Is it really true that among slightly more civilized nations, such as the Jews and half-Jews, there have been entire sects who would not worship God save by stripping themselves of all their clothes? Such, we are told, were the Adamites and the Abelians. They gathered quite naked to sing the praises of God: St. Epiphanius and St. Augustine say so. It is true that they were not contemporary, and that they were very far from these peoples’ country. But, at all events, this madness is possible: it is no more extraordinary, no more mad than a hundred other follies which have traveled round the world one after the other.
We have said elsewhere that even today the Mohammedans still have saints who are madmen, and who go naked like monkeys. It is very possible that some fanatics thought it was better to present themselves to the Deity in the state in which He formed them, than in the disguise invented by man. It is possible that they showed all out of piety. There are so few well-made persons of both sexes, that nakedness might have inspired chastity, or rather disgust, instead of increasing desire.
It is said particularly that the Abelians renounced marriage. If there were any fine lads and pretty lasses among them, they were at least comparable to St. Adhelme and to blessed Robert d’Arbisselle, who slept with the most attractive girls, so that their continence might triumph the more.
But I admit that it must have been very entertaining to see a hundred Helens and Parises singing anthems, giving each other the kiss of peace, and making agapae.
All of which shows that there is no singularity, no extravagance, no superstition which has not passed through the heads of mankind. Happy the day when these superstitions cease to trouble society and make it a scene of disorder, hatred, and fury! It is better, no doubt, to pray God stark naked than to stain His altars and the public places with human blood.
NATURAL LAW
B: What is natural law?
A: The instinct which makes us feel justice.
B: What do you call just and unjust?
A: What appears so to the entire universe.
B: The universe is composed of many heads. It is said that Sparta applauded thefts for which Athenians were condemned to the mines.
A: Abuse of words, logomachy, equivocation; theft could not be committed in Sparta, when everything was common property. What you call theft was the punishment for avarice.
B: It was forbidden to marry one’s sister in Rome. It was allowed among the Egyptians, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry one’s sister on the father’s side. It is with regret that I cite that wretched little Jewish people; who should certainly not serve as a model for anyone, and who (putting religion aside) were never anything but a race of ignorant and fanatic brigands. But still, according to their books, the young Tamar, before being ravished by her brother Amnon, says to him: “Nay, my brother, do not thou this folly, but speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from thee.”
A: All that is conventional law, arbitrary customs, passing fashions; the essential remains always. Show me a country where it was honorable to rob me of the fruit of my toil, to break one’s promise, to lie in order to hurt, to calumniate, to assassinate, to poison, to be ungrateful toward a benefactor, to beat one’s father and one’s mother when they offer you food.
B: Have you forgotten that Jean Jacques, one of the fathers of the modern Church, has said that “the first man who Jared enclose and cultivate a piece of land” was the enemy “of the human race,” that he should have been exterminated, and that “the fruits of the earth are for all, and the land belongs to none”? Have we not already examined together this lovely proposition which is so useful to society?
A: Who is this Jean Jacques? He is certainly not either John the Baptist, nor John the Evangelist, nor James the Greater, nor James the Less; it must be some Hunnish wit who wrote that abominable impertinence or some mischievous wag who wanted to laugh at what the whole world regards most seriously. For instead of going to spoil the land of a wise and industrious neighbor, he had only to imitate him; and when every father of a family followed this example, it did not take long to establish a very pretty village. The author of this passage seems to me a very unsociable animal.
B: You think then that by outraging and robbing the good man who has surrounded his garden and chicken-run with a hedge, he has been wanting in respect toward the requirements of natural law?
A: Yes, yes. There is a natural law, and it does not consist either in doing harm to others or in rejoicing thereat.
B: I imagine that man likes and does harm only for his own advantage. But so many people are led to look for their own interest in the misfortune of others, vengeance is so violent a passion, there are such disastrous examples of it; ambition, still more fatal, has inundated the world with so much blood, that when I retrace for myself the horrible picture, I am tempted to avow that man is very diabolical. In vain do I carry the notion of justice and injustice in my heart. An Attila courted by St. Leo; a Phocas flattered by St. Gregory with the most cowardly baseness; an Alexander VI sullied with so many incests, so many murders, so many poisonings, with whom weak Louis XII (called “the good”) makes the most infamous and intimate alliance; a Cromwell whose protection is sought by Cardinal Mazarin, and for whose sake the cardinal drives out of France the heirs of Charles I, Louis XIV’s first cousins—a hundred examples of this sort upset my ideas completely and I no longer know where I am.
A: Well, do storms stop our enjoyment of today’s beautiful sun? Did the earthquake which destroyed half the city of Lisbon stop your traveling very comfortably to Madrid? If Attila was a brigand and Cardinal Mazarin a rogue, are there not princes and ministers who are honest people? Has it not been remarked that in the war of 1701, Louis XIV’s council was composed of the most virtuous men? The Duc de Beauvilliers, the Marquis de Torci, the Maréchal de Villars, and last of all Chamillart, who was supposed to be incompetent, but never dishonest. Does not the idea of justice subsist always? It is upon justice that all laws are founded. The Greeks called laws “daughters of heaven,” which means only daughters of nature. Have you no laws in your country?
B: Yes, some good, some bad.
A: Where, if not in the notion of natural law, did you obtain the idea that is natural to every man when his mind is well made? You must have obtained it there, or nowhere.
B: You are right, there is a natural law; but it is still more natural to many people to forget it.
A: It is natural also to be one-eyed, hump-backed, lame, deformed, unhealthy; but one prefers people who are well made and healthy.
B: Why are there so many one-eyed and deformed minds?
A: Pax! But turn to the article on “Power.”
NATURE
(Dialogue between the Philosopher and Nature.)
THE PHILOSOPHER: Who are you, Nature? I live in you; for fifty years I have been seeking you, and I have not found you yet.
NATURE: The ancient Egyptians, who it is said lived some twelve hundred years, reproached me on the same grounds. They called me Isis; they put a great veil on my head, and they said that nobody could lift it.
THE PHILOSOPHER: That is why I am appealing to you. I have been able to measure some of your globes, know their paths, assign the laws of motion; but I have not been able to learn who you are. Are you always active? Are you always passive? Did your elements arrange themselves, as water deposits itself on sand, oil on water, air on oil? Have you a mind which directs all your operations, as councils are inspired as soon as they are assembled, although their members are sometimes fools? Please tell me the answer to your riddle.
NATURE: I am the great everything. I know no more about it. I am not a mathematician; and everything in my world is arranged according to mathematical laws. Guess, if you can, how it is all done.
THE PHILOSOPHER: Certainly, since your great everything does not know mathematics, and since all your laws are most profoundly geometrical, there must be an eternal geometer who directs you, a supreme intelligence who presides over your operations.
NATURE: You are right. I am water, earth, fire, atmosphere, metal, mineral, stone, vegetable, and animal. I am quite sure that I possess an intelligence. You have an intelligence, but you do not see it. I do not see mine either. I feel this invisible power but I cannot know it. Why should you, who are but a small part of me, want to know what I do not know?
THE PHILOSOPHER: We are curious. I should like to know why you are so unsubtle in your mountains, your deserts, and your seas, when you exhibit such ingenuity in your animals and in your vegetables?
NATURE: My poor child, do you wish me to tell you the truth? The fact is that I have been given a name which does not suit me. They call me Nature, when I am all art.
THE PHILOSOPHER: That word upsets all my ideas. Do you mean to say that nature is only art?
NATURE: Yes, without doubt. Do you not realize that there is an infinity of art in those seas and those mountains that you find so unsubtly made? Do you not realize that all those waters gravitate toward the center of the earth, and rise only by immutable laws; that those mountains which crown the earth are the immense reservoirs of the eternal snows which unceasingly produce those fountains, lakes, and rivers without which my animal species and my vegetable species would perish? And as for what are called my animal kingdom, my vegetable kingdom, and my mineral kingdom, you see here only three; but you should realize that I have millions of kingdoms. If you consider only the creation of an insect, of an ear of corn, of gold, or of copper, everything will appear as a marvel of art.
THE PHILOSOPHER: It is true. The more I think about it, the more I see that you are only the art of some superlatively potent and ingenious mighty being, who hides himself while he makes you appear. All thinkers since Thales, and probably long before him, have played at blind man’s buff with you. They have said: “I have you!” And they had nothing. We all resemble Ixion: he thought he was kissing Juno, and he was embracing only a cloud.
NATURE: Since I am all that there is, how can a being such as you, so small a part of myself, comprehend me? Be content, atoms who are my children, with understanding a few atoms that surround you, with drinking a few drops of my milk, with nourishing yourself briefly on my breast, and with dying without having known your mother or your nurse.
THE PHILOSOPHER: My dear mother, tell me something of why you exist, of why there is anything.
NATURE: I will answer you as, for so many centuries I have answered all those who have asked me about first principles: I Know Nothing About Them.
THE PHILOSOPHER: Would not nothingness be better than this multitude of existences made only for continual dissolution, this host of animals born only to devour and to be devoured, this host of sentient beings created to endure so much pain, and that other crowd of rational beings by whom reason is so rarely heard? Tell me, Nature, what good is there in all that?
NATURE: Oh! go and ask Him who made me.
NEW NOVELTIES
It seems that the first words of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, In nova fert animus, are the motto of the human race. Nobody is moved by the wonderful spectacle of the sun which rises, or rather appears to rise, every day; everybody runs to see the tiniest meteor which flames for an instant in that accumulation of vapors, called the sky, which surrounds the earth.
An itinerant bookseller does not burden himself with a Virgil, with a Horace, but with a new book, even though it be detestable. He draws you aside and says to you: “Sir, do you want some books from Holland?”
From the beginning of time, women have complained that men have been unfaithful to them for the sake of novelty, for the sake of other women whose novelty was their only merit. Many ladies (it must be confessed, despite the infinite respect we have for them) have treated men as they complain they have themselves been treated; and the story of Gioconda is much older than Ariosto.
Perhaps this universal taste for novelty is one of nature’s blessings. People cry to us: “Be content with what you have, desire nothing that is above your station, restrain your curiosity, curb your intellectual activity.” These are excellent maxims, but if we had always followed them, we should still be eating acorns, we should still be sleeping in the open air, and we should not have had Corneille, Racine, Molière, Poussin, Lebrun, Lemoine, or Pigalle.
POWER, OMNIPOTENCE
I suppose that anyone who reads this article is convinced that this world has been created by an intelligence, and that a little knowledge of astronomy and anatomy is enough to make this universal and supreme intelligence admired. But can he know by himself that this intelligence is omnipotent, that is to say, infinitely powerful? Has he the least notion of the infinite, or the ability to understand what is an infinite power?
The celebrated historian philosopher, David Hume, says: “A weight of ten ounces is lifted in a balance by another weight; therefore this other weight is of more than ten ounces; but one can adduce no reason why it should weigh a hundred ounces.”
One can argue likewise: You recognize a supreme intelligence strong enough to create you, to preserve you for a limited time, to reward you, to punish you. Do you know enough of this intelligence to demonstrate that it can do still more?
How can you prove by your reason that this being can do more than he has done?
The life of all animals is short. Could he make it longer?
All animals are the prey of one another; everything is born to be devoured. Could he create without destroying?
You do not know what nature is. You cannot therefore know if nature has not forced the supreme intelligence to do only the things it has done.
This globe is only a vast field of destruction and carnage. Either the great Being has been able to make of it an eternal abode of delight for all sentient beings, or He has not been able. If He has been able, and if He has not done so, He must be regarded as malevolent; but if He has not been able, do not hesitate to look on Him as a very great power, circumscribed by Nature.
Whether or not His power is infinite is nothing to you. It is a matter of indifference to a subject whether his master possesses five hundred leagues of land or five thousand; he is subject, neither more nor less, in either case.
Which would be the greater insult to this ineffable Being? To say, “He has made men miserable without being able to do anything about it,” or, “He has made them for His pleasure”?
Many sects represent Him as cruel; others, for fear of admitting a wicked God, have the audacity to deny His existence. Is it not probably better to say that the necessity of His nature and the necessity of things have determined everything?
The world is the theater of moral ill and physical ill: We are all only too aware of it, and the “Everything is for the best” of Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Pope, is only a witty paradox, a rather poor joke.
The two principles of Zoroaster and Manes, so carefully scrutinized by Bayle, are a still poorer joke. They are, as has been remarked already, Molière’s two doctors, one of whom says to the other: “Grant me the emetic, and I will grant you the bleeding.” Manichaeism is absurd; and that is why it has had so many supporters.
I admit that I have not been enlightened by all that Bayle says about the Manichaeans and the Paulicans. That is controversy, and I would have preferred pure philosophy. Why discuss our mysteries in relation to Zoroaster’s? As soon as you dare to examine our mysteries, which require only faith and no reason, you walk on the edge of a precipice.
The trash in our scholastic theology has nothing to do with the trash in Zoroaster’s ravings.
Why debate original sin with Zoroaster? There was never any question of such a thing until St. Augustine’s time. Neither Zoroaster nor any legislator of antiquity had ever heard of it.
If you dispute with Zoroaster, put under lock and key the Old and the New Testaments with which he was unacquainted, and which one must revere without desiring to explain them.
What, then, should I say to Zoroaster? My reason cannot admit two gods who are opposed to each other; such an idea is fit on
ly for a poem where Minerva quarrels with Mars. My feeble reason is much more satisfied with a single great Being, whose essence was to create, and who has created as much as nature would permit, rather than with the conception of two great Beings, one of whom spoils all the works of the other. Your bad principle, Ahriman, has not been able to upset a single one of the astronomical and physical laws of the good principle, Ormuzd; everything progresses in the heavens with the greatest regularity. Why should the wicked Ahriman have had power over this little globe of the world?
If I had been Ahriman, I should have attacked Ormuzd in his fine vast provinces of multitudinous suns and stars. I should not have limited myself to making war on him in a little village.
There is much evil in this village: but how do you know that this evil is not inevitable?
You are forced to admit an intelligence operating throughout the universe. But do you know, for instance, if this power is able to foresee the future? You have asserted it a thousand times, but you have never been able either to prove it, or to understand it. You cannot know how any being whatever sees what is not. Well, the future is not; therefore no being can see it. You are reduced to saying that He foresees it; but foreseeing is conjecturing. This is the opinion of the Socinians.
Well, a God who, according to you, conjectures, can be mistaken. In your system He is really mistaken, for if He had foreseen that His enemy would poison all His works here below, He would not have produced them, He would not have arranged matters so that He would have to suffer the shame of continual defeat.
Do I not do Him much more honor by saying that He has made everything by the necessity of His nature, than you do Him by raising an enemy who disfigures, soils, and destroys all His works here below?
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 16