The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library)

by Francois Voltaire

  It is said there are savages who eat men and think they do right. I reply that these savages have the same idea of justice and injustice as we have. They make war as we do from madness and passion; we see the same crimes committed everywhere, and eating one’s enemies is but an additional ceremony. The wrong is not putting them on the spit but killing them, and I dare to assert that no savage thinks he acts well when he murders his friend. I saw four savages from Louisiana who were brought to France in 1723. Among them was a woman of a very gentle character. I asked through the interpreter if she had ever eaten the flesh of her enemies and if she liked it; she answered: Yes; I then asked if she would willingly have killed or have caused to be killed any of her compatriots in order to eat them; she replied with a shudder and with a visible horror for this crime. I defy the most determined liar among travelers to dare to assert that there is a tribe, a family, where it is permitted to break one’s word. I am justified in believing that since God created certain animals to feed in common, others to see each other only in pairs very seldom, spiders to make webs, every species possesses the instruments necessary for the work it has to do. Man has been given everything needed to live in society; just as he has been given a stomach to digest, eyes to see, a soul to judge.

  Place two men on the earth; they will only call that good, virtuous, and just which is good for both of them. Place four, and there will be nothing virtuous except what is suitable to all four; and if one of the four eats another’s supper, or beats or kills him, he will assuredly arouse the others. What I say of these four men must be said of the whole universe. That, Monseigneur, is roughly the plan on which I have written this moral metaphysics; but should I speak of virtue in your presence?

  Cirey, 18th October, 1738.

  I observe with a satisfaction approaching pride, Monseigneur, that the little oppositions I endure in my own country arouse indignation in your Royal Highness’s great heart. You cannot doubt but that your approval amply rewards me for all these annoyances; they are common to all who have cultivated the sciences and those men of letters who have most loved the truth have always been the most persecuted.

  Calumny attempted the death of Descartes and Bayle; Racine and Boileau would have died of grief had they not found a protector in Louis XIV. We still possess verses made against Virgil. I am far indeed from being able to compare myself with those great men; but I am more fortunate than they; I enjoy repose, I have a fortune sufficient for a private man and greater than a philosopher needs, I live in a delicious solitude beside a most estimable woman whose society ever provides me with new lessons. And then, Monseigneur, you are graciously pleased to love me; the most virtuous, the most amiable prince in Europe deigns to open his heart to me, to confide to me his works and his thoughts and to correct mine. What more do I need? Health alone fails me; but there is not a sick man in the world happier than I.

  12th August, 1739.

  In Paris they talk of nothing but fêtes and fireworks; they are spending a lot of money on powder and rockets. They used to spend as much on amenities and the things of the mind; when Louis XIV gave fêtes. Corneille, Molière, Quinault, Lulli, Lebrun were concerned in them. I am sorry that a fête should be only a passing fête, a noise, a crowd, a large number of bourgeois, a few diamonds and nothing more; I should like it to pass to posterity. Our masters the Romans understood that better than we; the amphitheaters and triumphal arches erected for a day of solemnity still please and instruct us. But we build a scaffold in the Place de Crève where the night before several thieves have been broken on the wheel; and we fire cannons from the Hôtel de Ville. I wish they would use these cannons to destroy the Hôtel de Ville which is in the vilest taste imaginable, and that the money spent on rockets should be used to build a handsome one. A prince who builds necessarily causes the other arts to flourish: Painting, sculpture, engraving follow in the steps of architecture. A fine drawing-room is meant for music, another for comedy. In Paris we have neither comedy nor opera house; and, by a contradiction only too worthy of us, excellent works are played in very ugly theaters. The good plays are in France and the beautiful vessels in Italy.

  December, 1740.

  SIRE,

  I am now like the pilgrims to Mecca who turn their eyes toward that town after they have left it; I turn mine toward your Court. My heart, touched by your Majesty’s kindness, feels only the distress of not being able to live near you. I take the liberty to send you a new copy of the tragedy of Mahomet, the first sketches of which you desired to see long ago. It is a tribute I pay to the amateur of the arts, to the enlightened judge, above all to the philosopher, far more than to the sovereign.

  Your Majesty knows with what spirit I was animated in composing this work; my pen was guided by love of the human race and horror of fanaticism, to virtues which are made to stand beside your throne. I have always thought that tragedy should not be a mere spectacle to touch the heart without reforming it. What does the human race care for the passions and misfortunes of a hero of antiquity, if they do not serve to instruct us? It is admitted that the comedy of Tartufe, that masterpiece which no nation has equaled, has done good to men by showing hypocrisy in all its ugliness; may one not attempt to attack in a tragedy that species of imposture which brings into play at once the hypocrisy of some and the fury of others? May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples

  Those who say that the time of these crimes has passed; that we shall never again see a Barcochebas, a Mohammed, a John o’ Leiden, etc.; that the flames of religious wars are extinguished; in my opinion do too much honor to human nature. The same poison still exists though less developed; this pest, which appeared to be stamped out, from time to time produces germs which might infect the whole earth. In our own days have we not seen the prophets of the Cevennes kill in the name of God those of their sect who were not sufficiently submissive?

  The action I have painted is atrocious; and I do not know whether horror has ever been carried so far on any stage. There is a young man born virtuous, who, seduced by his fanaticism, murders an old man who loves him, and thus with the idea of serving God, unwittingly renders himself guilty of a parricide; there is an imposter who orders this murder and promises the assassin an incest as his reward. I admit that this is setting horror on the stage; and your Majesty is fully persuaded that a tragedy should not consist solely in a declaration of love, a jealousy, and a marriage.

  Our historians themselves inform us of actions more atrocious than that I have invented. Séïde at least does not know that the man he murders is his father and, when he has struck the blow, he feels a repentance as great as his crime. But Mézeray relates that at Melun a father killed his son with his own hand on account of his religion, and felt no remorse. We know the incident of the two brothers Diaz, one of whom was at Rome and the other in Germany at the beginning of the disturbances excited by Luther. Barthélemy Diaz, learning at Rome that his brother was inclining to Luther’s opinions at Frankfurt, left Rome with the intention of murdering him, arrived there and did murder him. I have read in Herrera, a Spanish author, that “Barthélemy Diaz underwent great perils in this action; but nothing shakes a man of honor conducted by probity.” Herrera, with a holy religion completely opposed to cruelty, a religion which teaches us to endure and not to take vengeance, was convinced that probity might lead a man to murder and fratricide; and no one rose up against these infernal maxims!

  These are the maxims which placed a dagger in the hand of the monster who deprived France of Henry the Great; set the portrait of Jacques Clément on the altar and his name among the Blessed; cost his life to William Prince of Orange, creator of the liberty and grandeur of the Dutch. Salcède first wounded him in the head with a pistol-shot; and Strada relates that “Salcède (these are his own words) dared not undertake this action until he had purified his soul by confession at the feet
of a Dominican and had strengthened it with Heavenly bread.” Herrera says something more outrageous and atrocious: “Estando firme con el exemplo de nuestro Salvadore Jesu-Christo, y de sus Santos.” Balthazar Gérard who finally deprived that great man of life, had acted in the same way as Salcède.

  I observe that all who have committed similar crimes in good faith were young men like Séïde. Balthazar Gérard was about twenty. Four Spaniards, who had taken an oath with him to kill the prince, were of the same age. The monster who killed Henri III was only twenty-three. Poltrot, who murdered the great Duke of Guise, was twenty-five; this is the age of seduction and of fury. In England I almost became an eye-witness of the power of fanaticism upon a weak and youthful imagination. A boy of sixteen named Shepherd undertook to murder your maternal grandfather, King George I. What cause led him to that frenzy? Simply that Shepherd did not hold the same religion as the king. They had pity on his youth, they offered him pardon, they long urged him to repentance; he persisted in saying that it was better to obey God than men and that, if he were free, the first use he would make of his liberty would be to kill his king. And thus they were compelled to send him to execution as a monster they despaired of taming.

  I dare to say that anyone who has lived with men may have seen sometimes how ready they are to sacrifice nature to superstition. How many fathers have hated and disinherited their children! How many brothers harried their brothers, from this disastrous principle! I have seen examples in more than one family.

  If superstition does not always make itself known by those excesses which are numbered in the history of crime, it causes all the innumerable daily little evils in society that it can. It divides friends; it separates relatives; it persecutes the sage, who is only an honest man, by the hand of the madman, who is an Enthusiast; it does not always give the hemlock to Socrates, but it banished Descartes from a town which should be the refuge of liberty; it gave Jurieu, who played the prophet, sufficient influence to reduce the learned and philosophical Bayle to penury; it banished, it tore the successor of the great Leibnitz from that flower of youth which flocked to his lessons; and to re-establish him Heaven had to send a philosophical king, a real miracle which very seldom happens. In vain does human reason perfect itself by philosophy, which makes such progress in Europe; in vain great prince, do you strive to practice and to inspire this humane philosophy; in this very age, when reason lifts her throne on the one side, we see the most absurd fanaticism still build its altars on the other.

  Paris, 15th October, 1749.

  SIRE,

  I have just made an effort in my present dreadful state of mind to write to M. d’Argens; I will make another to throw myself at your Majesty’s feet.

  I have lost one who was my friend for twenty-five years, a great man, whose only defect was being a woman, whom all Paris regrets and honors. She did not perhaps receive justice during her life, and you perhaps have not judged her as you would have done, if she had had the honor to be known to your Majesty. But a woman who could translate Newton and Virgil, and who had all the virtues of a man of honor, will no doubt have a share in your regret.

  The state I have been in for the last month hardly leaves me a hope of ever seeing you; but I will tell you boldly that if you knew my heart better you might also have the goodness to regret a man who has loved in your Majesty nothing but your person.

  Sire, you are a very great king; you dictated peace in Dresden; your name will be great throughout all ages; but all your fame and all your power do not give you the right to distress a heart wholly devoted to you. Were I as well as I am ill, were I but ten leagues from your dominions, I would not stir a foot to visit the court of a great man who did not love me and who only sent for me as a sovereign. But if you knew me, if you had a true kindness for me, I would go to Pekin to throw myself at your feet. I am a man of sensibility, Sire, and nothing but that. I have perhaps only two days left to live, I shall spend them in admiring you but in deploring the injustice you do a soul which was so devoted to yours, and which still loves you as M. de Fénelon loved God— for his own sake. God should not scorn one who offers so rare an incense.

  Continue to believe, if you please, that I have no need of petty vanities and that I seek you alone.

  Paris, 10th November, 1749.

  SIRE,

  I received almost at the same time three letters from your Majesty; one dated the 10th September, via Frankfort, forwarded from Frankfort to Lunéville, sent on to Paris, to Cirey, back to Lunéville and again to Paris, while I was in the country in the most complete retirement; the two others reached me the day before yesterday by the offices of M. Chambrier, who is still I think at Fontainebleau. Alas! Sire, if the first of these letters had reached me in the crisis of my grief, at the time when I ought to have received it, I should only have left that disastrous Lorraine for you; I should have left it to throw myself at your feet; I should have come to hide myself in some comer of Potsdam or Sans Souci; half dead as I was, I should certainly have made this journey; I should have found the strength for it. I should even have had reasons which you may guess, for preferring to die in your dominions rather than in the country where I was born.

  What has happened? Your silence made me think that my request had displeased you; that you had really no feeling of kindness toward me; that you took what I proposed as a subterfuge and a determined wish to remain near King Stanislas. His Court, where I saw Mme. du Châtelet die in a way a hundred times more dreadful than you can believe, became for me a horrible dwelling-place, in spite of my tender attachment for that good prince and in spite of his extreme kindness. I therefore returned to Paris; I collected my family about me, I took a house, I found myself the father of a family without having any children. Thus in my grief I have made myself a quiet and honorable establishment, and I am passing the winter in these arrangements and in my business affairs which were mixed up with those of her whom death should not have carried off before me. But, since you are still graciously pleased to love me a little, your Majesty may be very sure that I shall come and throw myself at your feet next summer, if I am still alive. I now need no pretext, I need only the continuation of your kindness. I shall spend a week with King Stanislas, a duty I must fulfill; and the rest shall be for your Majesty.

  I beg you will be convinced that I only thought of that black rag because at that time King Stanislas would not have allowed me to leave him. I thought you had conferred that favor upon M. de Maupertuis. I expect new presents from your pen, and I flatter myself that the cargo you will receive immediately from me will bring me one from you. I shall have the honor to continue this little commerce during the winter; and with due respect, Sire, I think that you and I are the only two merchants of that sort in Europe. I shall then come to look over your accounts, to expatiate, to talk of grammar and poetry; I shall bring you Madame du Châtelet’s analytical grammar and as much as I can collect of her Virgil; in a word, I shall come with full pockets and I shall find your portfolios well furnished. I have a delicious expectation of these moments; but it is on the express condition that you are graciously pleased to love me a little, for otherwise I shall die at Paris.

  Ferney, 11th january, 1771.

  Great prophet, you resemble your predecessors sent by the most high; you perform miracles, I owe my life to you. I was dying in the midst of my Swiss snows, when your sacred vision was brought to me. As I read, my head freed itself, my blood circulated, my soul revived; after the second page I regained my strength, and owing to the singular effect of this celestial medicine, it gave me back my appetite and disgusted me with all other food.

  The eternal of old ordered your predecessor Ezechial to eat a parchment book; I should gladly have eaten your paper, had I not preferred a hundred times to reread it. Yes, you are the only prophet of Jehovah, since you are the only one who has told the truth and laughed at all his comrades; therefore Jehovah has blessed you by strengthening your throne, sharpening your pen, and illuminating your soul.


  Thus spoke the Lord: “This is he whom I announced: He shall make flat the high places and raise them that are low; behold he comes; he shall teach the children of men that a man may be brave and merciful, great and simple, eloquent and a poet; for I have taught him all these things. I illuminated him when he came into the world, so that he should make me known as I am and not as the foolish children of men have painted me. For I take all the spheres of the universe as witness that I, their founder, was never scourged nor hanged in that little globe of the earth; that I never inspired any Jew or crowned any Pope; but in the fullness of time I sent my servant Frederick, who is not called mine anointed, because he was not anointed; but he is my son and my image and I said unto him: ‘My son, it is not enough to have made thy enemies thy footstool and to have given laws to thy kingdom, but thou shalt drive superstition forever from this globe.”’

  And the great Frederick said unto Jehovah: “The monster of superstition have I driven from my heart and from the hearts of all that are near me; but, Father, you have arranged this world in such a way that I can only do good in my own house and even then with some difficulty. How do you expect me to give common sense to the people of Rome, Naples, and Madrid?”

  Then said Jehovah: “Thy lessons and thy examples shall suffice; give them long enough, O my son, and I will cause these germs to grow and to produce fruit in their time.”

  And the great prophet answered and said: “O Jehovahl You are very powerful, but I defy you to make all men reasonable. Take my advice, and content yourself with a small number of the elect; you will never have more for your share.”

  13th November, 1772.

  SIRE,

  Yesterday a royal packing-case arrived at my hermitage, and this morning I drank my coffee in a cup such as is not made in the lands of your colleague Kien-Long, the Emperor of China; the tray is of the greatest beauty. I knew that Frederick the Great was a better poet than the good Kien-Long but I did not know that he amused himself by manufacturing in Berlin porcelains superior to those of Kieng-Tsin, Dresden, and Sèvres; this amazing man must then eclipse his rivals in everything he undertakes. However, I will confess that among those who were with me at the opening of the packing-case, there were critics who did not approve the crown of laurel which surrounds the lyre of Apollo on the admirable cover of the prettiest dish imaginable. They said: “How can it happen that a great man, so well known for his scorn of display and false pride, should think of putting his arms on the cover of a dishl” I replied: “It must be a fancy of the workman; kings leave everything to the caprice of artists. Louis XIV did not order a slave to be put at the foot of his statue; he did not order Marshal de la Feuillade to engrave the famous inscription, To the Immortal Man; and when we see in a hundred places, Frederico immortali, we know that Frederick the Great did not imagine this device and that he let the world talk.”