métier que faisait l'homme en question, prêchant le déisme tout à
découvert aux toilettes de nos jeunes seigneurs ... L'Ancien
Testament, selon lui, n'est qu'un tissu de contes et de fables, les
apôtres étaient de bonnes gens idiots, simples, et crédules, et les
pères de l'Eglise, Saint Bernard surtout, auquel il en veut le
plus, n'étaient que des charlatans et des suborneurs.
'Je voudrais être homme d'authorité,' he adds, 'pour un jour seulement,
afin d'enfermer ce poète entre quatre murailles pour toute sa vie.' That
Voltaire at this early date should have already given rise to such pious
ecclesiastical wishes shows clearly enough that he had little to learn
from the deists of England. And, in the second place, the deists of
England had very little to teach a disciple of Bayle, Fontenelle, and
Montesquieu. They were, almost without exception, a group of second-rate
and insignificant writers whose 'onslaught' upon current beliefs was
only to a faint extent 'systematic and reasoned.' The feeble and
fluctuating rationalism of Toland and Wollaston, the crude and confused
rationalism of Collins, the half-crazy rationalism of Woolston, may each
and all, no doubt, have furnished Voltaire with arguments and
suggestions, but they cannot have seriously influenced his thought.
Bolingbroke was a more important figure, and he was in close personal
relation with Voltaire; but his controversial writings were clumsy and
superficial to an extraordinary degree. As Voltaire himself said, 'in
his works there are many leaves and little fruit; distorted expressions
and periods intolerably long.' Tindal and Middleton were more vigorous;
but their work did not appear until a later period. The masterly and
far-reaching speculations of Hume belong, of course, to a totally
different class.
Apart from politics and metaphysics, there were two directions in which
the _Lettres Philosophiques_ did pioneer work of a highly important
kind: they introduced both Newton and Shakespeare to the French public.
The four letters on Newton show Voltaire at his best--succinct, lucid,
persuasive, and bold. The few paragraphs on Shakespeare, on the other
hand, show him at his worst. Their principal merit is that they mention
his existence--a fact hitherto unknown in France; otherwise they merely
afford a striking example of the singular contradiction in Voltaire's
nature which made him a revolutionary in intellect and kept him a high
Tory in taste. Never was such speculative audacity combined with such
aesthetic timidity; it is as if he had reserved all his superstition for
matters of art. From his account of Shakespeare, it is clear that he had
never dared to open his eyes and frankly look at what he should see
before him. All was 'barbare, dépourvu de bienséances, d'ordre, de
vraisemblance'; in the hurly-burly he was dimly aware of a figured and
elevated style, and of some few 'lueurs étonnantes'; but to the true
significance of Shakespeare's genius he remained utterly blind.
Characteristically enough, Voltaire, at the last moment, did his best to
reinforce his tentative metaphysical observations on 'M. Loke' by
slipping into his book, as it were accidentally, an additional letter,
quite disconnected from the rest of the work, containing reflexions upon
some of the _Pensées_ of Pascal. He no doubt hoped that these
reflexions, into which he had distilled some of his most insidious
venom, might, under cover of the rest, pass unobserved. But all his
subterfuges were useless. It was in vain that he pulled wires and
intrigued with high personages; in vain that he made his way to the aged
Minister, Cardinal Fleury, and attempted, by reading him some choice
extracts on the Quakers, to obtain permission for the publication of his
book. The old Cardinal could not help smiling, though Voltaire had felt
that it would be safer to skip the best parts--'the poor man!' he said
afterwards, 'he didn't realise what he had missed'--but the permission
never came. Voltaire was obliged to have recourse to an illicit
publication; and then the authorities acted with full force. The
_Lettres Philosophiques_ were officially condemned; the book was
declared to be scandalous and 'contraire à la religion, aux bonnes
moeurs, et au respect dû aux puissances,' and it was ordered to be
publicly burned by the executioner. The result was precisely what might
have been expected: the prohibitions and fulminations, so far from
putting a stop to the sale of such exciting matter, sent it up by leaps
and bounds. England suddenly became the fashion; the theories of M. Loke
and Sir Newton began to be discussed; even the plays of 'ce fou de
Shakespeare' began to be read. And, at the same time, the whispered
message of tolerance, of free inquiry, of enlightened curiosity, was
carried over the land. The success of Voltaire's work was complete.
He himself, however, had been obliged to seek refuge from the wrath of
the government in the remote seclusion of Madame du Châtelet's country
house at Cirey. In this retirement he pursued his studies of Newton, and
a few years later produced an exact and brilliant summary of the work of
the great English philosopher. Once more the authorities intervened, and
condemned Voltaire's book. The Newtonian system destroyed that of
Descartes, and Descartes still spoke in France with the voice of
orthodoxy; therefore, of course, the voice of Newton must not be heard.
But, somehow or other, the voice of Newton _was_ heard. The men of
science were converted to the new doctrine; and thus it is not too much
to say that the wonderful advances in the study of mathematics which
took place in France during the later years of the eighteenth century
were the result of the illuminating zeal of Voltaire.
With his work on Newton, Voltaire's direct connexion with English
influences came to an end. For the rest of his life, indeed, he never
lost his interest in England; he was never tired of reading English
books, of being polite to English travellers, and of doing his best, in
the intervals of more serious labours, to destroy the reputation of that
deplorable English buffoon, whom, unfortunately, he himself had been so
foolish as first to introduce to the attention of his countrymen. But it
is curious to notice how, as time went on, the force of Voltaire's
nature inevitably carried him further and further away from the central
standpoints of the English mind. The stimulus which he had received in
England only served to urge him into a path which no Englishman has ever
trod. The movement of English thought in the eighteenth century found
its perfect expression in the profound, sceptical, and yet essentially
conservative, genius of Hume. How different was the attitude of
Voltaire! With what a reckless audacity, what a fierce uncompromising
passion he charged and fought and charged again! He had no time for the
nice discriminations of an elaborate philosophy, and no desire for the
careful balance of the judicial mind; his creed was simple and explicit,
and it also possessed the supreme merit of brevity: 'Écrasez l'infâme!'
was enough for him.
1914.