old saying about the snare that lies hidden in 
 generals, many persons being tolerably indifferent about the 
 dolus, so long as they can make sure of the latet. He attacked 
 a_definit£ — theology; — not a — tbfioSQphy. We may, indeed, 
 imagine the kind of questions which he would have asked of 
 one pressing such a doctrine on his acceptance ; how he would 
 have sought the grounds for calling aspirations universal, which 
 the numerical majority of the human race appear to have been 
 without, and the grounds for making subjective yearnings the 
 test and the measure of the truth of definite objective records ; 
 how he would have prayed to be instructed of these cravings, 
 whether they spring up spontaneously, or are the products of 
 spiritual self-indulgence, and also of thg precise manner in 
 which they come tcbe satisfied and soothed by the momentary 
 
RELIGION. i6i 
 
 appearance of a humane figure far ofif upon the earth ; how lie 
 would have paused to consider the intelligibility of so over- 
 whelming a wonder as the incarnation having been wrought, 
 for the benefit of so infinitesimally small a fragment of man- 
 kind. We can imagine this and much else, but Voltaire 
 would never have stirred a finger to attack a mysticism which 
 is not aggressive, and can. hardly be other than negatively 
 hurtful. 
 
 If any one had maintained against Voltaire that the aspirations 
 after a future life, the longing for some token that the deity 
 watches over his creatures and is moved by a tender solicitude 
 for them, and the other spiritual desires alleged to be instinc- 
 tive in men, constitute as trustworthy and firm a guide to truth 
 as the logical reason, we may be sure that he would have for- 
 given what he must have, considered an enervating abnegation 
 of intelligence, for the sake of the humane, if not very actively 
 improving, course of life to which this kind of pietism is wont 
 to lead. He might possibly have entertained a little contempt 
 for them, but it would have been quiet contempt and unspoken. 
 There is no case of Voltaire mocking at any set of men who 
 lived good lives. He did not mock the English Quakers. He 
 doubtless attacked many of the beliefs which good men hold 
 sacred, but if good men take up their abode under the same 
 roof which shelters the children of darkness and wrong, it is 
 not the fault of Voltaire if they are hit by the smooth stones 
 shot from his sling against their unworthy comrades. The 
 object of his assault was that amalgam of metaphysical subtle- 
 ties, degrading legends, false miracles, and narrow depraving 
 conceptions of divine government which made the starting 
 point. and vantage ground of those ecclesiastical oppressors, 
 whom he habitually and justly designated the enemies of the 
 human race. The evil and the good, the old purity and the 
 superadded corruptions, were all so inextricably bound up in 
 the Catholicism of the eighteenth century, that it was im- 
 possible to deal a blow to the one, without risk of harm to 
 the other. The method was desperate, but then the enemy 
 
i62 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 was a true Chimsera, a monster sodden in black corruption, 
 with whom in the breast of a humane man there could be no 
 terms. 
 
 The popes during the Voltairean period were above the 
 average in virtue and intelligence, but their power was entirely 
 overshadowed by that wonderful order which had assumed all 
 effective spiritual supremacy for something like two centuries. 
 Nor was this order the only retrogressive influence. The 
 eighteenth century was the century not only of the Sacrd 
 Coeur, but of the miracles of the dead abbd Paris, transactions 
 in which Jansenist emulated Jesuit in dragging men and women 
 into the deepest slough of superstition. A Roman augur fresh 
 from the inspection of the sacrificial entrails, would have had 
 , a right to despise the priests who invented an object for the 
 adoration of men in the diseased and hideous visions of Mary 
 Alacoque. The man who sells rain to savages may almost be 
 held to add to the self-respect of the race, if you contrast him 
 with the convulsionnaires and the fanatics who were transported 
 by their revolting performances.^ 
 
 France is the country where reactions are most rapid and 
 most violent. Nowhere else can the reformer count so surely 
 on seeing the completion of his reform followed so instantly by 
 the triumph of its adversaries. The expulsion of the Jesuits, 
 under circumstances of marked and uncompromisilig harshness, 
 was not consummated, before the tide of religious bigotry flowed 
 in from the opposite shore, and swelled to a portentous height 
 The exultation of the philosophers at the coming fall of their 
 old foes, was instantly checked by the yet worse things which 
 befell them and their principles at the hands of new enemies. 
 The reign of the Jansenists was speedily pronounced more 
 hateful than the reign of the Jesuits. Various accommodations 
 were possible with heaven, so long as the Jesuits had credit, 
 but the Jansenists were pitiless.' 
 
 " The reader will find an account of them in M. Lanfrey's L'Eglise et 
 Ics Philosophes du iSiime Siicle, pp. 131-5. 
 ' Corr. (Euv, Ixvi. p. 100. 
 
RELIGION. 163 
 
 The parliament or supreme judicial tribunal of Paris ^ was 
 Jansenist, mainly out of political hatred of the Jesuits, partly 
 from a hostility, very easily explained, to every manifestation 
 of ultramontane feeling and influence, partly from a professional 
 jealousy of the clergy, but partly also because the austere 
 predestinarian dogma, and the metaphysical theology which 
 brought it into supreme prominence, seem often to have had 
 an unexplained affinity for serious minds trained in legal ideas 
 and their application. The Jesuits had systematically abstained 
 as far as was possible from purely speculative theology. Suarez 
 is pronounced one of the greatest writers in speculative ethics 
 and jurisprudence ; but in the technical metaphysics of theology 
 the Jesuits with all their literary industry did not greatly care 
 to exercise themselves. Their task was social and practical, 
 and as confessors, directors, preachers, and instructors, they 
 had naturally paid less attention to abstract thought, than to 
 the arts of eloquence, address, and pliancy. Then, too, in 
 doctrine they had uniformly clung to the softer, more amiable, 
 more worldly, less repulsive, interpretation of the eternally 
 embarrassing claims of grace, election, free-will. The Augus- 
 tinian, Calvinistic, or Jansenist view of the impotence of will 
 and the saving importance of grace, is the answer of souls eager 
 to feel immediate individual contact with a Supreme Being. The 
 Jesuits and their power represented extremely different senti- 
 ments, fundamentally religious, but still fundamentally social 
 also, the desire of men for sympathetic and considerate guid- 
 ance in conduct, and their craving for such a unity of the 
 external ordering of the faith as should leave them undistracted 
 to live their lives. The former concentrated feelings upon the 
 relations of men directly and immediately with a Supreme 
 Being; the latter upon their relations with this Being only 
 mediately, through their relations with one another, and with 
 the church to which a measure of divinity had been attributed. 
 
 ' For the composition of this body see Voltaire's Histoire du Parlement 
 de Paris. (Env. xxxiv. Or in Martin's Hisi. de France, iv. 295 ; xii. 280 ; 
 and xiii. 53. 
 
1 64 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Hence the decline of the Jesuits assumed the form of a depra- 
 vation of morals, while the Jansenists held more and more 
 tightly to a narrow and bigoted correctness of belief. The 
 parliament was willing to resist a Molinist archbishop and his 
 satellites, when they refused burial to all who should die without 
 having received a certificate of conformity to the famous bull 
 Unigenitus, which proscribed Jansenist opinion.^ But none 
 the less for this was it bent on suppressing the common enemy, 
 who despised the bull and the Five propositions, Molina and 
 Jansenius, archbishop Beaumont and Quesnel, all equally. 
 Voltaire's natural sagacity made him alive tO' the fact, which 
 perhaps remains as true now as then, that the professional and 
 middle classes are a worse enemy of liberal opinion and are 
 more intolerant than the remnants of the old aristocratic orders. 
 He says to D'Alembert, ' You are right in declaring yourself 
 the enemy of the great and their flatterers; still, the great 
 protect one upon occasion, they despise the Infamous, and 
 they will not persecute philosophers ; but as for your pedants 
 of Paris, who have bought their office, as for those insolent 
 bourgeois, half fanatics, half imbecile, they can do nothing but 
 mischief.' ■"• He had not learnt to look away from both classes, 
 professional and aristocratic alike, to that third estate where 
 the voice of the reformer has always found the first response. 
 Still what he said was true as against the lawyers, whose vision 
 perhaps never extends beyond the improvement of that mere 
 surface of order with which their profession is concerned. The 
 parliament of Paris was the eager ally of the bigots of the court 
 in 1 75 7, in fulminating deadly edicts against the Encyclopsedia 
 and all concerned in its production or circulation. In 1762, 
 the year of the publication of Emile and the Contrat Social, 
 not all the influence of Rousseau's powerful protectors could 
 prevent the launching of a decree of arrest against him. 
 Bloodier measures were not wanting. 
 
 In 1762 Morellet had published under the title of a 
 
 ' Si^cle de Louis xv. c. 36. CEiwres, xxix. p. 3. 
 " Corr. (Euv. Ixxv. p. 145. 
 
RELIGION. 165 
 
 Manual for Inquisitors a selection of the most cruel and 
 revolting portions of the procedure of the Holy Office, drawn 
 from the Directorium Inquisitorium of Eymeric, a grand in- 
 quisitor of the fourteenth centuiy. The cold-blooded cruelties 
 of the regulations which were thus brought into the light of the 
 eighteenth century, created the most profound sensation among 
 the rapidly increasing adherents of tolerance and humanity. 
 Voltaire was intensely stirred by this resuscitation of horrors 
 that he mistook for dead. It made the same impression upon 
 him, he said, as the bleeding body of Cssar made upon the 
 men of Rome." But he soon found that it was an error to 
 impute a special cruelty to the spiritual power. Malesherbes, 
 in giving Morellet the requisite permission to print his Manual, 
 had amazed his friend by telling him, that though he might 
 suppose he was giving to the world a collection of extraordinary 
 facts and unheard-of processes, yet in truth the jurisprudence 
 of Eymeric and his inquisition was as nearly as possible identi- 
 cal with the criminal jurisprudence of France at that very 
 moment.'^ This was very soon to be proved. 
 
 The bigots, infuriated by the blows which were destroying 
 the Jesuits, hunted out against heretical enemies some forgotten 
 portions of this terrible jurisprudence. A protestant pastor, 
 Rochette, was hung for exercising his functions in Languedoc. 
 The Catholics on the occasion of the arrest of Rochette were 
 summoned by sound of tocsin, and three young Protestants, 
 who were brothers, fearing massacre in the midst of the agita- 
 tion, took up their arms : for this offence they were convicted 
 of rebellion, and had their heads struck off.^" It became pain- 
 fully clear how great a mistake it was to suppose the clergy 
 touched with some special curse of cruelty. Then, as usually, 
 for good or for evil, they were on about the same moral level 
 with an immense number of laymen, and were not much more 
 than the incarnation of the average darkness of the hour. If 
 
 1' Corr. CEiivres, Ixvii. p. 166. , 
 " Mem. de Morellet, ch. iii. p. 62. 
 '' Martin's jKs^ de France, xvi. p. 139. 
 
i66 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Eymeric's procedure only copied the ordinary criminal juris- 
 prudence, the bigotry of the ecclesiastics was accurately 
 reflected in the bigotry of the secular tribunals. The Protestant 
 Galas was broken on the wheel (1762), because his son had 
 been found dead, and some one chose to say that the father 
 had killed him, to prevent him from turning Catholic. Tliere 
 was not the smallest fragment of evidence, direct or indirect, 
 for a single link in the chain of circumstances on which the 
 unfortunate man's guilt depended ; while there were many facts 
 which made the theory of his guilt the most improbable that 
 could have been brought forward. The widow and the children 
 of Galas were put to the torture, and eventually fled to Geneva 
 to take refuge with Voltaire. During the same year the same 
 tribunal, the parliament of Toulouse, did its best to repeat this 
 atrocity in the case of Sirven. Sirven was a Protestant, and his 
 daughter had been with perfect legality snatched away from 
 him, and shut up in a convent, there to be better instructed in 
 the faith. She ran away, and was found at the bottom of a 
 well. Sirven was accused of murdering his daughter, and he 
 only escaped the wheel by prompt flight. His wife perished 
 of misery amid the snows of the Gevennes, and he joined the 
 wretched family of Galas at Geneva, where the same generous 
 man furnished shelter and protection. 
 
 In the north of France the fire of intolerance burnt at least 
 as hotly as in the south. At Abbeville a crucifix was found to 
 have been mutilated in the night. Two lads of eighteen, to 
 one of whom Frederick gave shelter in Prussia, were accused 
 under cover of the sacrilege, and La Barre was condemned by 
 the tribunal of Amiens, at the instance of the bishop, to have 
 tongue and right hand cut off, and then be burnt alive; a 
 sentence that was presently commuted by the Parliament of 
 Paris to decapitation (1766). There was no proof whatever 
 that either of the two youths was in any way concerned in the 
 outrage. The bishop of the diocese had issued monitory pro- 
 clamations, and conducted a solemn procession to the insulted 
 crucifix. The imagination of the town was kindled, and the 
 
RELIGION. 167 
 
 sacrilege became the universal talk of a people growing more 
 and more excited. Rumour ran that a new sect was being 
 formed, which was for breaking all the crucifixes, which threw 
 the host on the ground and cut it with knives. There were 
 women who declared that they had seen these things. All the 
 horrible stories were revived which had been believed against 
 the Jews in the middle ages. A citizen took advantage of this 
 fierce agitation to gratify a private grudge against a relative of 
 La Barre. He set inquiries on foot among the lowest persons 
 for proof that the youth had been concerned in the original 
 crime. By one means or another he got together material 
 enough to support an indictment. Proceedings once begun, a 
 crowd of informers rose up. It was deposed that La Barre 
 and D'Etallonde had passed within thirty yards of the sacred 
 procession without removing their hats, that La Barre had 
 spoken irreverently of the Virgin Mary, that he had been heard 
 to sing unseemly songs and recite ribald litanies. This testi- 
 mony, given with a vagueness that ought to have proved it 
 legally valueless, was the fruit of the episcopal monitory, which 
 as at Toulouse in the case of Galas, virtually incited the dregs 
 of the people to bring accusations against their superiors, and 
 menaced a man with the pains of hell if he should refuse to 
 put his neighbour in peril of his life. The tribunal, as excited 
 as the witnesses and the rest of the public, relied on a royal 
 ordinance of 1682, directed against sacrilege and superstition 
 and designed to put down sorcery. In the sentence inflicting 
 so bloody a punishment, the offence was described as consisting 
 in singing abominable songs against the Virgin Mary." To 
 exact such a penalty for such a delinquency was to make human 
 life a mere plaything for the ignorant passion of the populace 
 and the intellectual confusion of the tribunals. 
 
 These atrocities kindled in Voltaire a blaze of anger and 
 pity, that remains among the things of which humanity has 
 most reason to be proud. Everybody who has read much of 
 
 " Relation de la Mort du Chevalier de la Barre, 1 766; Le Cri du 
 Sang Innocent, 1775. (Euv. xxxix. p. 99. 
 
i68 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 the French writing of the middle of the eighteenth century, is 
 conscious from time to time of a sound of mocking and sardonic 
 laughter in it. This laugh of the eighteenth century has been 
 too often misunderstood as the expression of a cynical hardness 
 of heart, proving the hollowness of the humanitarian pretensions 
 in the midst of which it is heard. It was in truth something 
 very different; it was the form in which men sought a little 
 relief from the monotony of the abominations which oppressed 
 them, and from whose taint they had such difficulty to escape. 
 This refrain, that after all a man can do nothing better than 
 laugh, apparently so shallow and inhuman, in reality so pene- 
 trated with melancholy, we may count most certainly on finding 
 at the close of the narration of some more than usually 
 iniquitous or imbecile exploit of those in authority. It was 
 when the thought of the political and social and intellectual 
 degradation of their country became too vivid to be endured, 
 that men like Voltaire and D'Alembert would abrupdy turn 
 away from it, and in the bitterness of their impotence cry that 
 there was nothing for it but to take the world and all that 
 befalls therein in merriment It was the grimacing of a man 
 who jests when he is perishing of hunger, or is shrinking under 
 knife or cautery. Thus D'Alembert having given Voltaire an 
 account of the execution of the unfortunate La Barre, in words 
 that show how intensely his own narrative was afflicting him, 
 suddenly concludes by saying that he will add no more on this 
 auto-da-f^, so honourable to the French nation, for it made him 
 ill-humoured, and he meant only to mock at whatever might 
 happen. 15 But Voltaire could not rest thus. The thought of 
 so hateful a crime, perpetrated by a tribunal of justice, clothed 
 liim in the shirt of Nessus. All aflame, he wrote to D'Alembert 
 with noble impetuosity : 
 
 ' This is no longer a time for jesting : witty things do not 
 
 go well with massacres. What? These Busirises in wigs 
 
 destroy in the midst of horrible tortures children of sixteen ! 
 
 And tliat in face of the verdict of ten upright and humane 
 
 " Corr. July l6, 1766. (Euv. Ixxv. p. 357. 
 
RELIGION. 169 
 
 judges ! And the victim suffers it ! People talk about it for a 
 moment, and the next they are hastening to the comic opera ; 
 and barbarity, become the more insolent for our silence, will to- 
 morrow cut throats juridically at pleasure. Here Galas broken 
 on the wheel, there Sirven condemned to be hung, further off a 
 gag thrust into the mouth of a lieutenant-general, a fortnight 
 after that five youths condemned to the flames for extravagances 
 that deserved nothing worse than Saint Lazare. Is this the 
 country of philosophy and pleasure ? It is the country rather 
 of the Saint Bartholomew massacre. Why, the Inquisition 
 would not have v-entured to do what these Jansenist judges 
 have done.'" When he had received D'Alembert's letter, 
 ending as we have seen, his remonstrance waxed vehement : 
 ' What, you would be content to laugh ? We ought rather to 
 resolve to seek vengeance, or at any rate to leave a country 
 
 where day after day such horrors are committed No, 
 
 once more, I cannot bear that you should finish your letter by 
 saying, I mean to laugh. Ah, my friend, is it a time for laugh- 
 ing? Did men laugh when they saw Phalaris's bull being made 
 red-hot?'^' 
 
 This revival in the tribunals of Paris and the provincial 
 towns alike, of the ignorant fanaticism and the unscientific 
 jurisprudence of the most unenlightened times, was the more 
 bitter and insupportable from the new light which shone around 
 such horrors. Beccaria's treatise on Offences and Penalties 
 had just been translated into French by Morellet, and furnished 
 a strange commentary upon the atrocities of Toulouse and 
 Abbeville. It seemed, men said, as if at every striking vindica- 
 tion of the rights of humanity the genius of cruelty broke its 
 chains, and, to prove the futility of all such vindications, 
 inspired new acts of barbarism and violence.^' The philosophic 
 group had yielded to a premature exultation, and in their inex- 
 perience supposed tliat they who planted the tree should see 
 the gathering-in of the fruit. The reign of reason was believed 
 
 '^ Corr. CEuv. Ixxv. p. 359. 
 
 " lb. p. 361. " Grimm, Corr. Lit. v. p. 133, 
 
170 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 to be clofse at hand, and this belief made the visible recrudes- 
 cence of fanatical unreason signally insupportable. It is a high 
 honour to Voltaire and his disciples that the trial did not prove 
 too strong for their faith, and that when they saw how far too 
 sanguine they had been, they were more astonished than they 
 were discouraged, and their energy redoubled with the demands 
 made upon it. The meaner partisans of an orthodoxy which 
 can only make wholly sure of itself by injustice to adversaries, 
 have always loved to paint the Voltairean school in the 
 character of demons, enjoying their work of destruction with a 
 sportive and impish delight. They may have rejoiced in their 
 strength so long as they cherished the illusion that those who 
 first kindled the torch should also complete the long course and 
 bear the lamp to the goal. When the gravity of the enterprise 
 showed itself before them, they remained alert with all courage, 
 but they ceased to fancy that courage necessarily makes men 
 happy. The mantle of philosophy was rent in a hundred 
 places, and bitter winds entered at a hundred holes, but they 
 only drew it the more closely around them.^^ At the very last 
 Voltaire seems to have seen something of the vast space which 
 every ray of light has to traverse before it reaches the eye of the 
 common understanding. ' I now perceive,' he wrote the year 
 before his death, ' that we must still wait three or four hundred 
 years. One day it cannot but be that good men win their 
 cause ; but before that glorious day arrives how many disgusts 
 have we to undergo, how many dark persecutions, without 
 reckoning the La Barres, of whom from time to time they will 
 make an auto-da-fd.'^° To speak thus was to recognize the true 
 character of the revolution, and the many elements which go 
 to the transformation of an old society. To speak thus, too, 
 was to mark the true character of the sincere lover of 
 human progress, the soul of steadfast patience and strong hope, 
 mingled with many a pang for the far-off and slow-coming 
 good. 
 
 It was a natural thing to identify the Jesuits with the 
 " Corr. 1774. CEuv. Ixxv. p. 627. '" lb. p. 696. 
 
RELIGION. 171 
 
 strongest part of the old society, because their organization was 
 both the strongest and most striking of its external supports. 
 Their suppression, though not to be dispensed with except on 
 the condition of an ultimate overthrow of morality and an 
 extinction of intellectual light, had one effect which the states- 
 men of the time could hardly be expected to see, and which 
 has not been enough considered. Just as the papacy by the 
 fourteenth century had become more and more exclusively 
 a temporal power, so the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth 
 had become more and more a commercial power. They were 
 a powerful trading corporation, and it was as merchants, rather 
 than as casuists and directors of conscience, that they finally 
 came into collision with secular authority in France, Portugal, 
 and Spain. Now since the revival of the order it has been 
 exclusively engaged in the contest for spiritual supremacy, and 
 for as much of temporal power as has seemed essential to its 
 security. This, however, is only one of the evils which counter, 
 balance the advantages of every progressive measure ; for, alas, 
 when the statesman believes most confidently that he has 
 advanced by a league, a very few years show him or others that 
 his league was after all no more than an ell or two. 
 
 The reactionary outburst of fanaticism for which the humili- 
 ation of the Jesuits was a signal, only showed how well founded 
 the Voltairean allegations as to the depraving effects of the 
 existing system of religion had really been. It was the verifi- 
 cation of all that Voltaire ever said against the system, and 
 demonstrated both the virulence and the tenacity of the 
 influences which Catholicism in the days of its degradation had 
 exerted over the character of the nation. It was most illogical 
 to expect a people who had been bred in the Catholic tradition 
 suddenly to welcome its enemies. If Catholicism had trained 
 men up to the temper which seeks the light and loves it, how 
 should it have deserved animosity ? Nearly all lovers of im- 
 provement are apt in the heat of a generous enthusiasm to 
 forget that if all the world were ready to embrace their cause, 
 their improvement could hardly be needed. It is one of the 
 
172 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 hardest conditions of things that the more numerous and reso- 
 lute the enemies of reform, then the more unmistakably urgent 
 the necessity for it. It was just because the cruelty, persecu- 
 tion, and darkness, in the last ten years of the reign of Lewis xv. 
 were things possible, that the onslaught upon Catholicism 
 was justifiable and praiseworthy. They showed the depth and 
 strength of the forces of the old society, and they foreshadowed 
 the violence which marked its dissolution. If people had 
 remembered in 1789 how few years separated them from the 
 wide-spread fanaticism which darkened the last days of Voltaire, 
 they might have calculated better how few years separated them 
 from the Napoleonic Concordat. 
 
 No permanent transformation of a society, we may be sure, 
 can ever take place until a transformation has been accom- 
 plished in the spiritual basis of thought. Voltaire may have 
 distinctly seen this and formulated it to himself, or not ; in any 
 case, he steered his own course exactly as he would have done 
 if he had seen it. As M. Guizot expresses it, the separation ' 
 between the spiritual and temporal orders was never real in 
 Europe except in the eighteenth century, when for the first 
 time the spiritual order developed itself entirely apart from the 
 temporal order. '^ Thus Voltaire acquiesced without murmur or 
 reproach in the conditions of political absolutism, and the dis- 
 grace and ruin which the nuUity of the government brought 
 upon his country in the Seven Years War, keenly as he felt it, yet 
 provoked no thought of temporal changes. His correspondence 
 in that fatal time is marked by a startling apathy about public 
 events, and even Rossbach seems not to move him to seek its 
 causes. If we compare his joyful erathusiasm ai the accession 
 of Turgot to power in 1774, we can have no doubt that this 
 strange numbness of feeling was only the silence of a wise man 
 despairing of saying or seeing anything useful, and not the 
 criminal folly of a bad citizen to whom the welfare of his 
 country is not dear. The disasters of France were as serious 
 
 " Hist, de la Civilisation en Europe, I4i^me lefon, p. 405. Cf. also 
 De Tocqueville''s Ancien Regime, liv. idi. ch. i. 
 
RELIGION. 173 
 
 to him as to any one else, as may be plainly seen under the 
 assumed philosophy with which his vivacious spirit loved to veil 
 real feeling ; but the impossibility of doing anything, even of 
 taking a part in the process with which we English are so 
 familiar as the forming of public opinion, drove him for conso- 
 lation to the field where he was certain of doing efficient work.^^ 
 Writing in 176 1, a year of crushing national loss, he says to one 
 of the oldest and most intimate of his correspondents : 'There 
 is nothing to laugh at in all this. I am struck to the heart. 
 Our only resource is in the promptest and most humiliating 
 peace. I always fancy, when some overwhelming disaster 
 arrives, that tlie French will be serious for six weeks. I have 
 not yet been able to disabuse myself of this notion.' ^ Voltaire 
 was penetrated by the spirit of action, and he perceived and 
 regretted that the organization of France did not permit of the 
 effective action of private individuals in the field of politics.'* 
 There are lines in the Hemiade extolling the freedom of 
 England, '° and he sometimes indulges in the commonplaces 
 of a literary republicanism ; but turning to the portion of his 
 works which his editors have classified as political, we scarcely 
 find much beyond the documents, and they are important and 
 interesting enough, still not truly political, that relate to tte 
 various affairs of Galas,. La Barre, and others, in which he 
 exposed the atrocities of the tribunals. So far as they come 
 into the region of politics at all, it is only to assail the overt and 
 direct injustice done to society by the institutions, privileges, 
 and pretensions of the church. He constantly attacks in a 
 great variety of forms the material mischief inflicted on society 
 by the vast numbers of monks, mendicant or other ; their un- 
 productive lives, the burden of their maintenance weighing 
 upon more industrious subjects, the restriction of population 
 occasioned by their celibacy. The direct refusal of the clergy 
 in 1750 to consent to pay their share of the taxes like other 
 
 ^^ Corr. 1757-8. CEtiv. Ixvi. pp. 92, 102, 112, 185, etc. 
 
 ^^ Corr. CEuv. Ixvii. p. 174; also Ixxv. p. 170. 
 
 " See ante, p. 14. -'" Chant i. v. 306. 
 
-V'-^ 
 
 174 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 citizens, though owning as much as a fifth of all the property in 
 the realm, moved him to insist in a vigorous pamphlet that the 
 distinction in a kingdom between spiritual and temporal powers 
 is a relic of barbarism ; that it is monstrous to permit a body of 
 men to' say, Let those pay who work, we ought not to pay 
 because we are idle ; that superstition inevitably tends to make 
 bad citizens, and therefore princes ought to protect philpsophy 
 which destroys superstition.^^ 
 
 Voltaire's task, however, was never directly political, but 
 spiritual, to shake the foundations of that rehgious system which 
 professed to be founded on the revelation of Christ. Was he 
 ngt right ? If we find ourselves walking amid a generation of , 
 cruel and unjust and darkened spirits, we may be assured that 
 it is their beliefs on what they deem highest that have made 
 them so. There is no counting with certainty on the justice of 
 men who are capable of fashioning and worshipping an unjust 
 divinity, nor on their humanity so long as they incorporate 
 inhuman , motives in their most sacred dogma, nor on their 
 reasonableness while they rigorously decline to accept reason as 
 a test of truth. 
 
 ' It is necessary to admit from the point of view of impartial 
 criticism, that Voltaire had one defect of character, of extreme 
 importance in a leader of this memorable and direct attack. 
 With all his enthusiasm for things noble and lofty, generous and 
 compassionate, he missed the peculiar emotion of holinesSj;_the 
 soul and life alike of the words of Christ and Saint Paul, that 
 indefinable secret of the long, hold of mystic superstition over so 
 many high natures, otherwise entirely prepared for the bright- 
 ness of the rational day. From this impalpable essence which 
 magically surrounds us with the mysterious and subtle atmo- 
 sphere of the unseen, changing distances and proportions, 
 adding new faculties of sight and purpose, extinguishing the 
 flames of disorderly passion in a flood of truly divine aspira- 
 tion, w'e have to confess that the virtue went out in the presence 
 of Voltaire. To admire Voltaire, cried a man who detested 
 "' La Voix du Sage et du Peuple (1750). CEuv. xxxviii. p. 53. 
 
RELIGION. 175 
 
 him, is the sign of a corrupt heart, and if anybody is drawn to 
 his works, then be very sure that God does not love such an 
 one.^' The truth of which that is so vehement a paraphrase 
 amounts to this, that Voltaire has said no word, nor even shown 
 an indirect appreciation of any word said by another, which 
 stirs or expands the emotional susceptibility, indefinite exulta- 
 tation, and far-swelling inner harmony, which De Maistre and 
 others have known as the love of God, and for which a better 
 name, as covering most varieties of form and manifestation, is 
 holiness, deepest of all the words that defy definition. Through 
 the affronts which his reason received from certain pretensions 
 both in the writers and in some of those whose actions they 
 commemorated, this sublime trait in the Bible, in both portions 
 of it, was unhappily lost to Voltaire. He had no ear for the 
 finer vibrations of the spiritual voice. / j 
 
 This had no concern in the fact that he hated and despised, 
 and was eager that others should hate and despise, the religious 
 forms that ruled France in his day. The Christianity which he 
 assailed was as little touched as Voltairism itself with that spirit 
 .of holiness which poured itself round the lives and words of the 
 two founders, the great .master and the great apostle. The 
 more deeply imbued a man was with this spirit, the more 
 ardently would he crave the demolition of that Infamous in 
 belief and in practice, which poisoned the stream of holiness 
 in its springs, and shed pestilence along its banks, and choked 
 its issues in barrenness and corruption. 
 
 The point where the failure of this quality in Voltaire was 
 especially a source of weakness to his attack, is to be found in 
 the crippling of his historic imagination, and the inability which 
 this inflicted upon him of conceiving the true meaning and 
 lowest roots of the Catholic legend. The middle age between 
 himself and the polytheism of the Empire was a parched 
 desert to him and to all his school, just as to the Protestant 
 the interval between the apostles and Luther is a long night of 
 imclean things. He saw only a besotted people led in chains 
 
 ^' De Maistre, Soiries de St, PHersbourg, 4ieme. 
 
 / / 
 
176 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 by a crafty priesthood ; he heard only the unending repetition 
 of records that were fictitious, and dogmas that drew a curtain 
 of darkness over the understanding. Men spoke to him of the 
 roild beams of Christian charity, and where they pointed he 
 saw only the yellow glare of the stake ; they talked of the 
 gentle solace of Christian faith, and he heard only the shrieks 
 of the thousands and tens of thousands whom faithful Christian 
 persecutors had racked, strangled, gibbetted, burnt, broken on 
 the wheel. Through the steam of innocent blood which Chris- 
 tians for the honour of their belief had spilt in every quarter 
 of the known world, the blood of Jews, Moors, Indians, and 
 all the vast holocausts of heretical sects and people in eastern 
 and western Europe, he saw only dismal tracts of intellectual 
 darkness and heard only the humming of the doctors, as they 
 served forth to congregations of poor men hungering for spiritual 
 sustenance the draff of theological superstition. 
 
 This vehement and blinding antipathy arose partly from the 
 intense force with which the existing- aspect of Catholicism 
 recalled all that was worst, and shut out all that was best in its 
 former history. One cannot fairly expect the man who is in 
 the grip of a decrepit tyrant, to do absolutely full justice to the 
 seemly deeds and gracious promises of his tormentor's youth. 
 But partly also tliis blindness arose from the fact that Voltaire 
 measured the achievements of Catholicism by the magnitude 
 of its pretensions. He took its supernatural claims seriously, 
 and his intelligence was exasperated beyond control by the 
 amazing disproportion and incongruity between these claims 
 and the most conspicuous of the actual results. Those who 
 have parted company with a religion, as Voltaire had parted 
 company with Christianity, can only be counted upon to award 
 the well-earned praise to its better part, after they have planted 
 themselves stably on the assumption that the given religion- is 
 a human and natural force like another. 
 
 The just historic calm on which our modern prides himself, 
 is only possible in proportion to the mature completeness with 
 which he takes for granted, and believes that those to whom he 
 
RELIGION. 177 
 
 speaks will take for granted, the absence of supernatural inter- 
 vention in the processes of religious action and development. 
 He is absolutely undisturbed by the thought of that claim, 
 which was omnipotent until Voltaire came to do deadly battle 
 with it, of Christianity to be a crowning miracle of divine favour, 
 which should raise men to be only a little lower than the angels, 
 and should be the instrument for pouring out upon them an 
 ever-flowing stream of special and extraordinary grace. It is 
 not until the idea has dropped out of our minds of the great 
 fathers of the church as saints, that we are free to perceive 
 what services they rendered as statesmen, and it is only when 
 men have ceased to dispute whether Christianity was a revela- 
 tion, that they have eyes to see what services it has rendered 
 as a system. But in Voltaire's time, if Catholicism was justified 
 historically, it was believed dogmatically, and therefore was 
 to be attacked dogmatically also. The surrender of the written 
 legend has never hindered its champions from taking ground 
 which implied some esoteric revelation, that proves to be some 
 special interpretation of the written legend. So long as the 
 thinker is busy disproving the position that a man who happens 
 to live on a certain part of the globe is a being of such singular 
 and -exceptional consequence in the universe as to be held 
 worthy by supreme heavenly powers of receiving a miraculous 
 message and the promise of this and that unspeakable privilege 
 in indescribable worlds to come, so long he is not likely 
 to weigh very fairly the effects of the belief in such power, 
 messages, and privileges, on the education and advancement of 
 this world. The modern historic justice which is done to 
 Catholicism is due to the establishment of a series of convic- 
 tions that civilization is a structure which man by his own right 
 arm has raised for himself, that it has been exposed to many 
 an .era of storm and stress, and to manifold influences which 
 have been perpetually destroying portions of the great edifice, 
 adding fresh parts, modifying the old, by an interminable 
 succession of changes, resounding and volcanic, or still and 
 imperceptible; that the danger of destruction was never so 
 
 N 
 
178 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 terrible as in the days of the dissolution of the old Roman 
 society; that in this prolonged crisis the Christian church 
 emerged, first by its organization and the ability of some of its 
 chiefs, and next by the attraction of legends that harmonized 
 with the needs of a dark, confused, and terror-stricken time ; 
 that the many barbarous and absurd articles of beUef in- 
 corporated in the Christian profession by the sophists of the 
 East, received from time to time humane modification in the 
 hands of the wiser churchmen of the West, whose practical 
 judgment was perpetually softening down the crude, savage, 
 unilluminated doctrines which had naturally sprung up in the 
 dismal age when the Catholic system acquired substance and 
 shape. A just recognition of all these things is only easy to 
 one whose expectations from humanity are moderate, who 
 perceives how tardy and difiicult is the accomplishment of each 
 smallest step in tlie long process, and how helpful are even the 
 simplest beliefs of rude times in transforming men from vagrant 
 animals into beings with a consciousness of fixed common 
 relations towards some object of common worship, and so 
 planting the first germs of social consolidation and growth. 
 
 Voltaire was, from the circumstances in whiah he was 
 placed, too busy proving the purely human origin of Catholi- 
 cism to have a mind free to examine how much, if we suppose 
 it to be of purely human origin, it has done for those who 
 accepted it. Perhaps we ought rather to praise than blame 
 him for abstaining from planting himself at the historic point 
 of view, before settling the previous question whether the 
 historic point of view is permitted in considering the religious 
 movements of Europe. Until Voltaire and others had divested 
 the current religion of its supernatural pretensions, it was 
 impossible for any thinker, who declines to try to take the 
 second step before he has already taken the first, to survey 
 the operations of such a religion as a merely secular force. 
 This surely is a field of thought where no serious inquirer could 
 content himself with a mere working hypothesis. If the super- 
 natural claims of Catholicism are well founded, then tlae historic 
 
RELIGION. 
 
 179 
 
 method of treating it is either a frivolous diversion or else a 
 grave and mischievous heresy. The issue being of this moment, 
 everybody who studies the philosophy of history with effect 
 must have made up his mind in one way or the other. Vol- 
 taire had made up his mind very deiinitely, and the conclusion 
 to which, for adequate or inadequate reasons, he came in this 
 matter was one of the most influential agencies in preparing 
 men's minds for the construction and general reception of a 
 sounder historical philosophy than was within his own reach. 
 That he did not see the deduction from his work is a limitation 
 of vision that he shares with most of the men to whom it has 
 fallen to overthrow old systems, and clear the ground on which 
 the next generation has raised new. 
 
 II 
 
 / 
 
 Having said thus much on the general causes and conditions 
 of Voltaire's attack, we may next briefly examine his method. 
 A brief examination sufiices, because, like all his contemporaries, 
 he was so very imperfectly acquainted with the principles of 
 scientific criticism, and because his weapons, though sharp and 
 deadly enough for their purpose, are now likely to become 
 more and more thoroughly antiquated. In criticism he was, 
 as has been often remarked, the direct descendant of Bayle. 
 That is, his instruments were purely literary and dialectical. 
 He examined the various sacred narratives as if he had been 
 reviewing a contemporary historian. He delights in the minute 
 cavils of literary pyrrhonism, and rejoices in the artifice of 
 imposing the signifiicance of the letter, where his adversaries 
 strove for interpretation of the spirit. As if, for instance, 
 anything could be more childish than to attack baptism by 
 asking whether Christianity consists in throwing water on the 
 head, with a little salt in it.^^ He is perfectly content with 
 the exposure of a fallacy in words, without seeking to expose 
 '* (Euvres, xxxv. p. 37. 
 
i8o VOLTAIRE. 
 
 the root fallacy of idea. Nothing short of the blindest parti- 
 sanship can pretend to find in this a proper or adequate 
 method. The utmost that can be said, and no just historian 
 ought to forget to say it, is that it was not more improper nor 
 inadequate than the orthodox method of defence. Bayle's com- 
 mentary on the words, ' Compel them' to come in,'' would not 
 satisfy the modern requirements of scriptural exegesis, but 
 it was quite good enough to confound those who contended 
 that the text was a direct warrant and injunction from heaven 
 for the bitterest persecution on earth. But the unfair parry 
 of unfair thrust, extenuate it as we may, count it inevitable 
 as we may, even reckoning up such advantages from it as we 
 can, and in the present case they were enormous, can never 
 be any pattern or masterpiece of retort ; and it is folly to allow 
 admiration for the social merit of Voltaire's end to blind us 
 to, the logical demerit of his means. It is deliberately to throw 
 away the advantage of our distance from the contest, and to 
 sell for a momentary self-indulgence, in the spirit of party the 
 birthright of a free and equitable historic vision. Let men not 
 fail to do justice to the gains of humanity ^von by the emanci- 
 pation of the eighteenth century; but we shall be worse off 
 than if they had never been transmitted, if they are allowed 
 to bind us to approve of every detail of the many movements 
 by which the final triumph was obtained. 
 ^''' The key to his method of attack is given us in a sentence 
 in one of his letters to D'Alembert. ' It is never by means 
 of metaphysics,' he says, ' that you will succeed in delivering 
 men from error; you must prove the truth by facts."" In 
 other words, the sublim^ abstract reasoning of a Spinoza will 
 do far less to dispel the ^narrow ideas, unfounded beliefs, and 
 false restrictive conceptions which cripple the human intel- 
 ligence so long as it is in bondage to a theological system, 
 than a direct disproval of the alleged facts on which the system 
 professes to rest. It is only by dealing immediately with these 
 that you can make the repulse of error a real question, sub- 
 "' Corr. 1773. CEuv. Ixxv. p. 614. 
 
RELIGION. i8i 
 
 stantially interesting to ordinary men. Always remembering 
 that Voltaire's intelligence was practical rather than speculative, 
 and, besides this, that from the time when he commenced his 
 attack in earnest the object which he had at heart was the 
 overthrow of a crushing practical institution, we may agree that 
 in such a humour and with such a purpose the most effective \ 
 way of harassing so active and pestilent a foe was to carry the 
 war into the enemy's quarters, and to use those kinds of 
 arguments which the greatest number of men would be likely 
 to find cogent. We may complain that Voltaire never rises 
 from the ground into the region of the higher facts of religion ; 
 and this is quite true. It would have been controversially 
 futile if he had done so. There was no audience in those times 
 for the discussioii of the higher facts ; and the reason of this 
 was that the spiritual instructors and champions themselves 
 thrust into th,e front place legends, miracles, and the whole 
 of the peculiarly vulgar part of the theological apparatus, which 
 it would have been as absurd to controvert metaphysically, as 
 it would be to try to elevate a Gold-coast negro from his fetish 
 worship by the transcendental parts of Plato. 
 
 It nearly always happens that the defenders of a decaying 
 system, when they find themselves surrounded by the wholly 
 uncongenial atmosphere of rationalistic method, fall back, not 
 on the noblest, but on the ignoblest parts of their system. 
 Distressed by the light, they shrink hurriedly into darkest 
 recesses of the famiUar caves, partly because they have a sense 
 -ef especial security in a region that they know so well, and 
 partly because they have misgivings lest the surrender of articles 
 or practices in which they only half believe, should by too 
 stringent process of logical compulsion lead to the destruction 
 of others in which they believe with all their hearts. Such 
 tactics may or may not be politic, but we can at least be quite 
 certain that they tend neither to elevation of rehgion, nor 
 discovery of truth, nor profit and sincerity of discussion. If a 
 set of doctrines be attacked from many quarters in an unworthy 
 manner, and taken at their worst instead of at their best, we 
 
1 82 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 laay be quite sure that this is as much due to the defenders 
 as to the assailants. It was not Voltaire's fault that the con- 
 troversy turned on issues which a more iriodem opponent would 
 not care to dispute. He is constantly flippant and trivial, and 
 consta,ntly manifests gross irreverence, but it was the writers ' 
 whom he was combating, writers like Sanchez or the stercorists, 
 who had opened frivolous and unbecoming questions that could 
 hardly be exposed with gravity. He was making war on an 
 institution, and it was not his concern to fight on ground which 
 his adversary had never thought, and was too blind and 
 demoralized to be able to think, of taking up. It was not 
 his fault that the upholders of, the creed he attacked, made 
 a stand upon the letter of saeired documents, upon prophecy 
 and miracle and special intervention, upon the virtues of rehcs 
 and the liquefaction of the blood of Saint Januarius. The same 
 wise man who forbade us to answer a fool according to his 
 folly, also enjoined upon us to answer a fool according to his 
 folly, and the moral commentator agrees that each prescription 
 is as sage as its contradictory. 
 
 If truth means anything, it was worth while to put to rout 
 the distortions of truth with which the church lowered the 
 understanding of its votaries. If truth means anything, then 
 it was worth while to reply to the allegation that the history 
 of the Christian church is a long witness of the goodness of 
 heaven and the ever-present guidance of its heavenly founder, 
 by a record of the actual facts; of the simplicity, equality, 
 absence of multiplied rites, orders, and dogmas, among the 
 primitive members of the congregation, and of the radical 
 differences between the use of apostolic times and of times 
 since ; of the incurable want of authority for all those kles 
 of demons being cast out, pious inscriptions in letters of 
 gold found graven on the hearts of martyrs, and the rest, 
 which grow rare in proportion as we draw nearer to the times 
 when the evidence for them would have been preserved ; of the 
 infamous character of many Christian heroes, from Constantine 
 downwards, and of the promptitude with which the Christians, 
 
RELIGION. 183 
 
 as soon as ever they had power, dyed their hands in the blood 
 of their persecutors ; of the stupefying circumstances that after 
 a revelation was made to the human race by no less a prodigy 
 than the incarnation of supreme power in a mortal body, 
 and the miraculous maintenance of this event and its signifi- 
 cance in the tradition, doctrine, discipline of the Catholic church, 
 yet the whole of Asia, the whole of Africa, all the possessions 
 of the EngUsh and Dutch in America, all the uncivilized Indian 
 tribes, all the southern lands, amounting to one-fifth part of the 
 globe still remain in the clutches of the demon, to verify that 
 holy saying of many being called but few chosen.™ 
 
 It may be said that this kind of argument really proves 
 nothing at all about the supernatural origin or character of the 
 Christian revelation, for which you must seek the responses not 
 of ecclesiastical history but of the human heart. And that may be 
 a fair thing to say, but then this contention of the new revelation 
 being only a message to the heart has only been heard since 
 Voltaire thrust aside the very different contention of his day. 
 Those various beliefs were universally accepted about the pro- 
 gress of the church, which were true in no sense whatever, literal 
 or spiritual, mystical or historical. People accepted traditions 
 and records, sacred and profane, as literal, accurate, categorical 
 declarations and descriptions of a long series of things done 
 and suffered. Moreover, the modern argument in favour of 
 the supernatural origin of the Christian religion, drawn from 
 its suitableness to our needs and its divine response to our 
 aspirations, must be admitted by every candid person resorting 
 to it to be of exactly equal force in the mouth of a Mahometan 
 or a fire-worshipper or an astrolater. If you apply a subjective 
 test of this kind, it must be as good for the sincere and satisfied 
 votaries of one creed, as it is for those of any other. The needs 
 and aspirations of the Mahometan would not be satisfied by 
 fetishism or polytheism, nor those of the developed polytheist 
 by totem-worship. It would be ridiculous for so small a 
 minority of the race as the professors of Christianity to assume 
 3" Cf. Diet. Phil, s.v, Eglise. (Euv. liv. pp. 221-248. 
 
J 84 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 that their aspirations are the absolute measure of those of 
 humanity in every stage. The argument can never carry us 
 beyond the relativity of religious truth. 
 
 Now the French apologist a hundred years ago dealt in the 
 most absolute possible matter. Christianity to him meant a 
 set of very concrete ideas of all sorts ; any one who accepted 
 them in the concrete and literal form prescribed by the church 
 would share infinite bliss, and any one who rejected them, 
 whether deliberately or from never having been so happy as to 
 hear of them, would be infinitely tormented. If this theory be 
 right, then Voltaire must naturally be abhorred by all persons 
 who hold it, as a perverse and mischievous hinderer of light 
 If it be wrong, and we must observe that from its terms this is 
 not one of the marvellously multiplying beliefs of which we 
 hear that they may be half wrong and- half right, then Voltaire 
 may take rank with other useful expellers of popular error. 
 Everybody must admit how imperfect is all such treatment of 
 popular error ; how little rich, how little comprehensive, how 
 little full. Yet the surgeon who has couched his patient's 
 cataract has surely done a servifce, even if he do not straightway 
 carry him to enjoy the restored faculty on some high summit of 
 far and noble prospect. 
 
 \ Voltaire's attack was essentially the attack of the English 
 deists, as indeed he is always willing enough to admit, pursued 
 with far less gravity and honest search for truth, but, it is 
 hardly necessary to say, with far more adro'itness, rapidity, and 
 grace of manner than any of them, even than Bolingbroke. 
 As we have seen, he insisted on throwing himself upon the 
 facts in the records that are least easily reconciled with a 
 general sense of probability and evidence, as gradually de- 
 veloped in men by experience. He placed the various incidents 
 of the Bible, the interpretation of them by the church, the state- 
 ment of doctrine, the characters of prominent actors, in the 
 full light of common experience and of the maxims which 
 experience has made second nature. ' I always speak humanly,' 
 he says mockingly, ' I always put myself in the place of a man 
 
RELIGION. 185 
 
 who, having never heard tell either of Jews or Christians, should 
 read these books for the first time, and not being illuminated by- 
 grace, should be so unhappy as to trust unaided reason in the 
 matter, until he should be enlightened from on high.' '^ 
 
 It is superfluous to detail the treatment to which he sub- 
 jected such mysteries of the faith as the inheritance of the 
 curse of sin by all following generations from the first fall of 
 man ; the appearance from time to time, among an obscure 
 oriental tribe, of prophets whp foretold the coming of a divine 
 deliverer, who should wash. away that fatal stain by sacrificial 
 expiation ; the choice of this specially cruel, treacherous, stub- 
 bom, and rebellious tribe, to be the favoured people of a deity 
 of spotless mercy and truth ; the advent of the deliverer in 
 circumstances of extraordinary meanness and obscurity among 
 a generation that greeted his pretensions with incredulity, and 
 finally caused him to be put to death with ignominy, in spite of 
 his appeal to the prophets and to the many signs and wonders 
 which he wrought among them ; the rising of this deliverer from 
 the dead; the ascription to him in the course of the next three 
 or four centuries of claims which he never made in person, and 
 of propositions which he never advanced while he walked 
 on the eartji, yet which must now be accepted by every one 
 who would after death escape a pitiless torment without end ; 
 the truly miraculous preservation amid a fiery swarm of heresies, 
 intricate, minute, subtle, barely intelligible, but very soul-de- 
 stroying, of that little fragile thread of pure belief which can 
 alone guide each spirit in the divinely appointed path. Exposed 
 to the light, which they were never meant to endure, of ordi- 
 nary principles of evidence founded on ordinary experience, the 
 injmortal legends, the prophecies, the miracles, the mysteries, 
 on which the spiritual faith of Europe had hung for so many 
 generations, seemed to shrivel up in unlovely dissolution. The 
 authenticity of the texts on which the salvation of man depends, 
 the contradictions and inconsistencies of the documents, the 
 incompatibility between many acts and motives expressly 
 " Dieu et les Hommes, c. xiv. CEuvres, xlv. p. 318. 
 
i86 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 approved by the holiest persons, and the justice and mercy 
 which are supposed to sit enthroned on high in their bosoms, 
 the forced constructions of prophecies and their stultifying 
 futility of fulfilment, the extraordinary frivolousness of some of 
 the occasions on which the divine power of thaumaturgy was 
 deliberately and solemnly exerted, — these were among the 
 points at which the messenger of Satan at Ferney was permitted 
 sorely to buffet the church. What is the date of the Apostles' 
 Creed ? What of the so-called Athanasian Creed ? How were 
 the seven sacraifients instituted one after another? What was 
 the difference between the synaxis and the mass? And so 
 forth through many hundreds of pages. 
 
 Along with rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesias- 
 tical history, are many more as to doctrine, and the assumption 
 on which a doctrine' rests ; questions as to the trinity, as to 
 redemption by the shedding of innocent blood, as to the daily 
 miracle of transubstantiation, as to the resurrection of the body, 
 as to the existence of an entity called soul independently of 
 that matter which, apart from miracle, seems an inseparable 
 condition of its manifestation. His arguments on all these 
 subjects contain a strange mixture of shallow mockery and just 
 objection. The questions which he suggests for the doctors as 
 to the resurrection of the body may serve for an example. 
 Among them are these : 
 
 ' A Breton soldier goes to Canada. It happens by a not 
 uncommon chance that he falls short of food ; he is forced to 
 eat a piece of an Jroquois whom he has killed over night. The 
 Iroquois had fed on Jesuits for two or three months, a great 
 part of his body had thus become Jesuit. So there is the body 
 of the soldier with Iroquois, Jesuit, and whatever he had eaten 
 before, entering into it. How then will each resume exactly 
 what belongs to him ? ' 'In order to come to life again, to be 
 the same person you were, you must have a lively and present 
 recollection ; it is memory that makes your identity. Havin" 
 lost memory, how are you to be the same man?' Again, 
 ' considering that only certain material elements are proper for 
 
RELIGION. 187 
 
 the composition of the human body, where is earth enough to 
 be found to remake all the bodies needed for so many hundreds 
 of generations ? And supposing that by a prodigious miracle 
 the whole human race could be resuscitated in the Valley of 
 Jehoshaphat, where are all the spirits meanwhile ? ' '^ 
 
 Another very favourite mode of a,pproacliing the beliefs, 
 incidents, and personages of Jewish and Christian history was 
 to show that they had counterparts in some pagan fables or 
 systems, in the books of Chinese philosophers or Brahminical 
 sages. The inference from this identity or correspondence 
 between some Judaical practices and myths, and the practices 
 and myths of Arabians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, 
 was that they were in all cases equally the artificial creations of 
 impostors preying on the credulity of men, ' the first prophet or 
 diviner having been the first rogue who met the first fool.' It 
 is curious to observe how the modern argument from constantly 
 extending discoveries in comparative mythology tends to the 
 demolition of the special pretensions of Judaical myths of all 
 sorts, by the very opposite inference to that on which the Vol- 
 tairean school rested. Voltaire urged that as these myths 
 resembled one another in this and that important feature, 
 therefore they were all equally spurious, false, and absurd. 
 The modern, on the contrary, would hold them all equally 
 .genuine, equally free from the taint of imposture in priest or 
 people, and equally faithful representations of the mental states 
 which produced and accepted them. The weakening of the 
 ]:)articular sanctity and objective reality of any one form of 
 these common primitive ways of thinking about the action 
 of non-human agents would be just as strong, whether we take 
 the new or the old view of the generation of myths, but the 
 difference of the effect of the two views upon the justice and 
 fertility of historic spirit is immeasurable. 
 
 There is no sign, however, that Voltaire was ever seriously 
 conscious of the importance of a right consideration of the 
 mental conditions of primitive peoples. This study had been 
 '^ Diet. Phil. s.v. Resurrection. (Euvres, lyiii. p. 67. 
 
1 88 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 commenced in liis own time by De Brosses, the inventor of the 
 term fetishism, and pronounced by competent modern authori- 
 ties to have been a powerful and original thinker upon the facts 
 of the infancy of civilization.^ Yet Voltaire treated the specu- 
 lations of this industrious inquirer with the same ignorant 
 contempt and scorn that the theological enemies of geology 
 were once accustomed to bestow on men who chipped bits of 
 rock and cherished fossils.'* Oddly enough, Voltaire's careless- 
 ness and want of thought on these matters left him with that 
 very theory of the nature of the development of cultivation, on 
 which the theological school insists to this day as against the 
 scientific ethnologists. The question is whether the earliest 
 men were savages, or partially civilized ; in other words, whether 
 civilization has consisted in a certain uniform progression from 
 a state a little above the brutes, or whether the savage is not a 
 b2ing who has degenerated from a partial degree of civihzation. 
 The progression theory was no doubt in a general way a cha- 
 racteristic doctrine of the men of the eighteenth century, for 
 which De Maistre, an ardent and most ingenious advocate of 
 the degeneration theory, reviled them with his usual heartiness. 
 Yet his eagerness to depress revelation by exalting natural 
 theology led Voltaire to the essentially theological position that 
 the earliest men had a clear and lofty idea of a Supreme Being, 
 and a ready appreciation of justice and charity in their relations 
 with one another, until the vile ambition of priestly and pro- 
 phetic impostors succeeded in setting upon their necks the 
 yoke of systems which corrupted the heart and conscience, 
 and sophisticated a pure and simple faith. 
 
 He did not hold that men were conscious of the one God 
 as they were conscious of light, or that they had perceptions of 
 such a being, as they had perceptions of the ground they tilled. 
 The idea was -derived by process of natural logic from the con- 
 templation of astonishimg natural effects, of harvest and dearth, 
 
 '' See, for instance, Tylor'-s Primitive Culture, i. 32, ii. 131, etc. 
 ''' Corr. 1770. (Euvres, Ixxv. pp. 522, 526, etc. This active spite 
 .prevented the accession of De Brosses to a seat in the academy. 
 
RELIGION. 189 
 
 of fair days and tempests, of benefactions and scourges. They 
 saw all these things, and felt the work of a master.*" Just as in 
 each community there were men who by the force of their 
 reason found out that triangles with the same base and of the 
 same height are equal, and others who in sowing and reaping 
 and tending their flocks perceived that the sun and moon re- 
 turned pretty nearly to the point from which they had started, 
 and that they never travelled beyond a certain limit to north or 
 south, so there was a third man who considered that men, 
 animals, stars could not have made themselves, and who saw 
 that therefore a Supreme Being must exist j while a fourth, 
 struck by the wrongs that men inflicted on one another, con- 
 cluded that if there exists a being who made the stars, the 
 earth, and men, such a being must confer favour on the vir 
 tuous, and punishments on the wicked. This idea, Voltaire 
 declares, is so natural and so good that it was most readily 
 embraced."^ The various forms of revelation were only so 
 many corruptions of that simple, serviceable, and self-proving 
 monotheism, and so were the conceptions of polytheism. He 
 had no notion that monotheism is a later development of the 
 theological spirit than polytheism. Unable to deny that the 
 Greeks and Romans, about whom he knew so little and talked 
 so much, had plurality of gods, he drew a distinction between 
 one Supreme Being and all the rest, and contended that you 
 may search all their records in vain for a single fact or a single 
 word to counterbalance the many passages and monuments 
 which attest their belief of the sovereignty of the one deity and 
 his superiority over all the rest."' We do not know whether 
 this was a fortuitous kind of growth in his own mind, or whether 
 it was a scrap of recollection from the painstaking pages in 
 which Cudworth had worked at the establishment of that expla- 
 nation of polytheism. Voltaire too often writes on these 
 weighty subjects, as if trusting to a memory that snatched 
 
 3= Diet. Phil. s.v. Dieu. (Euvres, liv. p. 20. 
 
 "^ Dieu et les Hommes, c. iii. (Euvres, xlv. p. 270. 
 
 " Diet. Phil. s.v. Polytheisme. (Euvres, Ivii. p. 391. 
 
igo VOLTAIRE. 
 
 effectively at plausible theories, while losing much of their 
 evidence and all their deeper bearings. 
 
 It would be not a little extraordinary, if we did not con- 
 stantly remember that Voltaire's strength did not lie in specula- 
 tion or systematic thought, that he saw none of the objections 
 to this account of things, and that he was content with so 
 limited an observation of the facts. If De Brosses had mag- 
 nanimously suffered himself to be cheated in the transaction of 
 the fourteen cords of wood, Voltaire would perhaps have read 
 his book candidly, and if he had read it otherwise than with 
 a foregone resolution to despise it, he would have come upon a 
 number of circumstances entirely fatal to his smooth theory 
 that many gods are always subordinate to the one, because he 
 would have had to consider those states of the human mind in 
 which there are no spiritual gods at all, but in which every object 
 whatever is invested with volition and power. In one place he 
 shows something like a recognition of the true nature of the 
 process. ' I have always been persuaded,' he says in a letter to 
 Mairan, ' that the phenomena of the heavens have been in the 
 main the source of the old fables. Thunder was heard on the 
 inaccessible summit of a mountain ; therefore there must be 
 gods dwelling on the mountain, and launching the thunder. 
 The sun seems to speed from east to west, therefore he has 
 fine coursers. The rain does not touch the head of one who 
 sees a rainbow, so the rainbow is a token that there will never 
 again be a deluge.' *° But then Voltaire was no systematic 
 thinker, and thus there was no security that any given right idea 
 which came into his mind would either remain present to him, 
 or would be followed up and placed along with other ideas in a 
 scientific order. Apart from this, however, it is extraordinary 
 that Voltaire's extreme acuteness did not suggest to him the 
 question, how it was that the artless and clear belief in one God 
 became more and more obscured by the growing multitude of 
 other gods, just in proportion as the primitive tribes became 
 more civilized in all the arts of life. If the nomad progenitors 
 
 " Corr. 1761. CEuvres, Ixvii. p. 186. 
 
RELIGION. 191 
 
 of the Greeks had only one god, how was it that, as knowledge, 
 social feeling, love of beauty, and all the other ennobling parts 
 of man became more fully developed, the power of superstition 
 waxed greater, and temples and images were multiplied ? 
 
 Again, the theologist might, consistently with his deliberate 
 principle of resort to the miraculous, contend that this first 
 conception of a single supreme power, in the fact of the exist- 
 ence of which he is entirely at one with Voltaire, was directly 
 implanted by a supernatural force. But Voltaire, debarred 
 from such an explanation as this, was driven silently to assume 
 and imply the truly incredible position that the rudest savages, 
 being what we know them, urgently occupied in the struggle for 
 means of subsistence, leading lives purely animal, possessed of 
 no vocabulary for any abstract idea, should yet by one leap 
 of natural logic have risen to one of the very highest pinnacles 
 of speculation, and both felt and expressed the idea of cause in 
 the most general and comprehensive of all its forms. Surely 
 this assumption, measured by any of those standards of expe- 
 rience or probability to which he professed to appeal, was as 
 much of a miracle as those which he so decisively repudiated. 
 
 In one of his letters Voltaire declared that Locke was the 
 only reasonable metaphysician that he knew, and that next to 
 him he placed Hume.*" Did he ever read, we may wonder, 
 that masterly essay on the Natural History of Religion, where 
 Hume not only combats with his usual vigour and effectiveness 
 the idea of the belief in one omniscient, omnipotent, and 
 omnipresent spirit being the primary religion of men, and shows 
 that polytheism precedes monotheism, but also traces the origin 
 of all religion to its rudiment, in that 'universal tendency 
 among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to 
 transfer to every object those qualities with which they are 
 familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately con- 
 scious.'^" The greater the knowledge we acquire of the 
 spiritual rudiments of primitive people, the more certainly is it 
 
 '° Corr. 1758. CEuvres, Ixvi. p. 200. 
 *" Nat. Hist, of Religion, sect. iii. 
 
192 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 established that the idea of theism as the earliest and most 
 elementary belief, which Voltaire had picked up from Boling- 
 broke and Pope, is untenable, and that Hume has been more 
 and more fully warranted in saying that the only "point of 
 theology on which the consent of mankind is nearly universal 
 is that ' there is an invisible, intelligent power in the world, but 
 whether this power be supreme or subordinate, whether confined 
 to one being or distributed among several, what attributes, 
 qualities, connections, or principles of action, ought to be 
 ascribed to these beings, concerning all these points there is 
 the widest difference in the popular systems of theology.' *^ 
 This might be placing natural theology very low, but Hume at 
 any rate placed it where he did and described it as he did, 
 because he had knowledge enough of the condition of various 
 nations in various parts of their history, and was sufficiently 
 penetrated with a cautious and scientific spirit, to abstain from 
 the unsupported and purely metaphysical conjectures of men 
 like Voltaire and Rousseau. Well might the keen-eyed De 
 Maistre describe him from the Catholic point of view as the 
 most dangerous and the guiltiest of all those pestilent -ivriters, — 
 the one who employed most talent with most coolness to do 
 most mischief.^ 
 
 If Voltaire had studied Hume, moreover, he might have 
 learnt how futile and inappropriate it is in the long run to 
 examine a religion otherwise than in its most fundamental and 
 comprehensive general ideas, and how narrow and superficial 
 would every philosophic appreciation ultimately find what he 
 called refutation by facts. For his own immediate purpose, 
 which was to cover the church and its creed with ridicule, the 
 method of collecting all the ludicrous, immoral, and inconsis- 
 tent circumstances in the Scriptures and their current interpreta- 
 tion, was, as we have already said, a weapon potent enough. 
 Voltaire, however, not only did not use, he never understood 
 nor perceived, the fact that a religion rests for its final base on 
 a certain small number of ideas, or that it is only by touching 
 
 " lb. seel. iv. " Soirics de St. Pkersiourg, vi. p. 403. 
 
RELIGION. 
 
 193 
 
 these, by loosening the firmness of their hold, by revealing their 
 want of coherency and consistency with other accepted ideas, 
 that we can expect to shake the superstructure. For example, 
 if only the official exponents of religion had not been so firmly 
 bent on making the feeblest of all their ramparts into their very 
 citadel, it would have been a very small thing to urge the truly 
 singular quality of such miracles as those of the water made 
 wine at Cana, of the cursing of the barren fig-tree, of the unfor- 
 tunate swine who rushed violently down a steep place and 
 were choked. These were legends that from the right point of 
 view of religion were not worth defending, any more than from 
 the right point of view of truth they were worth attacking. 
 The details of the use of a supernaturally conferred power may 
 best be let alone, until the probability of the existence and 
 bestowal of such power has been discussed and decided. The 
 important issue and matter of vital concern turned upon the 
 general idea of the miraculous ; yet this was what Voltaire, 
 perhaps from an instinctive Consciousness of the little capacity 
 he possessed for genuine speculation, postponed to the really 
 secondary purpose of disparaging particular cases of miraculous 
 performance. 
 
 We are now touching what, before Hume, was the central 
 defect of the eighteenth-century attack, judged philosophically 
 rather than practically. The movement was a reaction against 
 a certain set of ideas which had been incorporated in the 
 Christian system, as that system was elaborated by the oriental 
 sophisters. Yet the exact conflict between the old ideas and 
 the new was never conceived, much less was it expressed, in 
 clear comprehensive formulas. Consequently the most general 
 terms for the debate were neither sought nor found, and hence 
 the oppressive narrowness, the stifling want of free air, through- 
 out the controversy. The truth or falsehood which it is good 
 for us to discover in connection with a religion resides not in 
 detail, but in the largest general ideas of the subject. These 
 draw all else along with them. Let us take an illustration from 
 a characteristic of the antichristian attack which has already 
 
 
 
194 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 been mentioned. The Voltairean school, as we have before 
 observed,*' habitually derided the sacred importance attached 
 by the church in all ages, from Saint Paul downwards, to the 
 practice of continence. But there is no sign, so far as the 
 present writer's knowledge goes, that they ever were near per- 
 ceiving the origin of that superstition lying deep down for so 
 many centuries in the human mind. The sanctity of conti- 
 nence was only one product of the old far-spreading conviction 
 of all the evil and unholiness essentially inherent in matter. 
 This conviction, which has itself a history and genesis well 
 worth tracing, probably accounts for more of the peculiar 
 manifestations contained in Christianity than any one principle 
 of belief besides. From this metaphysical idea sprang the 
 whole theory of asceticism ; it had much to do indirectly with 
 the first establishment of the doctrine of the divinity of Christ ; 
 it entered into the triumph of indispensable grace.** The 
 speculative origin of practices and sentiments which the heads 
 of the western church valued, modified, and sagaciously used 
 for ecclesiastical or political reasons, ought never to be lost 
 sight of, because their duration has depended on the circum- 
 stance of the original speculative idea remaining deeply sunk, 
 though not often put into articulate form, in the minds of the 
 faithful, and of all others whom these practices and sentiments 
 have influenced. One key to the central movement of the 
 eighteenth century is the dispersion of this association of evil 
 and corruption from matter. There was energetic and trium- 
 phant progress in the discovery of the laws of matter, in their 
 most stupendous, overwhelming, and majestic order. There 
 was a steady tendency to resolve mental manifestations into 
 functions of matter. There was a general inclination to forget 
 those depressing facts connected with the decay and dissolution 
 of matter, which, in the dismal times when the church was 
 founded, had been thrust into a prominence so humiliating to 
 human dignity. The general movement was carried too far by 
 
 *' Ante, ch. iii. 
 
 ■" See Milman's Hist, of Latin Christianity, bk. ii. chap. ii. and iii. 
 
RELIGION. 
 
 195 
 
 extreme spirits, but on the whole it was a salutary and much- 
 needed protest against the limitation of knowledge within airy 
 cloudlands where no true knowledge was to be reached, and 
 of emotion within transcendental aspirations where the deep 
 reality of human relations faded into dim distance. 
 
 It is only when controversy is conducted with reference to 
 ground ideas of this kind, that the parties to it can be sure of 
 being on the same plane, and, if they are not on the same 
 plane, one of the least mischiefs is that their arguments fly over 
 one another's heads. Voltaire failed, partly from want of historic 
 knowledge, partly from insufficient depth of nature, to see what 
 these ground ideas were, against which he was fighting. Thus, 
 to take another instance, he failed to see that the beUef in the 
 exertion of supernatural power even on occasions which struck 
 him as so frivolous, and in a manner undoubtedly incompatible 
 with justice, was merely an incidental result of a profoundly 
 rooted idea of the closeness, constancy, and mixed holiness and 
 majesty, of the relations between man and. an awful being other 
 than man, endowed with powers denied to us, and animated by 
 motives inscrutable to us. He chose, if we are not wrong in 
 using a term that may imply much conscious deliberation, to 
 identify his own conception of deity with the conception of 
 deity in the first four centuries of the Christian era, simply 
 because the object of each was called by a common name. He 
 found that the actions attributed to the Supreme Being whom 
 the churrJi revered, were unworthy of a personage endowed 
 with the qualities which he ascribed to a supreme power, in his 
 own version of that culminating conception. He was thus 
 never on the same plane of thought or argument, but he never 
 was near finding this out. VThe God whom he conceived was 
 incapable, from the very nature attributed to him by his wor- 
 shippers, of the various transactions, lofty and mean, sublime 
 and puerile, described in the documents on which Catholicism 
 relied, and the tradition by which it corroborated and inter- 
 preted them. The ground idea of the belief in the miraculous 
 was an extremely anthropomorphic notion' of a divinity, pes- 
 
196 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 sessed of complete power, but using it in obedience to motives 
 which finite understandings cannot pretend to fathom or 
 measure. Such a notion was the natural growth of the human 
 mind, amid such a set of circumstances as attended the develop- 
 ment and establishment of Christianity. Men sat in darkness, 
 forlorn and without hope, and it is not hard for us to imagine 
 the exultation with which some greater spirit would produce, 
 and all others would embrace, the idea of this misery and dark- 
 ness being no more than an outer accident, the mysterious and 
 incomprehensible dispensation of a divine being, ever alive to 
 the destinies of men, but holding them in the hollow of an 
 unseen hand, and guiding them in ways that are not as our 
 ways ; ever remote from corporeal vision, but operating at a 
 multitude of points on the spirit of each man through grace, 
 and finally, by a consummating miracle repeated daily some 
 thousands of times, severing this spirit from the probation of 
 flesh, and prolonging its existence independently of the body 
 through all eternity in modes of being, none the less real for 
 being impossible to conceive. To Voltaire this was unspeakable 
 foolishness. The prodigies of grace, of the resurrection of the 
 body, of the incarnation of divinity, were inconsistent with the 
 qualities which he imputed to the creator of the universe, and 
 hence he contented himself with mocking at them ; the real 
 state of the case was simply that a number of influences had 
 drawn men aside from that conception of the creator, with 
 which such prodigies were not inconsistent, but were on the 
 contrary logically and inseparably associated. 
 
 This failure to rise to the highest ideas involved in the great > 
 debate explains, along with, much besides, two striking facts 
 connected with it. It explains the intense acerbity of the 
 conflict, and the flaming depth of tlie chasm which divided and 
 divides the two camps in France. For the best natures are 
 most violently irritated and outraged by mocking and satiric 
 attack upon the minor details, the accidents, the outside of the 
 objects of faith, when they would have been affected in a very 
 different way by a contrast between the loftiest parts of their 
 
RELIGION. 197 
 
 own belief and the loftiest parts of some other belief Many- 
 persons who would listen to a grave attack on the consistency, 
 reasonableness, and elevation of the currently ascribed attri- 
 butes of the godhead, with something of the respect due to the 
 profound solemnity of the subject, would turn \vith deaf and 
 implacable resentment upon one who should make merry over 
 the swine of Gadara. 
 
 /The same circumstance, secondly, explains the absence of 
 permanent quality about all that Voltaire wrote upon religion. 
 For instance, men who sympathize with him in his aims, and 
 even for their sake forgive him his method, who have long ago 
 struck the tents under which they once found shelter in the 
 lands of belief, to whom Catholicism has become as extinct 
 a thing as Mahometanism, even they will turn with better 
 chance of edification to the great masters and teachers of the 
 old faith, than to the fiery precursor of the new. And why, if 
 not for the reason that while he dealt mainly with the lower 
 religious ideas, or with the higher ideas in their lowest forms, 
 they put these into the second place, and move with an inspir- 
 ing exultation amid the loftiest and most general conceptions 
 that fine imagination and a soaring reason could discover among 
 the spiritual treasures of their religion. They turned to the 
 diviner mind, and exercised themselves with the weightiest and 
 most universal circumstances of the destiny of mankind. This 
 is what makes their thought and eloquence of perpetual worth, 
 because the circumstances with which they deal are perpetually 
 present, and the elements of life and character to which they 
 appeal perpetually operative. The awful law of death, the 
 impenetrable secret of the first cause, the fierce play of passion 
 and universal distribution of pain, the momentariness of 
 guilt and eternity of remorse, the anguish of bereavement that 
 chokes and rends, the hopeless inner desolation which is the 
 unbroken lot of myriads of the forlorn of the earth, — these 
 ghostly things ever laying siege to the soul were known to 
 a Bossuet or a Pascal, and resolved by a series of ideas about 
 the unknowable power and the government of the world, which 
 
198 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 are no longer the mighty weapons of exorcism they 'Once were, 
 but they are at any rate of due magnitude and proportion, sub- 
 lime, solemn, never unworthy. We touch the hands of those 
 who have walked with the most high, and they tell us many 
 moving wonders ; we look on faces that have shone in rays 
 from the heaven of noble thoughts ; we hear solemn and melo- 
 dious words from men who received answers from oracles that 
 to us are very mute, but the memory of whose pov:er is still 
 upon us. Hence the work of these glowing mortals lives even 
 for those to whom their faith is dead, while the words that 
 Voltaire wrote on religion are lifeless as the Infamous which 
 they so meritoriously slew. As we have said, he never knew 
 the deeper things of Catholicism. This is what he wrote about 
 the immortal Dante : ' Everybody with a spark of good sense 
 ought to blush at that monstrous assemblage in hell of Dante 
 and Virgil, of Saint Peter and Madonna Beatrice. There are 
 to be found among us, in the eighteenth century, people who 
 force themselves to admire feats of imagination as stupidly 
 extravagant and as barbarous as this ; they have the brutality 
 to oppose them to the masterpieces of genius, wisdom, and 
 eloquence, that we have in our language. O -tempora, O 
 judicium!'^ To which prodigy of criticism we can only 
 exclaim with the echo, tempora, O judicium I 
 
 III. 
 
 Let us see shortly what was Voltaire's own solution of those 
 facts of life with which religion has to deal. The Catholic 
 solution we know, and can definitely analyse and describe ; but 
 the v agueness of V oltairean deism defies any attempt at detailed 
 exaiiSimtion. ^ We~can perceive a siipernatu ral existence, en- 
 dowe d with indefinable attributes, which are fix gr"stfbT^utrvelv 
 m the_i ndividual consciousness of each beliey err~ari?r whirli' 
 tE erefore can never be set forth in a sche me of general accept- 
 *' Covr. 1761. (Euvres, Ixvii. p, 74, 
 
MELIGION. 199 
 
 anc e. The Voltairean deist — and such persons exist in ample 
 numbers to this day — hardly ever takes the trouble to reconcile 
 with one another the various attributes which he imputes at 
 various times to some great master power of the universe. 
 There is scarcely one of these attributes to which, when it 
 comes to be definitely described, he does not encounter afTront- 
 ing contradiction in the real occurrences that arise from time 
 to time to search and try all our theories, deistical or other. 
 The phenorn ena "f Tnnral anH physical evil on the earth, and 
 jhe_ arrival of disasters wh ich rnaVp nn discriminati on between 
 their victims , are constantlv dealing sore blows to the concep- 
 ti ons which the deist loves to erect in moments of optimistic 
 ejt pansion, of the clemency , justic e, and illimita ble power of 
 a being who governs the universe, and is a something 
 outside-_ and independent of it. These optimist conceptions, 
 va gue, unve rified, free of definite relations with any moral or 
 s ocial_system,^ and furnishing no principle of active human 
 association as the Catholic idea of deity had done, consti- 
 tnte the favourite religion or religiosity of those classes in all 
 rqriijpi-n rnnntriVf;^ whic h have found the Voltairean kind of 
 obiect jon to the Christia n rpvplai-i'nn ingnpp rable. and which are 
 s o fortunate as to enjoy a full measure of material prosperity . 
 To these classes the black side of life is strange and a matter of 
 hearsay ; and hence the awkwardness of reconciling their com- 
 placent theory with the horror of facts is never forced upon 
 them. In their own happiness they love to superadd the 
 luxury of thankfulness to the bounty of a being to whom they 
 owe all, and to swell the tide of their own emotions by medita- 
 tion on his infinite and unspeakable perfections. Proof they 
 require none, beyond the loveliness and variety of external 
 nature, the innocence and delight of all young creatures, the 
 order of the seasons bearing us their copious fruit, the vivid 
 intelligence and serviceable power of man, who is the divinely 
 appointed recipient of all these multitudinous favours. Hence 
 in proportion as this sort of deism stirs the soul of a man, the 
 more closely are his inmost thoughts reserved for contempla- 
 
200 VOLTAIRE 
 
 tion of the relations between the Supreme Being and his own 
 individuality, l ^t is a creed whic h is specially ada pted for, and 
 has been^ g-enerally seized "^y^ thnsp with who m the world h as 
 
 gone very well, owing to their own laiidahle exertion, and who 
 
 9". 
 
 are inclined to believe that the existing ordering of society 
 is fu ndamentally the best possible. It is the superlative deco - 
 rati on of optimis m. 
 
 , The mass of men, those who dwell in dens and whose lives 
 are bitter, have never, in spite even of Rousseau's teaching, 
 accepted deism. An opportunity for trying the experiment had 
 occurred in the fourth century, and the lesson should not be 
 forgotten. Deism had been the prevailing opinion in religion, 
 but, as the most instructive of all the historians of the dissolu- 
 tion of the Empire observes, it was generally felt that deism did 
 not supply the void occasioned by the absence of the multitude 
 of sympathetic divinities of the pagan system. Its influence 
 was cold and inanimate.*" The common people are wont to 
 crave a revelation, or else they find atheism a rather better 
 synthesis than any other. They either cling to the miraculously 
 transmitted message with its hopes of recompense, and its 
 daily communication of the divine voice in prayer or sacrament, 
 or else they make a world which moves through space as a 
 black monstrous ship with no steersman. The bare deistic 
 ^idf\ij_rif j} bn'ng en d nwrd fit n n rc wit h nn T r r rig n p mrrj nnd 
 s overeign clemency, with might that cannot be resisted and 
 '*' jus tice that cannot be impugned, who loves man with infinit p 
 ten derness, yet sends him no word of comfort and gives h j m rio 
 way of deliverance, is too hard a thing for those who have to 
 
 endure the hardships_ oLJ]ie brutes, but yet preserv 
 g ence o f men. 
 
 Comment concevoir un Dieu, la bonti meme. 
 Qui prodigua ses biens a ses enfans qu'il aime, 
 Et qui versa sur eux les maux k pleines mains ? 
 Quel oeil peut penetrer dans ses prafonds desseins ? 
 De I'etre tout parfait le mal ne pouvait naltre ! 
 
 Finlay's Greece under the Romans (B.C. 146-A.D. 716), pp. 146- y. 
 
RELIGION. 201 
 
 II ne vient point d'autrui puisque Dieu seul est maltre : 
 
 II existe pourtant. O tristes vdrites ! 
 
 O melange etonnant de contrarietes ! 
 
 Un Dieu vint consoler notre race afflig^e ; 
 
 II visita la terre et ne I'a point changee ! 
 
 Un sophiste arrogant nous dit qu'il ne I'a pu ; 
 
 II le pouvait, dit I'autre, et ne I'a point voulu ; 
 
 II le voudra, sans doute ; et tandis qu'on raisOnne, 
 
 Des foudres souterraines engloutissent Lisbonne, 
 
 Et de trente cites dispersent les debris, 
 
 Des bords sanglans du Tage a la mer de Cadix.^' 
 
 A bald deism has undoubtedly been the creed of some of 
 the purest and most generous men that have ever trod the 
 earth, but none the less on that account is it in its essence a 
 doctrine of self-complacent individualism from which society 
 has little to hope, and with which there is little chance of the 
 bulk of society ever sympathizing. In truth, one can scarcely 
 call it a creed. It is mainly a name for a particular mood of 
 fine spiritual exaltation ; the expression of a state of indefinite 
 aspiration and supreme feeling for lofty things. Are you going 
 to convert the new barbarians of our western world with this 
 fair word of emptiness? Will you sweeten the lives of suffering 
 men, and take its heaviness from that droning piteous chronicle 
 of wrong and cruelty and despair, whith everlastingly saddens 
 the compassionating ear like moaning of a midnight sea ; will 
 you animate the stout of heart with new fire, and the firm of 
 hand with fresh joy of battle, by the thought of a being without 
 intelligible attributes, a mere abstract creation of metaphysic, 
 whose mercy is not as our mercy, nor his justice as our justice, 
 nor his fatherhood as the fatherhood of men ? It was not by a 
 cold, a cheerless, a radically depraving conception such as this, 
 that the church became the refuge of humanity in the dark 
 times of old, but by the representation, to men sitting in bond- 
 age and confusion, of godlike natures moving among them 
 under figure of the most eternally touching of human relations, 
 a tender mother ever interceding for them, and an elder brother 
 laying down his life that their burdens might be loosened. 
 
 *' Poerae sur le Desastre de Lisbonne. CEuvres, xv. p. 53. 
 
202 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 We have spoken of Voltairean deism, and the expression is 
 a convenient one to distinguish from the various forms of 
 mystic theology, which gloomily disclaim any pretence to , be 
 rational, the halting-place of spirits too deeply penetrated with 
 the rationalistic objections of Voltaire to accept revelation, and 
 either too timorous or too confident to acquiesce in a neutral 
 solution. It is unjust, however, to attribute to Voltaire himse lf 
 a perfect adherence to the d eistical idea. For the first half of 
 his life there is no doubt that it floated in his mind, as in so 
 rnanv _otliers. in 3 ranHnm manner, as the true expla nation of" 
 ^thewojid. — His int-roHiirtinn t n the teaching of Newton would 
 give a firme r shape to such a belief He has indeed told us 
 that it was so. He mentions that in the course of several inter- 
 views he had with Doctor Samuel Clarke in 1726, this philo- 
 sopher never pronounced the name of God without a curious 
 air of awe and self collection, and he commemorates the impres- 
 sion which the sight of this habit, and reflection upon its 
 significance, made upon him.*^ Still it was not a very active or 
 vital element of belief with him even then, but rather of the 
 nature of the sublimest of poetic figures. 
 
 Oui, dans le sein de Dieu, loin de ce corps mortel, 
 L'esprit semble ecouter la voix de I'Etemel.'" 
 
 Clearly this kind of expression means very little, and has no 
 source in the deeper seats of the writer's feeling. A consider - 
 able number of Voltaire's deistical ejaculations, and on thes e 
 occasiansJ ie threw into them a measure of real jjnctinn, may 
 be fairly traced t o the extraordinary polemical utility of an idea 
 oT^potless purity, entire justice, inexhaustible mercy, as an 
 en gine o f battle against men who in the sacred name of th is 
 idea were the great practi tioners of mtolerance and wron g. 
 
 Ignorer ton etre supreme, 
 
 Grand Dieu ! c'est un moindre blaspheme, 
 
 Et moins digue de ton courroux 
 
 *' Phil, de Newton. CEuv. xli. p. 46. See also the whole chapter. 
 " A Mdme. du Chatelet sur la Philosophie de Newton (1738). (Euv. 
 xviL p. 113. 
 
RELIGION. 203 
 
 Que de te croire impitoyable, 
 
 De nos malheurs insatiable, 
 
 Jaloux, injuste comme nous. 
 
 Lorsqu'un devot atrabilaire 
 
 Nourri de superstition, 
 
 A par cette affreuse chimere, 
 
 Corrompu sa religion, 
 
 Le voila stupide et farouche t 
 
 Le fiel decoule de sa bouche, 
 
 Le fanatisme arme son bras : 
 
 Et dans sa piete profonde 
 
 Sa rage immolerait le nionde 
 
 A son Dieu, qu'il ne conualt pas.*° 
 
 To have a conception of perfect goodness was a manifest con- 
 venience in confronting men who were to be proved masters of 
 badness. B ut when the pressure of circumstance forced Vo l- 
 taire t o seek in earnest for an explanation of the world, which 
 " he hadformerly be en content to take in an easy way upon 
 trus tj__tli£a_t he deism, which had been barely more than 
 nominal at best, was transformed into a ve ry different and far 
 sincerer mo od. It would obviousl y be a gross blunder from a 
 logical point to confou nd optimism with deism, but it is cle ar 
 that what shoo k Voltaire's conviction of the existence of ^ deity 
 was the awakening in him of a keener sense of the calamitie s 
 that afflict the race of man. Personal misfortunes perhaps had 
 their share. It was after the loss of Madame du Chatelet, and 
 after the rude dispersion of his illusions, as to Frederick, when 
 he barely knew whither to turn for shelter or a home, that ^the 
 o ptimism which he had learnt in England began to lose its hold\ 
 upon him. We must do him the justice to add that he was yet \ 
 more sensible of disasters which affected others. The horrid 1 
 tide of war which devastated Europe and America, the yet more 
 hateful tide of persecution for opinion which swept over France, 
 and the cruel maladministration of justice which disgraced her 
 tribunals, stirred all that was best in him to the very depths. 
 The only non-dramatic poem of his which has strength, 
 sincerity, and profundity of meaning enough firmly to arrest 
 
 "> Ode sur le Fanatisme. (Euvres, xvi. p. 331, 
 
k'.X 
 
 . .u^ VOLTAIRE. 
 
 the reader's attention, and stimulate both thought and feeling, 
 is that fine and powerful piece which he wrote on the occasion 
 of the great earthquake of Lisbon.^'- Here he threw into 
 energetic and passionately argumentative verse the same protest 
 against the theory that whatever is is best, which he afterw ards 
 urged in a very different form in the 'refine d insolence' of 
 T^n^Ap^'^ He approaches more nearly than a quarter oTa 
 century before he would have thought possible, to the deep 
 gloom of the Pascal against whose terrible pictures he had then 
 so warmly protested. He sees mankind imprisoned in a circl e 
 of a ppalling doom, from w hich there is no way of escape. Un- 
 ffipJPaj;ra1, \£__cnr\ finrl no solution , and he jjeiiounces that^ 
 rriQcker y of— ar po lution whi'-h rnVs th at a ll is well i n accents 
 '^'"'"if^j!d."^'''^ ^'^''"f^fii'tig^.. ^^- P''"tests against the dc lnsinn nf 
 forc ing the course of the world's destiny into a mora l formula, 
 tha t shall contain the terms of justice and mercy in the ir human 
 sense. 
 
 Aux cris demi-formes de leurs voix expirantes, 
 
 Au spectacle effrayant de leurs cendres fumantes, 
 
 Direz-vous : C'est I'effet des eternelles lois, 
 
 Qui d'un Dieu libre et bon necessitent le choix ? 
 
 Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes : 
 
 Dieu s'est venge, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes ? 
 
 Quelle crime, quelle faute out commis ces enfans 
 
 Sur le sein maternel ^erases et sanglans ? 
 
 Lisbonne, qui n'est plus, eut-elle plus de vices 
 
 Que Londres, que Paris, plonges dans les delices ? 
 
 Lisbonne est abimee, €t I'ou danse a Paris. 
 
 He equally refuses, though not in terms, to comfort himself 
 by the reflection that, in default of a better, the current ragged 
 theory of the providential government of the universe, because 
 it may be possible, must be true. He c an find no answer, and 
 cqnfesses-Jiisbelief that no answer is to be fomu Lby human 
 fort. Wh atever~sige"Tye-takg; we~"canonlv shudder; there 
 is nothing that we know, nothing tliat we have not to fear. 
 
 *' CEuvres, xv. pp. 39-62. 
 
 ^'' Aristotle's definition of firpaireMa, or wit, as S$pis TreiraiSeu/ieyij marks 
 one of Voltaire's chief talents with entire accuracy. 
 
RELIGION. 205 
 
 Nature is mute, and we interrogate her in vain ; the book of 
 destiny is dosed to our eyes. 
 
 L'homme, etranger a soi, de ITiomme est ignore. 
 Que suis-je? ou suis-je? 011 vais-je? et d'oii suis-je tire? 
 Atomes tourmentes sur cet amas de boue, 
 Que la mort engloutit, et dont le sort se joue, 
 Mais atomes pensans, atomes dont les yeiix, 
 Guides par la pens^e, ont mesure les cieux, 
 Au sein de I'infini nous elan9ons notre etre, 
 Sans pouvoir un moment nous voir et nous connaltre. 
 * =F * * * 
 
 Le passe n'est pour nous qu'un triste souvenir ; 
 Le present est affreux, s'il n'est point d'avenir, 
 Si la nuit du tombeau detruit I'etre qui pense. 
 
 He abandons Plato and rejects Epicurus. Bayle knows more 
 than they, as, with the balance in his hand, he teaches men to 
 doubt ; wise enough, great enough, to be without a system. 
 
 In a note he adds to this glorification of Bayle, whom he 
 styles the advocate-general of the philosophers — the thinker 
 in whose pages all opinions are set forth, all the reasons which 
 shake them and all which uphold are equally investigated, 
 while he abstains from giving any conclusions."' Elsewhere he 
 explains that when he describes reason as having made immense 
 progress in Germany, he does not refer to those who openly 
 embrace the system of Spinoza ; but the good folk who have 
 no filxed principles on the nature of things, who do not know 
 what is, but know very well what is not, these are my true 
 philosophers.''* 
 
 It would not be difficult to find a score of passages in which 
 the writer assumes or declares certainty on this high matter to 
 be attainable, and to be entirely in one direction. His opinions 
 undoubtedly shifted with the veering of his moods, but on the 
 whole these axioms of suspense mark the central point to which 
 they constantly tended to return, and at which they rested 
 longest. That dark word. Shut thine eyes and thou shalt see, 
 opened no road for him. The saying that the Most High may 
 
 •' CEuvrcs, XV. p. 58. " Corr. 1765. CEuvres, Ixxv. p. 311. 
 
2o6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 be easily known, provided one does not press for definition, 
 offered no treasure of spiritual acquisition to the man who 
 never let go, even if he did not always accurately appreciate, 
 Locke's injunction to us to be careful to define our terms. 
 We cannot label "Voltaire either spiritualist or materialist. The 
 success with which he evades these two appellations is one of 
 the best available tests of a man's capacity for approaching the 
 great problems with that care and positive judgment, which 
 are quite as proper to them as to practical affairs or to physical 
 science. 
 
 Thus with reference to the other great open question, he 
 habitually insisted that the immortality of the soul can never 
 possibly be demonstrated, and that this is why it has been 
 revealed to us by religion,^^ which is perhaps Voltaire's way 
 of saying that it is no near concern of his. Sometimes he 
 argued from considerations of general probability. The brutes 
 feel and think up to a certain point, and men have only the 
 advantage over them of a greater combination of ideas ; the 
 more or less makes no difference in kind. 'Well, nobody 
 thinks of giving ah immortal soul to a flea ; why should you 
 give one any the more to an elephant, or a monkey, or my 
 Champagne valet, or a village steward who has a trifle more 
 instinct than my valet ? ' ^ Again, he retorted significantly on 
 those who contended with a vehemence of prejudice known 
 in some places even to this day, that belief in the immortality 
 of the soul is an indispensable condition of probity : as if the 
 first Jews accepted that dogma, and as if there were no honest 
 men among them, and no instruction in virtue.^' 
 
 In fine, then, we search Voltaire in vain for a positive creed, 
 which logic may hold in coherent bonds, or social philosophy 
 accept as a rehgious force. The old word about his faith must 
 be pronounced true. It remains a creed of negation. But 
 
 " Lettres Ang. xiv. CEiivres, xxxv. p. io8. 
 
 '° Corr. 1736. CEuvres, Ixiii. p. 31. 
 
 " Diet. Phil. S.V. Locke. CEuvres, Ivi. p. 338. 
 
RELIGION. 207 
 
 still, be it always understood, negation of darkness. And this 
 inevitably leads in the direction of the day. It was an indis- 
 pensable step in the process of transition. Men, it is constantly 
 being said since the violent breaking-up of French society, will 
 never consent to live on no better base than articles of denial 
 and formulas of suspense, for are not the deepest parts of 
 human character moved by strong yearning for relationship 
 with the unknowable? It may be so, and if it be, the Vol- 
 tairean movement was the great instrument in leading, not 
 merely a scanty group of speculative intellects, but vast bodies, 
 large nations, of common folk to perceive, or dimly to con- 
 jecture, that this object of adoration which their eyes strain 
 after is unknowable, and that there is no attainable external 
 correlative of their deep desire. Voltaire never went so far in 
 the direction of assertion as Rousseau, and he never went so far 
 in the direction of denial as Holbach. And, whatever we may 
 say generally of the horror of the world for the spirit that 
 denies, all that was best and most truly progressive in French 
 society during the eighteenth century, Turgot and Condorcet 
 no less' than Beaumarchais, showed itself content to follow him 
 in this middle path. His appreciation of religion was wanting 
 in a hundred vital things, just as some may say that Luther's 
 was, but it contained the one idea which the deepest spirit of 
 the time prompted men to desire, the decisive repudiation 
 of the religious notions of the past. We must call this negative, 
 no doubt, but no word should frighten us away from seeing 
 how much positive aspiration lay underneath. When men are 
 in the mood of France a century and a quarter since, when 
 all that an old civilization has bestowed on them of what is 
 best and strongest, rises up against all that the same civiliza- 
 tion has bequeathed to them of what is pestilent and dangerous, 
 they are never nice critics. They do not decline a reinvigor- 
 ating article of faith, because it is not a system, nor do they 
 measure a deliverer by syllogism. The smallest chink may 
 shine like light of the sun to prisoners long held io black 
 and cavernous recesses. 
 
208 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 When Bayle's Dictionary came out, we read, so great was 
 the avidity to have sight of it, that long before the doors of 
 the Mazarin library were open, a little crowd assembled in the 
 early morning of each day, and there was as great a struggle for 
 the first access to the precious book, as for the front row at 
 the performance of a piece for which there is a rage.^ This 
 was the beginning of an immense impulse of curiosity, eager 
 to fill the vacuum occasioned by the slow subsidence of the old 
 religion, which had once covered not only faith, but science, 
 history, dialectic, and philosophy, all in a single synthesis. It 
 was this impulse which Voltaire both represented and accele- 
 rated. In these periods of agitation, men forgive all to one 
 who represents without compromise or diminution their own 
 dominant passions. Vehemence of character counts for more 
 than completeness of doctrine, and they crave a battle-cry, 
 not a dissertation. They need to have their own sentiment 
 aggressively presented, and their own defects of boldness or 
 courage at once rebuked and supplemented by a leader whose 
 purpose can never be mistaken, and whose words are never 
 nipped by the frost of intellectual misgiving. All through the 
 century there was slowly growing up an inner France, full of 
 angry disgust against the past Its germ was the crowd eager 
 to read Bayle. Its outcome was the night of the Fourth of 
 August 1789, when the civil order of society was overthrown 
 between a sunset and a dawn. Voltaire, as we have seen, 
 studiously abstained from any public word upon things political, 
 but it was he who in the long interval between these two events 
 held men by a watchword to which the political decay of the 
 country gave such meaning, that of hatred to the old. And 
 there was no such steadfast symbol of the old as the church, to 
 him and his school a lurid beacon on a monster-haunted shore. 
 
 Voltaire's selection of the church as the object of his attacks 
 marks an important difference between him and the other great 
 revolutionary precursor. Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar was per- 
 fectly willing to accept the cultus of Christianity, even when he 
 " Holberg, quoted in Sainte-Beuve's Nouv^aux Lundis, ix. 26, 
 
RELIGION. 2on 
 
 J ^^' 
 had ceased to accept its dogma,'' He regarded all particular 
 
 religions as so many salutary institutions, all good so long as 
 they were the organs for a due service of God. He actually 
 celebrated mass with more veneration after the acquisition of 
 his new principles, than he had been accustomed to do when 
 he supposed that the mass was an occasion of personal divine 
 presence. This kind of teaching was clearly to perpetuate and 
 transfix for ever the form of religion which each country, or any 
 given set of men in it, might possess. It was to stereotype 
 beUef, as it is stereotyped among the millions in the East. 
 Whence was reform to come, whence any ray of new light, 
 whence a principle of growth and activity for the intelligence of 
 men ? How on these terms is truth to win the battle at a single 
 point? This was the beginning of a fatal substitution of bland 
 emotional complacency for robust cultivation of the reason, and 
 firm reverence for its lessons as the highest that we can learn. 
 Voltaire no doubt did in practice many a time come to terms 
 with his adversary while he was yet on the way with him ; but, 
 disagreeable as these temporizings are to us who live in an 
 easier day, they never deceived any one, nor could they ever 
 be mistaken for the establishment of intellectual treason as a 
 principle, or of philosophic indifference as a climax. As has 
 been said, though he writes in the midst of the old rdgime, in 
 the face of the Bastille, and with the fetters of the enemy in 
 some sort actually upon him, he still finds a thousand means of 
 reaching you.^" He is always the representative of reason, and 
 never of sentimentalism. He was not above superficial com- 
 promises in matters of conduct, and these it is hard or impos- 
 sible to condone ; but at any rate he is free from the deeper 
 and more penetrating reproach of erecting hypocrisy into a 
 deliberate doctrine. 
 
 We do not know how far he ever seriously approached the 
 
 question, so much debated since the overthrow of the old order 
 
 in France, whether a society can exist without a religion ? He 
 
 says in one place that to believe God and spirits corporeal is 
 
 '' Qulnet's La Revolution, i. l68, 
 
 P 
 
2IO VOLTAIRE. 
 
 an old metaphysical error, but absolutely not to believe in any 
 god would be an error incompatible with wise government But 
 even this much was said for the sake of introducing a taunt 
 against the orthodox, .who by a strange contradiction had risen 
 up with fury against Bayle for believing it possible that a society 
 of atheists could hold together, while they insisted with just as 
 much violence that the empire of China was established on a 
 basis of atheism/" His natural sagacity would most likely have 
 shown him that this is one of the sterile problems, with which 
 the obstructive defender of things as they are tries to draw the 
 soldier of improvement away from his strongest posts. Whether 
 a society can exist without religion or not, at least its existence 
 as a structure for whose duration we can be anxious, must 
 depend on the number of men in it who deal honestly with 
 their own understandings. And, further, is no man to be 
 counted to have a religion who, like Voltaire, left great ques- 
 tions open, and put them aside, as all questions, that must from 
 the limitations of human faculty eterijally remain open, well 
 deserve to be put aside ? Must we ever call an unknown God 
 by one name ? Are there so few tasks for one on earth, that he 
 must strain all his soul to fix the regimen of high heaven ? 
 
 Voltaire, there is every reason to think, did in an informal 
 kind of way suppose in the bottom of his heart that there is 
 nothing in human nature to hinder a very advanced society 
 from holding perfectly well together, with all its opinions in a 
 constant state of analysis. Whatever we may think of it, this 
 dream of what is possible, if the activity of human intelligence 
 were only sufficiently stimulated and the conditions of social 
 union were once so adjusted as to give it fair play, unquestion- 
 ably lies at the root of the revolutionary ideas with all those 
 who were first stirred by Voltaire rather than by Rousseau. 
 Condorcet, for instance, manifestly depends with the firmest 
 confidence upon that possibility being realized. It is the idea 
 of every literary revolutionist, as distinguished from the social 
 
 '" Essai sur les Mceurs, o. ii. CEuvres, xx. p. 344. See also c clxxxii. 
 CEuv. xxiv. p. 162. 
 
RELIGION. 211 
 
 or economic revolutionist, in France at the present day. The 
 knowledge that this was the case, added to the sound convic- 
 tion that men can never live by analysis alone, gave its fire to 
 De Maistre's powerful attack, and its immense force to Burke's 
 plea for what he called prejudice. But the indispensable 
 synthesis need never be immovably fixed, nor can it soon again 
 be one and single for our civilization ; for progress consists in. 
 gradual modifications of it, as increase of knowledge and unfore- 
 seen changes in the current of human affairs disclose imperfec- 
 tions in it, and wherever progress is a law the stages of men's 
 advance are unequal. Above all, it is monstrous to suppose 
 that because a man does not accept your synthesis, he is there- 
 fore a being without a positive creed or a coherent body of 
 belief capable of guiding and inspiring conduct. 
 
 There are new solutions for him, if the old are fallen dumb. 
 If he no longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of 
 God's justice, but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of 
 matter, the humility of his awe is deepened, and the tenderness 
 of his pity made holier, that creatures who can love so much 
 should have their days so shut round with a wall of darkness. 
 The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, not weaker, 
 when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in 
 thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the 
 inner spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for 
 its own guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees 
 of an unseen tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weaken- 
 ing and corrupting the future of his brothers. And he will be 
 less effectually raised from inmost prostration of soul by a 
 doubtful subjective reconciliation, so meanly comfortable to his 
 own individuality, than by hearing full in the ear the sound of 
 the cry of humanity craving sleepless succour from her children. 
 That swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which 
 the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, 
 may still remain ; for how shall the universe e /er cease to be a 
 sovereign wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman 
 fixedness of law ? And a man will be already in no mean 
 
212 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good hope can fall upon him 
 like harmonies of music, that the earth shall still be fair, and 
 the happiness of every feeling creature still receive a constant 
 augmentation, and each good cause yet find worthy defenders, 
 when the memory of his own poor name and personahty 
 has long been blotted out of the brief recollection of men 
 for ever. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 The activity of the foremost men of the eighteenth century in 
 the composition of history is too remarkable a circumstance, 
 not to deserve some attempt at explanation. There vi^ere 
 historians in previous ages, but in the eighteenth century there 
 was both in France, and afterwards in England, a special and 
 extraordinary development in this direction. Partially no 
 doubt this was due to the general movement of curiosity, the 
 wide-spread desire for all kinds of knowledge, which was in the 
 air. Men were emancipating themselves from the trammels of 
 an authority which had not widened the limits of inquiry in 
 the same proportion as human faculties had strengthened, and, 
 amid the universal expansion of intelligent interest and the 
 eager scrutiny of all the objects of knowledge which the new 
 dawn was baring to sight, it was not possible that the order of 
 political and social facts in former epochs should be neglected. 
 This, however, does not sufficiently explain why such a man as 
 Hume betook himself to the composition of history, or why 
 Gibbon found himself best able to attack Christianity by tracing 
 some of the most important parts of its annals, or why Voltaire, 
 who lived so entirely and intensely in the present, should have 
 thought it worth while to give so much labour to presentation 
 of the past. It is a striking fact, which must be something 
 more than an accident, that the best secular histories which 
 remain from this period, one of them the most striking monu- 
 
214 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 ment in historical literature, were written by the most marked 
 assailants of reigning superstition. 
 
 Was it not, indeed, to be expected that as the dark clouds 
 of an absorbing consciousness of the supernatural cleared away, 
 men of understanding would be more and more drawn towards 
 study of human action, and that the advance of society under 
 purely natural and positive conditions would immediately seize 
 a foremost place among the objects of experiential inquiry? 
 It is too constantly maintained by persons with something of a 
 vested interest in darkness, that those who do not worship the 
 gods are indifferent to the happiness of men. Yet the history 
 of intellectual progress would seem to show that it was not until 
 the commencement of a rapid decline in the acceptance of ter- 
 rorist and jealous deities and incomprehensible dogmas, that 
 serious attention was given to some of the subjects in which a 
 sound knowledge is among the most indispensable conditions 
 of the advancing welfare of men. For instance, as soon as the 
 hold of ancient versions of the supernatural was loosened over 
 the stronger spirits, by the middle of the century there instantly 
 took place an astonishing development of activity in the physical 
 sciences. The interest of historic and economic studies was, at 
 least as pressing. Becoming aware that men had made their 
 own world, thinkers found the consideration of the process by 
 which this world is made, and the order of society established 
 and developed, forced upon them with an entirely new signifi- 
 cance. The dry bones of the ancient valley of annalists and 
 chroniclers were made to live, and the great work of the recon- 
 struction of the past was begun, with an alertness and perse- 
 verance that has not been surpassed even in an age of far 
 purer and juster historical intelligence. It was quite reason- 
 able that the conviction of each act in the universe, from the 
 crash of an empire to the fall of a sparrow to the ground, being 
 due to an arbitrary and inscrutable decree, should prevent the 
 rise of history from the level of annals into the region of 
 philosophy. The decay of this theory of the goveriiment 
 of the universe was as reasonably the cause of a new 
 
HISTORY. 
 
 215 
 
 mode of looking at the long records of the race, and we find 
 ourselves moving in a day of historical masterpieces. 
 
 Voltaire has told us the circumstances under which he was 
 led to approach the philosophy of history. Madame du 
 Chatelet, whose mind would fain have reached every kind of 
 knowledge, but who was especially apt for metaphysics and 
 geometry, had conceived an aversion for history. ' What does 
 it matter to me,' she would ask, ' a Frenchwoman living on my 
 estate, to know that Egil succeeded Haquin in Sweden, and 
 that Ottoman was the son of Ortogrul? I have read with 
 pleasure the history of the Greeks and the Romans ; they 
 offered me Certain great pictures which attracted me. But I 
 have never yet been able to finish any long history of our 
 modem nations. I can see scarcely anything in them but con- 
 fusion; a host of minute events without connection or sequence, 
 a thousand battles which settled nothing. I renounced a study 
 which ovei-whelms the mind without illuminating it.' To this 
 frank statement of the case, to which so many thousands of 
 persons in all epochs would so heartily subscribe, Voltaire 
 replied by pointing out that perhaps' the study of history would 
 be no waste of time, if by cutting away all the details of wars, 
 as tedious as they are untrustworthy, all the frivolous negotia- 
 tions which have been nothing but pieces of purposeless 
 cheating, all the minute incidents which stifle great events, and 
 by retaining those which paint manners, you made of this chaos 
 a general and well-arranged picture ; in short, if you tried to 
 disengage from the concourse of events the history of the 
 human mind.^ Not all the faults of execution ought to blind 
 us to the merit of this notion of the true way of studying 
 history, or to the admirable clearness of vision with which 
 Voltaire, not only in this but in all his other historical pieces, 
 adhered to his own two leading principles ; first, that laws, arts, 
 manners, are the chief matter and concern of history; and 
 second, that ' details which lead to nothing are in hijtory what 
 baggage is to an army, impedimenta, for we must look at things 
 ' Essai sur les Mceurs, pp. i, 2. 
 
2i6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 in large, for the very reason that the human mind is small and 
 sinks under the weight of minutiae.' Minutiae ought to be col- 
 lected by annalists, or in some kind of dictionaries where one 
 might find them at need.^ In this last point Voltaire, as might 
 be expected, was more just than Bolingbroke, who had said 
 somewhat petulantly that ' he had rather take the Darius whom 
 Alexander conquered for the son of Hystaspes, and make 
 as many anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer, than sacrifice 
 half his life to collect all the learned lumber that fills the head 
 of an antiquary.' ' The antiquary's is a vocation like another, 
 and the highest kind of history can only flourish on condition 
 that the humbler ancillary kind flourishes also, and that there 
 are patient and scrupulous men to mark the difference between 
 Darius Codomannus and Darius the son of Hystaspes. 
 
 We may say that three kinds of men write history : the 
 gazetteer or annalist, the statesman, and the philosopher. The 
 annalist's business is to investigate and record events, and his 
 highest merits are clearness, accuracy, and simplicity. The 
 political historian seeks the superficial and immediate causes of 
 great transactions, and he serves us by mixed penetration and 
 soundness of judgment. The historical philosopher is con- 
 cerned only with groups of events, the changes and movements 
 that transform communities, and with the trains of conditions 
 that lead to such movements. The majority of historians, from 
 the illustrious Bacon down to the compiler of a manual, illus- 
 trate the first kind. Thucydides and Tacitus, among the 
 ancients, a Machiavelli or a Finlay, among modems, may illus- 
 trate the second kind. As Voltaire was sometimes gazetteer 
 and sometimes statesman, so Montesquieu took the statesman's 
 point of view in his reflections on the decline of Rome, and 
 that of the philosopher in the Spirit of Laws. It is the states- 
 man or man of the world, who, after recounting Caesar's failure 
 on one occasion to comply with the etiquette of the senate, 
 proceeds to make the following reflection, tliat ' we never oiTend 
 
 ' Essai sur les Moeurs, p. 9. 
 
 • On the Study of History, Letter i. ad finem. 
 
HISTORY. 217 
 
 men more, than when we shock their ceremonies and usages : 
 seek to oppress them, and that is sometimes a proof of the 
 importance you attach to them ; but shock their customs, and 
 that is always a mark of contempt.' * It is the philosopher, 
 feeling for the causes of things and their order, who being led 
 to inquire into the spirit or meaning of Laws, understands such 
 an inquiry to involve a comparative investigation of the relations 
 between laws and physical climate, the quality of ground, situa- 
 tion and extent of territory, the mode of life of the people, 
 agricultural, hunting, or pastoral ; between laws and the freedom 
 of the constitution, the religion, wealth, trade, moral ideas, and 
 manners, of the inhabitants ; above all, historically, between 
 laws and their origin and the order of things on which they 
 were first founded. 
 
 In a similar way we may divide Voltaire's historical pieces 
 into two main classes. Indeed, if we count the Annals of the 
 Empire, which he wrote to please the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, 
 he may rank also under the third remaining head among the 
 annalistic historians. This, however, is too unsatisfactory a 
 piece of work for us to care either to classify or to remember it. 
 The subject was not of his own selection, he knew compara- 
 tively little about it, his materials were extremely scanty and 
 imperfect, and he composed it at a time when his whole mind 
 was violently perturbed by his recent quarrel with Frederick, 
 and torn by anxiety where he should find a home in rest and 
 freedom. It was the only work he ever wrote, for which he per- 
 haps had no heart, and the least observant reader will notice 
 how vast a difference this made in the temper of its composi- 
 tion. Indeed, Voltaire was not born to be a simple chronicler: 
 The realistic and practical leanings of his intellect naturally 
 gave him a distaste for the collection of mere uninterpreted and 
 unapplied facts. His clear comprehensiveness, the product of 
 a vigorous imagination with strong sense, as naturally impelled 
 him to group circumstances, and to introduce the widest pos- 
 sible generality among them. He has one of the peculiar gifts 
 * Grandeur et Decadence dis Roviains, c. xi. 
 
2i8 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 of the historian, as distinguished from the gazetteer, of throwing 
 rapid glances over a wide field on the suggestion of a minor 
 fact as he passes by it, and of converting what to others would 
 be the mere unconsidered trifles of narrative into something 
 possessed of its due measure of vitality and significance. He 
 fills his pages with reflections that are usually not brought from 
 very far depths, but which are almost always lively, just, and in 
 real matter. Perhaps this is not an unmixed good, for it is not 
 unconnected with an extraordinary evenness and light facility 
 'TST style, which tends to draw the reader somewhat too rapidly 
 and too smoothly over ground that had been rugged enough to 
 the actual travellers. It tends therefore tacitly to plant a false 
 impression about the tardiness, difiiculty, peril, and infinitely 
 varied possibilities of the social movements which are history's 
 object and material. Perhaps a reader has a better idea of the 
 true manner in which events march, from Comines or Claren- 
 don, than from all the elegance and manifold graces of Voltaire, 
 and we sometimes feel inclined to repeat De Maistre's angry 
 demand for that grave and unhasting dignity which is the life 
 of history. 
 
 We have already noticed one of the differences between 
 Voltaire and Rousseau, which arose from the predominance of 
 sentiment over reason in the latter. In the present connec- 
 tion another fact well worth noticing is that Rousseau was 
 entirely wanting in either taste or serious regard for history. 
 The past seems to have been to him a kind of blurred tablet, 
 confused and indecipherable, interposed between the vision of 
 men and the only thought or knowledge which it is good for 
 them to possess. Voltaire's reading of this tablet was inadequate 
 enough, in many respects it was even a grave distortion of the 
 truth; but with that sound sense in which Rousseau was so 
 absolutely deficient, he felt how irrational it was, in the first 
 place, to shut our eyes deliberately to tlie course and meaning 
 of all the foregone action of the race, and, in the second, to 
 leave unattacked and unturned the strong position which the 
 traditional parables of the past and their undisturbed interpreta- 
 
HISTORY. 219 
 
 tion conferred upon the champions of orthodoxy and abso- 
 lutism. Rousseau, being a sentimentaUst, appears to have 
 discerned nothing of this. His ideas all involved a breach with 
 the past, as Voltaire's did, but Voltaire deserves credit for per- 
 ceiving that, to make this effective, you must at least find out 
 as well as you can what the past was. 
 
 For his four works in the class of political history he had the 
 best attainable authorities and material, and no one was ever 
 more diligent in putting them to the best possible use.' His 
 acute sense, strengthened by contact with the world and its 
 most active personages, made him what we may almost call 
 prematurely scientific in his demand for adequate evidence and 
 proof. It is rather striking, for example, to find him antici- 
 pating more recent objections to the trustworthiness of Tacitus, 
 pointing out the extraordinary improbabilities in his account 
 of Tiberius, Nero, and the others. There is all the difference, 
 he says, between a faithful historian equally free from adulation 
 and hatred, and 'a malicious wit who poisons everything 
 through the medium of a concise and energetic style.' Are we 
 to believe, he asks elsewhere, on the story of a man who lived 
 long after Tiberius, that this emperor, nearly eighty years old, 
 who had up to that time been decent almost to austerity, yet 
 passed all his time in debaucheries hitherto unknown, and so 
 monstrous as to need new names for them?'' And in the same 
 way he questions the alleged atrocities of Nero and Caligula, as 
 well as the motives imputed to Domitian by Tacitus for the 
 frequency with which he sent to inquire after the health of 
 Agricola. These historic doubts sprang from none of the 
 political judgment or feeling which propounds them in more 
 modern times, but purely from scientific incredulity. ' History,' 
 
 ' The dates of the publication of Voltaire's historical worlcs are these : — 
 Charles XII., 1731 ; Sikle de Louis XIV., 1752 (a portion of it in 1739) ; 
 Annales de r Empire, 1753-4; Essai sur les Mceurs, 1757 {surreptitiously in 
 1754); Histoire de Rtissie, Pt. I. in 1759, Pt. II. in 1763 ; Precis du Steele 
 de Lotas XV., 1768; Histoire du Parlement de Paris, 1769. 
 
 " Le Pyrrhonisme de 1' Histoire, cc. xii. xiii. CEuvres, xxxvi. p. 346 ; 
 also p. 428. 
 
220 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 \ he once wrote, ' is after all nothing but a parcel of tricks that 
 j we play the dead.' ' He did not hold this slightly splenetic 
 ^ theory, in which assuredly there is a painful truth, to absolve 
 him from the duty of doing what he could to belie it, and to 
 make history as correct and as faithfully representative of actual 
 occurrences, as careful inquiry from those most likely to know 
 the characters of the most prominent actors could make it. In 
 the composition of the Sibcle de Louis xv. he had of course the 
 advantage of knowing all these leaders of the public activity 
 personally and at first hand, while if he had not that advantage 
 to the same extent in the Si^cle de Louis xiv., he at least mixed 
 on intimate terms with many who had been intimate with the 
 court of the great monarch. For the history of Russia he was 
 amply provided with documents and authentic narratives from 
 the Russian court, at whose solicitation he undertook a work 
 which was the first full introduction of that hitherto barbarous 
 and unknown country to the literature of civilized Europe. His 
 letters to Schouvalof, the imperial chamberlain, attest the 
 unremitting industry with which he sought for every kind of 
 information that might be useful to him. 'The enlightened 
 spirit which now reigns among the principal nations of Europe, 
 requires that we should go to the bottom, where in former times 
 a historian barely thought it worth while to skim the surface. 
 People wish to know how a nation grew together ; what was 
 its population before the epoch of which you treat ; the differ- 
 ence in the number of the regular army then and in former 
 times ; the nature and growth of its commerce ; what arts have 
 sprung up within the country, and what have been introduced 
 from elsewhere and been perfected there; what used to be 
 the ordinary average revenue of the state, and what it is now ; 
 the birth and extension of its navy ; the proportion in number^ 
 between its nobles and its ecclesiastics and monks, and between 
 the latter and the cultivators of the soil, etc' ^ Even importu- 
 nities of this kind continued over a space of some years, and 
 
 ' CoiT. (Euvres, Ixvi. p. 17. 
 
 • Corr. 1757. CEuvres, Ixvi. p. 61. 
 
HISTORY. 221 
 
 the copious responses which they brought, never consoled 
 Voltaire for not having made the journey to the Russian capital 
 in his proper person. ' I should have learnt more from you in 
 a few hours of conversation,' he wrote to Schouvalof, ' than all 
 the compilers in the world will ever teach me.' ^ In writing the 
 History of Charles xii. of Sweden, one of the most delightful of 
 his books, the art of which is none the less because it is so little 
 ostentatious and striking and seems so easy, he had procured 
 a large quantity of material from Fabrice, who knew the Swedish 
 king during his detention at Bender and subsequently, and met 
 Voltaire in London. This material was supplemented in 
 later years by information picked up at Lundville from the ex- 
 Polish king Stanislas, who was indebted to Charles for his 
 sovereignty, that true SSpov aStu/aoj/. 'As for the portraits 
 of men,' Voltaire declared, ' they are nearly all the creations of 
 fancy ; 'tis a monstrous piece of charlatanry to pretend to paint 
 a personage with whom you have never lived.' ^" Napoleon, in 
 the memorable campaign of 1812, coming to various places 
 which Voltaire had occasion to describe in his History of 
 Charles xii., found his account weak and inaccurate, and threw 
 it aside in favour of Adlerfeldt. This was to be expected from 
 the very merit of the book ; for how should a picture painted 
 in large for the general instruction of the world, satisfy the 
 minute requirements of strategical topography? It was pre- 
 cisely Voltaire's object to separate history from geography, 
 statistics, anecdote, biography, tactics, and to invest it with an 
 independent character and quality apart from all these. 
 
 It is another of the distinctions of his new method of writing 
 history that, with the exception of the book on Charles xii., 
 he throws persons and personal interests into a second place, 
 as being no more than instruments or convenient names for 
 critical turning-points in the large movements of peoples. In 
 the narration of the rise of Russia to a place among civilized 
 nations, the character of Peter the Great inevitably comes into 
 marked prominence, because when a population lies on the 
 
 ' Coir. 1 761. (Euv. Ixvii. p. 228. '" CEuvres, xx. p. 10. 
 
222 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 stagnant level of barbarism, the first man who summons them 
 to undertake the task of national elevation constitutes an ele- 
 ment of paramount importance in their annals. In proportion, 
 however, as they rise to the fulfilment of this surpassing work, 
 the im^portance of the heroic individual diminishes; as the 
 national self-consciousness and collective powers become 
 greater, the figure of the individual shows less. 
 
 Voltaire was always conscious, though not so clearly as 
 writers are now, of the great historical principle that besides ,the 
 prominent men of a generation ther»e is a something at work 
 underneath, a moving current on whose flood they are borne. 
 He never fixed this current by any of the names which now fall 
 so glibly from our lips,— tendency of the times, tenor of public 
 opinion, spirit of the age, and the like, by which we give ' a 
 collective name to groups of sentiments and forces, all making 
 in what seems to be a single direction. But although unnamed, 
 this singular and invisible concurrence of circumstance was yet 
 a reality to him. The age was something ^besides its heroes, 
 and something besides its noisiest and most resounding occur- 
 rences. His divisions of the great epochs of humanity are 
 undoubtedly open to much criticism, because the principles on 
 which he drew the dividing lines have lost their force in new 
 generations. It was to be expected that they would do so ; 
 and his four great epochs " were not likely to remain the four 
 great epochs of a posterity, which has partially learnt the 
 lesson that he had not learnt at all, that perfection in the fine 
 arts is not the highest mark of an age in which humanity may 
 glory. Nevertheless, we are bound to recognize that a new 
 way of regarding human action, as well as a new way of com- 
 posing history, was being introduced by a writer whose first 
 paragraph declared that he proposed to himself a greater object 
 than an account of the life of Lewis xiv. ; that he designed to 
 paint for the instruction of posterity, not the actions of a single 
 man, but the spirit of men ; and that while all periods must be 
 alike to one who only desires to fill his memory with facts, 
 " Siecle de Louis xiv, c. i, QLuvres, xxv. p. 283. 
 
HISTORY. 223 
 
 discrimination among them cannot be dispensed with for one 
 who thinks. 
 
 Hence also the propriety of discrimination among the 
 various kinds of fact which are at the historian's disposal, and 
 in this order Voltaire's whole soul revolted against the reigning 
 practice and prescription. 'I would rather have details,' he wrote 
 to one of his intimates so early in his career as 1735, 'about 
 Racine and Despreaux, Molifere, Bossuet, Descartes, than I would 
 about the battle of Steinkirk. There is nothing left but the names 
 of men who led battalions and squadrons. There is no return 
 to the human race from a hundred engagements ; but the great 
 men I have spoken of prepared pure and everlasting pleasures 
 for mortals still unborn. ^ A canal-sluice, a picture by Poussin, 
 a fine tragedy, a truth established, are all of them things a 
 thousand times more precious than the whole mass of annals 
 of the court, and than all the narratives of campaigns.' ^^ From 
 this and from a multitude of other passages, as well as from his 
 actual compositions, we perceive that the activity of a court 
 and the manoeuvres of an army were no longer in Voltaire's 
 eyes the fit substance of history. One reason for this might 
 be his lively sense of the impossibility of knowing the character 
 and motives of people with whom one has not lived, or the 
 real cause of even the most momentous intrigues and negotia- 
 tions in which one has not taken a personal share. A still 
 deeper reason would be his most rational conviction that these 
 matters are only of moment to us for their larger results and 
 unmistakable outcome, and from the profoundly true and im- 
 portant principle that the progress of intellectual enlightenment, 
 material prosperity, and moral elevation is not only a feature 
 in the history of a nation, but does itself constitute that history, 
 while all records of other transactions in the course of its 
 annals, achievements in diplomacy, feats of arms, revolutions 
 in policy, have no true histc/ic value, except for the light they 
 shed upon this economic, intellectual, and moral progress, and 
 are not worth studying except in that light. We may see the 
 '* Corr. 1735. (Euvres, Ixii, pp. 455-6. 
 
224 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 immediate effects of Voltaire's influence most markedly of all 
 in Gibbon, but in a less important shape in the general account 
 of the middle ages which Robertson contributed to his History ' 
 of Charles v. (1769), and which remained for many years the 
 most instructive piece that our literature possessed upon the 
 character and spirit of tjie feudal system and other features 
 of the middle ages. Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of 
 Civil Society (1767) bears traces of the same influence. In 
 both of these cases much also must be added for the kindred 
 authority of Montesquieu. One has some hesitation in adding 
 Hume to the list in the present connection, because his history, 
 the composition of which extended from 1752 to 1763, ought 
 perhaps to be counted rather the direct and independent out- 
 come of the French philosophic spirit, than of the French 
 historic spirit which itself proceeded from the philosophy ; and 
 because, moreover, Hume, as a historian, has some of Vol- 
 taire's most serious defects, without that breadth and size 
 which constituted his greatest merit, though it is needless to 
 point out how many merits Hume had of his own. It is worth 
 remarking that in some pages which he wrote on Hume's 
 History," Voltaire gave it a joyful welcome, as might be 
 expected, and particularly to those parts which we now 
 esteem most lightly, such as the contemptuous account of 
 Cromwell. 
 
 To return, however, to the point from which we have 
 digressed. One very direct consequence of the historical 
 principle we have described, and of the way in which it was 
 illustrated in the histories of Lewis xiv. and Lewis xv., and 
 most of all in the Essay on Manners, was the degradation of 
 war from the highest to the lowest place among the objects 
 of the historian's regard. War began for the first time to be 
 systematically considered and treated as a mere instrument and 
 means, and not as one of the most serious of social ends. We 
 can never honour Voltaire too long nor too deeply for the 
 vehemence and sincerity of his abhorrence of the military 
 " (Euvres, xxxvi. pp. 428-34. (1768.) 
 
HISTORY. 225 
 
 spirit. Nowhere do we feel more distinctly that he marked the 
 end of the mediaeval temper, than in his noble protests against' 
 the glory of bloodshed. The great orators of tlie church to the 
 very last donned the robes of their most sumptuous rhetoric, 
 when they were called to consecrate the virtues of the victorious 
 soldier. The pages of the Old Testament supplied them with 
 a hundred baleful heroes to whom they might liken their 
 warrior, and a hundred cruel and bloody tropes with which 
 they might decorate the funeral oration. So long as the 
 atrocities of the Hebrew chiefs and people, their treacheries 
 and slaughters, were held sacred and celebrated with unction, 
 it was not likely that the voice of the peacemaker could make 
 itself heard. 
 
 Voltaire not only held up these demoralizing records to the 
 odium they deserve ; he directly taxed the clergy with their 
 failure to discharge the very highest part of their duty. Of the 
 five or six thousand sermons of Massillon, he asked, are there 
 a couple where you could pick out a word or two against the 
 scourge and crime of war? Bourdaloue preached against 
 impurity, but what sermon did he ever direct against the 
 murder, rapine, brigandage, and universal rage, which desolate 
 the world? 'Miserable physicians of souls, you declaim for 
 five quarters of an hour against the mere pricks of a pin, and 
 say no word on the curse which tears us into a thousand 
 pieces ! Philosophers and moralists, burn your books : so long 
 as the caprice of a handful of men will cause the massacring in 
 all loyalty of thousands of our brothers, the part of the human 
 race which is devoted to heroism will contain all that is most 
 Irightful in human nature. What concern to me are humanity, 
 benevolence, modesty, temperance, gentleness, wisdom, piety, 
 so long as half an ounce of lead shatters my body, and I die 
 at twenty in torments unspeakable, surrounded by five or six 
 thousand dead or dying, while my eyes, opening for the last 
 time, see the town I was born in delivered to fire and sword, 
 and the last sounds that reach my ears are the shrieks of women 
 and children expiring in the ruins — and the whole for the pre- 
 
 Q 
 
2i6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 tended interests of a man that we do not know?'" His rebuke 
 to Montesquieu is still more distinctively modern. The author 
 of the Esprit des Lois had said that among societies it some- 
 times happens that natural defence possibly involves the ne- 
 cessity of attack, when a nation perceives that a longer peace 
 would place another nation in a position to destroy it.^ ' If 
 ever there was a war evidently unjust,' Voltaire replies, 'it is 
 that which you propose; it is to go and kill your neighbour 
 for fear your neighbour should be in a condition to attack you ; 
 that is to say, you must run the risk of ruining your country, in 
 
 the hope of ruining without reason some other country 
 
 If your neighbour grows too powerful during a time of peace, 
 what hinders you from growing powerful like him ? If he has 
 made alliances, make alliances on your side. If, having less 
 religion, he has all the more manufacturers and soldiers for it, 
 imitate him in so sage an economy. If he drills his sailors 
 better, drill yours too : all that is perfectly just. But to expose 
 your people to the most horrible misery, in the idea, which is 
 so often chimerical, of crushing your dear brother, the most 
 serene bordering prince — ! 'twas never for a president of a 
 pacific order to give you such a piece of counsel.' '^ The book 
 in which this sound view of justice and expediency in the 
 dealings of nations with one another was pressed upon the 
 aftention of France, was published in 1764, five years before 
 the birth of the man who turned the tide back, and made the 
 international policy of France a synonym both for iniquity 
 and folly. On the 15th of August 1769 Voltaire concluded 
 his letter to D'Alembert with his usual vivacity : ' Adieu ; my 
 compliment's to the devil, for it is he who governs the world.' ^' 
 If he had known that, while he was writing, Napoleon Bonaparte 
 had come into the world, and could at the same time have 
 foreseen the new-comer's destiny, he might have said the same 
 thing more seriously. Voltaire never played the sentimentalist. 
 
 " Diet. Phil. s.v. Guerre. CEuvres, Iv. pp. 48S-9. 
 
 '* Esprit des Lois, x. ii. 
 
 •8 CEuvres. Iv. p. 490. " Corr. CEuvres, Ixxv. p. 460. 
 
HISTORY. 227 
 
 He knew that there are complexities of affairs which only the 
 sword can cut. But he was the first influential writer — for 
 the abbd Saint-Pierre, so undeservedly laughed at for his 
 dreams of perpetual peace, had no influence to speak of — who 
 deliberately placed war among retrograde agencies, and 
 deliberately dwelt upon peaceful industry as the true life of 
 nations.^^ 
 
 Diplomacy and its complex subterranean processes, which 
 have occupied so extremely disproportionate a space in written 
 history, and which are in acted history responsible for so much 
 evil, were in the same way informally relegated to the region of 
 inhuman occupations. Its methods were the tortuous and 
 depressing methods of the same past, which had made the 
 many the playthings and unhappy instruments of the few, and 
 
 ' had never interrupted the triumphant manoeuvres of craft and 
 subtlety by a whisper for the claims of humanity and justice. 
 Voltaire scarcely ever speaks of negotiations between contend- 
 ing powers without a shrewd thrust, half contemptuous and 
 half angry. The plain where some negotiations took place in 
 the struggles among the descendants of Charles the Great is 
 still called the Field of Lies ; a name, he says, that might well 
 be common to most spots where men have negotiated.^" And 
 this represents his general tone in speaking of a branch of 
 activity which may interest the professional diplomatist in all 
 its details, but which, as he thought, can only concern the 
 historical student in its results. Here Voltaire represented a 
 marked tendency, which waxes stronger as societies grow more 
 penetrated with popular forces, to divest diplomacy of a profes- 
 sional quality, and to throw the adjustment of the relations 
 between nations as entirely as possible into the hands of plain 
 
 men of firm and upright character, and full knowledge of the 
 
 special matters at issue. 
 
 It is, however, when we come to the ground idea of the 
 
 " See a letter of the king of Prussia in Voltaire's Works, Ixxiv. p. 
 144, &c. 
 
 " C. xxiii. CEuvres, xxi. p. 9. 
 
2 28 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Essay on Manners,^" that we feel the full breath of the modem 
 spirit, and perceive that at length we are nearing the wide 
 expanse of the sea. There we emerge absolutely from the 
 narrow conception of universal history, with which Bossuet had 
 familiarized men's minds in the Discourse on Universal History. 
 This famous piece, which has had at least as much praise as it 
 merits, if we are to consider reason as well as eloquence, was 
 fundamentally and in substance no more than a bit of theo- 
 logical commonplace splendidly decorated; Bossuet indeed 
 spoke of ' the concatenation of human affairs,' but only in the 
 sarne sentence with ' the sequence of the counsels of God.' 
 The gorgeous rhetorician of the church was not likely to rise 
 philosophically into the larger air of universal history, properly 
 so called. His eloquent discourse is a vindication of divine fore- 
 sight, by means of an intensely narrow survey of such sets of 
 facts as might be- thought not inconsistent with the deity's fixed 
 purpose to make one final and decisive revelation to men. No 
 one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human 
 circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as 
 merely the ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long 
 procession of all the ages, figures in so diminutive a consum- 
 mation as the Catholic church, is likely to obtain a very 
 efl'ective hold of that broad sequence and many-linked chain of 
 events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, but whose real 
 meaning he never was even near seizing. His merit is that he 
 did in a small and rhetorical way, what Montesquieu and 
 Voltaire afterwards did in a truly comprehensive and philo- 
 I sophical way ; he pressed forward general ideas in connection 
 with the recorded movements of the chief races of mankind. 
 For a teacher of history to leave the bare chronicler's road so 
 far as to declare, for example, the general principle, inadequate 
 and over-stated as it is, that ' religion and civil government are 
 the two points on which human things revolve,' even this was 
 
 ''" Maurs, like fiBi), is untranslatable by any single English word.' The 
 full title is Bssai stir les Mceurs et I' Esprit des Nations, et sur les princitaux 
 faits de VHisloire depuis Charleviagiiejusju'ct, Louis XIII. 
 
HISTORY. 229 
 
 a clear step in advance — and to dismiss the long series of 
 emperors from Augustus to Alexander Severus in two or three 
 pages was to show a rare sense of large historic proportion. 
 Again, Bossuet's expressions of ' the concatenation of the 
 universe,' of the interdependence of the parts of so vast a 
 whole, of there coming no great change without having its 
 causes in foregoing centuries, and of the true object of history- 
 being to observe in connection with each epoch those secret 
 dispositions of events which prepared the way for great changes, 
 as well as the momentous conjunctures which more immediately- 
 brought them to pass — all these phrases seem to point to a true 
 and philosophic survey. But they end in themselves, and lead 
 nowhither. The chain is an arbitrary and one-sided collection 
 of facts. The writer does not cautiously follow and feel after 
 the successive links, but forges and chooses and arranges them 
 after a pattern of his own, which was fixed independently of 
 them. A scientific term or two is not enough to disguise the 
 purely theological essence of the treatise. 
 
 Bossuet's Discourse is moreover constructed wholly on the 
 theory that a special revelation was delivered to the Jews, and 
 in tracing their course we have fast hold of the chain by which 
 it has pleased heaven to communicate to earth all the truths we 
 possess as to the highest things. Such a conception stifles a 
 modem reader. The first pages of the Essay on Manners, 
 sometimes placed separately as the Philosophy of History, prove 
 that we have escaped from the cave. The chosen people fell into 
 rank with other peoples, that equally supposed themselves to 
 be chosen by their own peculiar gods. They lose the towering 
 pre-eminence in virtue and light and divine favour with which 
 their own records and Bossuet's interpretation had so splendidly 
 invested them. We find that their pretensions were not unique, 
 but universal among nations in such a stage ; that their virtues 
 were not singular, though some of their vices seem so. In a 
 word, if some of Voltaire's details are crude and rudimentary, at 
 least he has the merit of showing to his unaccustomed readers 
 what vast epochs of time, what uncounted multitudes of men, 
 
23© VOLTAIRE. 
 
 what varied movements of the human spirit, surround the little 
 speck of Judaism. 
 
 The bulk of the Essay was composed in 1740, but it is 
 probable that this preliminary examination of other oriental 
 nations, their practices, institutions, and religious ideas, was 
 suggested by Montesquieu's memorable book, which appeared 
 in 1748, some years before the publication of the Essay on 
 Manners. It is in point of execution much less satisfactory 
 than what follows, for Voltaire's knowledge of Greek and Hebrew 
 was inadequate, and he fell into various errors which his adver- 
 saries happily possessed scholarship enough to expose. In the 
 modern provinces of the book, which constitute the important 
 part of it, he was much more entirely at home in his subject. 
 Here his familiarity with detail, considering the vast quantity of 
 his other employments, is extremely surprising, and perhaps in 
 no other book of equal generality have there been discovered so 
 few serious inaccuracies, though none have encountered more 
 hostile critics. 
 
 Prejudice, alas, spares truth and light no more when it 
 narrows the vision of a free-thinker, than wlien it distorts the 
 faculty of the devout. Being a reaction against Bossuet's un- 
 reasonable exaltation of the Jews and their history, Voltaire's 
 conception of the place due to them partook of the inevitable 
 fault of all reactions, and left out of sight considerations which 
 it is eminently unscientific not to remember. ' You never find,' 
 he says, ' a generous action in the annals of the Hebrews ; they 
 knew neither hospitality nor liberality nor clemency. Their 
 sovereign bliss is to practise usury with foreigners, and this 
 spirit of usury is so rooted in their hearts, that it is the continual 
 object of the figures they employ in the eloquence which is 
 peculiar to them. Their glory is to deliver to fire and slaughter 
 the small villages of which they may be able to take possession. 
 They assassinate their masters when they are slaves, and they 
 never know how to pardon when they are victorious ; they are 
 the enemies of the human race.'*^ This is as great an exaggera- 
 '^ C. vi. CEuvres, xx, p. 396. 
 
HISTORY. 231 
 
 tion on one side, as Bossuet's exaltation of them and their 
 deeds was on the other side. We ought to admit what abomin- 
 able traits the character and history of this race unfortunately 
 present, without forgetting how much is owing to them for pre- 
 serving in its sublimest shape, and investing with the most 
 deeply impressive images and associations, that idea of mono- 
 theism which, if destined to be superseded by other ideas more 
 commensurate with the limits of human intelligence, must still 
 be counted the germ of much that is purest and loftiest and 
 most inspiring among the ideals of western civilization. 
 
 The same kind of extreme prejudice which drove Voltaire 
 into maintaining of the Jews, not that they were a people whom 
 >ve should do very ill either to imitate or admire, but nothing 
 less than that they were the enemies of the human race, found 
 vent in such assertions as that if any one could have restored 
 the Empire to its strength, or at all events retarded its fall, that 
 man was the Emperor Julian.^^ A historian may justly contend, 
 if he thinks that the evidence warrants him, that Julian belongs 
 to the type of virtuous reactionists, just as we may say it of 
 Wesley or the chiefs of the Tractarians. But to make such an 
 assertion as that the repression of Christianity after the middle 
 of the fourth century, even supposing it to have been possible 
 of achievement, could have given back to the rapidly declining 
 empire a strength of which all the roots were lifeless, was to 
 falsify history for the sake of exalting the name of an apostate. 
 A Roman aristocrat, blind to the real operation and compara- 
 tive value of the forces at work, might be pardoned for holding 
 Christianity guilty of the general dissolution around him ; but it 
 was a strange phantasy for a philosopher of the eighteenth 
 century to suppose that the Christian system, in the shape 
 which it had assumed by Julian's time, did not offer principles 
 of firmer association, than the mere rites of a paganism which 
 was spontaneously decaying with a rapidity that increased day 
 by day.^^ There is no stronger illustration of the twist which 
 
 " C. xi. CEuvres, xx. p. 455. 
 
 " See on this interesting subject Finlay's Greece under the Romans 
 (B,C. I46-A.D. 716), pp. 156-7. 
 
232 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 polemical fury may give to the most acute intelligence, than 
 this belief of Voltaire's, that an organization which had attracted 
 to itself every able and statesmanlike intellect of the time, 
 could do less for the regeneration of the Empire than the 
 initiated disciple of Platonist theurgy. 
 
 His account of the history of the church is composed in the 
 same vein, and we may see where Gibbon, who was a reader of 
 Voltaire, drew the inspiration of the solemn sneer with which 
 he sapped solemn creed. ^* ' So many frauds, so many errors, so 
 many disgusting absurdities,' says Voltaire, ' with which we have 
 been inundated for seventeen hundred years, have been unable 
 to do any harm to our religion. It is unquestionably divine, 
 since seventeen centuries of imposture and imbecility have 
 not destroyed it.' ^ Voltaire thought as ill as possible of the 
 century to which he belonged ; we cannot therefore charge him 
 with the inconsistency which marks some of his most prominent 
 disciples, who while they accepted such an account of the vile- 
 ness of the church as he had given them, did not scruple to 
 believe that, as if by miracle, seventeen centuries of steady 
 depravation were per saltum to be followed by an eighteenth 
 and other centuries of boundless virtue and enlightenment. 
 Still it is wonderful that he should have been able to appreciate 
 the admirable character of the best sovereign of the thirteenth 
 century, Lewis ix.,^^ and to describe his motives and his 
 achievements so generously, and yet should never have thought 
 of the education and surrounding spiritual conditions by which 
 such a character had been formed. If the power oi Catholicism 
 for evil was so great and decisive, it would have been reason- 
 able to suppose that it had some share also in moulding to 
 good those who came forth from it the very flower of humanity. 
 But Voltaire did not know how much a man is the product of 
 a system operating on, and with, the individual predisposition, 
 or he would not have chidden St. Lewis for remaining on the 
 
 '* Childe Harold, iii. io6 and 107. 
 
 ^^ C. ix. CEuvres, xx. p. 445. 
 
 '^ C. Iviii. Giuvres, xxi. pp. 328 4'!. 
 
HISTOR V. 233 
 
 level of the prejudice of his time, instead of changing the spirit 
 of his age.^' How should St. Lewis have risen from the prejudice 
 of his age, when it was exactly that prejudice which had formed 
 him, and of which he represented the worthy side ? 
 
 Even without this inconsistency, the fundamental error is 
 bad enough. We get very wearied of the persistent identifica- 
 tion of the church throughout the dark ages with fraud and 
 imposture and sinister self-seeking, when we have once learnt, 
 what is undoubtedly the most important principle in the study 
 of those times, that it >was the churchmen who kept the flicker- 
 ing light of .civilization alive amid the raging storms of uncon- 
 trolled passion and violence. The truth is that Voltaire never 
 realized civilization as an organism, which if not surrounded 
 with the proper conditions of life will perish, and which will 
 prosper and wax stronger exactly in proportion as it is nour- 
 ished. That the light was more than once very near sinking in 
 the west under the waves of barbarism, as it has actually sunk 
 in the eastern portions of the Empire, seems to have been an 
 all-important fact which he either never saw, or which, if he 
 saw it, never impressed him as assuredly it ought to have done. 
 
 This is the more curious as he was able to perceive, in a way 
 in which it were much to be wished that more recent historians 
 might show an equal discernment, that we ought to use the 
 terms of civilization, with all their complex and accumulated 
 associations, in an extremely modified sense in speaking of the 
 centuries between the fifth and the thirteenth, just as it is 
 the gravest mistake to suppose that, because you can express 
 the results of the various contests of those times in terms of 
 philosophy, therefore the actors in any one of them were both 
 conscious of its most general bearings, and were animated by 
 large and philosophical inclinations. For example, after he 
 has told us how William the Conqueror sent to the Pope 
 Harold's battle-standard and a small portion of the small 
 treasure that an' English king might possess in those times, he 
 proceeds to reduce the transaction to what he conceived to be 
 " Quelques petites Hardiesses, &c. (Euvres, xxxvi. p. 445. 
 
234 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 its true proportions, in the following manner : ' Thus,' he says, 
 ' a barbarian, the son of a harlot, the murderer of a legitimate 
 king, shares the plunder of this king with another barbarian ; 
 for if you take away the names of duke of Normandy, king of 
 England, and pope, all is reduced to the action of a Norman 
 brigand and a Lombard receiver of plunder.' "^ This being 
 the case, the secular possessors of power being so rude, petty, 
 and barbarous, their contests being ' those of bears and wolves,' 
 their rapacity and violence being tempered by few of those 
 ideas of justice which form, the bonds of society in its more 
 advanced stages, it ought to have struck even the most ardent 
 enemy of ecclesiastical pretensions as a thing in the highest 
 degree unphilosophical, to pour all the ill epithets of usur- 
 pation upon the virtuous efforts of the great churchmen, who 
 were least touched by the spirit of violence, to take away 
 as much power as they could from barbarous princes and 
 nobles, who were most impregnated with that and all other 
 dark spirits. The smaller the difference between the least 
 moral and the most moral orders in a community, the more 
 desirable it is that the order with even a small advantage 
 should acquire as much power as possible; for the reason 
 ■ that so near an approach to equality in morals is most likely 
 to occur when the average is low, and when therefore the need 
 to prevent it from falling any lower is most urgent. Granting 
 that the ecclesiastics were only slightly the superiors of the 
 barbarous laymen, this is all the better ground for rejoicing that 
 they succeeded in converting their ascendancy of moral idea 
 into an ascendancy of political' fact. 
 
 In short, Voltaire's great panorama, magnificent as it is and 
 most royally planned, is not drawn in lines and with colour that 
 explain the story or lay bare the principles of its progress. The 
 plan is imposed from without, just as in Bossuet's case, not 
 carefully sought from within the facts themselves. Wliat is 
 meant then by the assertion that Voltaire's Essay is one of the 
 foundations of modern history ? If he gives no explanation of 
 '^ C. xlii. CEuvres, xxi. p. 143, 
 
HISTOR Y. 235 
 
 the course of history, none to himself probably, and none to us 
 assuredly, what is his merit ? This, that he has fully placed 
 before us the history which is to be explained ; that he has 
 presented the long external succession of facts in their true 
 magnitude and in a definite connection ; that he did not write 
 a' history of France, or of the papacy, or of the Mahometan 
 power, or of the crusades, but that he saw the advantage, as we 
 see the unavoidable necessity, of comprehending in a single 
 idea and surveying in a single work the various activities, the 
 rise and fall of power, the transference from one to another 
 of political predominance, the^ contributions to the art of living, 
 among the societies which were- once united in a single em- 
 pire. The history of each of these societies, England, France, 
 Spain, Italy, the Byzantine Empire, is followed in relation to 
 the history of Europe, which is indeed composed of these co- 
 ordinate parts. The movement of communities since the 
 dissolution of the Roman Empire is ■exhibited in a collective 
 form, and that it should be exhibited and accepted in this form 
 was obviously a preliminary step to. an organic treatment of the 
 multiplied laws of social physics. 
 
 ' There are some events,' he wrote in a note- to his best 
 poem, ' which have 'effects, and others, which have none. It is 
 with the chain of events as it is with a genealogical tree, where 
 we perceive branches, that become extinct at the first genera- 
 tion, and others that continue the race. Many events remain 
 without any filiation. It is thus that in every machine there are 
 effects necessary to the- movement, while others are indifferent, 
 following the operation of the first, and leading to nothing. 
 The wheels of a vehicle serve to make-it go ; but whether they 
 raise a little more or a little less dust, the journey is accom- 
 plished equally. Such is the general order of the world, that 
 the links of the chain are not deranged by a little more or a 
 little less of irregularity.'^^ The figures in this passage serve 
 adequately to describe his own treatment. We see in the 
 Essay the lines of the genealogical tree, but we do not learn the 
 " Notes sur le Desastre de Lisbonne. (Euvres, xv. p. 57. 
 
236 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 laws of the transmission of qualities from one stock to another ; 
 we see the links of the chain, but not the conditions which 
 fastened each to the other ; conditions, indeed, only to be 
 grasped through a scientific study of human nature which Vol- 
 taire had never made ; and finally we see the towering car 
 drawn slowly along a devious road by sweat and strain of 
 millions, but we know not why it went by this road rather than 
 another. In a word, the inner machinery of societies and of 
 their movement remains as far from our sight as it ever was. 
 The study of those economic and material forces which have so 
 profound an influence upon social transformations, was in its 
 infancy, and the Economists, who really saw that there are 
 definite laws regulating the play ©f these forces, unfortunately 
 mixed up with their speculations 'a number of chimerical 
 fancies, which Voltaire was too acute ito accept, but not patient 
 enough to sift.™ In this respect he is as defective as Gibbon, 
 in whose book, so justly famous for its splendid breadth of con- 
 ception and industrious elaboration of detail, we have much of 
 that meagre philosophy which consisted in the exposure of 
 falsehood, but Httle of the true science which shows us the 
 numerous organs of society in connection with their actual play 
 and function. Neither Gibbon nor Voltaire made any contri- 
 bution, nor seems to have been aware of the importance of 
 contributing, to that -study of .the fundamental conditions of the 
 social union, which Aristotle commenced, and which both 
 Bodin in the sixteenth century and Montesquieu in the 
 eighteenth had so meritoriously .continued.'^ Nevertheless, it 
 was much;to lead men to study the history of modern Europe 
 as a whole, and we may say of Voltaire in connection with 
 history what he said of Corneille in connection with tragedy — 
 ' It is so great a merit to have opened the career, and inventors 
 are so much above other men, that posterity pardons their 
 greatest faults."^ 
 
 '" He ridiculed some of these in one of his most humane and otherwise 
 excellent pieces, L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus (1767). CEuv. lix. p. 395. 
 " The ReptMic, \!,Tj. Esprit da Lois, 1748. 
 '* CEuv. Ixvii. p. 94, 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FERNEY. 
 
 Voltaire; as we have seen, took possession of Ferney in 1758, 
 and he lived here almost without a break for something like 
 twenty years. His estate was a feudal seigniory in the district 
 of Gex, on the very frontier of Switzerland, but in France, 
 though enjoying immunity from French taxation. He built a 
 new manor-house, and in his capacity of lord of the manor 
 replaced the dilapidated little church of the estate hy a new 
 one, very small, very plain, and' about which, notwithstanding 
 its famous inscription of which he so often boasted, — JDeo erexit 
 Voltaire, — much more noise has been made, than so simple 
 and natural a proceeding at all calls for.^ Madame Denis kept 
 house- for him, and according to the Paris gossips of the time, 
 on an extravagant scale, which often produced ruptures between 
 the two. Guests were incessant and the hospitality ungrudg- 
 ing.^ He complained during the Seven Years War of the 
 embarrassment of being a Frenchman, when he had to entertain 
 daily at dinner Russians, English, and' Germans.'' He protests 
 
 ^ A drawing of 'Voltaire's chateau at Ferney is given in Blancheton's 
 Vues Pittoresques des Chdteaux de France (Paris, 1826), Part II. The 
 chateau is still standing, and the prospect from the terrace repays a visit, 
 apart from the interest of association. The church is now a receptacle for 
 wine-casks. 
 
 ^ The reader who is curious as to the most indifferent details, will find 
 what he seeks in a singular monument of painstaking spleen, entitled 
 Menage et Finances de Voltaire, by M. Nicolardot (Paris, 1854). 
 
 ' Corr. 1 76 1. (Euv. Ixvii. p. 190. 
 
238 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 that he is weary of being hotel-keeper in general for all Europe, 
 and so weary was he at one time of this noisy and costly post, 
 that the establishment was partially suspended for upwards of a 
 year. One of the most generous of Voltaire's many generous 
 acts was his reception into his house of a child who had no other 
 claim on him than that of being the great-grand-daughter of the 
 uncle of Corneille. A soldier ought to succour the niece of his 
 general, he said. He took the liveliest interest in the little 
 maid's education, though she appears to have been a sulky 
 pupil, and eventually he married her with due dower to one 
 DupuitB. The bustle and expense of his establishment became 
 greater than ever, and in the spring of 1768 Paris was as much 
 electrified by news of a revolution at Ferney, as she has been 
 since by some revolutions in her own streets. Madame Denis 
 and the two Dupuits had suddenly made their way to Paris, and 
 for a year and a half Voltaire was left in peace, part of which 
 he employed sensibly in having his house cleaned from cellar 
 to garret, — a bit of news which is handed down to our times, 
 since, according to Grimm, the domestic arrangements of the 
 manor-house at Ferney interested at that moment more or less 
 every court in Europe.* In the autumn of 1769 Madame 
 Denis returned, and with her the old stir and extravagance were 
 resumed, for Voltaire was one of the best-humoured of men to 
 his family and friends, and could deny his niece nothing. We 
 have more than one description of this too immortal niece. 
 They are all equally unflattering. Her homeliness of appear- 
 ance amounted to the ugliness that is bitter. She was destitute 
 of wit, and had a vulgar soul. Born to be the insipid gossip of 
 a bourgeois circle, says one charitable writer, but having by 
 chance the first man in the nation for an uncle, she learnt to 
 chatter about literature and the theatre, as a pan-ot learns.^ 
 She wrote a comedy ; but the players, out of respect for Vol- 
 taire, declined to act in it. She wrote a tragedy ; but the one 
 favour, which the repeated entreaties of years could never wring 
 
 * Corr. Lit. vi. p. 272 ; v, p. 383, 
 
 • Grimm, Corr, Lit. v. p. 393. 
 
FERNEY. 239 
 
 from Voltaire, was that he would read it. She had histrionic 
 as well as dramatic ambition, and here worked a miracle, for 
 her representation of Mdrope once drew floods of tears from 
 some English ladies." Her affectation of intellect had not 
 cooled the reality of simple sensation, and if she loved art, she 
 was said not to despise gallantry. At any rate, though she was 
 only sixteen years younger than her uncle,' she needed con- 
 tinual festivities and crowds of guests. 
 
 Ferney was rather a difficult spot for a woman with a 
 passion for the hum of cities. For five months in the year, says 
 Voltaire, my deserts are, on the admission of Russians, worse 
 than Siberia itself; we see thirty leagues of mountain, snow, 
 and precipices : it is Naples in summer, Lapland in winter.^ 
 One year he marks with word of bitterness snow falling thick 
 in the middle of May. Four feet of snow in the court-yard 
 constituted a normal winter state. He commemorates with 
 enthusiasm how one day, through these four feet of snow, he 
 saw porters bringing him a hamper of Champagne from a friend ; 
 for the more generous sort of Burgundy with which he ordinarily 
 recruited himself had fallen short, and he had been reduced to 
 the humble vintage of Beaujolais. 
 
 Yet in the midst of a thousand discomforts and hardships 
 we never hear him wishing to be back in Paris. It remained 
 to him the accursed city, as it had been before his journey to 
 England. He always thought with horror of its cabal, intrigue, 
 frivolity, and sovereign indifference to the ruin of the kingdom 
 and the shedding of innocent blood. There can be no doubt 
 that this wise exile prolonged his days. He was constantly 
 complaining of illness, and he passed months at a time in bed, 
 which may in truth have been the best possible preservative of 
 life for one of his temperament. Yet in spite of this avoidance 
 of society, this passion for his study, the man of ordinary 
 
 ' Corr. 1 76 1. CEuv. Ixxv. p. 158. 
 
 ' Born 1710 ; lost her first husband 1744 ; married one Vivier in 1779 ; 
 died 1790. 
 
 » Corr. 1770. (Euv. Ixx. p. 175. 
 
-\ 
 
 240 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 capacity, with no more than an ordinary working day, may 
 marvel how amid so many distractions the master of the house 
 contrivedi to write so many scores of pieces, large and small, 
 and SCH many hundreds of letters, grave and gay. Of these 
 letters nearly seven thousand are already in print, and M. 
 Beuchot, most carefully informed of all Voltaire's editors, thinks 
 there are likely to be quite as many more still in undiscovered 
 existence. Ferney was the centre of the most universal and 
 variedi correspondence that any one man has ever carried on. 
 Frederick the Great was not the only crowned head with whom 
 Voltaire interchanged royal communication. Catharine 11. of 
 Russia, of Anhalt-Zerbst by birth, was the helpful patroness of 
 Diderot and D'Alembert, and was always eager- to hear some 
 word from the patriarch of their encyclopaedic church) only 
 praying him not to think her too importunate. Christian vii. 
 of Denmark apologizes for not being able at a stroke to remove 
 all the obstacles that lie in the way of the civil liberty of his 
 subjects. Gustavus- iii. of Sweden is elated by the thought 
 that Voltaire sometimes casts a glance on what is going on in 
 the North, and protests, that this is their greatest encourage- 
 ment to do as well as they can in all ways.' Joseph 11. would 
 fain have called at Ferney while travelling incoghito through 
 France, but fear of his mother's displeasure held him back, the 
 high and devout nature of Maria Theresa always finding Vol- 
 taire's rnockery of sacred things deeply repugnant, as we may 
 easily belie s^e. 
 
 Beside sovereigns who wrote to him as to an equal, every 
 young aspirant to literary distinction, however unknown and 
 obscure, sought a criticism from Ferney. Twenty years before 
 he settled down here, Voltaire had been consulted by Vau- 
 venargues, and had replied with words of painstaking and 
 generous counsel. It was always the same with him. No 
 young author ever solicited advice in vain, and he was never 
 sparing either of trouble or praise. The Marquis of Chastellux 
 sent him a copy of his F^licit^ Publique, and was raised to the 
 f CoiT. 1771-2. (E21V. Ixxiv. pp. 733 and 737. 
 
FERNEY. 241 
 
 seventh heaven by a letter of thanks, in which Voltaire tells 
 him : ' I covered the margin of my copy with notes, as I 
 always do when a book charms and instructs me ; I even took 
 the liberty of not always sharing the author's opinion. I am 
 very old and very feeble, but such reading makes me young 
 again.' And the letter contains a large number of points where 
 he thinks the author in error." 
 
 Besides kings and the writers of books, plain men also 
 besought his dictum on high matters. ' A burgomaster of 
 Middleburg,' he informs Madame du Deffand, ' whom I do 
 not know, wrote to me a little while since, to ask me in 
 confidence whether there is a God or not; whether, in case 
 there be one, he takes any heed of us ; whether matter is 
 eternal ; whether it can think ; whether the soul is immortal ; 
 and begging me to answer by return of post.'^^ One may 
 suspect that a little colouring is added here by the master ' 
 hand, but the substantial facts are probable enough. He 
 corresponded with cardinals, marshals of France, and bishops, 
 and he corresponded with Helvdtius and with Diderot, who, 
 greatly to the indignation of the business-like patriarch, had a 
 bad habit of leaving letters to answer themselves. ^^ If two cavalry 
 officers fell to disputing over the mess-table as to the propriety 
 of using some bit of old French, it was to Ferney that the 
 reference was instantly niade.^' We get an idea of the kind 
 of imperial authority which attached to Voltaire's judgment, 
 from the eagerness with which Turgot sought, without revealing 
 his name, an opinion from Ferney as to the worth of a 
 translation with which he lightened the heavy burden of his 
 intendance at Limoges, a translation of the Eclogues and Fourth 
 .zEneid into French metric verse. ' They say,' wrote Turgot, 
 ' that he is so busy with his Encyclopedia as neither to speak 
 
 '° Corr. 1772. CEuvres, Ixxi. p. 496. The marked copy is still in 
 existence, along with the rest of Voltaire's books, at St. Petersburg ; see 
 Lavergne's Economistes du I'&iime Slide, p. 285. 
 
 1' Corr. 1 761. CEuvres, Ixvii. p. 166. 
 
 " CEuvres, Ixxv. pp. 64, 69, etc. 
 
 '' Corr. 1770. CEuvres, Ixxi. p. 18. 
 
242 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 nor to write to any one.' If Turgot could have seen Voltaire's 
 correspondence for 1770, he would have found out how far 
 this rumour was from the truth, and in fact he did get an 
 answer to his own letter, but it can hardly have been very 
 much more satisfactory than silence would have been, for 
 Voltaire, while profuse in praise of the fidelity and spirit of the 
 translation, unfortunately did not detect that it was meant for 
 anything more ambitious than simple prose with enthusiasm in 
 it.^* As Turgot especially valued in the patriarch his ' superb 
 ear,' the blow was as sharp as it well could be. He was little 
 concerned or surprised on learning the fallacious reasoning of 
 the poet in political economy. ' Reasoning,' he adds, ' has 
 never been Voltaire's strong point.' ^° And that was true in 
 matters of abstract science, but he was an unrivalled popularizer 
 of the results of other people's reasoning, from Newton's 
 Principia down to Middleton's Free Enquiry, and this 
 popularization was what the conditions of the time caused to 
 be most ardently demanded. The proof of the demand we 
 may see in the extraordinary respect and curiosity, or dislike 
 and alarm, with which Voltaire for the twenty crowning years 
 of his life was regarded throughout the whole of civilized 
 Europe. 
 
 It is impossible to read the multitudinous volumes of Vol- 
 taire's correspondence, and they are being added to every two 
 or three years, with entire satisfaction. They are wittier than 
 any other letters in the world. For lightness, swiftness, grace, 
 spontaneity, you can find no second to them, at however long 
 an interval. But they abound in many things which are 
 disagreeable in the letters of an old man who had so true an 
 interest in the spread of virtue, knowledge, and the other 
 conditions of human dignity. These, however, may be passed 
 over as the innocent and unconscious unseemliness of a very 
 gay nature living , in a very free age. It is less easy to banish 
 the unpleasant impressions with which we find him playing the 
 equivocal part of being all things to all men. One would have 
 " QLuvres de Turgot, ii. pp. 814-25. lb. p. 824. 
 
FERNEY. 243 
 
 been pleased to have a little more stiffness, a little less pliancy 
 of phrase. We would not go through the world insisting on 
 grim Puritanic earnestness at every moment of a man's life, but 
 Voltaire's lively complaisance with all sorts of unworthy people 
 is something worse than unedifying. One can hardly help 
 sympathizing with D'Alembert's remonstrance. 'You have 
 rather spoilt the people who persecute us. 'Tis true you 
 have had greater need than anybody else to keep them quiet, 
 and that you have been obliged to offer a candle to Lucifer to 
 save yourself from Beelzebub, but Lucifer has only grown 
 the prouder, without Beelzebub growing the less malignant.'^" 
 The truth probably is that Voltaire did not always take 
 much thought of Lucifer or Beelzebub. For one thing, he was, 
 as we have said more than once, intensely sympathetic by 
 temperament, and in writing to a friend, or even an acquaint- 
 ance only, he was for the moment animated by a lively good 
 will and anxiety to be in harmony with his correspondent. 
 Inhere was nothing false in these purring pleasantries, with 
 which he amused all correspondents alike. They came as 
 naturally from his mobile and genial constitution, as an equality 
 of prosaic moroseness comes from persons of fundamentally 
 different constitutions. For another thing, the old fashion of 
 his youth never dropped away from him, and the elaborate 
 courteousness and friendly ardour of manner, which he had 
 learnt among the aristocratic friends of the days of the Regency 
 and afterwards at Paris and Versailles, did not desert him in 
 the solitudes of the Jura. He was to the last a man of quality, 
 as well as a crusher of the Infamous, and to the last he kept 
 up the tone of one who had been a gentleman of the chamber 
 to one king, and court-chamberlain to another. Voltaire's 
 temperament and earliest surroundings fully explain what was 
 a more public, as well as more serious, falling away from the 
 rigorous integrity which men are now accustomed to demand 
 from the leaders of unpopular causes. His sins in this order 
 are nearly as numerous as his public acts. Rousseau, perhaps 
 '° (Euvres, Ixxv. p. 331. 
 
244 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 we may say without breach of charity, as much from vanity as 
 principle, prefixed his name to all that he wrote, and he paid 
 the penalty in a life of. wandering and persecution. Voltaire 
 in his later days as invariably sheltered himself behind the 
 anonymous, and not only disclaimed works of which it was 
 notorious that he was the author, but insisted that his friends 
 should impute them to this or that dead name. Nobody was 
 deceived. While he got unwelcome credit for a multitude 
 of pieces that were not his own, assuredly nothing really his 
 ever failed to be set down to its true author. We can only say 
 that this was the evil practice of the time, and that "Voltaire 
 was here little worse than Turgot and many another man of 
 general virtuousness, to whom the ferocity of authority would 
 not even allow freedom enough to plead for tolerance, much 
 less to utter uncertified opinion. ' Tirne,' said D'Alfembert, 
 apologizing for some whiff of orthodoxy which Voltaire scented 
 in one or two articles in the Encyclopaedia, ' will make people 
 distinguish what we thought from what we said.'-" Condorcet, 
 as we know, deliberately defended these deceptions, which did 
 not deceive, while they did protect. He contended that if you 
 rob a man of his natural right of publishing his opinions, then 
 you lose your own right to hear the truth from the man's lips." 
 Undoubtedly all laws admit that duress introduces new con- 
 ditions into the determination of what is right and wrong in 
 action, or at least that it mitigates pains and penalties, and the 
 position of every claimant for free speech was in those days 
 emphatically a position of duress. The choice lay between 
 disavowal on the one hand, and on the other abstention from 
 proclaiming truths by which only society could gain the freedom 
 it so much needed ; between strict anonymity and leaving the 
 darkness unbroken. And we must remember that disingenuous 
 tricks to conceal authorship were not assuredly so unpardon- 
 able, when resorted to as protectives against imprisonment, 
 confiscation, and possible peril of life, as they are now among 
 
 " GEvvres, Ixxv. p. 33. 
 
 " CEuvres de Condorcet, iv. pp. 33, 34, and vi. pp. 187-9. 
 
FERNEY. 245 
 
 ourselves, when they serve no more defensible purpose than 
 sheltering men who have not the courage of their opinions, 
 against one or two paltry social deprivations. 
 
 The monstrous proceedings against La Barre, and the ease 
 with which in this and numerous other cases the jurisprudence 
 of the tribunals lent itself to the cruelty of fanatics, no doubt 
 excited in Voltaire a very genuine alarm for his own safety, and 
 probably with good reason. We know that he could not ven- 
 ture to visit Italy, in consequence of his just fear lest the Inqui- 
 sition should throw their redoubtable foe into prison, and the 
 parliaments of Toulouse and Abbeville had perpetrated juridical 
 murders as iniquitous as any of the proceedings of the Holy 
 Office. And though it is easy and right for the young, who live 
 in a time when you are not imprisoned or hung or decapitated 
 for holding unpopular opinions, to call out for manliness to the 
 uttermost in these things, one must make allowance for an 
 occasional fit of timorousness in a man of eighty, whom nature 
 had never cut out for a martyr. Yet, more than once, these 
 fits committed Voltaire to acts which were as great a scandal to 
 the devout as to the atheists. That he should rebuild the 
 ruinous little chapel of his estate was not much more remarked, 
 than it would be for a Protestant landlord to subscribe to 
 repair the Catholic church on an Irish property containing only 
 Catholic tenants. The gorgeous ceremony with which in his 
 quality of lord he commemorated its "opening, made everybody 
 laugh, not excepting the chief performer, for he actually took 
 the opportunity of lifting up his voice in the new temple and 
 preaching a sermon against theft. The bishop of Annecy in 
 Savoy, his diocesan, was furious at this mockery, and urged the 
 minister at Paris to banish Voltaire from France. In order to 
 avert the blow, Voltaire tried to make a nominal peace with 
 the church by confessing, and participating in the solemnity of 
 an Easter communion (1768). The bishop wrote him a long 
 letter of unctuous impertinences, to which Voltaire replied by 
 asking very tartly why the discharge of so ordinary a duty called 
 for this insolent congratulation. The philosophers of Paris 
 
246 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 were bitterly scandalized, and some of them wrote to tlie 
 patriarch of the sect to remonstrate. Even D'Alembert, his 
 own familiar friend, could not refrain from protest.^' Voltaire 
 could give no better reasons for his strange lapse than we may 
 hear given every day in our own country, by men who practise 
 hypocritical compliances for the sake of a little ignoble ease, 
 and thus perpetuate the yoke. He owed an example to his 
 parish, as if the example of feigning a belief which he repudiates 
 could be a good example for one to set in any parish. It was 
 very well to shirk these observances in Paris, because there in 
 the tide of business one finds an excuse or is not missed, but in 
 the country no such excuse offers itself. One must stand well 
 with the curd, be he knave or dunce. One must respect 
 the two hundred and fifty timorous consciences around one. 
 And so forth, down that well-worn list of pleas by which 
 men make anxiety about the consciences of others a sub- 
 stantial reason for treachery to their own. Voltaire besides 
 all these honestly added the one true reason, that he did not 
 mean to be burnt alive, and that the only way of making 
 sure against such a fate was to close the lips of spies and 
 informers.^" 
 
 The bishop knew perfectly well that the squire, who had 
 made his Easter communion in so remarkable a manner in 
 1768, was the author of the Philosophical Dictionary, of which 
 a bran-new edition, amended and revised, made its appearance 
 in 1769; and he appears to have forbidden the priest of Ferney 
 to confess or administer the eucharist to the chief of the flock. 
 Voltaire was at once seized with a fever, and summoned the 
 priest to administer ghostly comfort. The priest pleaded the 
 horrible rumours of the world as to the damnable books of 
 which the sick man was alleged to be the author. Voltaire 
 replied by warning him very peremptorily that in refusing to 
 administer the viaticum he was infringing the law, and the con- 
 sequence was that he did duly receive the viaticum, after which 
 
 " Corr. 1768. CEuvres, Ixxv. p. 426. 
 '» Jb. Ixx. pp. 198-9. 
 
FERNEY. 247 
 
 he signed a solemn act in the presence of a notary, declaring 
 that he pardons his various calumniators ; that ' if any indiscre- 
 tion prejudicial to the religion of the state should have escaped 
 him,' he seeks forgiveness from God and the State ; and finally 
 he forgave the bishop of Annecy, who had calumniated him to 
 the king, and whose malicious designs had come to nought. 
 The priest and notary afterwards falsified this amazing declara- 
 tion so as to appease the bishop, and came to Voltaire praying 
 him not to betray them. ' I prove to them,' he says, ' that 
 they will be damned, I give them something to drink, and they 
 go away delighted.' ^^ A yqunger philosopher of his school 
 remarks with his accustomed gravity on this most singular 
 transaction, that the satisfaction of -forcing his priest to ad- 
 minister by fear of the secular judges, and of insulting the 
 bishop of Annecy in a juridical manner, cannot excuse such a 
 proceeding in the eyes of the free and firm man, who weighs 
 calmly the claims of truth and the requirements of prudence, 
 when laws contrary to natural justice render truth dangerous 
 and prudence indispensable.'^ To which reflection we may 
 perhaps add another, suggested by the cruel experience of the 
 church in France within five and twenty years from Voltaire's 
 impious communion, that if any order, secular or spiritual, con- 
 strains its adversaries under penalties to the commission of base 
 acts, then if the chances of time should ever transfer the power 
 to the other side, that order has only itself to blame for what- 
 ever wrong may mark the retaliation. There is no more dan- 
 gerous policy in affairs of state than to strip your opponent of 
 ■ self-respect, and this the descendants of the persecutors found 
 out to their extreme cost, when in 1793 they had to deal with 
 the descendants of the persecuted. 
 
 One other curious piece of sportiveness in his dealings with 
 the church deserves to be noticed. In the year 1770 the post 
 of temporal father of the order of Capucins for the district of 
 
 i" Corr. 1769. (Euvres, Ixx. pp. 434, 435 ; Ixxv. p. 452. Grimm's 
 Corr. Lit. vi. p. 231, 
 
 «* Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, p. 126. 
 
248 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Gex became vacant. Voltaire applied for it, and the general 
 at Rome, perhaps hstening to a word from Ganganelli, or else 
 from the Duchess of Choiseul, sent to Ferney the letters patent 
 conferring upon its patriarch this strange dignity, and also 
 affiliating him to the order. What were Voltaire's motives in 
 so odd a transaction, it is not very hard to divine. Probably, 
 he thought even this humble office would be some protection 
 against persecution. Then it gave him an opportunity of 
 harassing his enemy, the bishop of Annecy. Thirdly, it 
 amused that whimsical element of farce and mischief which was 
 always so irrepressible in him, from the early days when he is 
 said to have nearly damned his own play by appearing on the 
 stage as the high-priest's train-bearer, and burlesquing that 
 august person's solemn gait. Voltaire filled his letters with 
 infinite pleasantries about the new Capucin, and seemed as 
 much pleased at the idea of wearing the cord of Saint Francis, 
 as he had been with the gold key of a Prussian chamberlain.^ 
 One of his first enjoyments was to write letters to his episcopal 
 foe, signed with a cross and his name : ' ►J* Voltaire, Capucin 
 indigne.'^ A story is told by Grimm of a visitor arriving at 
 Ferney, and being greeted by the patriarch with the news that 
 he would find his host a changed man. ' One grows a bigot in 
 one's old age ; I have a habit of having some pious work read 
 to me when I sit down at table.' And in fact, some one began 
 to read a sermon of Massillon, Voltaire throwing in exclama- 
 tions on the beauty, eloquence, imagination of the preacher. 
 Suddenly, after three or four pages, he called out ' Off with 
 Massillon !' and launched forth during the rest of the meal 
 with his usual verve and fanciful extravagance of imagination.^"^ 
 It is profoundly unedifying, but not the less characteristic. 
 
 Voltaire, there can be little doubt, never designed a social 
 revolution, being in this the representative of the method of 
 Hobbes. His single object was to reinstate the understanding 
 in its full rights, to emancipate thought, to extend knowledge, 
 
 *' Corr. CEuvres, Ixxi. pp. 25, 27, 30, &c. 
 
 '^ Grimm, Corr, Lit. vi. p. 358. ^ lb. 
 
FERNEY. 249 
 
 to erect the standard of critical common sense. He either 
 could not see, or else, as one sometimes thinks, he closes his 
 eyes and refuses for his part to see, that it was impossible to 
 revolutionize the spiritual basis of belief without touching the 
 social forms, which were inseparably connected with the old 
 basis by the strong bonds of time and a thousand fibres of 
 ancient association and common interest. Rousseau began 
 where Voltaire left off. He informs us that in the days when 
 his character was forming, nothing which Voltaire wrote escaped 
 him, and that the Philosophical Letters, that is the Letters on 
 the English, though assuredly not the writer's best work, were 
 what first attracted him to study, and implanted a taste which 
 never afterwards became extinct. The correspondence be- 
 tween Voltaire and the prince of Prussia, afterwards the great 
 Frederick, inspired Rousseau with a passionate desire to learn 
 how to compose with elegance, and to imitate the colouring of so 
 fine an author. ^^ Thus Voltaire, who was eighteen years his | 
 elder, gave this extraordinary genius his first productive im- 
 pulse. But a sensibility of temperament, to which perhaps 
 there is no parallel in the list of prominent men, impelled 
 Rousseau to think, or rather to feel, about the concrete wrongs 
 and miseries of men and women, and not the abstract rights of 
 their intelligence. Hence the two great revolutionary schools, 
 the school which appealed to sentiment, and the school which 
 appealed to intelligence. The Voltairean principles of the 
 strictest political moderation and of literary common sense, 
 negative, merely emancipatory, found their political outcome, as 
 French historians early pointed out, in the Constituent Assem- 
 bly, which was the creation of the upper and middle class, 
 while the spirit of Rousseau, ardent, generous, passionate for 
 the relief of the suffering, overwhelmed by the crowding forms 
 of manhood chronically degraded and womanhood systematic- 
 ally polluted, came to life and power in the Convention and 
 the sections of the Commune of Paris which overawed the 
 Convention. 
 
 *« Confessions, pt. i. liv. v. Date of 1736. 
 
250 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 ' It will not do,' wrote D'Alembert to Voltaire as early as 
 1762, 'to speak too loudly against Jean Jacques or his book, 
 for he is rather a king in the llalles.' ^^ This must have been 
 a new word in the ears of the old man, who had grown up in 
 the habit of thinking of public opinion as the opinion, not of 
 markets where the common people bought and sold, but of the 
 galleries of Versailles. Except for its theology, the age of 
 Lewis XIV. always remained the great age to Voltaire, the age 
 of pomp and literary glory, and it was too difficult a feat to 
 cling on one side to the Grand Monarch, and to stretch out 
 a hand on the other to the Social Contract. It was too difficult 
 for the man who had been embraced by Ninon de I'Enclos, 
 who was the correspondent of the greatest sovereigns in 
 Europe, and the intimate of some of the greatest nobles in 
 France, to feel much sympathy with writings that made their 
 author king of the Halles. Frederick offered Rousseau shelter, 
 and so did Voltaire; but each of them disliked his work 
 as warmly as the other. They did not understand one who, 
 if he wrote with an eloquence that touched all hearts, repulsed 
 friends and provoked enemies like a madman or a savage. 
 The very language of Rousseau was to Voltaire as an unknown 
 tongue, for it was the language of reason clothing the births 
 of passionate sensation. Emile only wearied him, though there 
 were perhaps fifty pages of it which he would have had bound 
 in morocco.^' It is a stale romance, he cries, while the Social 
 Contract is only remarkable for some insults rudely thrown at 
 kings by a citizen of Geneva, and for four insipid pages against 
 the Christian religion, which are simply plagiarized from Bayle's 
 centos.^ The author is a monster of ingratitude and insolence, 
 the arch-scoundrel and chief of charlatans, the lineal descend- 
 ant of the dog of Diogenes the cynic, and other evil things not 
 readily to be named in a polite age. Partly no doubt this 
 extreme irritation was due to the insults with which Jean 
 
 *' (Euvres, Ixxv. p. 182. 
 
 '* Corr. 1762. (Ewvres, Ixxv. p. 188. 
 
 S3 CEuvres, Ixvii. p. 432. 
 
FERNEY. 251 
 
 Jacques had repulsed his offers of shelter and assistance, had 
 repudiated Voltaire's attempts to defend him, and had held up 
 Voltaire himself as a proper object for the persecutions of 
 Geneva. But there was a still deeper root of discrepancy, 
 which we have already pointed out. Rousseau's exaggerated 
 tone was an offence to Voltaire's more just and reasonable 
 spirit, and the feigned austerity of a man whose life and 
 manners he knew, assumed in his eyes a disagreeable shade 
 of hypocrisy.^" Besides these things, he was clearly apprehen- 
 sive of the storms which Rousseau's extraordinary hardihood 
 had the very natural effect of raising in the circles of authorit)-, 
 though it is true that the most acute observers of the time 
 thought that they noticed a very perceptible increase of 
 Voltaire's own hardihood, as a consequence of the example 
 which the other set him. 
 
 The rivalry between the schools of Rousseau and Voltaire 
 represents the dead-lock to v/hich social thought had come ; 
 a dead-lock of which the catastrophe of the Revolution was 
 both expression and result. At the time of Voltaire's death 
 there was not a single institution in France with force enough 
 to be worth a month's purchase. The monarchy was decrepit ; 
 the aristocracy was as feeble and impotent as it was arrogant ; 
 the bourgeoisie was not without aspiration, but it lacked 
 courage and it possessed no tradition ; and the church was 
 demoralized, first by the direct attack of Voltaire and the not 
 less powerful indirect attack of the Encyclopedia, and second 
 by the memory of its own cruelty and selfishness in the genera- 
 tion just closing. But Voltaire's theory, so far as he ever put it 
 into its most general form, was that the temporal order was 
 safe and firm, and that it would endure until criticism had 
 transformed thought and prepared the way for a regime of 
 enlightenment and humanity. Rousseau, on the contrary, 
 directed all the engines of passion against the whole temporal 
 fabric, and was so little careful of freedom of thought, so little 
 confidept in the plenary efficacy of rational persuasion, as 
 '" Condorcet, p. 170. 
 
252 • VOLTAIRE. 
 
 to insist upon the extermination of atheists by law. The 
 position of each was at once irrefragable and impossible. It 
 was impossible to effect a stable reconstitution of the social 
 order until men had been accustomed to use their minds freely, 
 and had gradually thrown off the demoralizing burden. of super- 
 stition. But then the existing social order had become intoler- 
 able, and its forces were practically extinct, and consequently 
 such an attack as Rousseau's was inevitable, and was at the 
 same time and for the same reasons irresistible. To overthrow 
 the power of the church only was to do nothing in a society 
 perishing from material decay and political emasculation. 
 Yet to regenerate such a society without the aid of moral and 
 spiritual forces, with whose activity the existence of a dominant 
 ecclesiastical power was absolutely incompatible, was one of 
 the wildest feats that ever passionate sophist attempted. 
 
 If, however, it must be admitted that each of these two 
 famous destroyers was attempting an equally desperate task, 
 it is the contention of these pages that Voltaire was the more 
 right and farsighted of the two in his perception of the con- 
 ditions of the problem. We have now for various adequate 
 reasons acquired the habit of looking upon the church and 
 speaking of it, as an organization outside of society, or at least 
 as a separate organization and independent integer within it. 
 The truth is that in a Catholic country like France before the 
 Revolution, the church more than the secular order actually 
 was the society, as it had been, though to a far wider degree, 
 throughout Europe in the days of Hildebrand and Innocent. 
 That is to say, it furnished the strongest of the ideas, senti- 
 ments, hopes, and associations which bound men together in a 
 single community. The monarchy, the nobles, the old historic 
 French tradition, the various bodies and processes of law, were 
 swept away by the Revolution, virtually never to return, in 
 spite of the transient appearances to the contrary. The church 
 was swept away also, but only for a year or two ; and so little 
 effectual was the Revolution, which was in fact Rousseau's 
 Revolution, in permanently modifying its position, that those 
 
FERNEY. 253 
 
 Frenchmen at the present day who most soberly judge the 
 future of their country and look deepest into its state, clearly 
 perceive that the battle to be fought in the order of ideas 
 is a battle between the new moral and social ideas of the 
 workmen, and the old moral and social ideas which Catholicism 
 has implanted in the breasts of the peasants, and on which the 
 middle class privately and unconsciously lean for the support 
 of their own consciences, though they may have put away 
 Catholic dogma. We may see here, once more, the help which 
 Protestantism gave to the dissolution of the old society, by the 
 increased room it gave, apart from the specific influence of a 
 more democratic d ogma, for that gradual intellectual expansion 
 throughout a community, which for those who have faitli in the 
 reasoning faculty is the one sure secret of social advance. The 
 subjection of the spiritual power to the temporal, which has 
 commonly followed the establishment of the Protestant commu- 
 nion, has very likely retarded the final disappearance of many 
 ideas which foster anti-social tendencies ; but the subjection of 
 the spiritual power in such a set of circumstances has the effect 
 of softening shocks. Protestantism in the sixteenth century, if 
 it could have been accepted in France, would have been a 
 more edifying dissolvent than Voltairism was in the eighteenth ; 
 but it is certain that the loosening of theological ideas and the 
 organization connected with them and upholding them, Was the 
 first process towards making truly social ideas possible, and 
 their future realization a thing which good men might hope 
 for. Napoleon, the great organ of political reaction, knew 
 what he was about in paying writers for years to denigrate the 
 memory of Voltaire, whose very name he abhorred.'^ 
 
 In saying, however, that Rousseau's attack was inevitable, 
 we have perhaps said that it was indispensable; for where a 
 society is not able to resist an assault upon its fundamental 
 conditions, we may be tolerably sure that the time has arrived 
 when either these conditions must be dispersed, or else the 
 society must fall into rapid dissolution. We may refute 
 " Lamartiue's Girondins, iv, v. 
 
254 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Rousseau's sophisms as often and as conclusively as we please, 
 and may dwell as forcibly as we know how upon the untold 
 penalties which France has paid, and is still doomed to pay, for 
 whatever benefits hfe may have bestowed on her. But, after all 
 this, the benefits remain, and they may be briefly set down as 
 two in number. In the first place he spoke words that can 
 never be unspoken, and kindled a hope that can never be 
 extinguished ; he first inflamed men with a righteous conviction 
 that the evils of the existing order of things reduced civihzation 
 to a nullity for the great majority of mankind, and that it 
 cannot for ever be tolerable that the mass should wear away 
 their lives in unbroken toil without hope or aim, in order that 
 the few may live selfish and vacuous days. Rousseau presented 
 this sentiment in a shape which made it the 'negation of 
 society ; ' but it was much to induce thinkers to ask themselves, 
 and the bondsmen of society to ask their masters, whether the 
 last word of social philosophy had been uttered, and the last 
 experiment in the relations of men to one another decisively 
 tried and irrevocably accepted. Second, by his fervid eloquence 
 and the burning conviction which he kindled in the breasts of 
 great numbers of men, he inspired energy enough in France to 
 awaken her from the torpor as of ddath which was stealing 
 so rapidly over her. Nobody was more keenly aware of the 
 presence of this breath of decay in the air than Voltaire was. 
 It had seized such hold of the vital parts of the old order, that, 
 but for the fiery spirit and unquenchable ardour of the men who 
 read Rousseau as men of old had read the gospel, but for the 
 spirit and ardour which animated the Convention, and made it 
 alike in the tasks of peace and the tasks of war one of the most 
 effective and formidable assemblies that the world has ever 
 beheld, we do not see what there was to stop France from 
 sinking lower and lower into impotence, until at last the powers 
 who vainly threatened the republic with partition, might in the 
 course of time actually have consummated the threat against 
 the monarchy; This may seem impossible to us who live after 
 tlie Revolution and after Napoleon; but we must remember 
 
FERNEY. 255 
 
 the designs of partitioning Prussia in the middle of the century, 
 the accomplishment of a partition of the Italian possessions 
 of the house of Austria in 1735, and the partition of Poland ; 
 and why was France to be eternal, any more than the Byzantine 
 empire, or the power of the house of Austria, or the power of 
 Spain, had been eternal ? It was the fire kindled by Rousseau's 
 passion that saved her ; for even of the Constituent, which was 
 Voltairean, the very soul was Mirabeau, who was Rousseauite. 
 It will be seen that in one sense Rousseau was a far more 
 original personage than his first chief and inspirer. He con- 
 tributed new ideas, of extremely equivocal and perilous 
 character, but still new, to the multitudinous discussions which 
 were throwing all the social elements into confusion. These 
 ideas might indeed have been found substantially in the 
 writings of previous thinkers like Montaigne and Locke ; but 
 Rousseau's passion invested them with a quality which was 
 virtually to constitute them a fresh and original force. Voltaire 
 contributed initiative and a temperament, which made his 
 propagation of ideas that were not new, as important a fact in 
 social if not in intellectual history, as if he had been possessed 
 of superlative gifts in speculation. This has also to be re- 
 membered when we think of comparing him with Diderot, who, 
 while his equal in industry, was greatly his superior both in 
 fresh simplicity of imagination, and in grasp and breadth of 
 positive knowledge. Whoever will take the trouble to turn 
 over some of the thirty-five volumes of the Encyclopaedia, 
 may easily see how that gigantic undertaking (1751 — 1765), in 
 which Voltaire always took the most ardent and practical 
 interest,'^ assisted the movement that Voltaire had commenced. 
 It seemed to gather up into a single great reservoir all that 
 men knew, and this fact of mere mechanical collocation was a 
 sort of substitute for a philosophic synthesis. As Comte says, 
 it furnished a provisional rallying-point for eiforts the most , 
 divergent, without requiring the sacrifice of any points of 
 
 '* See his correspondence with D'Alerabert {CEuvres, Ixxv.) until 1760, 
 the date of D'Alembert's separation from Diderot and the Encyclopisdia. 
 
2S6 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 essential independence, in such a way as to secure for a body 
 of incoherent speculation an external look of system.^ This 
 enterprise, the history of which is a microcosm of the whole 
 battle between the two sides in France, enabled the various 
 opponents of theological absolutism, the Voltaireans, Rousseau- 
 ites, atheists, and all other sorts and conditions of protesting 
 men, to confront the church and its doctrine with a similar 
 semblance of organic unity and completeness. The Encyclo- 
 pedia was not simply negative and critical. It was an 
 unexampled manual of information, and was the means of 
 spreading over the country some knowledge of that active 
 scientific culture, which was producing such abundant and 
 astonishing discoveries. The two streams of dissolvent in- 
 fluences, negative criticism on the one hand, and positive 
 knowledge and scientific method on the other, were led into a 
 single channel of multiplied volume and force. There was no 
 real nor logical connection between the two elements, and 
 while one of them has daily grown less serviceable, the other 
 has daily' grown more absorbingly powerful, so as now to be 
 itself the effective indirect substitute for that direct negative 
 criticism, with which the Encyclopaedic design had once thrown 
 it into alliance. 
 
 Diderot, the third chief of the attack, does even fuller 
 justice than Rousseau to Voltaire's share in stimulating thought 
 and opening the mind of France; and in spite of the ex- 
 travagance of its first clause, there is a glimpse of true 
 discrimination in the characteristic sentence — ' Were I to call 
 him the greatest man nature has produced, I might find people 
 to agree with me ; but if I say that she has never yet produced, 
 and is never likely to produce again, a man so extraordinary, 
 only his enemies will contradict me."* This panegyric was 
 specially disinterested, because Voltaire's last years had been 
 not least remarkable for his bitter antipathy to the dogmatic 
 
 '' Phil. Pos. V. 520. 
 
 '■' Essais mr les rignis de Claude et Niron, vol. vi. pp. 256, 290, and 
 191 (Ed. 1819). 
 
FERNEY. 257 
 
 atheism and dogmatic materialism, of that school, with which 
 Diderot was most intimate personally, and with whose doctrines, 
 if he did not at all times seem entirely to share them, he had 
 at any rate a warmer sympathy than with any other system of 
 that negative epoch, when every chief thinker was so vague 
 positively, so veak constructively, and only the subalterns, like 
 D'Holbachand Helvetius, presumed to push on to conclusions. 
 
 The story of Voltaire's many long-sustained and unflagging 
 endeavours to procure whatever redress might 'be possible for 
 the victims of legal injustice, has been very often told, and 
 mere commemoration of these justly renowned achievements 
 may suffice here. *' The worst of the worthy sort of people,' he 
 once said, ' is that they are such cowards. A man groans over 
 wrong, he shuts his lips, he takes his supper, he forgets.' ^^ Vol- 
 taire was not of that temper. He was not only an extremely 
 humane man ; extraordinary vividness of imagination, lack of 
 which is at the root of so much cruelty, and unparalleled sym- 
 pathetic quality, thinness of which explains so much appalling 
 indifference, animated him to a perseverance in protecting the 
 helplesspwETfh entitles him to a place by the side of Howard 
 and the noblest philanthropists. There were three years in 
 which the chief business of his life was to procure the rehabili- 
 tation of the name of the unfortunate Galas, and the payment 
 of a money recompense to his family. He agitated the whole 
 world with indignation and pity by means of narratives, pleas, 
 short statements and long statements, passionate appeals and 
 argumentative appeals. Powerful ministers, fine ladies, lawyers, 
 men of letters, were all constrained by his importunate solicita- 
 tions to lend an ear to the cause of reason and tolerance, and 
 to lift up an arm in its vindication. The same tremendous 
 enginery was again brought into play in the case of Sirven. In 
 the case of La Barre and his comrade D'Etallonde, his tenacity 
 was still more amazing and heroic. For twelve years he per- 
 severed in the attempt to have the memory of La Barre re- 
 '' Corr. 1766. (Euvres, Ixxv. p. 364. 
 
 S 
 
258 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 habilitated. One of the judicial authorities concerned in that 
 atrocious exploit, struck with horror at the thought of being 
 held up to the execration of Europe by that terrible avenger, 
 conveyed some menace to Voltaire of what might befall him. 
 Voltaire replied to him by a Chinese anecdote. 'I forbid you,' 
 said a t3Tannical emperor to the chief of the tribunal of history, 
 ' to speak a word more of me.' The mandarin began to write. 
 ' What are you doing now ? ' asked the emperor. ' I am 
 writing" down the order that your majesty has just given me.'^^ 
 There was a something inexorable as doom about Voltaire's 
 unrelenting perseverance in getting wrong definitely stamped 
 and transfixed. If he did not succeed in obtaining justice for 
 the memory of La Barre, and in procuring for D'Etallonde 
 free pardon, at least he never abandoned the endeavour, and 
 he was just as ardent and unwearied in the twelfth year, as he 
 had been while his indignation was freshly kindled. He was 
 more successful in the case of Lally. Count Lally had failed 
 to save India from the English, had been taken prisoner, and 
 had then in a magnanimous way asked his captors to allow him 
 to go to Paris to clear himself from various charges, which the 
 too numerous enemies he had made were spreading against his 
 character and administration. The French people, infuriated 
 at the loss of their possessions in India and Canada, were 
 crying for a victim, and Lally, after a process tainted with every 
 kind of illegality, was condemned to death by the parliament 
 of Paris (1766) on the vague charge of abuse of authority, 
 exactions, and vexations.^' The murdered man's son, known 
 in the days of the Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined by 
 Voltaire in the honourable work of procuring revision of the 
 proceedings; and one of the last crowning triumphs of Voltaire's 
 days was the news brought to him on his dying bed, that his 
 long effort had availed. 
 
 The death of Lally is the parallel in French history to the 
 execution of Byng in the history of England, and, oddly enough, 
 
 " Condorcet, p. 124. 
 
 '' Martin's Hist, de Fraiue, xv. pp. 569-72. 
 
FERNEY. 259 
 
 Voltaire was very actively occupied in trying to avert that crime 
 ■of our government, as well as the crimes of his own. He had 
 known Byng when he was in England."* Some one told him 
 that a letter from Richelieu, who had been Byng's opponent at 
 Minorca, would be useful, and Voltaire instantly urged the 
 Duke to allow him to forward a letter he had, stating Richelieu's 
 conviction of his defeated enemy's bravery and good judgment. 
 Voltaire insists that this letter turned four votes on the court- 
 martial."" He informs a correspondent, moreover, of the fact 
 that Byng had instructed his executor to express his deep obliga- 
 tion both to Voltaire and Richelieu.*" Humanity is erroneously 
 counted among commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a 
 place, there would be less urgent need than, alas, there is, for 
 its daily exercise among us. In its pale shape of kindly senti- 
 ment and bland pity it is common enough, and is always the 
 portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, aggressive, and 
 alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like ancient 
 hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, and 
 Voltaire is one of its master-types. 
 
 His interest in public transactions in his latest years was 
 keener than ever. That fruit of Polish anarchy, the war 
 between Russia and Turkey which broke out in 1768, excited 
 his imagination to a pitch of great heat, and the dispatch in the 
 spring of 1770 of a squadron from Cronstadt, for the so-called 
 liberation of Greece, made him weep for joy. He implored 
 Frederick not to leave to Catherine alone the burden of so 
 glorious a task. Superstition had had seven crusades ; was it 
 not a noble thing to undertake one crusade to drive the bar- 
 barous Turks from the land of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles 
 and Euripides ? Frederick replied very sensibly that Dantzic 
 was more to him than the Pirseus, and that he is a little 
 indifferent about the modem Greeks, who, if ever the arts 
 should revive among them, would be jealous to find that a 
 
 " Corr. 1757. QLuvres, Ixvi. p. 51. 
 
 '' Corr. 1756. OLuvres, Ixv. p. 568; Ixvi. pp. I, ig, 20, 40. 
 
 *° CEuvres, Ixvi. p. S'- 
 
26o VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Gaul by his Henriade had surpassed their Homer; that this 
 same Gaul had beaten Sophocles, equalled Thucydides, and 
 left far behind him Plato, Aristotle, and the whole school of 
 the Porch :^ — ^which was, perhaps, not quite so sensibly said. 
 
 The successes of Russia against Turkey in 1770 roused the 
 anxiety of Austria and Prussia, and the solution of what we 
 know as the Eastern question was indefinitely postponed by the 
 device of partitioning Poland (Aug. 5, 1772), the alternative 
 to the acquisition of the whole of that country by Russia, the 
 least civilized of the three powers. Of this memorable trans- 
 action Voltaire heartily approved, and he gave thanks that 
 he had lived to see ' such glorious events.'^ He insisted, 
 decidedly against the king's will, that Frederick had devised 
 the scheme, for he found it full of genius, and to all seeming ^ 
 he discerned none of the execration which the event he had 
 just witnessed was destined to raise in his own country in years 
 to come. His friendship with two of the chief actors may have 
 biassed his judgment ; but Voltaire seldom allowed, indeed by 
 the conditions of his temperament he was unable to allow, 
 personal considerations of this kind to obscure his penetrating 
 sight. He may well have thought the partition of Poland 
 desirable, for the reasons which a statesman of to-day may find 
 adequate : the country's hopeless political anarchy, its crushing 
 material misery, the oppressive power of the church, the 
 inevitable and standing peril to Europe of the existence of such 
 a centre of conflagration. It is worth remarking that Rousseau' 
 was much more keenly alive to the gravity of the event, that he 
 protested against what had been done, and that his influence 
 has been one of the main causes of the illogical sympathy of 
 democratic Europe for one of the most pestilent of aristocratic 
 governments. 
 
 The accession of Turgot to power in 1774 stirred an ardent 
 sympathy in Voltaire. Like the rest of the school, he looked 
 upon this as the advent of the political messiah,^ and he shared 
 
 *' CoiT. 1772. CEuvres, Ixxiv. p. 36. *^ lb. p. 93, etc. 
 
 ^' See Morellet, i. pp. 147, 159, etc. 
 
FERNEY. 261 
 
 the extreme hopes of that great and virtuous man's most 
 sanguine lieutenants. He declared that a new heaven and 
 a new earth had opened to him."* His sallies against the 
 economists were forgotten, and he now entered into the famous 
 controversy of the free trade in grain with all his usual fire. 
 His fervour went too far for the sage minister, who prayed hirh 
 to be somewhat less eager in alarming uninformed prejudice. 
 Still he insisted on hoping all things. 
 
 Contemple la brillante aurore 
 
 Qui t'annonce enfin les beaux jours. 
 
 Un nouveau monde est pres d'eclore ; 
 
 Ate disparalt pour toujours. 
 
 Vois I'auguste philosophie, 
 
 Chez toi si long temps poursuivie, 
 
 Dieter ses triomphantes lois. 
 
 Je lui dis : ' Ange tutelaire, 
 
 Quels dieux repandent ces bienfaits ? ' 
 
 'C'est un seul homnie."* 
 
 When it proved that one man alone, ' qui ne chercha le 
 Trai, que pour faire le bien,'"" was no match for the mountain 
 torrent of ignorance, prejudice, selfishness, and usage, and 
 Turgot fell from power (May 1776), Voltaire sunk into a 
 despair for his country, from which he never arose. ' I am 
 as one dashed to the ground. Never can we console ourselves 
 for having seen the golden age dawn and perish. My eyes see 
 only death in front of me, now that M. Turgot is gone. It has 
 fallen like a thunderbolt on my brain and my heart alike. The 
 rest of my days can never be other than pure bitterness.'*' 
 
 The visit to Paris was perhaps a falsification of this prophecy 
 for a moment. In 1778, yielding either to the solicitations of 
 his niece, or to a momentary desire to enjoy the triumph of his 
 renown at its centre, he returned to the great city which he had 
 not seen for nearly thirty years. His reception has been de- 
 
 ■** CEuvres, Ixxv. p. 641. 
 
 «5 Ode sur le Passe et le Present (l77S)- CEuvres, xvi. p. 415. 
 
 ^« Epltre a un Homme (1776). CEuvres, xvii. p. 327. 
 
 " Corr. 1776. CEuvres, Ixxii. pp. 403, 409, 412, etc. 
 
262 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 scribed over and over again. It is one of the historic events 
 of the century. No great captain returning from a prolonged 
 campaign of difficulty and hazard crowned by the most glorious 
 victory, ever received a more splendid and far-resounding 
 greeting. It was the last great commotion in Paris under the 
 old regime. The next great commotion which the historian 
 has to chronicle is the ever-memorable fourteenth day of July, 
 eleven years later, when the Bastille fell, and a new order began 
 for France, and new questions began for all Europe. 
 
 The agitation of so much loud triumph and incessant 
 acclamation proved more violent than Voltaire's feeble health 
 could resist, and he died, probably from an over-dose of 
 laudanum, on the thirtieth of May 1778. His last writing was 
 a line of rejoicing to the young Lally, that their efforts had 
 been successful in procuring justice for the memory of one 
 who had been put to death unjustly. How far Voltaire realized 
 the nearness of vast changes we cannot tell. There is at least 
 one remarkable prophecy of his, in the well-known letter to 
 Chauvelin : — ' Everything that I see appears the throwing 
 broadcast of the seed of a revolution, which must inevitably 
 come one day, but which I shall not have the pleasure of 
 witnessing. The French always come late to things, but they 
 do come at last. Light extends so from neighbour to neigh- 
 bour, that there will be a splendid outburst on the first 
 occasion, and then there will be a rare commotion. The young 
 are very happy; they will see fine things.'*^ A less sanguine 
 tone marks the close of the apologue in which Reason and 
 Truth, her daughter, take a triumphant journey in France and 
 elsewhere, about the time of the accession of Turgot. 'Ah, 
 well,' says Reason, ' let us enjoy these glorious days ; let us rest 
 here, if they last ; and if storms come on, let us go back to our 
 well.'*' Whether this meant much or little none can know. 
 It would be shallow to believe that such men as Voltaire, with 
 
 " April 2, 1764. CEuvres, Ixviii. p. 220. 
 
 *' Eloge historique de la Raison {or "Voyage de la Raison). CEuvres, 
 Ix. p. 478. 
 
FERNEY. 263 
 
 faculty quickened and outlook widened in the high air to 
 which their fame raises them, really discerned no more than 
 we, who have only their uttered words for authority, can per- 
 ceive that they discerned. Great position often invests men 
 wth a second sight whose visions they lock up in silence, 
 content with the work of the day. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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