Voltaire
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Section I:
Philosopher, lover of wisdom, that is, of truth. All philosophers have
possessed this two-fold character; there is not one among those of antiquity
who did not give examples of virtue to mankind, and lessons of moral truth.
They might be mistaken, and undoubtedly were so, on subjects of natural
philosophy; but that is of comparatively so little importance to the conduct of
life, that philosophers had then no need of it. Ages were required to discover
a part of the laws of nature. A single day is sufficient to enable a sage to
become acquainted with the duties of man.
The philosopher
is no enthusiast; he does not set himself up for a prophet; he does not
represent himself as inspired by the gods. I shall not therefore place in the
rank of philosophers the ancient Zoroaster, or Hermes, or Orpheus, or any of
those legislators in whom the countries of Chalda, Persia, Syria, Egypt, and
Greece made their boast. Those who called themselves the sons of gods were the
fathers of imposture; and if they employed falsehood to inculcate truths, they
were unworthy of inculcating them; they were not philosophers; they were at
best only prudent liars.
By what fatality,
disgraceful perhaps to the nations of the West, has it happened that we are
obliged to travel to the extremity of the East, in order to find a sage of
simple manners and character, without arrogance and without imposture, who
taught men how to live happy six hundred years before our era, at a period when
the whole of the North was ignorant of the use of letters, and when the Greeks
had scarcely begun to distinguish themselves by wisdom? That sage is Confucius,
who deemed too highly of his character as a legislator for mankind, to stoop to
deceive them. What finer rule of conduct has ever been given since his time,
throughout the earth?
Rule a state as
you rule a family; a man cannot govern his family well without giving a good
example; virtue should be common to the laborer and the monarch; be active in
preventing crimes, that you may lessen the trouble of punishing them.
Under the good
kings Yao and Xu, the Chinese were good; under the bad kings Kie and Chu, they
were wicked.
Do to another as
to thyself; love mankind in general, but cherish those who are good; forget
injuries, but never benefits.
I have seen men
incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue. Let us
acknowledge that no legislator ever announced to the world more useful truths.
A multitude of
Greek philosophers taught afterwards a morality equally pure. Had they distinguished
themselves only by their vain systems of natural philosophy, their names would
be mentioned at the present day only in derision. If they are still respected,
it is because they were just, and because they taught mankind to be so.
It is impossible
to read certain passages of Plato, and particularly the admirable exordium of
the laws of Zaleucus, without experiencing an ardent love of honorable and
generous actions. The Romans have their Cicero who alone is perhaps more
valuable than all the philosophers of Greece. After him come men more
respectable still, but whom we may almost despair of imitating; these are
Epictetus in slavery, and the Antonines and Julian upon a throne.
Where is the
citizen to be found among us who would deprive himself, like Julian, Antoninus,
and Marcus Aurelius, of all the refined accommodations of our delicate and
luxurious modes of living? Who would, like them, sleep on the bare ground? Who
would restrict himself to their frugal habits? Who would, like them, march
bareheaded and barefooted at the head of the armies, exposed sometimes to the
burning sun, and at other times to the freezing blast? Who would, like them,
keep perfect mastery of all his passions? We have among us devotees, but where
are the sages? where are the souls just and tolerant, serene and undaunted?
There have been
some philosophers of the closet in France; and all of them, with the exception
of Montaigne, have been persecuted. It seems to me the last degree of malignity
that our nature can exhibit, to attempt to oppress those who devote their best
endeavors to correct and improve it.
I can easily
conceive of the fanatics of one sect slaughtering those of another sect; that
the Franciscans should hate the Dominicans, and that a bad artist should cabal
and intrigue for the destruction of an artist that surpasses him; but that the
sage Charron should have been menaced with the loss of life; that the learned
and noble-minded Ramus should have been actually assassinated; that Descartes
should have been obliged to withdraw to Holland in order to escape the rage of
ignorance; that Gassendi should have been often compelled to retire to Digne,
far distant from the calumnies of Paris, are events that load a nation with
eternal opprobrium.
One of the
philosophers who were most persecuted, was the immortal Bayle, the honor of
human nature. I shall be told that the name of Jurieu, his slanderer and
persecutor, is become execrable; I acknowledge that it is so; that of the
Jesuit Letellier is become so likewise; but is it the less true that the great
men whom he oppressed ended their days in exile and penury?
One of the
pretexts made use of for reducing Bayle to poverty, was his article on David,
in his valuable dictionary. He was reproached with not praising actions which
were in themselves unjust, sanguinary, atrocious, contrary to good faith, or
grossly offensive to decency.
Bayle certainly
has not praised David for having, according to the Hebrew historian, collected
six hundred vagabonds overwhelmed with debts and crimes; for having pillaged
his countrymen at the head of these banditti; for having resolved to destroy
Nabal and his whole family, because he refused paying contributions to him; for
having hired out his services to King Achish, the enemy of his country; for
having afterwards betrayed Achish, notwithstanding his kindness to him; for
having sacked the villages in alliance with that king; for having massacred in
these villages every human being, including even infants at the breast, that no
one might be found on a future day to give testimony of his depredations, as if
an infant could have possibly disclosed his villainy; for having destroyed all
the inhabitants of some other villages under saws, and harrows, and axes, and
in brick-kilns; for having wrested the throne from Ishbosheth, the son of Saul,
by an act of perfidy; for having despoiled of his property and afterwards put
to death Mephibosheth, the grandson of Saul, and son of his own peculiar friend
and generous protector, Jonathan; or for having delivered up to the Gibeonites
two other sons of Saul, and five of his grandsons who perished by the gallows.
I do not notice
the extreme incontinence of David, his numerous concubines, his adultery with
Bathsheba, or his murder of Uriah.
What then! is it
possible that the enemies of Bayle should have expected or wished him to
eulogize all these cruelties and crimes? Ought he to have said: Go, ye princes
of the earth, and imitate the man after Gods own heart; massacre without pity
the allies of your benefactor; destroy or deliver over to destruction the whole
family of your king; appropriate to your own pleasures all the women, while you
are pouring out the blood of the men; and you will thus exhibit models of human
virtue, especially if, in addition to all the rest, you do but compose a book
of psalms?
Was not Bayle
perfectly correct in his observation, that if David was the man after Gods own
heart, it must have been by his penitence, and not by his crimes? Did not Bayle
perform a service to the human race when he said, that God, who undoubtedly
dictated the Jewish history, has not consecrated all the crimes recorded in
that history?
However, Bayle
was in fact persecuted, and by whom? By the very men who had been elsewhere
persecuted themselves; by refugees who in their own country would have been
delivered over to the flames; and these refugees were opposed by other refugees
called Jansenists, who had been driven from their own country by the Jesuits;
who have at length been themselves driven from it in their turn.
Thus all the
persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher,
oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them.
It is not
generally known, that Fontenelle, in 1718, was on the point of losing his
pensions, place, and liberty, for having published in France, twenty years
before, what may be called an abridgement of the learned Van Dales Treatise
on Oracles, in which he had taken particular care to retrench and modify the
original work, so as to give no unnecessary offence to fanaticism. A Jesuit had
written against Fontenelle, and he had not deigned to make him any reply; and
that was enough to induce the Jesuit Letellier, confessor to Louis XIV., to
accuse Fontenelle to the king of atheism.
But for the
fortunate mediation of M. dArgenson, the son of a forging solicitor of Virea
son worthy of such a father, as he was detected in forgery himselfwould have
proscribed, in his old age, the nephew of the great Corneille.
It is so easy for
a confessor to seduce his penitent, that we ought to bless God that Letellier
did no more harm than is justly imputed to him. There are two situations in
which seduction and calumny cannot easily be resistedthe bed and the
confessional.
We have always
seen philosophers persecuted by fanatics. But can it be really possible, that
men of letters should be seen mixed up in a business so odious; and that they
should often be observed sharpening the weapons against their brethren, by
which they are themselves almost universally destroyed or wounded in their
turn. Unhappy men of letters, does it become you to turn informers? Did the
Romans ever find a Garasse, a Chaumieux, or a Hayet, to accuse a Lucretius, a
Posidonius, a Varro, or a Pliny?
How inexpressible
is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous
and malignant hypocrite! There were no hypocrites in ancient Rome, which
reckoned us a small portion of its innumerable subjects. There were impostors,
I admit, but not religious hypocrites, which are the most profligate and cruel
species of all. Why is it that we see none such in England, and whence does it
arise that there still are such in France? Philosophers, you will solve this
problem with ease.
Section II:
This brilliant and beautiful name has been sometimes honored, and sometimes
disgraced; like that of poet, mathematician, monk, priest, and everything
dependent on opinion. Domitian banished the philosophers, and Lucian derided
them. But what sort of philosophers and mathematicians were they whom the
monster Domitian exiled? They were jugglers with their cups and balls; the
calculators of horoscopes, fortune-tellers, miserable peddling Jews, who composed
philtres and talismans; gentry who had special and sovereign power over evil
spirits, who evoked them from their infernal habitations, made them take
possession of the bodies of men and women by certain words or signs, and
dislodged them by other words or signs.
And what were the
philosophers that Lucian held up to public ridicule? They were the dregs of the
human race. They were a set of profligate beggars incapable of applying to any
useful profession or occupation; men perfectly resembling the Poor Devil, who
has been described to us with so much both of truth and humor; men who are
undecided whether to wear a livery, or to write the almanac of the Annus
Mirabilis, the marvellous year; whether to work on reviews, or on roads;
whether to turn soldiers or priests; who in the meantime frequent the
coffee-houses, to give their opinion upon the last new piece, upon God, upon
being in general, and the various modes of being; who will then borrow your
money, and immediately go away and write a libel against you in conjunction
with the barrister Marchand, or the creature called Chaudon, or the equally
despicable wretch called Bonneval.
It was not from
such a school that the Ciceros, the Atticuses, the Epictetuses, the Trajans,
Adrians, Antonines, and Julians proceeded. It was not such a school that formed
a king of Prussia, who has composed as many philosophical treatises as he has
gained battles, and who has levelled with the dust as many prejudices as
enemies.
A victorious
empress, at whose name the Ottomans tremble, and who so gloriously rules an
empire more extensive than that of Rome, would never have been a great
legistratrix, had she not been a philosopher. Every northern prince is so, and
the North puts the South to absolute shame. If the confederates of Poland had
only a very small share of philosophy, they would not expose their country,
their estates, and their houses, to pillage; they would not drench their
territory in blood; they would not obstinately and wantonly reduce themselves
to being the most miserable of mankind; they would listen to the voice of their
philosophic king, who has given so many noble proofs and so many admirable
lessons of moderation and prudence in vain.
The great Julian
was a philosopher when he wrote to his ministers and pontiffs his exquisite
letters abounding in clemency and wisdom, which all men of judgment and feeling
highly admire, even at the present day, however sincerely they may condemn his
errors.
Constantine was
not a philosopher when he assassinated his relations, his son and his wife, and
when, reeking with the blood of his family, he swore that God had sent to him
the Labarum in the clouds. It is a long bound that carries us from
Constantine to Charles IX., and Henry III., kings of one of the fifty great provinces
of the Roman Empire. But if these kings had been philosophers, one would not
have been guilty of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the other would not
have made scandalous processions, nor have been reduced to the necessity of
assassinating the duke of Guise and the cardinal, his brother, and at length
have been assassinated himself by a young Jacobin, for the love of God and of
the holy church.
If Louis the
Just, the thirteenth monarch of that name, had been a philosopher, he would not
have permitted the virtuous de Thou and the innocent Marshal de Marillac to
have been dragged to the scaffold; he would not have suffered his mother to
perish with hunger at Cologne; and his reign would not have been an
uninterrupted succession of intestine discords and calamities.
Compare with
those princes, thus ignorant, superstitious, cruel, and enslaved by their own
passions or those of their ministers, such a man as Montaigne, or Charron, or
the Chancellor de lHpital, or the historian de Thou, or la Mothe Le Vayer, or
a Locke, a Shaftesbury, a Sidney, or a Herbert; and say whether you would
rather be governed by those sovereigns or by these sages.
When I speak of
philosophers I do not mean the coarse and brutal cynics who appear desirous of
being apes of Diogenes, but the men who imitate Plato and Cicero. As for you,
voluptuous courtiers, and you also, men of petty minds, invested with a petty
employment which confers on you a petty authority in a petty country, who
uniformly exclaim against and abuse philosophy, proceed as long as you please
with your invective railing. I consider you as the Nomentanuses inveighing
against Horace; and the Cotins attempting to cry down Boileau.
Section III:
The stiff Lutheran, the savage Calvinist, the proud Anglican high churchman,
the fanatical Jansenist, the Jesuit always aiming at dominion, even in exile
and at the very gallows, the Sorbonnist who deems himself one of the fathers of
a council; these, and some imbecile beings under their respective guidance,
inveigh incessantly and bitterly against philosophy. They are all different
species of the canine race, snarling and howling in their peculiar ways against
a beautiful horse that is pasturing in a verdant meadow, and who never enters
into contest with them about any of the carrion carcasses upon which they feed,
and for which they are perpetually fighting with one another.
They every day
produce from the press their trash of philosophic theology, their
philosophico-theological dictionaries; their old and battered arguments, as
common as the streets, which they denominate demonstrations; and their ten
thousand times repeated and ridiculous assertions which they call lemmas, and
corollaries; as false coiners cover a lead crown with a plating of silver.
They perceive
that they are despised by all persons of reflection, and that they can no
longer deceive any but a few weak old women. This state is far more humiliating
and mortifying than even being expelled from France and Spain and Naples.
Everything can be supported except contempt. We are told that when the devil
was conquered by Raphaelas it is clearly proved he wasthat haughty compound
of body and spirit at first easily consoled himself with the idea of the
chances of war. But when he understood that Raphael laughed at him, he roundly
swore that he would never forgive him. Accordingly, the Jesuits never forgave
Pascal; accordingly, Jerieu went on calumniating Bayle even to the grave; and
just in the same manner all the Tartuffes, all the hypocrites, in Molires
time, inveighed against that author to his dying day. In their rage they resort
to calumnies, as in their folly they publish arguments.
One of the most
determined slanderers, as well as one of the most contemptible reasoners that
we have among us, is an ex-Jesuit of the name of Paulian, who published a
theologico-philosophical rhapsody in the city of Avignon, formerly a papal
city, and perhaps destined to be so again. This person accuses the authors of
the Encyclopdia of having said:
That as man is
by his nature open only to the pleasures of the senses, these pleasures are
consequently the sole objects of his desires; that man in himself has neither
vice nor virtue, neither good nor bad morals, neither justice nor injustice;
that the pleasures of the senses produce all the virtues; that in order to be
happy, men must extinguish remorse, etc.
In what articles
of the Encyclopdia, of which five new editions have lately commenced, are
these horrible propositions to be found? You are bound actually to produce
them. Have you carried the insolence of your pride and the madness of your
character to such an extent as to imagine that you will be believed on your
bare word? These ridiculous absurdities may be found perhaps in the works of
your own casuists, or those of the Porter of the Chartreux, but they are
certainly not to be found in the articles of the Encyclopdia composed by M.
Diderot, M. dAlembert, the chevalier Jaucourt, or M. de Voltaire. You have
never seen them in the articles of the Count de Tressan, nor in those of
Messrs. Blondel, Boucher-dArgis, Marmontel, Venel, Tronchin, dAubenton,
dArgenville, and various others, who generously devoted their time and labors
to enrich the Encyclopdic Dictionary, and thereby conferred an everlasting
benefit on Europe. Most assuredly, not one of them is chargeable with the
abominations you impute to them. Only yourself, and Abraham Chaumieux, the
vinegar merchant and crucified convulsionary, could be capable of broaching so
infamous a calumny.
You confound
error with truth, because you have not sense sufficient to distinguish between
them. You wish to stigmatize as impious the maxim adopted by all publicists,
That every man is free to choose his country.
What! you contemptible
preacher of slavery, was not Queen Christina free to travel to France and
reside at Rome? Were not Casimir and Stanislaus authorized to end their days in
France? Was it necessary, because they were Poles, that they should die in
Poland? Did Goldoni, Vanloo, and Cassini give offense to God by settling at
Paris? Have all the Irish, who have established themselves in fame and fortune
in France, committed by so doing a mortal sin?
And you have the
stupidity to print such extravagance and absurdity as this, and Riballier has
stupidity enough to approve and sanction you; and you range in one and the same
class Bayle, Montesquieu, and the madman de La Metrie; and it may be added, you
have found the French nation too humane and indulgent, notwithstanding all your
slander and malignity, to deliver you over to anything but scorn!
What! do you dare
to calumniate your countryif indeed a Jesuit can be said to have a country? Do
you dare to assert that philosophers alone in France attribute to chance the
union and disunion of the atoms which constitute the soul of man? Mentiris
impudentissime! I defy you to produce a single book, published within the last
thirty years, in which anything at all is attributed to chance, which is merely
a word without a meaning.
Do you dare to
accuse the sagacious and judicious Locke of having said that it is possible
the soul may be a spirit, but that he is not perfectly sure it is so; and that
we are unable to decide what it may be able or unable to acquire?
Mentiris impudentissime!
Locke, the truly respectable and venerable Locke, says expressly, in his answer
to the cavilling and sophistical Stilling-fleet, I am strongly persuaded,
although it cannot be shown, by mere reason, that the soul is immaterial,
because the veracity of God is a demonstration of the truth of all that He has
revealed, and the absence of another demonstration can never throw any doubt
upon what is already demonstrated.
See, moreover,
under the article Soul, how Locke expresses himself on the bounds of human
knowledge, and the immensity of the power of the Supreme Being. The great
philosopher Bolingbroke declares that the opinion opposite to Lockes is
blasphemy. All the fathers, during the first three ages of the church, regarded
the soul as a light, attenuated species of matter, but did not the less, in
consequence, regard it as immortal. But now, forsooth, even your college
drudges consequentially put themselves forward and denounce as atheists those
who, with the fathers of the Christian church, think that God is able to bestow
and to preserve the immortality of the soul, whatever may be the substance it
consists of.
You carry your
audacity so far as to discover atheism in the following words, Who produces
motion in nature? God. Who produces vegetation in plants? God. Who produces
motion in animals? God. Who produces thought in man? God.
We cannot so
properly say on this occasion, Mentiris impudentissime; but we should rather
say you impudently blaspheme the truth. We conclude with observing that the
hero of the ex-Jesuit Paulian is the ex-Jesuit Patouillet, the author of a
bishops mandate in which all the parliaments of the kingdom are insulted. This
mandate was burned by the hands of the executioner. Nothing after this was
wanting but for the ex-Jesuit Paulian to elevate the ex-Jesuit Nonnotte to be a
father of the church, and to canonize the Jesuits Malagrida, Guignard, Garnet,
and Oldham, and all other Jesuits to whom God has granted the grace of being
hanged or quartered; they were all of them great metaphysicians, great
philosophico-theologians.
Section IV:
People who never think frequently inquire of those who do think, what has been
the use of philosophy? To destroy in England the religious rage which brought
Charles I. to the scaffold; to deprive an archbishop in Sweden of the power,
with a papal bull in his hand, of shedding the blood of the nobility; to
preserve in Germany religious peace, by holding up theological disputes to
ridicule; finally, to extinguish in Spain the hideous and devouring flames of
the Inquisition.
Gauls!
unfortunate Gauls! it prevents stormy and factious times from producing among
you a second Fronde, and a second Damiens. Priests of Rome! it compels you
to suppress your bull In cna domini, that monument of impudence and
stupidity. Nations! it humanizes your manners. Kings, it gives you instruction!
Section V:
The philosopher is the lover of wisdom and truth; to be a sage is to avoid the
senseless and the depraved. The philosopher, therefore, should live only among
philosophers.
I will suppose
that there are still some sages among the Jews; if one of these, when dining in
company with some rabbis, should help himself to a plate of eels or hare, or if
he cannot refrain from a hearty laugh at some superstitious and ridiculous
observations made by them in the course of conversation, he is forever ruined
in the synagogue; the like remark may be made of a Mussulman, a Gueber, or a
Banian.
I know it is
contended by many that the sage should never develop his opinions to the
vulgar; that he should be a madman with the mad, and foolish among fools; no
one, however, has yet ventured to say that he should be a knave among knaves.
But if it be required that a sage should always join in opinion with the
deluders of mankind, is not this clearly the same as requiring that he should
not be an honest man? Would any one require that a respectable physician should
always be of the same opinion as charlatans?
The sage is a
physician of souls. He ought to bestow his remedies on those who ask them of
him, and avoid the company of quacks, who will infallibly persecute him. If,
therefore, a madman of Asia Minor, or a madman of India, says to the sage: My
good friend, I think you do not believe in the mare Borac, or in the
metamorphoses of Vishnu; I will denounce you, I will hinder you from being
bostanji, I will destroy your credit; I will persecute youthe sage ought to
pity him and be silent.
If ignorant
persons, but at the same time persons of good understanding and dispositions,
and willing to receive instruction, should ask him: Are we bound to believe
that the distance between the moon and Venus is only five hundred leagues, and
that between Mercury and the sun the same, as the principal fathers of the Mussulman
religion insist, in opposition to all the most learned astronomers?the sage
may reply to them that the fathers may possibly be mistaken. He should at all
times inculcate upon them that a hundred abstract dogmas are not of the value
of a single good action, and that it is better to relieve one individual in
distress than to be profoundly acquainted with the abolishing and abolished.
When a rustic sees a serpent ready to dart at him, he will kill it; when a sage
perceives a bigot and a fanatic, what will he do? He will prevent them from
biting.
Section I: Write philosophy or philosophy as you please, but agree that as soon as it appears it is persecuted. Dogs to whom you present an aliment for which they have no taste, bite you. You will say that I repeat myself; but we must a hundred times remind mankind that the holy conclave condemned Galileo; and that the pedants who declared all the good citizens excommunicated who should submit to the great Henry IV., were the same who condemned the only truths which could be found in the works of Descartes.
All the spaniels
of the theological kennel bark at one another, and all together at de Thou, la
Mothe, Le Vayer, and Bayle. What nonsense has been written by little Celtic
scholars against the wise Locke!
These Celts say
that Csar, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, and Marcus Aurelius, might be philosophers,
but that philosophy is not permitted among the Celts. We answer that it is
permitted and very useful among the French; that nothing has done more good to
the English; and that it is time to exterminate barbarity. You reply that that
will never come to pass. No; with the uninformed and foolish it will not; but
with honest people the affair is soon concluded.
Section II:
One of the great misfortunes, as also one of the great follies, of mankind, is
that in all countries which we call polished, except, perhaps, China, priests
concern themselves with what belongs only to philosophers. These priests
interfered with regulating the year; it was, they say, their right; for it was
necessary that the people should know their holy days. Thus the Chaldan,
Egyptian, Greek, and Roman priests, believed themselves mathematicians and
astronomers; but what mathematics and astronomy! Whoever makes a trade of
quackery cannot have a just and enlightened mind. They were astrologers, and
never astronomers.
The Greek priests
themselves first made the year to consist only of three hundred and sixty days.
Their geometricians must have informed them that they were deceived by five
days and more. They, therefore, corrected their year. Other geometricians
further showed them that they were deceived by six hours. Iphitus obliged them
to change their Greek almanac. They added one day in four years to their faulty
year; Iphitus celebrated this change by the institution of the Olympiads.
They were finally
obliged to have recourse to the philosopher Meton, who, combining the year of
the moon with that of the sun, composed his cycle of nineteen years, at the end
of which the sun and moon returned to the same point within an hour and a half.
This cycle was graven in gold in the public place of Athens; and it is of this
famous golden number that we still make use, with the necessary corrections.
We well know what
ridiculous confusion the Roman priests introduced in their computation of the
year. Their blunders were so great that their summer holidays arrived in
winter. Csar, the universal Csar, was obliged to bring the philosopher
Sosigenes from Alexandria to repair the enormous errors of the pontiffs. When
it was necessary to correct the calendar of Julius Csar, under the pontificate
of Gregory XIII., to whom did they address themselves? Was it to some
inquisitor? It was to a philosopher and physician named Lilio.
When the almanac
was given to Professor Cog, rector of the university, to compose, he knew not
even the subject. They were obliged to apply to M. de Lalande, of the Academy
of Sciences, who was burdened with this very painful task, too poorly
recompensed. The rhetorician Cog, therefore, made a great mistake when he
proposed for the prize of the university this subject so strangely expressed:
Non magis Deo quam regibus infensa est ista qu vocatur hodie philosophia. That which we now call philosophy, is not more the enemy of God than of kings. He would say less the enemy. He has taken magis for minus. And the poor man ought to know that our academies are not enemies either to the king or God.
Section III:
If philosophy has done so much honor to France in the Encyclopdia, it must
also be confessed that the ignorance and envy which have dared to condemn this
work would have covered France with opprobrium, if twelve or fifteen
convulsionaries, who formed a cabal, could be regarded as the organs of France;
they were really only the ministers of fanaticism and sedition; those who
forced the king to dissolve the body which they had seduced. Their fanatical
credulity for convulsions and the miserable impostures of St. Mdard, was so
strong, that they obliged a magistrate, elsewhere wise and respectable, to say
in full parliament that the miracles of the Catholic church always existed. By
these miracles, we can only understand those of convulsions, for assuredly it
never performed any others; at least, if we believe not in the little children
resuscitated by St. Ovid. The time of miracles is passed; the triumphant church
has no longer occasion for them. Seriously, was there one of the persecutors of
the Encyclopdia who understood one word of the articles Astronomy, Dynamics,
Geometry, Metaphysics, Botany, Medicine, or Anatomy, of which this book, become
so necessary, treats in every volume. What a crowd of absurd imputations and
gross calumnies have they accumulated against this treasure of all the sciences!
They should be reprinted at the end of the Encyclopdia, to eternize their
shame. See what it is to judge a work which they were not even fit to study.
The fools! they have exclaimed that philosophy ruined Catholicism. What, then,
in twenty millions of people, has one been found who has vexed the least
officer of the parish! one who has failed in respect to the churches! one who
has publicly proffered against our ceremonies a single word which approached
the virulence with which these railers have expressed themselves against the
regal authority! Let us repeat that philosophy never did evil to the state, and
that fanaticism, joined to the esprit du corps, has done much in all times.
Section IV:
Substance of Ancient Philosophy. I have consumed about forty years of my
pilgrimage in two or three corners of the world, seeking the philosophers
stone called truth. I have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and
Augustine, Plato and Malebranche, and I still remain in ignorance. In all the
crucibles of philosophers, there are perhaps two or three ounces of gold, but
all the rest is caput mortuum, insipid mire, from which nothing can be
extracted.
It seems to me
that the Greeks, our masters, wrote much more to show their intellect, than
they made use of their intellect to instruct themselves. I see not a single
author of antiquity who has a consistent, methodical, clear system, going from
consequence to consequence.
All that I have
been able to obtain by comparing and combining the systems of Plato, of the
tutor of Alexander, Pythagoras, and the Orientals, is this: Chance is a word
void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. The world is arranged
according to mathematical laws; therefore, it is arranged by an intelligence.
It is not an
intelligent being like myself who presided at the formation of the world; for I
cannot form a miserable worm; therefore, the world is the work of an
intelligence prodigiously superior. Does this being, who possesses intelligence
and power in so high a degree, necessarily exist? It must be so, for he must
either have received being from another, or through his own nature. If he has
received his being from another, which is very difficult to conceive, I must
look up to this other, which will in that case be the first cause. On whichever
side I turn, I must admit a first cause, powerful and intelligent, who by his
own nature is necessarily so.
Has this first
cause created things out of nothing? We cannot conceive that to create out of
nothing is to change nothing into something. I cannot admit such a creation, at
least until I find invincible reasons which force me to admit what my mind can
never comprehend. All that exists appears to exist necessarily, since it
exists; for if to-day there is a reason for the existence of things, there was
one yesterday; there has been one in all times; and this cause must always have
had its effect, without which it would have been a useless cause during
eternity.
But how can
things have always existed, being visibly under the hand of the first cause?
This power must always have acted in like manner. There is no sun without
light, there is no motion without a being passing from one point of space to
another.
There is,
therefore, a powerful and intelligent being who has always acted; and if this
being had not acted, of what use to him would have been his existence? All
things are, therefore, emanations from this first cause. But how can we imagine
that stone and clay may be emanations of the eternal, intelligent, and puissant
being? Of two things, one must be; either that the matter of this stone and
mine necessarily exists of itself, or that it exists necessarily by this first
cause; there is no medium.
Thus, therefore,
there are but two parts to take; either to admit matter eternal of itself, or
matter eternally proceeding from a powerful, intelligent, eternal being. But
existing of its own nature, or emanating from a producing being, it exists from
all eternity, because it exists; and there is no reason that it might not have
always existed.
If matter is
eternally necessary, it is in consequence impossibleit is contradictory, that
it should not exist; but what man can assure you that it is impossible, that it
is contradictory, that this fly and this flint have not always existed? We are,
however, obliged to swallow this difficulty, which more astonishes the
imagination than contradicts the principles of reasoning.
Indeed, as soon
as we have conceived that all has emanated from the supreme and intelligent
being; that nothing has emanated from him without reason; that this being,
always existing, must always have acted; that, consequently, all things must
have eternally proceeded from the bosom of his existencewe should no more be
deterred from believing the matter of which this fly and flint are formed is
eternal, than we are deterred from conceiving light to be an emanation of the
all-powerful being.
Since I am an
extended and thinking being, my extent and thought are the necessary
productions of this being. It is evident to me that I cannot give myself extent
or thought. I have, therefore, received both from this necessary being.
Can he have given
me what he has not? I have intelligence; I am in space; therefore, he is
intelligent and is in space. To say that the Eternal Being, the All-Powerful
God, has from all time necessarily filled the universe with His productions, is
not taking from Him His free-will; but on the contrary, for free-will is but
the power of acting. God has always fully acted; therefore God has always used
the plenitude of His liberty.
The liberty which
we call indifference is a word without an ideaan absurdity; for this would be
to determine without reason; it would be an effect without a cause. Therefore
God cannot have this pretended free-will, which is a contradiction in terms. He
has, therefore, always acted by the same necessity which causes His existence.
It is, therefore, impossible for the world to exist without God; it is
impossible for God to exist without the world. This world is filled with beings
who succeed each other; therefore, God has always produced beings in
succession.
These preliminary
assertions are the basis of the ancient eastern philosophy, and of that of the
Greeks. We must except Democritus and Epicurus, whose corpuscular philosophy
has combated these dogmas. But let us remark that the Epicureans were founded
on an entirely erroneous philosophy, and that the metaphysical system of all
the other philosophy subsisted with all the physical systems. All nature,
except the void, contradicts Epicurus, and no phenomenon contradicts the
philosophy which I explain. Now, a philosophy which agrees with all which
passes in nature, and which contents the most attentive mind, is it not
superior to all other unrevealed systems?
After the
assertions of the most ancient philosophers, which I have approached as nearly
as possible, what remains to us? A chaos of doubts and chimeras. I believe that
there never was a philosopher of a system who did not confess at the end of his
life that he had lost his time. It must be confessed that the inventors of the
mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of
syllogisms. He who imagined a ship, towers much above him who imagined innate
ideas.