Voltaire: A Sketch of his Life and Works Part 5

His voice is mighty among the ages."

Dr. D. F. Strauss wrote: "Voltaire's historical significance has been ill.u.s.trated by the observation of Goethe that, as in families whose existence has been of long duration, Nature sometimes at length produces an individual who sums up in himself the collective qualities of all his ancestors, so it happens also with nations, whose collective merits (and demerits) sometimes appear epitomised in one individual person. Thus in Louis XIV. stood forth the highest figure of a French monarch. Thus, in Voltaire, the highest conceivable and congenial representative of French authorship. We may extend the observation farther, if, instead of the French nation only, we take into view the whole European generation on which Voltaire's influence was exercised. From this point of view we may call Voltaire emphatically the representative writer of the eighteenth century, as Goethe called him, in the highest sense, the representative writer of France."

Victor Hugo, in the magnificent oration which he p.r.o.nounced on the centenary of Voltaire's death, said: "Voltaire waged the splendid kind of warfare, the war of one alone against all-that is to say, the grand warfare; the war of thought against matter; the war of reason against prejudice; the war of the just against the unjust; the war of the oppressed against the oppressor; the war of goodness; the war of kindness. He had the tenderness of a woman and the wrath of a hero. He was a great mind and an immense heart. He conquered the old code and the old dogma. He conquered the feudal lord, the Gothic judge, the Roman priest. He raised the populace to the dignity of people. He taught, pacified, and civilised. He fought for Sirven and Montbailly, as for Calas and La Barre. He accepted all the menaces, all the persecutions, calumny, and exile. He was indefatigable and immovable. He conquered violence by a smile, despotism by sarcasm, infallibility by irony, obstinacy by perseverance, ignorance by truth."

Buckle, in his _History of Civilisation_ (vol. ii., p. 304) says: "It would be impossible to relate all the original remarks of Voltaire, which, when he made them, were attacked as dangerous paradoxes, and are now valued as sober truths. He was the first historian who recommended universal freedom of trade; and although he expresses himself with great caution, still, the mere announcement of the idea is a popular history forms an epoch in the progress of the French mind. He is the originator of that important distinction between the increase of population and the increase of food, to which political economy has been greatly indebted, a principle adopted several years later by Townsend, and then used by Malthus as the basis of his celebrated work. He has, moreover, the merit of being the first who dispelled the childish admiration with which the Middle Ages had been hitherto regarded. In his works the Middle Ages are for the first time represented as what they really were-a period of ignorance, ferocity, and licentiousness; a period when injuries were unredressed, crime unpunished, and superst.i.tion unrebuked." Again (page 308): "No one reasoned more closely than Voltaire when reasoning suited his purpose. But he had to deal with men impervious to argument; men whose inordinate reverence for antiquity had only left them two ideas, namely, that everything old is right, and that everything new is wrong.

To argue against these opinions would be idle indeed; the only other resource was to make them ridiculous, and weaken their influence by holding up their authors to contempt. This was one of the tasks Voltaire set himself to perform; and he did it well. He therefore used ridicule, not as the test of truth, but as the scourge of folly. And with such effect was the punishment administered that not only did the pedants and theologians of his own time wince under the lash, but even their successors feel their ears tingle when they read his biting words; and they revenge themselves by reviling the memory of the great writer whose works are as a thorn in their side, and whose very name they hold in undisguised abhorrence."

Mr. Lecky, in his _History of Rationalism in Europe_ (vol. ii., p. 66) says: "Voltaire was at all times the unflinching opponent of persecution. No matter how powerful was the persecutor, no matter how insignificant was the victim, the same scathing eloquence was launched against the crime, and the indignation of Europe was soon concentrated upon the oppressor. The fearful storm of sarcasm and invective that avenged the murder of Calas, the magnificent dream in the _Philosophical Dictionary_ reviewing the history of persecution from the slaughtered Canaanites to the latest victim who had perished at the stake, the indelible stigma branded upon the persecutors of every age and of every creed, all attested the intense and pa.s.sionate earnestness with which Voltaire addressed himself to his task. On other subjects a jest or a caprice could often turn him aside. When attacking intolerance he employed, indeed, every weapon; but he employed them all with the concentrated energy of a profound conviction. His success was equal to his zeal; the spirit of intolerance sank blasted beneath his genius.

Wherever his influence pa.s.sed, the arm of the inquisitor was palsied, the chain of the captive riven, the prison door flung open. Beneath his withering irony, persecution appeared not only criminal but loathsome, and since his time it has ever shrunk from observation and masked its features under other names. He died, leaving a reputation that is indeed far from spotless, but having done more to destroy the greatest of human curses than any other of the sons of men."

Mr. Lecky, in his _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ (v., 312), observes: "No previous writer can compare with him in the wideness and justness of his conceptions of history, and even now no historian can read without profit his essays on the subject. No one before had so strongly urged that history should not be treated as a collection of pictures or anecdotes relating to courts or battles, but should be made a record and explanation of the true development of nations, of the causes of their growth and decay, of their characteristic virtues and vices, of the changes that pa.s.s over their laws, customs, opinions, social and economical conditions, and over the relative importance and well-being of their different cla.s.ses... (p. 315). Untiring industry, an extraordinary variety of interests and apt.i.tudes, a judgment at once sound, moderate, and independent, a rare power of seizing in every subject the essential argument or facts, a disposition to take no old opinions on trust and to leave no new opinions unexamined, combined in him with the most extraordinary literary talent. Never, perhaps, was there an intellect at once so luminous, versatile, and flexible, which produced so much, which could deal with such a vast range of difficult subjects without being ever obscure, tangled, or dull."

Colonel Hamley wrote: "But after the winnowings of generations, a wide and deep repute still remains to him; nor will any diminution which it may have suffered be without compensation, for, with the fading of old prejudices, and with better knowledge, his name will be regarded with increased liking and respect. Yet it must not be supposed that he is here held up as a pattern man. He was, indeed, an infinitely better one than the religious bigots of that time. He believed, with far better effect on his practice than they could boast, in a Supreme Ruler. He was the untiring and eloquent advocate at the bar of the universe of the rights of humanity."

Mr. Swinburne has well expressed this characteristic. "Voltaire's great work," he says, "was to have done more than any other man on record to make the instinct of cruelty not only detestable, but ludicrous; and so to accomplish what the holiest and the wisest of saints and philosophers had failed to achieve: to attack the most hideous and pernicious of human vices with a more effective weapon than preaching and denunciation: to make tyrants and torturers look not merely horrible and hateful, but pitiful and ridiculous."

Edgar Quinet, in his lectures on the Church, says: "I watch for forty years the reign of one man who is himself the spiritual direction, not of his country, but of his age. From the corner of his chamber he governs the realm of mind. Everyday intellects are regulated by his; one word written by his hand traverses Europe. Princes love and kings fear him. Nations repeat the words that fall from his pen. Who exercises this incredible power which has nowhere been seen since the Middle Ages? Is he another Gregory VII? Is he a Pope? No-Voltaire."

And Lamartine, in similar strain, remarks: "If we judge of men by what they have _done_, then Voltaire is incontestibly the greatest writer of modern Europe. No one has caused, through the powerful influence of his genius alone and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in the minds of men. His pen aroused a sleeping world, and shook a far mightier empire than that of Charlemagne, the European empire of a theocracy. His genius was not _force_, but _light_. Heaven had destined him not to destroy, but to illuminate; and wherever he trod, light followed him, for Reason-which is light-had destined him to be, first her poet, then her apostle, and lastly her idol."

Mr. Alexander A. Knox, writing in the _Nineteenth Century_ (October 1882), says: "That the man's aspirations were in the main n.o.ble and honorable to humanity, I am sure. I am equally so that few men have exercised so great an influence upon their fellow creatures.... The wonderful old man! When he was past eighty years of age he set to work, like another Jeremy Bentham, to abolish the admission of hearsay evidence into French legal proceedings. But his great work was that by his wit and irony he broke down the _principle of authority_ which had been so foully abused in France. Would the most strictly religious man wish to see religion as it was in France in the eighteenth century?

Would the greatest stickler for authority wish to find a country governed as France was governed in the days of Voltaire?"

Du Bois-Reymond, the eminent German scientist, remarks: "Voltaire is so little to us at present because the things he fought for, 'toleration, spiritual freedom, human dignity, justice,' have become, as it were, the air we breathe, and do not think of except when we are deprived of it."

Col. R. G. Ingersoll, in his fine _Oration on Voltaire_, observes: "Voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work. A perfect master of the French language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations-in fact and in feeling playing upon it as skilfully as Paganini on his violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the most serious subjects with the gaiety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts, questions, subjects as a juggler does b.a.l.l.s, keeping them in the air with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit and wisdom, and sometimes wickedness, logic and laughter. With a woman's instinct, knowing the sensitive nerves-just where to touch-hating arrogance of place, the stupidity, of the solemn, s.n.a.t.c.hing masks from priest and king, knowing the springs of action and ambition's ends, perfectly familiar with the great world, the intimate of kings and their favorites, sympathising with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superst.i.tion, and loving liberty with all his heart. Such was Voltaire, writing _dipus_ at seventeen, _Irene_ at eighty-three, and crowding between these two tragedies the accomplishment of a thousand lives."

The Right Hon. John Morley testifies: "Voltaire was the very eye of modern illumination. It was he who conveyed to his generation in a mult.i.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 contemporary, Montesquieu, that humanity had lost its t.i.tle-deeds, and he had recovered them. The four-score volumes which he wrote are the monument, as they were the instrument, of a new renascence. They are the fruit and representation of a spirit of encyclopaedic curiosity and productiveness. Hardly a page of all these countless leaves is common form. Hardly a sentence is there which did not come forth alive from Voltaire's own mind, or which was said because some one else had said it before. Voltaire was a stupendous power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw many new things, after which the spirits of others were unconsciously groping and dumbly yearning. Nor was this all. Voltaire was ever in the front and centre of the fight. His life was not a mere chapter in a history of literature. He never counted truth a treasure to be discreetly hidden in a napkin. He made it a perpetual war cry, and emblazoned it on a banner that was many a time rent, but was never out of the field." We may fitly conclude with Browning's incisive lines in _The Two Poets of Croisie_:-

_"Ay, sharpest, shrewdest steel that ever stabbed_

_To death Imposture through the armour joints."_

SELECTIONS FROM VOLTAIRE'S WORKS

History

The world is old, but history is of yesterday.-_Melanges Historiques_.

If you would put to profit the present time, one must not spend his life in propagating ancient fables.-_Ibid_.

A mature man who has serious business does not repeat the tales of his nurse.-_Ibid_.

Search through all nations and you will not find one whose history does not begin with stories worthy of the Four Sons of Aymon and of Robert the Devil.-_Politique et Legislation._

Ancient histories are enigmas proposed by antiquity to posterity, which understands them not-_Dict. Phil._ (Art. "Histoire").

A real fact is of more value than a hundred ant.i.theses.-_Melanges Historiques_.

I have a droll idea. It is that only people who have written tragedies can throw interest into our dry and barbarous history. There is necessary in a history, as in a drama, exposition, knotty plot, and _denouement_, with agreeable episode.-_Corr. gen._ 1740.

They have made but the history of the kings, not that of the nation. It seems that during fourteen hundred years there were only kings, ministers, and generals among the Gauls. But our morals, our laws, our customs, our intelligence-are these then nothing?-_Corr_., 1740.

Is fraud sanctified by being antiquated?-_Sottisier_.

I have ever esteemed it charlatanry to paint, other than by facts, public men with whom we have had no connection.-_Corr. gen._, 1752.

If one surveys the history of the world, one finds weaknesses punished, but great crimes fortunate, and the world is a vast scene of brigandages abandoned to fortune.-_Essai sur les Murs_, c. 191.

Since the ancient Romans, I have known no nation enriched by victories.-_Contant d' Orville_, i. 337.

To buy peace from an enemy is to furnish him with the sinews of war.-_Ibid_, p. 334.

The grand art of surprising, killing, and robbing is a heroism of the highest antiquity.-_Dial_. 24.

Murderers are punished, unless they kill in grand company to the sound of trumpets; that is the rule.-_Dict. Phil_. (Art. "Droit").

We formerly made war in order to eat; but in the long run, all the admirable inst.i.tutions degenerate.-_Dial._ 24.

It suffices often that a mad Minister of State shall have bitten another Minister for the rabies to be communicated in a few months to five hundred thousand men.-_Ibid_.

In this world there (are) only offensive wars; defensive ones are only resistance to armed robbers.-_Ibid._

Twenty volumes in folio never yet made a revolution. It is the portable little shilling books that are to be feared. If the Gospel cost twelve hundred sesterces, the Christian religion would never have been established.-_Correspondence with D1 Alembert_, 1765.

Wars

C.: What, you do not admit there are just wars?

A.: I have never known any of the kind; to me it appears contradictory and impossible.

C.: What! when the Pope Alexander VI. and his infamous son Borgia pillaged the Roman States, strangled and poisoned the lords of the land, while according them indulgences: was it not permissible to arm against these monsters?

A.: Do you not see that it was these monsters who made war? Those who defended themselves from aggression but sustained it. There are constantly only offensive wars in this world; the defensive is nothing but resistance to armed robbers.

C.: You mock us. Two princes dispute an heritage, their right is litigious, their reasons equally plausible; it is necessary then that war should decide, and this war is just on both sides.