The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library)

by Francois Voltaire

  CONCATENATION OF EVENTS

  It is said that the present is pregnant with the future. Events are linked to each other by an invincible fatality: Homer puts Destiny above even Jupiter. This master of gods and men declares roundly that he cannot stop his son Sarpedon dying at his appointed time. Sarpedon was born at the moment when he had to be born, and could not be born at another moment; he could not die otherwise than before Troy; he could not be buried elsewhere than in Lycia; he had at the appointed time to produce vegetables which had to be changed into the substance of a few Lycians; his heirs had to establish a new order in his states; this new order had to exert an influence over the neighboring kingdoms; from it necessarily resulted a new arrangement of war and peace with the neighbors of the neighbors of Lycia: thus, step by step, the destiny of the whole world has been dependent on Sarpedon’s death, which depended on Helen being carried off; and this carrying off was necessarily linked to Hecuba’s marriage, which, when traced back to other events was linked to the origin of things.

  If only one of these facts had been arranged differently, another universe would have resulted: but it was not possible for the present universe not to exist; therefore it was not possible for Jupiter to save his son’s life, for all that he was Jupiter.

  This system of necessity and fatality according to report has been invented in our time by Leibnitz, under the name of self-sufficient reason. It is, however, very ancient: that there is no effect without a cause and that often the smallest cause produces the greatest effects, is not a recent idea.

  Lord Bolingbroke avows that the little quarrels of Madame Marlborough and Madame Masham gave birth to his chance of making Queen Anne’s private treaty with Louis XIV; this treaty led to the Peace of Utrecht; this Peace of Utrecht established Philip V on the throne of Spain. Philip V took Naples and Sicily from the house of Austria; the Spanish prince who is today King of Naples clearly owes his kingdom to my lady Masham: and he would not have had it, he would not perhaps even have been born, if the Duchess of Marlborough had been more complaisant towards the Queen of England. His existence at Naples depended on one foolishness more or less at the court of London.

  Examine the position of all the peoples of the universe. They are established like this on a sequence of facts which appear to be connected with nothing and which are connected with everything. Everything is cog, pulley, cord, spring, in this vast machine.

  It is likewise in the physical sphere. A wind which blows from the depths of Africa and the southern seas brings with it a portion of the African atmosphere, which falls in rain in the valleys of the Alps. These rains fertilize our lands, while our north wind in its turn sends our vapors among the Negroes. We do good to Guinea, and Guinea does good to us. The chain stretches from one end of the universe to the other.

  But it seems to me that the truth of this principle is strangely abused. From it some people conclude that there is not a sole minute atom whose movement has not exerted its influence in the present arrangement of the world; that there is not a single minute accident, among either men or animals, which is not an essential link in the great chain of fate.

  Let us understand each other: every effect clearly has its cause, going back from cause to cause in the abyss of eternity; but every cause has not its effect going forward to the end of the centuries. All events are produced by each other, I admit; if the past is delivered of the present, the present is delivered of the future; every being has a father, but every being does not always have children. Here it is precisely as with a genealogical tree: each house goes back, as we say, to Adam; but in the family there are many persons who have died without issue.

  There is a genealogical tree of the events of this world. It is incontestable that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from Gomer, and the Russians from Magog, his younger brother: one finds this genealogy in so many fat books! On this basis one cannot deny that the Great Turk, who is also descended from Magog, was bound to be well beaten in 1769 by Catherine II, Empress of Russia. This adventure is clearly connected with other great adventures. But that Magog spat to right or left, near Mount Caucasus, and that he made two circles in a well or three, that he slept on the left side or on the right, are matters which, in my opinion, had little influence on present affairs.

  One must conclude that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step, until it makes a circuit of the world, as he has demonstrated still further. Throw into water a body of like density: You calculate easily that after a short time the movement of this body, and the movement it has communicated to the water, will be destroyed. The movement disappears and is effaced. In the same way, the movement that Magog might have produced by spitting in a well cannot influence what is passing today in Moldavia and Wallachia; therefore present events are not the children of all past events: they have their direct lines; but a thousand little collateral lines do not serve them at all. Once more, every being has a father, but every being does not have children.

  DEMOCRACY

  As a rule there is no comparison between the crimes of great men, who are always ambitious, and the crimes of the people, who always want, and can only want, liberty and equality. These two sentiments, Liberty and Equality, do not lead straight to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, the devastation of one’s neighbors’ lands, etc. But ambitious might and the mania for power plunge men into all these crimes, whatever the time, whatever the place.

  Popular government is in itself, therefore, less iniquitous, less abominable than despotic power.

  The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty. There have been mountain-dwelling republicans who were savage and ferocious; but it was not the republican spirit that made them so, it was nature.

  The real vice of a civilized republic is expressed in the Turkish fable of the dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads injured one another, and the many tails obeyed a single head which sought to devour everything.

  Democracy seems suitable only to a very little country, and one that is happily situated. However small it may be, it will make many mistakes, because it will bo composed of men. Discord will reign there as in a mon astery; but there will be no St. Bartholomew, no Irish massacres, no Sicilian vespers, no Inquisition, no condemnation to the galleys for having taken some water from the sea without paying for it—unless one assumes that this republic is composed of devils in a comer of hell.

  Which is better—runs the endless question—a republic or a monarchy? The dispute always resolves itself into an agreement that it is a very difficult business to govern men. The Jews had God Himself for their master, and see what has happened to them as a result: nearly always have they been oppressed and enslaved and even today they do not appear to cut a very pretty figure.

  DESTINY

  Of all the books of the Occident which have come down to us, the most ancient is Homer. It is there that one finds the customs of profane antiquity, the gross heroes, the gross gods, made in the image of men; but it is there among dreams and inconsequentialities, that one finds too the seeds of philosophy, and above all the idea of that destiny which is master of the gods, as the gods are masters of the world.

  When the magnanimous Hector is determined to fight the magnanimous Achilles, and with this object starts running away at top speed, thrice making the circuit of the city before fighting, in order to have more vigor; when Homer compares fleetfooted Achilles, who pursues him, to a sleeping man; when Madame Dacier goes into ecstasies of admiration over the art and mighty sense of this passage—then Jupiter wishes to save great Hector who has made so many sacrifices to him, and he consults the fates; he weighs the destinies of Hector and Achilles in the balance (Iliad, liv, xxii), and he finds that the Trojan must indubitably be killed by the Greek. He, Jupiter, cannot oppose it; and from this moment, Hector’s guardian genius, Apollo, is forced to abandon his hero. The point is not that Homer is of
ten prodigal —notably in this passage—of quite contradictory ideas, but that he is the first in whom one finds the notion of destiny. This notion, therefore, must have been much in vogue in his time.

  The Pharisees, among the little Jewish people, did not adopt destiny until several centuries later; for these Pharisees, who were the first literates among the Jews, were very newfangled. In Alexandria they mixed a part of the Stoic dogmas with the old Jewish ideas. St. Jerome even claims that their sect is not much anterior to the Christian era.

  The philosophers needed neither Homer nor the Pharisees to persuade themselves that everything happens through immutable laws, that everything is arranged, that everything is a necessary effect. This is how they argued. Either the world exists by its own nature, by its physical laws, or a supreme being has formed it according to his supreme laws: in both cases, these laws are immutable; in both cases everything is necessary; heavy bodies tend towards the center of the earth, without being able to rest in the air. Pear trees can never bear pineapples. A spaniel’s instinct cannot be an ostrich’s instinct; everything is arranged, geared, and controlled.

  Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas. There comes a time when he necessarily loses his teeth, his hair and his ideas.

  If you could disturb the destiny of a fly, there would be nothing to stop you from controlling the destiny of all other flies, of all other animals, of all men, of all nature. You would find yourself in the end more powerful than God.

  Imbeciles say: “My doctor has saved my aunt from a mortal malady; he has made her live ten years longer than she ought to have lived.” Others who pretend to wisdom say: “The prudent man makes his own destiny.”

  But often the prudent, far from making their own destinies, succumb to them; it is destiny that makes them prudent.

  Profound students of politics affirm that if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton and a dozen other parliamentarians had been assassinated a week before Charles I’s head was cut off, this king might have lived longer and died in his bed. They are right. They might add that if the whole of England had been swallowed up in the sea, this monarch would not have perished on a scaffold near Whitehall; but things were so arranged that Charles had to have his neck severed.

  Your doctor saved your aunt, but in doing so he assuredly did not contradict nature’s order: he followed it. It is clear that your aunt could not stop herself being born in such and such a town, that she could not stop herself having a certain malady at a particular time, that the doctor could not be elsewhere than in the town where he was, that your aunt had to call him, that he had to prescribe for her the drugs which cured her, or which one thinks cured her, when nature was the only doctor.

  A peasant thinks that it has hailed on his field by chance; but the philosopher knows that there is no chance, and that it was impossible, in the constitution of this world, for it not to hail on that day in that place.

  There are persons who, frightened by this truth, admit only half of it—like debtors who offer half to their creditors, and ask respite for the rest. “There are,” they say, “some events which are necessary, and others which are not.” It would be laughable if one part of the world were arranged, and another part were not; if a part of what happens had to happen, and another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine opposed to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly, others not to reason at all, and others to persecute those who do reason.

  Some say to you: “Do not believe in fatalism; for then, everything appearing inevitable, you will work at nothing, you will wallow in indifference, you will love neither riches, nor honors, nor glory; you will not wish to acquire anything, you will believe yourself as devoid of merit as of power; no talent will be cultivated, everything will perish through apathy.”

  Be not afraid, gentlemen, we shall always have passions and prejudices, since it is our destiny to be subjected to prejudices and passions: we shall know that it no more depends on us to have much merit and great talent, than to have a good head of hair and beautiful hands: we shall be convinced that we must not be vain about anything; and yet we shall always have vanity.

  I necessarily have the urge to write this, and you have the itch to condemn me. Both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you.

  The owl, which feeds on mice in its hovel, says to the nightingale: “Stop singing under your beautiful, shady trees. Come into my hole, that I may eat you.” And the nightingale replies: “I was born to sing here —and to laugh at you.”

  You ask me what will become of liberty? I do not understand you. I do not know what this liberty is of which you speak; and you have been disputing about its nature for so long that you assuredly cannot be acquainted with it. If you wish—or rather, if you are able —to examine peaceably with me what it is, pass on to the letter “L.”

  DOG

  It seems that nature has given the dog to man for his defense and pleasure; it is of all animals the most faithful; it is the best possible friend of man.

  It appears that there are several species absolutely different. How can we believe that a greyhound comes originally from a spaniel? The one has neither the hair, legs, shape, ears, voice, scent, nor instinct of the other. A man who has never seen any dogs but barbets or spaniels, and who saw a greyhound for the first time, would take it rather for a dwarf horse than for an animal of the spaniel race. It is very likely that each race was always what it now is, with the exception of a few mongrel breeds.

  It is astonishing that in the Jewish law the dog was considered unclean, as well as the griffin, the hare, the pig, and the eel; there must have been some moral or physical reason for it, which we have not yet discovered.

  The tales that are told of the sagacity, obedience, friendship, and courage of dogs, are as extraordinary as they are true. The military philosopher, Ulloa, assures us that in Peru the Spanish dogs recognize the men of the Indian race, pursue them, and tear them to pieces; and that the Peruvian dogs do the same with the Spaniards. This would seem to prove that each species of dogs still retained the hatred which was inspired in it at the time of the conquest, and that each race always fought for its master with the same valor and attachment.

  Why, then, has the word “dog” become a term of contempt? When we would be tender, we say my sparrow, my dove, my chicken; we even say my kitten, though this animal is famed for treachery; and, when we are angry, we call people dogs! The Turks, even when not angry, speak with horror and contempt of the Christian dogs. The English populace, when they see a man who, by his manner or dress, has the appearance of having been born on the banks of the Seine or of the Loire, commonly call him a French dog—a figure of speech which is neither just nor polite.

  The fastidious Homer introduces the divine Achilles telling the divine Agamemnon that he is as impudent as a dog. This could excuse the English populace.

  The most zealous friends of the dog must, however, confess that this animal has a bold eye; that some are snappish; that they often bite strangers whom they take for their master’s enemies, as sentinels fire on passersby who approach too near the counterscarp. These are probably the reasons which have rendered the epithet “dog” insulting; but we dare not decide.

  Why was the dog adored or revered—whichever you will—by the Egyptians? Because the dog is man’s sentinel. Plutarch tells us that after Cambyses had killed their bull Apis, and had had it roasted, no animal except the dog dared to eat the remains of the feast, so profound was the respect for Apis; the dog, not so scrupulous, swallowed the god without hesitation. The Egyptians, as may be imagined, were exceedingly scandalized, and Anubis lost much of his credit.

  The dog, however, still bears the honor of being always in the heavens, under the names of the great and little dog. We regularly record the dog days.

  But of all dogs, Cerberus has had the grea
test reputation; he had three heads. We have remarked that, anciently, all went by threes—Isis, Osiris, and Orus, the three first Egyptian divinities; the three brother gods of the Greek world—Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto; the three Fates, the three Furies, the three Graces, the three judges of hell, and the three heads of this infernal dog.

  We perceive here with grief that we have said nothing of cats. We will only remark that there are no cats in the heavens, as there are goats, crabs, bulls, rams, eagles, lions, fishes, hares, and dogs; but, in compensation, the cat has been consecrated, or revered, or adored, as partaking of saintliness, in several towns—and as altogether divine by no small number of women.

  THE ECCLESIASTICAL MINISTRY

  The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend toward this goal must be considered alien or dangerous.

  Instruction, exhortation, threats of torments to come, promises of immortal beatitude, prayers, counsels, spiritual help, are the only means ecclesiastics may use to try to make men virtuous here below, and happy for eternity. All other means are repugnant to the liberty of reason, to the nature of the soul, to the unalterable rights of conscience, to the essence of religion, to that of the ecclesiastical ministry, and to the rights of the sovereign.