The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library)

by Francois Voltaire

  One does not have an unworthy idea of God when one says that, after He had formed thousands of millions of worlds where death and evil do not dwell, it was necessary that evil and death should dwell in this world.

  One does not disparage God when one says that He could not form man without giving him self-esteem; that this self-esteem could not lead him without misleading him most of the time; that his passions are necessary, but that they are disastrous; that propagation cannot be executed without desire; that desire cannot animate man without resulting in quarrels; that these quarrels necessarily bring wars in their train, etc.

  When we see even a part of the operations of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, and contemplate this globe of ours which is a perfect sieve, from which innumerable exhalations are constantly escaping, what philosopher among us will be bold enough, what scholastic foolish enough, to believe that nature could stop the effects of volcanoes, the abrupt changes of the atmosphere, the violence of the winds, plagues, and all destructive scourges?

  One must be very powerful, very strong, very ingenious, to have created lions which devour bulls, and to have created men capable of inventing weapons which can, at a blow, kill not only bulls and lions, but other men. One must be very powerful to have created spiders which spin webs to catch flies—but this does not mean that one has to be omnipotent, infinitely powerful.

  If the great Being had been infinitely powerful, there is no reason why He should not have made sentient animals infinitely happy. He has not done so; therefore He was unable to do so.

  All the philosophical sects have stranded on the reef of moral and physical ill. We can only conclude and avow that God, having acted for the best, has not been able to act better.

  This necessity settles all the difficulties and finishes all the disputes. We are not impudent enough to say: “All is good.” We say: “All is as little bad as possible.”

  Why does a child often die in its mother’s womb? Why is another who has had the misfortune to be born, reserved for lifelong torments terminated by a frightful death?

  Why has the source of life been poisoned all over the world since the discovery of America? Why, since the seventh century of our era, has smallpox carried off the eighth part of the human race? Why since the beginning of tune have bladders been subject to becoming stone quarries? Why the plague, war, famine, the Inquisition? Try as you will, you can arrive at no other solution than that everything has been necessary.

  I speak here to philosophers only, not to theologians. We well know that faith is the thread in the labyrinth. We know that the fall of Adam and Eve, original sin, the immense power given to the devil, the predilection accorded by the great Being to the Jewish people, and the baptism substituted for the amputation of the prepuce, are the answers which explain everything. We have argued only against Zoroaster, and not against the university of Conimbre or Coimbre, to which we submit in our articles.

  PRAYERS

  We do not know of any religion without prayers; even the Jews prayed, although they had no public formula, until they began to sing canticles in their synagogues, which was very late in their history.

  All men, in desire and fear, have invoked the aid of a deity. Some philosophers, more respectful to the Supreme Being, and less condescending to human frailty, would have no prayer but resignation. It is, indeed, what seems proper as between creature and creator. But philosophy is not made to govern the world; she rises above the common herd; she speaks a language that the crowd cannot understand. It would be like telling fish. wives to study conic sections.

  Even among the philosophers, I do not believe that anyone apart from Maximus of Tyre has treated of this matter. This is the substance of Maximus’s ideas.

  The Eternal has His intentions from all eternity. If prayer accords with His immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of Him what He has resolved to do. If one prays Him to do the contrary of what He has resolved, it is praying that He be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that He is all these things; it is to mock Him. Either you ask Him a just thing, in which case He must do it, and the thing will be done without your praying Him for it—entreating Him is even to distrust Him: or the thing is unjust, in which case you insult Him. You are worthy or unworthy of the grace you implore: if worthy, He knows it better than you; if unworthy, you commit one more crime by asking for what you do not deserve.

  In a word, we pray to God only because we have made Him in our own image. We treat Him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke and appease. In short, all nations pray to God: wise men resign themselves and obey Him. Let us pray with the people, and resign ourselves with the wise men.

  PREJUDICES

  Prejudice is an opinion without judgment. Thus, all over the world, people inspire children with as many opinions as they choose to, before the children can judge.

  There are some universal, necessary prejudices, which are even virtuous. In all countries children are taught to recognize a rewarding and revenging God, to respect and love their father and their mother, to look on theft as a crime and selfish lying as a vice, before they can guess what is a vice and what a virtue.

  There are, then, some very good prejudices; they are those which are ratified by judgment when one comes to reason.

  Sentiment is not simply prejudice; it is something much stronger. A mother does not love her son because she has been told she must love him; she cherishes him happily in spite of herself. It is not through prejudice that you run to the help of an unknown child about to fall from a precipice, or be eaten by a beast.

  But it is through prejudice that you will respect a man clad in certain clothes, walking gravely, speaking likewise. Your parents have told you that you should bow before this man; you respect him before knowing whether or not he merits your respect. You grow in years and in knowledge, and you perceive that this man is a charlatan steeped in arrogance, self-interest, and artifice. You despise what you revered, and prejudice cedes to judgment. Through prejudice you have believed the fables with which your childhood was cradled. You have been told that the Titans made war on the gods, that Venus was amorous of Adonis; when you are twelve you accept these fables as truths; when you are twenty you look on them as ingenious allegories.

  Let us examine briefly the different sorts of prejudices, so as to set our affairs in order. Perhaps we shall find ourselves like those who, at the time of the Mississippi Bubble, discovered that they had been dealing in imaginary riches.

  PREJUDICES OF THE SENSES

  Is it not strange that our eyes always deceive us, even when we have excellent sight, and that on the contrary our ears do not deceive us? Let your well-informed ear hear, “You are beautiful, I love you,” and it is quite certain that someone has not said, “I hate you, you are ugly.” But you see a smooth mirror, when the fact is that you are mistaken, that it has a very uneven surface. You see the sun as about two feet in diameter, when in truth it is a million times bigger than the earth.

  It seems that God has put truth in your ears, and error in your eyes; but study optics, and you will see that God has not deceived you, and that it is impossible for objects to appear to you otherwise than you see them in the present state of things.

  PREJUDICES, PHYSICAL

  The sun rises, the moon also, the earth is motionless: these are natural physical prejudices. But that lobsters are good for the blood, because when cooked they are red; that eels cure paralysis because they wriggle; that the moon affects our maladies because one day someone observed that a sick man had an increase of fever during the waning of the moon—these ideas and a thousand others are the errors of ancient charlatans who judged without reasoning, and who, being deceived, deceived others.

  PREJUDICES, HISTORICAL

  Most historical stories have been believed without examination, and this belief is a prejudice. Fabius Pictor relates that many centuries before his time, a vestal of the town of Alba, going to draw water in her pitcher, was ravished, that she ga
ve birth to Romulus and Remus, that they were fed by a she-wolf, etc. The Roman people believed this fable; they did not inquire whether or not there were vestals in Latium, at that time, whether it was probable that a king’s daughter would leave her convent with her pitcher, or whether it was likely that a she-wolf would suckle two children instead of eating them. The prejudice established itself.

  A monk writes that Clovis, being in great danger at the battle of Tolbiac, made a vow to turn Christian if be escaped; but is it natural to address oneself to a foreign god on such an occasion? Is it not then that the religion in which one was born acts most potently? What Christian, in battle against the Turks, will not address himself to the Holy Virgin rather than to Mohammed? It is added that a pigeon brought the holy phial in its beak to anoint Clovis, and that an angel brought the oriflamme to lead him; prejudice believed all the little tales of this kind. Those who understand human nature know perfectly well that Clovis the usurper, and Rolon (or Rol) the usurper, turned Christian in order to govern the Christians more securely, just as the Turkish usurpers turned Mussulman in order to govern the Mussulmans more securely.

  PREJUDICES, RELIGIOUS

  If your nurse has told you that Ceres rules over the crops, or that Vistnou and Xaca made themselves men several times, or that Sammonocodom came to cut down a forest, or that Odin awaits you in his hall near Jutland, or that Mohammed or somebody else made a journey into the sky; if, lastly, your tutor comes to drive into your brain what your nurse has imprinted on it, you keep it for life. If your judgment wishes to rise against these prejudices, your neighbors and, above all, your neighbors’ wives cry out: “Impious reprobate,” and dismay you. Your dervish, fearing to see his income diminish, accuses you to the cadi, and this cadi has you impaled if he can, because he likes ruling over fools, and thinks that fools obey better than those who are not fools. And all this will go on until your neighbors and the dervish and the cadi begin to understand that foolishness is good for nothing, and that persecution is abominable.

  RARE

  Rare, in natural philosophy, is the opposite of dense. In moral philosophy, it is the opposite of common. This second variety of rare is what excites admiration. One never admires what is common; one enjoys it.

  An eccentric thinks himself superior to the rest of wretched mankind when he has in his study a rare medal that is good for nothing, a rare book that nobody has the courage to read, an old engraving by Albrecht Dürer, badly designed and badly printed: he triumphs if his garden contains a stunted tree from America. This eccentric has no taste; he has only vanity. He has heard that the beautiful is rare; but he should know that all that is rare is not beautiful.

  Beauty is rare in all nature’s works, and in all works of art.

  Whatever ill things have been said of women, I maintain that it is rarer to find women perfectly beautiful than tolerably good. In the country you will meet ten thousand women attached to their homes, who are laborious and sober, and busy feeding, rearing, and teaching their children; but you will find hardly one whom you could exhibit in the theaters of Paris, London, and Naples, or in the public gardens, and who would be considered a beauty.

  Similarly, in works of art you have ten thousand daubs and scrawls to one masterpiece.

  If everything were beautiful and good, it is clear that one would no longer admire anything; one would only enjoy. But would one have pleasure in enjoying? That is a big question.

  Why have the beautiful passages in The Cid and Cinna had such a prodigious success? Because in the profound night in which people were plunged, they suddenly saw a burst of new light which they had not expected. It was because this kind of beauty was the rarest thing in the world.

  The groves of Versailles were a beauty unique in the world, as were certain passages of Corneille. St. Peter‘s, in Rome, is unique. But let us suppose that all the churches of Europe were equal to St. Peter’s, that all statues were Venus de Medici, that all tragedies were as beautiful as Racine’s Iphigéníe, all works of poetry as well written as Boileau’s Art Poétique, all comedies as good as Tarlufe, and so on in every sphere. Would you then have as much pleasure in enjoying masterpieces that had become common as you did when they were rare? I say boldly: “No!” And I believe that the ancient school, which so rarely was right, was right when it said: Ab assuetis non fit passio—habit does not make passion.

  But, my dear reader, will it be the same with the works of nature? Will you be disgusted if all the maids are as beautiful as Helen; and you, ladies, if all the lads are like Paris? Let us suppose that all wines are excellent, will you have less desire to drink? If partridges, pheasants, pullets were common at all seasons, would you have less appetite? I say boldly again: “No!” despite the axiom of the schools—“Habit does not make passion” —and the reason, as you know, is that all the pleasures which nature gives us are always recurring needs, necessary enjoyments, while the pleasures of the arts are not necessary. It is not necessary for a man to have groves where water gushes to a height of a hundred feet from the mouth of a marble face, and on leaving these groves to go to see a fine tragedy. But the two sexes are always necessary to each other. The table and the bed are necessities. The habit of being alternately on these two thrones will never disgust you.

  In Paris a few years ago people admired a rhinoceros. If there were in one province ten thousand rhinoceroses, men would run after them only to kill them. But let there be a hundred thousand beautiful women men will always run after them to—honor them.

  SEASON

  At the time when all France was mad over the Mississippi Bubble, and John Law was controller-general, there came to him a man who was always right, who always had reason on his side. Said he to Law, in the presence of a large crowd:

  “Sir, you are the biggest madman, the biggest fool, or the biggest rogue who has yet appeared among us, and that is saying a great deal. This is how I prove it. You have imagined that a state’s wealth can be increased tenfold with paper, but as this paper can represent only the money that is representative of true wealth—the products of the land and industry—you should have begun by giving us ten times more com, wine, cloth, canvas, etc. That is not enough, you must be sure of your market. But you make ten times as many notes as we have of silver and commodities, therefore you are ten times more extravagant, or more inept, or more of a rogue than all the comptrollers who have preceded you. Now this is how I prove the major term of my thesis.”

  But he had hardly started his major when he was led off to a lunatic asylum.

  When he came out of the asylum, where he studied hard and strengthened his reason, he went to Rome, where he asked for a public audience with the Pope, on condition that he would not be interrupted in his harangue. And he spoke to the Pope in these terms: “Holy Father, you are an antichrist and this is how I prove it to Your Holiness. I call antichrist the man who does the contrary to what Christ did and commanded. Now Christ was poor, and you are very rich; he paid tribute, and you exact tribute; he submitted to the powers that were, and you have become a power yourself; he walked on foot, and you go to Castel-Gandolfo in a sumptuous equipage; he ate whatever anyone was good enough to give him, and you want us to eat fish on Friday and Saturday, when we live far from sea and river; he forbade Simon Barjona to use a sword, and you have swords in your service, etc., etc., etc. Therefore in this sense Your Holiness is antichrist. In every other sense I hold you in great veneration, and I ask you for an indulgence in articulo mortis.”

  My man was put in the Castello St. Angelo.

  When he came out of the Castello St. Angelo, he rushed to Venice, and asked to speak to the doge.

  “Your Serenity,” he said, “must be a very extravagant person to marry the sea every year: for, in the first place, one only marries the same person once; secondly, your marriage resembles Harlequin’s which was half made, seeing that it lacked but the consent of the bride; thirdly, how do you know that other maritime powers will not one day declare you incapable of consumm
ating the marriage?”

  Having spoken, he was shut up in the Tower of St Mark’s.

  When he came out of the Tower of St. Mark’s, he went to Constantinople, where he had an audience with the mufti, and spoke to him in these terms: “Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of a supreme Being, and the rule of being just and charitable, is otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of fairy tales. If the archangel Gabriel had brought the leaves of the Koran to Mohammed from some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel come down; but nobody saw him. Therefore Mohammed was a brazen impostor who deceived imbeciles.”

  Hardly had he pronounced these words than he was run through with a sword. Nevertheless he had always been right, and had always had reason on his side.

  RELIGION

  Tonight I was in a meditative mood. I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I admired the immensity, the movements, the harmony of those infinite globes which the vulgar do not know how to admire.

  I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I said to myself: “One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; one must be stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad not to worship Him. What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should not this tribute be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same supreme power which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking being who dwells in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be uniform. If a sentient, thinking animal in Sirius is born of a tender father and mother who have been occupied with his happiness, he owes them as much love and care as we owe to our parents. If someone in the Milky Way sees a needy cripple, if he can help him, and if he does not do so, he is guilty in the sight of all globes. Everywhere the heart has the same duties: on the steps of the throne of God, if He has a throne; and in the depth of the abyss, if He is an abyss.”