Toleration And Other Essays - free ebook by Voltaire

TOLERATION AND OTHER ESSAYS

BY VOLTAIRE TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY Joseph McCabe G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1912 The Knickerbocker Press, New York...

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INTRODUCTION

It seems useful, in presenting to English readers this selection of the works of Voltaire, to recall the position and personality of the writer and the circumstances in which the works were written. It is too lightly assumed, even by many who enjoy the freedom which he, more than any, won for Europe, and who may surpass him in scepticism, that Voltaire is a figure to be left in a discreetly remote niche of memory. “Other times, other manners” is one of the phrases he contributed to modern litera

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SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF JEAN CALAS

The murder of Calas, which was perpetrated with the sword of justice at Toulouse on March 9, 1762, is one of the most singular events that deserve the attention of our own and of later ages. We quickly forget the long list of the dead who have perished in our battles. It is the inevitable fate of war; those who die by the sword might themselves have inflicted death on their enemies, and did not die without the means of defending themselves. When the risk and the advantage are equal astonishment

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CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXECUTION OF JEAN CALAS

If the white penitents were the cause of the execution of an innocent man, the utter ruin of a family, and the dispersal and humiliation that attach to an execution, though they should punish only injustice; if the haste of the white penitents to commemorate as a saint one who, according to our barbaric customs, should have been dragged on a hurdle, led to the execution of a virtuous parent; they ought indeed to be penitents for the rest of their lives. They and the judges should weep, but not i

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THE IDEA OF THE REFORMATION

When enlightenment spread, with the renaissance of letters in the fifteenth century, there was a very general complaint of abuses, and everybody agrees that the complaint was just. Pope Alexander VI. had openly bought the papal tiara, and his five bastards shared its advantages. His son, the cardinal-duke of Borgia, made an end, in concert with his father, of Vitelli, Urbino, Gravina, Oliveretto, and a hundred other nobles, in order to seize their lands. Julius II., animated by the same spirit,

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WHETHER TOLERATION IS DANGEROUS, AND AMONG WHAT PEOPLES IT IS FOUND

There are some who say that, if we treated with paternal indulgence those erring brethren who pray to God in bad French [instead of bad Latin], we should be putting weapons in their hands, and would once more witness the battles of Jarnac, Moncontour, Coutras, Dreux, and St. Denis. I do not know anything about this, as I am not a prophet; but it seems to me an illogical piece of reasoning to say: “These men rebelled when I treated them ill, therefore they will rebel when I treat them well.” I wo

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HOW TOLERATION MAY BE ADMITTED

I venture to think that some enlightened and magnanimous minister, some humane and wise prelate, some prince who puts his interest in the number of his subjects and his glory in their welfare, may deign to glance at this inartistic and defective paper. He will supply its defects and say to himself: What do I risk in seeing my land cultivated and enriched by a larger number of industrious workers, the revenue increased, the State more flourishing? Germany would be a desert strewn with the bones o

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WHETHER INTOLERANCE IS OF NATURAL AND HUMAN LAW

Natural law is that indicated to men by nature. You have reared a child; he owes you respect as a father, gratitude as a benefactor. You have a right to the products of the soil that you have cultivated with your own hands. You have given or received a promise; it must be kept. Human law must in every case be based on natural law. All over the earth the great principle of both is: Do not unto others what you would that they do not unto you. Now, in virtue of this principle, one man cannot say to

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WHETHER INTOLERANCE WAS KNOWN TO THE GREEKS

The peoples of whom history has given us some slight knowledge regarded their different religions as links that bound them together; it was an association of the human race. There was a kind of right to hospitality among the gods, just as there was among men. When a stranger reached a town, his first act was to worship the gods of the country; even the gods of enemies were strictly venerated. The Trojans offered prayers to the gods who fought for the Greeks. Alexander, in the deserts of Libya, w

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WHETHER THE ROMANS WERE TOLERANT

Among the ancient Romans you will not find, from Romulus until the days when the Christians disputed with the priests of the empire, a single man persecuted on account of his opinions. Cicero doubted everything; Lucretius denied everything; yet they incurred not the least reproach. Indeed, license went so far that Pliny, the naturalist, began his book by saying that there is no god, or that, if there is, it is the sun. Cicero, speaking of the lower regions, says: “There is no old woman so stupid

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THE MARTYRS

There were Christian martyrs in later years. It is very difficult to discover the precise grounds on which they were condemned; but I venture to think that none of them were put to death on religious grounds under the earlier emperors. All religions were tolerated, and there is no reason to suppose that the Romans would seek out and persecute certain obscure men, with a peculiar cult, at a time when they permitted all other religions. Titus, Trajan, the Antonines, and Decius were not barbarians.

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OF THE DANGER OF FALSE LEGENDS, AND OF PERSECUTION

Untruth has imposed on men too long; it is time to pick out the few truths that we can trace amid the clouds of legends which brood over Roman history after Tacitus and Suetonius, and have almost always enveloped the annals of other nations. How can we believe, for instance, that the Romans, whose laws exhibit to us a people of grave and severe character, exposed to prostitution Christian virgins and young women of rank? It is a gross misunderstanding of the austere dignity of the makers of our

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ABUSES OF INTOLERANCE

Do I propose, then, that every citizen shall be free to follow his own reason, and believe whatever this enlightened or deluded reason shall dictate to him? Certainly, provided he does not disturb the public order. It does not depend on man to believe or not to believe; but it depends on him to respect the usages of his country. If you insist that it is a crime to disbelieve in the dominant religion, you condemn the first Christians, your fathers, and you justify those whom you reproach with per

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WHETHER INTOLERANCE WAS OF DIVINE RIGHT IN JUDAISM, AND WHETHER IT WAS ALWAYS PRACTISED.[27]

Divine right means, I believe, the precepts which God himself has given. He ordered that the Jews should eat a lamb cooked with lettuces, and that the eaters should stand, with a stick in their hands, in commemoration of the Passover; he commanded that in the consecration of the high-priest blood should be applied to his right ear, right hand, and right foot. They seem curious customs to us, but they were not to antiquity. He ordered them to put the iniquities of the people on the goat hazazel ,

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EXTREME TOLERANCE OF THE JEWS

Hence both under Moses, the judges, and the kings you find constant instances of toleration. Moses says several times ( Exodus xx.) that “God punishes the fathers in the children, down to the fourth generation”; and it was necessary thus to threaten a people to whom God had not revealed the immortality of the soul, or the punishments and rewards of another life. These truths were not made known either in the Decalogue or any part of Leviticus or Deuteronomy . They were dogmas of the Persians, Ba

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WHETHER INTOLERANCE WAS TAUGHT BY CHRIST

Let us now see whether Jesus Christ set up sanguinary laws, enjoined intolerance, ordered the building of dungeons of the inquisition, or instituted bodies of executioners. There are, if I am not mistaken, few passages in the gospels from which the persecuting spirit might deduce that intolerance and constraint are lawful. One is the parable in which the kingdom of heaven is compared to a king who invites his friends to the wedding-feast of his son ( Matthew xxii.). The king says to them, by mea

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THE ONLY CASES IN WHICH INTOLERANCE IS HUMANLY LAWFUL

For a government to have the right to punish the errors of men it is necessary that their errors must take the form of crime; they do not take the form of crime unless they disturbed society; they disturb society when they engender fanaticism; hence men must avoid fanaticism in order to deserve toleration. If a few young Jesuits, knowing that the Church has condemned the Jansenists, proceed to burn a house of the Oratorian priests because the Oratorian Quesnel was a Jansenist, it is clear that t

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ACCOUNT OF A CONTROVERSIAL DISPUTE IN CHINA

In the early years of the reign of the great Emperor Kam-hi a mandarin of the city of Canton heard from his house a great noise, which proceeded from the next house. He inquired if anybody was being killed, and was told that the almoner of the Danish missionary society, a chaplain from Batavia, and a Jesuit were disputing. He had them brought to his house, put tea and sweets before them, and asked why they quarrelled. The Jesuit replied that it was very painful for him, since he was always right

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WHETHER IT IS USEFUL TO MAINTAIN THE PEOPLE IN SUPERSTITION

Such is the weakness, such the perversity, of the human race that it is better, no doubt, for it to be subject to all conceivable superstitions, provided they be not murderous, than to live without religion. Man has always needed a curb; and, although it was ridiculous to sacrifice to fauns or naiads, it was much more reasonable and useful to worship these fantastic images of the deity than to sink into atheism. A violent atheist would be as great a plague as a violent superstitious man. When me

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VIRTUE BETTER THAN SCIENCE

The less we have of dogma, the less dispute; the less we have of dispute, the less misery. If that is not true, I am wrong. Religion was instituted to make us happy in this world and the next. What must we do to be happy in the next world? Be just. [29] What must we do to be happy in this world, as far as the misery of our nature allows? Be indulgent. It would be the height of folly to pretend to bring all men to have the same thoughts in metaphysics. It would be easier to subdue the whole unive

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OF UNIVERSAL TOLERATION

One does not need great art and skilful eloquence to prove that Christians ought to tolerate each other—nay, even to regard all men as brothers. Why, you say, is the Turk, the Chinese, or the Jew my brother? Assuredly; are we not all children of the same father, creatures of the same God? But these people despise us and treat us as idolaters. Very well; I will tell them that they are quite wrong. It seems to me that I might astonish, at least, the stubborn pride of a Mohammedan or a Buddhist pri

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ON SUPERSTITION

My Brethren : You are aware that all prominent nations have set up a public cult. Men have at all times assembled to deal with their interests and communicate their needs, and it was quite natural that they should open these meetings with some expression of the respect and love which they owe to the author of their lives. This homage has been compared to the respect which children pay to their father, and subjects to their sovereign. These are but feeble images of the worship of God. The relatio

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ON THE INTERPRETATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

My Brethren : Books rule the world, or, at least, those nations in it which have written language; the others do not count. The Zend Avesta, attributed to the first Zoroaster, was the law of the Persians. The Veda and the Shastabad are the law of the Brahmans. The Egyptians were ruled by the books of Thot, who has been called “the first Mercury.” The Koran holds sway to-day over Africa, Egypt, Arabia, India, part of Tartary, the whole of Persia, Scythia, Asia Minor, Syria, Thrace, Thessaly, and

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ON THE INTERPRETATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

My Brethren : There are in the New Testament, as there are in the Old, depths that we cannot sound, and sublimities that our poor reason can never attain. I do not propose here either to reconcile the gospels, which seem to contradict each other at times, or to explain mysteries which, by the very fact that they are mysteries, must be inexplicable. Let those who are more learned than I discuss whether the Holy Family betook itself to Egypt after the massacre of the children at Bethlehem, as Matt

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ARTICLE I.

Illustrious Romans, it is not the Apostle Paul who has the honour of addressing you. It is not that worthy Jew who was born at Tarsus, according to the Acts of the Apostles , and at Giscala according to Jerome and other fathers; a dispute that has led some to believe that one may be born in two different places at the same time, just as there are among you certain bodies which are created by a few Latin words, and are found in a hundred thousand places at the same time. [38] It is not the bald,

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ARTICLE II.

When I travelled among you, I wept to see the Zocolanti occupying that very Capitol to which Paulus Emilus led King Perseus, the descendant of Alexander, chained to his triumphal car; that temple to which the Scipios had brought the spoils of Carthage, and in which Pompey triumphed over Asia, Africa, and Europe. But even more bitter were my tears when I recalled the feast that Cæsar spread for our ancestors on twenty-two thousand tables, and when I compared the congiaria , that immense free dist

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ARTICLE III.

It was explained to me that an aged priest, who has been appointed pope by other priests, cannot find either the time or the will to relieve your misery. He can think only of living. What interest should he take in Romans? He is himself rarely a Roman. What care should he take of an estate that will not pass to his children? Rome is not his patrimony, as it was that of the Cæsars. It is an ecclesiastical benefice; the papacy is a kind of commendatory abbey, [46] which each abbot ruins while he l

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ARTICLE IV.

When your altar of Victory had been destroyed, the barbarians came and finished the work of the priests. Rome became the prey and the sport of nations that it had so long ruled, if not repressed. It is true that you still had consuls, a senate, municipal laws; but the popes have robbed you of what the Huns and Goths had left you. It was in earlier times unheard of that a priest should set up royal rights in any city of the Empire. It is well known all over Europe, except in your chancellery, tha

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ARTICLE V.

You will ask me by what means this strange revolution of all divine and human laws was brought about. I am about to tell you; and I defy the most zealous fanatic in whom there is still a spark of reason, and the most determined rogue who has still a trace of decency in his soul, to resist the force of the truth, if he reads this important inquiry with the attention it deserves. It is certain and undoubted that the earliest societies of the Galilæans, afterwards called Christians, remained in obs

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ARTICLE VI.

It is clear that the first half-Jewish Christians took care not to address themselves to the Roman Senators, nor to any man of position or any one above the lowest level of the people. It is well known that they appealed only to the lowest class. To these they boasted of healing nervous diseases, epilepsy, and uterine convulsions, which ignorant folk, among the Romans as well as among the Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, and Syrians, regarded as the work of charms or diabolical possession. There must as

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ARTICLE VII.

Thus the Christians made progress among the people by a device that invariably seduces ignorant folk. But they had a still more powerful means. They declaimed against the rich. They preached community of goods; in their secret meetings they enjoined their neophytes to give them the little money they had earned; and they quoted the alleged instance of Sapphira and Ananias ( Acts v., 1-11), whom Simon Barjona, called Cephas, which means Peter, caused to die suddenly because they had kept a crown t

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ARTICLE VIII.

Let us now, Romans, consider the artifices, roguery, and forgery to which the Christians themselves have given the name of “pious frauds”; frauds that have cost you your liberty and your goods, and have brought down the conquerors of Europe to a most lamentable slavery. I again take God to witness that I will say no word that is not amply proved. If I wished to use all the arms of reason against fanaticism, all the piercing darts of truth against error, I should speak to you first of that prodig

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ARTICLE IX.

Cæsar was but your dictator; Augustus was content to be your general, consul, and tribune; Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero left you your elections, your prerogatives, and your dignities; even the barbarians respected them. You maintained your municipal government. Not by the authority of your bishop, Gregory III., but of your own decision, you offered the dignity of patrician to the great Charles Martel, master of his king, conqueror of the Saracens in the year 741 of our faulty vulgar era. Believe

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PRAYER

God of all the globes and stars, the one prayer that it is meet to offer to you is submission. How can we ask anything of him who arranged and enchained all things from the beginning? Yet if it is permitted to expose our needs to a father, preserve in our hearts this feeling of submission and a pure religion. Keep from us all superstition. Since there are those who insult you with unworthy sacrifices, abolish those infamous mysteries. Since there are those who dishonour the divinity with absurd

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SERMON

My brethren, religion is the secret voice of God speaking to men. It ought to unite men, not divide them; hence every religion that belongs to one people only is false. Ours is, in principle, that of the whole universe; for we worship a supreme being as all nations do, we practise the justice which all nations teach, and we reject all the untruths with which the nations reproach each other. At one with them in the principle which unites them, we differ from them in the things about which they ar

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THE QUESTIONS OF ZAPATA

( Translated by Dr. Tamponet, of the Sorbonne ) The licentiate Zapata, being appointed Professor of Theology at the University of Salamanca, presented these questions to a committee of doctors in 1629. They were suppressed. The Spanish copy is in the Brunswick Library. Wise Masters : 1º. How ought I to proceed with the object of showing that the Jews, whom we burn by the hundred, were for four thousand years God’s chosen people? 2º. How could God, whom one cannot without blasphemy regard as unju

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INTRODUCTION

It is not a question of taking sides between Russia and Turkey; for these States will, sooner or later, come to an understanding without my intervention. It is not a question of declaring oneself in favour of one English faction and against another; for they will soon have disappeared, to make room for others. I am not endeavouring to choose between Greek and Armenian Christians, Eutychians and Jacobites, Christians who are called Papists and Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, the primitive folk

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I OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION

Everything is in motion, everything acts and reacts, in nature. Our sun turns on its axis with a rapidity that astonishes us; other suns turn with the same speed, while countless swarms of planets revolve round them in their orbits, and the blood circulates more than twenty times an hour in the lowliest of our animals. A straw that is borne on the wind tends naturally towards the centre of the earth, just as the earth gravitates towards the sun, and the sun towards the earth. The sea owes to the

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II OF THE NECESSARY AND ETERNAL PRINCIPLE OF ACTION

This single mover is very powerful, since it directs so vast and complex a machine. It is very intelligent, since the smallest spring of this machine cannot be equalled by us, who are intelligent beings. It is a necessary being, since without it the machine would not exist. It is eternal, for it cannot be produced from nothing, which, being nothing, can produce nothing; given the existence of something, it is demonstrated that something has existed for all eternity. This sublime truth has become

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III WHAT IS THIS PRINCIPLE?

I cannot prove synthetically the existence of the principle of action, the prime mover, the Supreme Being, as Dr. Clarke does. If this method were in the power of man, Clarke was, perhaps, worthy to employ it; but analysis seems to me more suitable for our poor ideas. It is only by ascending the stream of eternity that I can attempt to reach its source. Having therefore recognised from movement that there is a mover; having proved from action that there is a principle of action; I seek the natur

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IV WHERE IS THE FIRST PRINCIPLE? IS IT INFINITE?

I do not see the first motive and intelligent principle of the animal called man, when he demonstrates a geometrical proposition or lifts a burden. Yet I feel irresistibly that there is one in him, however subordinate. I cannot discover whether this first principle is in his heart, or in his head, or in his blood, or in his whole body. In the same way I have detected a first principle in nature, and have seen that it must necessarily be eternal. But where is it? If it animates all existence, it

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V THAT ALL THE WORKS OF THE ETERNAL BEING ARE ETERNAL

The principle of nature being necessary and eternal, and its very essence being to act, it must have been always active. If it had not been an ever-active God, it would have been an eternally indolent God, the God of Epicurus, the God who is good for nothing. This truth seems to me to be fully demonstrated. Hence the world, his work, whatever form it assume, is, like him, eternal; just as the light is as old as the sun, movement as old as matter, and food as old as the animals; otherwise the sun

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VI THAT THE ETERNAL BEING, AND FIRST PRINCIPLE, HAS ARRANGED ALL THINGS VOLUNTARILY

It is clear that this supreme, necessary, active intelligence is possessed of will, and has arranged all things because it [69] willed them. How can one act, and fashion all things, without willing to fashion them? That would be the action of a mere machine, and this machine would presuppose another first principle, another mover. We should always have to end in a first intelligent being of some kind or other. We wish, we act, we make machines, when we will; hence the great very powerful Demiour

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VII THAT ALL BEINGS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, ARE SUBJECT TO ETERNAL LAWS

What are the effects of this eternal power that dwells essentially in nature? I see only two classes of them, the insensitive and the sensitive. The earth, the seas, the planets, the suns, seem admirable but lifeless things, devoid of sensibility. A snail that wills, has some degree of perception, and makes love, seems, to that extent, to have an advantage greater than all the glory of the suns that illumine space. But all these beings are alike subject to eternal and unvarying laws. Neither the

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VIII THAT MAN IS ESSENTIALLY SUBJECT IN EVERYTHING TO THE ETERNAL LAWS OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLE

Let us regard, with the eyes of reason, this animal man which the great being has produced. What is his first sensation? A sensation of pain; then the pleasure of feeding. That is the whole of our life: pain and pleasure. Whence have we these two springs which keep us in action until our last moment, if not from this first principle of action, this Demiourgos? Assuredly we do not give pain to ourselves; and how could we be the cause of our few pleasures? We have said elsewhere that it is impossi

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IX OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION IN SENTIENT BEINGS

There comes at length a time when a greater or smaller number of perceptions, received in our mechanism, seem to present themselves to our will. We think that we are forming ideas. It is as if, when we turn the tap of a fountain, we were to think that we cause the water which streams out. We create ideas, poor creatures that we are! It is evident that we had no share in the former, yet we would regard ourselves as the authors of the latter. If we reflect well on this vain boast of forming ideas,

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X OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION CALLED THE SOUL

But, some centuries later in the history of man, it came to be imagined that we have a soul which acts of itself; and the idea has become so familiar that we take it for a reality. We talk incessantly of “the soul,” though we have not the least idea of the meaning of it. To some the soul means the life; to others it is a small, frail image of ourselves, which goes, when we die, to drink the waters of Acheron; to others it is a harmony, a memory, an entelechy. In the end it has been converted int

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XI EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION CALLED THE SOUL

There is, nevertheless, a principle of action in man. Yes, there is one everywhere. But can this principle be anything else than a spring, a secret first mover which is developed by the ever-active first principle—a principle that is as powerful as it is secret, as demonstrable as it is invisible, which we have recognised as the essential cause in the whole of nature? If you create movement or ideas because you will it, you are God for the time being; for you have all the attributes of God—will,

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XII WHETHER THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION IN ANIMALS IS FREE

There is a principle of action in man and in every animal, just as there is in every machine; and this first mover, this ultimate spring, is necessarily eternally arranged by the master, otherwise all would be chaos, and there would be no world. Every animal, like every machine, necessarily and irresistibly obeys the power that directs it. That is evident, and sufficiently familiar. Every animal is possessed of will, and one must be a fool to think that a dog following its master has not the wil

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XIII OF THE LIBERTY OF MAN, AND OF DESTINY

A ball that drives another, a hunting-dog that necessarily and voluntarily follows a stag, a stag that leaps a great ditch not less necessarily and voluntarily, a roe that gives birth to another roe, which will bring a third into the world—these things are not more irresistibly determined than we are to do all that we do. Let us remember always how inconsistent and absurd it would be for one set of things to be arranged and the other not. Every present event is born of the past, and is father of

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XIV ABSURDITY OF WHAT IS CALLED LIBERTY OF INDIFFERENCE

What an admirable spectacle is that of the eternal destinies of all beings chained to the throne of the maker of all worlds! I imagine a time when it is not so, but a chimerical liberty makes every event uncertain. I imagine that one of the substances intermediate between us and the great being (there may be millions of such beings) comes to consult the eternal being on the destiny of some of the enormous globes that stand at such vast distances from us. The sovereign of nature would be forced t

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XV OF EVIL AND, IN THE FIRST PLACE, THE DESTRUCTION OF BEASTS

We have never had any idea of good and evil, save in relation to ourselves. The sufferings of an animal seem to us evils, because, being animals ourselves, we feel that we should excite compassion if the same were done to us. We should have the same feeling for a tree if we were told that it suffered torment when it was cut; and for a stone if we learned that it suffers when it is dressed. But we should pity the tree and the stone much less than the animal, because they are less like us. Indeed,

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XVI OF EVIL IN THE ANIMAL CALLED MAN

So much for the beasts; let us come to man. If it be not an evil that the only being on earth that knows God by his thoughts should be unhappy in his thoughts; if it be not an evil that this worshipper of the Deity should be almost always unjust and suffering, should know virtue and commit crime, should so often deceive and be deceived, and be the victim or the executioner of his fellows, etc.; if all that be not a frightful evil, I know not where evil is to be found. Beasts and men suffer almos

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XVII ROMANCES INVENTED TO EXPLAIN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

Of a hundred peoples who have sought the cause of physical and moral evil, the Hindoos are the first whose romantic imaginations are known to us. They are sublime, if the word “sublime” be taken to mean “high.” Evil, according to the ancient Brahmans, comes of a quarrel that once took place in the highest heavens, between the faithful and the jealous angels. The rebels were cast out of heaven into Ondera for millions of ages. But the great being pardoned them at the end of a few thousand years;

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XVIII OF THE SAME ROMANCES, IMITATED BY BARBARIC NATIONS

In the regions of Chaldæa and Syria the barbarians also had their legends of the origin of evil. Among one of these nations in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates it was said that a serpent, meeting a burdened and thirsty ass, asked what the ass carried. “The recipe of immortality,” said the ass; “God has bestowed it upon man, who has laid it on my back. He follows me, but is far off, because he has only two legs. I die of thirst; prithee tell me where there is a stream.” The serpent led the ass

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XIX DISCOURSE OF AN ATHEIST ON ALL THIS

An Atheist says to me: It has been proved, I admit, that there is an eternal and necessary principle. But from the fact that it is necessary I infer that all that is derived from it is necessary; you have been compelled to admit this yourself. Since everything is necessary, evil is as inevitable as good. The great wheel of the ever-turning machine crushes all that comes in its way. I have no need of an intelligent being who can do nothing of himself, and who is as much a slave to his destiny as

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XX DISCOURSE OF A MANICHÆAN

A Manichæan, hearing the Atheist, says to him: You are mistaken. Not only is there a God, but there are necessarily two. It has been fully proved that the universe is arranged intelligently, and there is an intelligent principle in nature; but it is impossible that this intelligent principle, which is the author of good, should also be the author of evil. Evil must have its own God. Zoroaster was the first to proclaim this great truth, about two thousand years ago; and two other Zoroasters came

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XXI DISCOURSE OF A PAGAN

Then a Pagan arose, and said: If we are to admit two gods, I do not see what prevents us from worshipping a thousand. The Greeks and Romans, who were superior to you, were polytheists. It will be necessary some day to return to the admirable doctrine that peoples the universe with genii and deities; it is assuredly the only system which explains everything—the only one in which there is no contradiction. If your wife betrays you, Venus is the cause of it. If you are robbed, put the blame on Merc

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XXII DISCOURSE OF A JEW

Take no notice of this idolatrous Pagan who would turn God into a Dutch president, and offer us subordinate gods like members of parliament. My religion, being above nature, can have no resemblance to others. The first difference between them and us is that the source of our religion was hidden for a very long time from the rest of the earth. The dogmas of our fathers were buried, like ourselves, in a little country about a hundred and fifty miles long and sixty in width. In this well dwelt the

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XXIII DISCOURSE OF A TURK

When the Jew had finished, a Turk, who had smoked throughout the meeting, washed his mouth, recited the formula “Allah Illah,” and said to me: I have listened to all these dreamers. I have gathered that thou art a dog of a Christian, but thou pleasest me because thou seemest liberal, and art in favour of gratuitous predestination. I believe thou art a sensible man, assuming that thou dost agree with me. Most of thy dogs of Christians have spoken only folly about our Mohammed. A certain Baron de

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XXIV DISCOURSE OF A THEIST

A Theist then asked permission to speak, and said: Everyone has his own opinion, good or bad. I should be sorry to distress any good man. First, I ask pardon of the Atheist; but it seems to me that, compelled as he is to admit an excellent design in the order of the universe, he is bound to admit an intelligence that has conceived and carried out this design. It is enough, it seems to me, that, when the Atheist lights a candle, he admits that it is for the purpose of giving light. It seems to me

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XXV DISCOURSE OF A CITIZEN

When the Theist had spoken, a man arose and said: I am a citizen, and therefore the friend of all these gentlemen. I will not dispute with any of them. I wish only to see them all united in the design of aiding and loving each other, in making each other happy, in so far as men of such different opinions can love each other, and contribute to each other’s happiness, which is as difficult as it is necessary. To attain this end, I advise them first to cast in the fire all the controversial books w

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POEM ON THE LISBON DISASTER;

Or an Examination of the Axiom, “All is Well”...

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