Voltaire,
(Francois-Marie Arouet), a French literary figure and enlightenment
philosopher, wrote powerfully in support of religious toleration
and freedom of speech. He is most famous for his novel Candide
in which he made fun of Leibniz who held that this is the best of
all possible worlds. He was a bitter and outspoken critic of the
Catholic church - "crush the infamous thing."
AstrologyAstrology
may rest on better foundations than Magic. For if no one has seen
either Goblins, or Lemures, . . . or Demons, . . . the predictions
of astrologers have often been seen to succeed. If of two astrologers
consulted on the life of a child and on the weather, one says that
the child will live to manhood, the other not; if one announces
rain, and the other fine weather, it is clear that one of them will
be a prophet.. . .One of the most famous mathematicians in Europe,
named Stoffler, who flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
and who long worked at the reform of the calendar, proposed at the
Council of Constance, foretold a universal flood for the year 1524.
This flood was to arrive in the month of February, and nothing is
more plausible; for Saturn, Jupiter and Mars were then in conjunction
in the sign of Pisces. All the peoples of Europe, Asia and Africa,
who heard speak of the prediction, were dismayed. Everyone expected
the flood, despite the rainbow. . . .Everyone armed himself with
a boat as with an ark. . . . At last the month of February arrived,
and not a drop of water fell: never was month more dry, and never
were the astrologers more embarrassed. Nevertheless they were not
discouraged, nor neglected among us; almost all princes continued
to consult them.I have not the honor of being a prince; but the
celebrated Count of Boulainvilliers and an Italian, named Colonne,
who had much prestige in Paris, both foretold that I should die
infallibly at the age of thirty-two. I have been so malicious as
to deceive them already by nearly thirty years, wherefore I humbly
beg their pardon.Authority Wretched
human beings, whether you wear green robes, turbans, black robes
or surplices, cloaks and neckbands, never seek to use authority
where there is question only of reason, or consent to be scoffed
at throughout the centuries as the most impertinent of all men,
and to suffer public hatred as the most unjust. A
hundred times has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with
which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred
and first, and I hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever;
I desire that there be graved on the door of your Holy Office:
"Here seven cardinals, assisted by minor
brethren, had the master of thought in Italy thrown into prison
at the age of seventy; made him fast on bread and water because
he instructed the human race, and because they were ignorant."
. . . Further on a [university] faculty,
which had not great faculties, issued a decree against innate ideas,
and later a decree for innate ideas, without the said faculty being
informed by its beadles what an idea is. In
the neighboring schools judicial proceedings were instituted against
the circulation of the blood. An action
was started against inoculation, and parties have been subpoenaed.
At the Customs of thought twenty-one folio
volumes were seized, in which it was stated treacherously and wickedly
that triangles always have three angles; that a father is older
than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost her virginity before giving
birth to her child, and that flour is not an oak leaf. Democracy
Ordinarily there is no comparison between
the crimes of the great who are always ambitious, and the crimes
of the people who always want, and can want only liberty and equality.
These two sentiments, Liberty and Equality, do not lead direct to
calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, the devastation of one's
neighbors' lands, etc.; but ambitious might and the mania for power
plunge into all these crimes whatever be the time, whatever be the
place. Popular government is in itself,
therefore, less iniquitous, less abominable than despotic power.
The great vice of democracy is certainly not
tyranny and cruelty: [But] democracy seems suitable only to a very
little country, and further it must be happily situated. Small though
it be, it will make many mistakes, because it will be composed of
men. Discord will reign there as in a monastery; but there will
be no St. Bartholomew, no Irish massacres. . . no inquisition, no
condemnation to the galleys for having taken some water from the
sea without paying for it, unless one supposes this republic composed
of devils in a corner of hell. One
questions every day whether a republican government is preferable
to a king's government? The dispute ends always by agreeing that
to govern men is very difficult. The Jews had God Himself for master;
see what has happened to them on that account: nearly always have
they been beaten and slaves, and to-day do you not find that they
cut a pretty figure?EqualityIt is clear that men, enjoying the faculties
connected with their nature, are equal; they are equal when they
perform animal functions, and when they exercise their understanding.
The King of China, the Great Mogul, the Padisha of Turkey, cannot
say to the least of men: " I forbid you to digest, to go to
the privy and to think." All the animals of each species are
equal among themselves. In our
unhappy world it is impossible for men living in society not to
be divided into two classes, the one the rich that commands, the
other the poor that serves; and these two are subdivided into a
thousand, and these thousand still have different gradations.All
the poor are not unhappy. The majority were born in that state,
and continual work stops their feeling their position too keenly;
but when they feel it, then one sees wars, like that of the popular
party against the senate party in Rome, like those of the peasants
in Germany, England and France. All these wars finish sooner or
later with the subjection of the people, because the powerful have
money, and money is master of everything in a state: I say in a
state; for it is not the same between nations. The nation which
makes the best use of the sword will always subjugate the nation
which has more gold and less courage.All men are born with a sufficiently
violent liking for domination, wealth and pleasure, and with much
taste for idleness; consequently, all men want their money and the
wives or daughters of others, to be their master, to subject them
to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at least to do only
very agreeable things. You see clearly that with these fine inclinations
it is as impossible for men to be equal as it is impossible for
two predicants or two professors of theology not to be jealous of
each other. The human race, such as
it is, cannot subsist unless there is an infinity of useful men
who possess nothing at all; for it is certain that a man who is
well off will not leave his own land to come to till yours; and
if you have need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary to
the Privy Council who will make them for you. Equality, therefore,
is at once the most natural thing and the most fantastic.
As men go to excess in everything when they
can, this inequality has been exaggerated. It has been maintained
in many countries that it was not permissible for a citizen to leave
the country where chance has caused him to be born; the sense of
this law is visibly: " This land is so bad and so badly governed,
that we forbid any individual to leave it, for fear that everyone
will leave it." Do better : make all your subjects want to
live in your country, and foreigners to come to it. All
men have the right in the bottom of their hearts to think themselves
entirely equal to other men : it does not follow from that that
the cardinal's cook should order his master to prepare him his dinner;
but the cook can say: " I am a man like my master; like him
I was born crying; like me he will die with the same pangs and the
same ceremonies. Both of us perform the same animal functions. If
the Turks take possession of Rome, and if then I am cardinal and
my master cook, I shall take him into my service." This discourse
is reasonable and just; but while waiting for the Great Turk to
take possession of Rome, the cook must do his duty, or else all
human society is perverted. As regards
a man who is neither a cardinal's cook, nor endowed with any other
employment in the state; as regards a private person who is connected
with nothing, but who is vexed at being received everywhere with
an air of being patronized or scorned, who sees quite clearly that
many monsignors have no more knowledge, wit or virtue than he, and
who at times is bored at waiting in their antechambers, what should
he decide to do? Why, to take himself off.
Translated by
H.I. Woolf, New York: Knopf, 1924
Edited
by Jennifer Brainard, c. Historywiz 2000-2003
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