The key to the matter, I think, is in the phrase which I used a little earlier, when I said that Voltaire was at once an avid inbreather and a mighty trumpet of the Zeitgeist. He was the perfect instrument of his century. His age—or as much of it as deserved to be called the age of enlightenment—spoke through him. As propagandist and publicist he has never been surpassed, for he was master of a style that was supremely capable of communicating ideas, that was devastating in controversy. Clarity, directness, simplicity, always the concrete expression, almost always the familiar word—but the familiar word incisively used—these were the characteristics which made it possible for Joubert to say that, “No more attention is required to read Voltaire than to listen to a man speak.”
Commanding all degrees of irony and every shade of sarcasm, an adept in mock humility and the art of driving home opinion while pretending to beg for instruction, peerless in badinage and terrible in rage, unapproachable in wit, by turn subtle and brutal in persuasion, Voltaire was a teacher such as the world has seldom seen. For, in his eyes, the writer who did not teach was no writer at all. With Fontenelle he held that history should be a guide to rational conduct.11 Moral philosophy and ethics were meaningless, he believed, if they did not subserve the good of society by means of instruction. Even the poet’s function was pedagogical. “Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths,” he wrote to Frederick, “do not deserve to be read.”
Because he was so effectively the spokesman of his age, so characteristically its representative, so completely its embodiment—its very type and symbol—Voltaire has been credited with originations and achievements that were not really his. To his own laurels have been added some that belong more properly to other men; laurels drawn to him by a power of attraction similar to that which causes famous wits, in every generation, to be credited with witticisms actually uttered by their less famous contemporaries. There is the matter of the Encyclopedia, for example.
Voltaire’s name is inseverably linked with this arsenal of enlightenment, and he is popularly supposed, even by some of his biographers, to have played a far more important part than he did in this great collaborative effort, which was originally intended to produce a French version of, and an improvement upon, Chambers’ Cyclopedia. One often comes on allusions and references which would indicate that his contribution must have eclipsed even that of Diderot himself, the editor-in-chief who, in George Saintsbury’s words, “had perhaps the greatest faculty of any man that ever lived for the literary treatment in a workman-like manner of the most heterogeneous and in some cases rebellious subjects,” and whose “untiring labour, not merely in writing original articles, but in editing the contributions of others, determined the character of the whole work.”
The truth, according to one of the closest students of the subject, would seem to be that Voltaire was mistrustful of the undertaking from the outset, as having too official a flavor for his taste; that he was in disagreement with Diderot, whom he believed to be intent on mere compilation rather than propaganda; and that he never, despite certain valuable contributions, gave himself wholeheartedly to the work.12 Certainly he did not stand fast during the crises of 1758 and 1760, when publication was suspended because of protests by Parliament, Jesuits, and Jansenists. If he did not withdraw from the enterprise completely, as did d’Alembert, he suddenly became remarkably discreet. Diderot and his staff, however, carried on to produce seventeen volumes by 1765. Summing up the relationship between Voltaire and the encyclopedists, Raymond Naves writes: “We have found a serious lack of understanding between them, and a parallelism rather than a convergence of efforts. Far from being the chief of the encyclopedists, Voltaire was only their franc-tireur; but it was in their service that he came to know himself completely, which is not the least interesting aspect of the story.”
Then there is the matter of the Revolution. That Voltaire helped clear the ground for this cataclysmic event there can be no possible doubt; but it is erroneous to assume, as is often done, that he foresaw the Revolution or would have approved had he lived to witness it. He would have been shocked and horrified by the social overturn which was symbolized by the brutal stamping and whirling of the Carmagnole, in place of the stately minuet; by the disappearance of knee-breeches, in favor of trousers boldly striped in red and blue.
Voltaire believed in the dignity of the individual but he did not believe in mass-man. He was an aristocrat in all his fibers, by instinct and by conviction. Far from being a republican, he was a passionate monarchist, a devoted admirer of the grand siècle, whose ideal state was the kind of state that the old regime might have been, if only the great Louis had been greater than he was. Voltaire believed in political, administrative, legal, and moral reforms; but the only way he would have reformed the monarchy, had he been able, would have been by installing a philosopher king, worthy of absolute power. He believed neither in social equality, nor in unrestrained political liberty, nor in the extension of education to the lower classes. He wished and worked to alleviate the burdens of the people, to make their lives more worth living, but he could not imagine a time when an aristocracy would not be placed above them by the watchmaker of the universe. “Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark what discord followsl” He did, however, wish with all his heart for an aristocracy capable of tolerance and benevolence. He longed to see mankind happy and prosperous. “Yet, with all his faith in humanity, he never considered the people fit to govern themselves.” 13 As late as 1768, he could declare: “As regards the people, they will always be stupid and barbarous. They are oxen which require a yoke, a goad, and some hay.”
Those persons who have in their ignorance admired Voltaire for the wrong reasons may find it distressing to admit that he was so completely a creature of his intellectual milieu and his adopted class; that he did not ride the wave of the future more adventurously, that he did not look forward with shining hope to the century of the common man. The judicious, on the other hand, will be quite content to admire him for what he was and did, within the circle of his obvious limitations.
More distressing is the conspicuous, ugly vein of antiSemitism which runs through much of his writing, particularly the Philosophical Dictionary. He almost never refers to a Jew, the Jewish people, or Jewish history, save in terms of contempt, contumely, and denigration; and such references are painfully numerous. One may argue that anti-Semitism was the rule in Europe, when Europe’s Jews were still confined to ghettos and compelled to wear identifying badges. But should not the great soldier of tolerance have been superior to this detestable rule? What can we think, when the arch-foe of fanaticism himself fans the fires of one brand of fanaticism by writing of one particular people as if they were set apart from all the rest of mankind? We can only attempt to explain, I think, without apology or condonation.
Voltaire’s anti-Semitism was of a special kind. He did not think of the Jews, as did so many of his contemporaries, as the murderers of Christ, or as an enduring threat to Christian children. He thought of them as the people who had made Christianity possible; as the seed-bed of a religion which he despised, which he considered an affront to human intelligence. Their history, as related in the Old Testament, was to him barbarous, cruel, horrible, incredible; while the New Testament, built upon the Old, was the bulwark of l’infâme. So, when he poured out his hot lead upon the Jews, when he spat upon their gabardines, he was really striking through them at his mortal enemy. This is an explanation, as I have said; nothing more. It in no way alters a fact—or a complex of facts—which, however unpleasant, must be accepted.
If this evaluation is right, then, Voltaire’s greatness consists in his having been so vigorously, so comprehensively, and so successfully the representative of his age —the age of enlightenment—in which man, carrying the promises of the humanist Renaissance towards their logical conclusions, stood forth upon this earth in confidence and pride, reliant only on his own reason; when, in the words of a hostile historian, he “arrogated
to himself the peculiarly divine privilege of absolute independence or self-sufficiency, which theologians term aseitas.” 14 The rational man who is content to be nothing more than rational, who can perceive no need of being anything more, who finds reason equal to human problems, who looks forward to the continuing triumphs of reason over nature—this is the type of the eighteenth-century enlightenment; this is the type of which Voltaire is the supreme example.
Like Fontenelle, like many of his predecessors and contemporaries, Voltaire was a skeptic who believed in reason. But he believed, also, in the limitations of reason. Indeed, he trusted it only as far as he could see clearly with his own sharp eyes. Plato was incomprehensible to him, Aristotle baffling. As for his attitude toward scholastic philosophy, it is summed up in his reference to Occam as “a celebrated madman.” The most profound mysteries and the highest truths were both, he was convinced, beyond reason’s reach. In 1736, in his first letter to Frederick, he wrote: “I look upon metaphysical ideas as things which do honor to the human mind. They are flashes in the midst of a dark night; and that, I think, is all we can hope of metaphysics. It seems improbable that the first principles of things will ever be thoroughly known. The mice living in a few little holes of an immense building do not know if the building is eternal, who is the architect, or why the architect built it. They try to preserve their lives, to people their holes, and to escape the destructive animals which pursue them. We are the mice; and the divine architect who built this universe has not yet, so far as I know, told His secret to any of us.”
We have traveled far since Voltaire’s day. We have seen the age of enlightenment give rise to the age of progress; to a boundless optimism, a vast complacency, reared on a triple base—the theory of evolution, the business dynamism of the western world, and man’s apparently unlimited power over nature. Then we have witnessed a failure of rational nerve; we have watched the prestige of reason decline, in many quarters, in direct proportion to the mounting achievements of science : an event caused partially, but not entirely, by the two most terrible wars in history and the threat of an even more terrible third. We have lived to hear our famous Renaissance, of which we were so proud, described not as a rebirth of human values, but as the beginning of a long period of human disintegration; while the road of science, on which we set out so bravely, is now seen by an ever increasing number of observers as the road to death.
Catholic thinkers and publicists have, of course, been most eloquent in analyzing a process which they believe to be a perfect justification of their unchanging historical and religious position. Christopher Dawson speaks brilliantly for them all, when he writes: “So we have the paradox that at the beginning of the Renaissance, when the conquest of nature and the creation of modern science are still unrealized, man appears in godlike freedom with a sense of unbounded power and greatness; while at the end of the nineteenth century, when nature has been conquered and there seem no limits to the powers of science, man is once more conscious of his misery and weakness as the slave of material circum stance and physical appetite and death. Instead of the heroic exaltation of humanity which was characteristic of the naturalism of the Renaissance, we see the humiliation of humanity in the anti-human naturalism of Zola. Man is stripped of his glory and freedom and left as a naked human animal shivering in an inhuman universe.” 15
The voice of Rome is not alone in proclaiming, to an unhappy and bewildered generation, the vanity of reason. A Toynbee looks up and down the long vistas of history, and persuades himself that we are in all probability moving toward the final triumph of Christianity. A Pitirim Sorokin can survey the periods of civilization, weigh their elements, chart tendencies, and decide that the western world is about to enter upon a new age of faith. Scientists, working at the highest levels, having reached the frontiers of empiricism, are finding it a comfort to supplement their knowledge with super-rational beliefs. Writers who were skeptical and uncompromising intellectuals only twenty years ago are now taking refuge in old religions of the West and even older Eastern mysteries. The fugitives from reason are following many paths, but their numbers are impressive, and the significance of their action is not to be ignored.
Whether or not this flight is a major movement in the intellectual history of man, whether or not the rational tide, after its long run, is destined to be borne backward by a rising tide of faith, remains to be demonstrated. But, whatever the upshot, Voltaire stands and will stand as a landmark and a symbol; toweringly identified with one notable stage of man’s development; perfectly representing one of man’s possible responses to the challenge of life. And, for those of us who are incapable of finding supernatural solace, the rationalism of Voltaire —with all its limitations—must remain the best hope and the best instrument that man has on earth.
BEN RAY REDMAN
Some Dates in the Life of Voltaire
A Brief Bibliography of Works by Voltaire
For the first time, Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary16 has been translated in full—a well-documented two-volume edition by Peter Gay (New York and London, 1962). No complete version of the vast Essai sur les Moeurs is readily available in English; however, its many introductory chapters have been compiled under the tide The Philosophy of History,16 with a preface by Thomas Kiernan (New York and London, 1965).
The Philosophical Letters—also called the English Letters, as in the present text—have been translated in their entirety by Ernest Dilworth (Indianapolis, Ind., and London, 1961); they are also contained in vol. XXIX of the Harvard Classics.
Voltaire is often regarded as the forerunner of modern historical writing, and his Age of Louis XIV16 continues to command interest. Translated by Martyn P. Pollack, it appears in Everyman’s Library (New York and London, 1961). An abridged Louis XIV, together with excerpts from the History of Charles XII and related works, has been translated by J. H. Brumfitt: Age of Louis XIV and Other Selected Writings 16 (New York, 1963; London, 1966).
Voltaire’s neoclassical tragedies are no longer played, seldom read; but Mahomet the Prophet or Fanaticism16 has been published in a new prose translation by Robert L. Myers (New York, 1964). Voltaire’s mock-heroic poem La Pucelle, condemned by the Church for licentiousness, exists in English as The Virgin of Orleans (Denver, Colo., 1965). Though Howard Nelson’s translation is in prose it conveys the author’s fiercely anticlerical tone. Another biting attack on organized religion and blind belief, the Sermon of the Fifty, has been rendered by J. A. R. Seguin (London, 1963).
A prolific correspondent, Voltaire wrote some twenty thousand letters. A compact compilation has been edited by Theodore Besterman: Select Letters of Voltaire (London and Camden, N.J., 1963).
—James R. Hewitt
Philosophical Dictionary
Selections
ABBE
THE word abbé, let it be remembered, signifies father. If you become one you render a service to the state; you doubtless perform the best work that a man can perform; you give birth to a thinking being. In this action there is something divine. But if you are Monsieur l’Abbé only because you have had your head shaved, wear a clerical collar, and a short cloak, and are waiting for a fat benefice, you do not deserve the name of abbé.
The ancient monks gave this name to the superior whom they elected; the abbé was their spiritual father. What different things do the same words signify at different times! The spiritual father was a poor man at the head of others equally poor; but the poor spiritual fathers have since had incomes of two hundred or four hundred thousand livres, and there are poor spiritual fathers in Germany who have regiments of guards.
A poor man, making a vow of poverty, and in consequence becoming a sovereign? It has been said before. but it must be said a thousand times: this is intolerable. The laws protest such an abuse; religion is shocked by it, and the really poor, who want food and clothing, appeal to heaven at the door of Monsieur l’Abbé.
But I hear the abbés of Italy, Germany, Flanders, and Burgundy ask: “Why a
re not we to accumulate wealth and honors? Why are we not to become princes? The bishops, who were originally poor, are like us; they have enriched and elevated themselves; one of them has become superior even to kings; let us imitate them as far as we are able.”
Gentlemen, you are right. Invade the land; it belongs to him whose strength or skill obtains possession of it. You have made ample use of the times of ignorance, superstition, and infatuation, to strip us of our inheritances, and trample us under your feet, that you might fatten on the substance of the unfortunate. But tremble for fear that the day of reason will arrive!
ADAM
So much has been said and so much written concerning Adam, his wife, the pre-Adamites, etc., and the rabbis have put forth so many idle stories respecting Adam, and it is so dull to repeat what others have said before, that I shall here hazard a new idea, or one, at least, which is not to be found in any ancient author, father of the church, preacher, theologian, critic, or scholar with whom I am acquainted. I mean the profound secrecy with respect to Adam which was observed throughout the habitable earth, Palestine only excepted, until the time when the Jewish books began to be known in Alexandria, and were translated into Greek under one of the Ptolemies. Even then they were very little known; for large books were very rare and very dear. Besides, the Jews of Jerusalem were so incensed against those of Alexandria, loaded them with so many reproaches for having translated their Bible into a profane tongue, called them so many ill names, and cried so loudly to the Lord, that the Alexandrian Jews concealed their translation as much as possible. It was so secret that no Greek or Roman author speaks of it before the time of the Emperor Aurelian.
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 5