THE infidels of one age have often been the aureoled saints of the next.
The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new.
As time sweeps on the old passes away and the new in its turn becomes
old.
There is in the intellectual world, as in the physical, decay and
growth, and ever by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy.
The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of
infidels.
Political rights have been preserved by traitors, the liberty of mind by
heretics.
To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest was blasphemy.
For many centuries the sword and cross were allies. Together they
attacked the rights of man. They defended each other.
The throne and altar were twins--two vultures from the same egg.
James I. said: "No bishop, no king." He might have added: "No cross,
no crown." The king owned the bodies of men; the priest, the souls.
One lived on taxes collected by force, the other on alms collected by
fear--both robbers, both beggars.
These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds. The king made
laws, the priest made creeds. Both obtained their authority from God,
both were the agents of the Infinite.
With bowed backs the people carried the burdens of one, and with
wonder's open mouth received the dogmas of the other.
If the people aspired to be free, they were crushed by the king, and
every priest was a Herod who slaughtered the children of the brain.
The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both by both.
The king said to the people: "God made you peasants, and He made me
king; He made you to labor, and me to enjoy; He made rags and hovels for
you, robes and palaces for me. He made you to obey, and me to command.
Such is the justice of God."
And the priest said: "God made you ignorant and vile; He made me holy
and wise; you are the sheep, I am the shepherd; your fleeces belong to
me. If you do not obey me here, God will punish you now and torment you
forever in another world. Such is the mercy of God."
"You must not reason. Reason is a rebel. You must not
contradict--contradiction is born of egotism; you must believe. He that
hath ears to hear let him hear." Heaven was a question of ears.
Fortunately for us, there have been traitors and there have been
heretics, blasphemers, thinkers, investigators, lovers of liberty, men
of genius who have given their lives to better the condition of their
fellow-men.
It may be well enough here to ask the question: What is greatness?
A great man adds to the sum of knowledge, extends the horizon of
thought, releases souls from the Bastile of fear, crosses unknown and
mysterious seas, gives new islands and new continents to the domain of
thought, new constellations to the firmament of mind. A great man does
not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to
happiness, and what he ascertains he gives to others.
A great man throws pearls before swine, and the swine are sometimes
changed to men. If the great had always kept their pearls, vast
multitudes would be barbarians now.
A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's
night, an inspiration and a prophecy.
Greatness is not the gift of majorities; it cannot be thrust upon any
man; men cannot give it to another; they can give place and power, but
not greatness.
The place does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king. Greatness is
from within.
The great men are the heroes who have freed the bodies of men; they are
the philosophers and thinkers who have given liberty to the soul; they
are the poets who have transfigured the common and filled the lives of
many millions with love and song.
They are the artists who have covered the bare walls of weary life with
the triumphs of genius.
They are the heroes who have slain the monsters of ignorance and fear,
who have outgazed the Gorgon and driven the cruel gods from their
thrones.
They are the inventors, the discoverers, the great mechanics, the kings
of the useful who have civilized this world.
At the head of this heroic army, foremost of all, stands Voltaire, whose
memory we are honoring tonight.
Voltaire! a name that excites the admiration of men, the malignity of
priests. Pronounce that name in the presence of a clergyman, and you
will find that you have made a declaration of war. Pronounce that name,
and from the face of the priest the mask of meekness will fall, and
from the mouth of forgiveness will pour a Niagara of vituperation and
calumny. And yet Voltaire was the greatest man of his century, and did
more to free the human race than any other of the sons of men.
On Sunday, the 21st of November, 1694, a babe was born--a babe so
exceedingly frail that the breath hesitated about remaining, and the
parents had him baptized as soon as possible. They were anxious to save
the soul of this babe, and they knew that if death came before baptism
the child would be doomed to an eternity of pain. They knew that God
despised an unsprinkled child. The priest who, with a few drops of
water, gave the name of Francois-Marie Arouet to this babe and saved
his soul--little thought that before him, wrapped in many folds, weakly
wailing, scarcely breathing, was the one destined to tear from the white
throat of Liberty the cruel, murderous claws of the "Triumphant Beast."
When Voltaire came to this "great stage of fools," his country had been
Christianized--not civilized--for about fourteen hundred years. For a
thousand years the religion of peace and good-will had been supreme. The
laws had been given by Christian kings, and sanctioned by "wise and
holy men." Under the benign reign of universal love, every court had its
chamber of torture, and every priest relied on the thumb-screw and rack.
Such had been the success of the blessed gospel that every science was
an outcast.
To speak your honest thoughts, to teach your fellow-men, to investigate
for yourself, to seek the truth, these were all crimes, and the
"holy-mother church" pursued the criminals with sword and flame.
The believers in a God of love--an infinite father--punished hundreds of
offences with torture and death. Suspected persons were tortured to
make them confess. Convicted persons were tortured to make them give the
names of their accomplices. Under the leadership of the church, cruelty
had become the only reforming power.
In this blessed year, 1694, all authors were at the mercy of king and
priest. The most of them were cast into prisons, impoverished by fines
and costs, exiled or executed.
The little time that hangmen could snatch from professional duties was
occupied in burning books.
The courts of justice were traps, in which the innocent were caught.
The judges were almost as malicious and cruel as though they had been
bishops or saints. There was no trial by jury, and the rules of
evidence allowed the conviction of the supposed criminal by the proof of
suspicion or hearsay.
The witnesses, being liable to be tortured, generally told what the
judges wished to hear.
The supernatural and the miraculous controlled the world. Everything was
explained, but nothing was understood. The church was at the head. The
sick bought from monks little amulets of consecrated paper. They did not
send for a doctor, but for a priest, and the priest sold the diseased
and the dying these magical amulets. These little pieces of paper with
the help of some saint would cure diseases of every kind. If you would
put one in a cradle, it would keep the child from being bewitched. If
you would put one in the barn, the rats would not eat your corn. If you
would keep one in the house, evil spirits would not enter your doors,
and if you buried them in the fields, you would have good weather, the
frost would be delayed, rain would come when needed, and abundant crops
would bless your labor. The church insisted that all diseases could
be cured in the name of God, and that these cures could be effected
by prayers, exorcism, by touching bones of saints, pieces of the true
cross; by being sprinkled with holy water or with sanctified salt, or
touched with magical oil.
In that day the dead saints were the best physicians; St. Valentine
cured the epilepsy; St. Gervasius was exceedingly good for rheumatism;
St. Michael for cancer; St. Judas for coughs and colds; St. Ovidius
restored the hearing; St. Sebastian was good for the bites of snakes and
the stings of poisonous insects; St. Apollonia for toothache; St. Clara
for any trouble with the eyes; and St. Hubert for hydrophobia. It
was known that doctors reduced the revenues of the church; that was
enough--science was the enemy of religion.
The church thought that the air was filled with devils; that every
sinner was a kind of tenement house inhabited by evil spirits; that
angels were on one side of men and evil spirits on the other, and that
God would, when the subscriptions and donations justified the effort,
drive the evil spirits from the field.
Satan had power over the air; consequently he controlled the frost, the
mildew, the lightning and the flood; and the principal business of the
church was with bells, and holy water, and incense, and crosses, to
defeat the machinations of that prince of the power of the air.
Great reliance was placed upon the bells; they were sprinkled with holy
water, and their clangor cleared the air of imps and fiends. And bells
also protected the people from storms and lightning. In that day the
church used to anathematize insects. Suits were commenced against rats,
and judgment rendered. Every monastery had its master magician, who
sold incense and salt and tapers and consecrated palms and relics.
Every science was regarded as an enemy; every fact held the creed of the
church in scorn. Investigators were regarded as dangerous; thinkers
were traitors, and the church exerted its vast power to prevent the
intellectual progress of man.
There was no real liberty, no real education, no real philosophy, no
real science---nothing but credulity and superstition. The world was
under the control of Satan and the church.
The church firmly believed in the existence of witches and devils and
fiends. In this way the church had every enemy within her power. It
simply had to charge him with being a wizard, of holding communications
with devils, and the ignorant mob were ready to tear him to pieces. So
prevalent was this belief, this belief in the supernatural, that the
poor people were finally driven to make the best possible terms they
could with the spirit of evil. This frightful doctrine filled every
friend with suspicion of his friend; it made the husband denounce the
wife, children their parents, parents their children. It destroyed the
amenities of humanity; it did away with justice in courts; it broke the
bond of friendship; it filled with poison the golden cup of life; it
turned earth into a very perdition peopled with abominable, malicious
and hideous fiends. Such was the result of a belief in the supernatural;
such was the result of giving up the evidence of their own senses and
relying upon dreams, visions and fears. Such was the result of the
attack upon the human reason; such the result of depending on the
imagination, on the supernatural; such the result of living in this
world for another; of depending upon priests instead of upon ourselves.
The Protestants vied with Catholics; Luther stood side by side with the
priests he had deserted in promoting this belief in devils and fiends.
To the Catholic every Protestant was possessed by a devil; to the
Protestant every Catholic was the home of a fiend. All order, all
regular succession of causes and effects were known no more; the natural
ceased to exist; the learned and the ignorant were on a level. The
priest was caught in the net he had spread for the peasant, and
Christendom became a vast madhouse, with the insane for keepers.
When Voltaire was born the church ruled and owned France. It was
a period of almost universal corruption. The priests were mostly
libertines, the judges cruel and venal. The royal palace was a house of
prostitution. The nobles were heartless, proud, arrogant and cruel to
the last degree. The common people were treated as beasts. It took the
church a thousand years to bring about this happy condition of things.
The seeds of the Revolution unconsciously were being scattered by every
noble and by every priest.
They were germinating slowly in the hearts of the wretched; they were
being watered by the tears of agony; blows began to bear interest. There
was a faint longing for blood. Workmen, blackened by the sun, bowed by
labor, deformed by want, looked at the white throats of scornful ladies
and thought about cutting them.
In those days witnesses were cross-examined with instruments of torture;
the church was the arsenal of superstition; miracles, relics, angels and
devils were as common as lies.
In order to appreciate a great man we must know his surroundings. We
must understand the scope of the drama in which he played--the part he
acted, and we must also know his audience.
In England George I. was disporting with the "May-pole" and "Elephant,"
and then George II., jealous and choleric, hating the English and their
language, making, however, an excellent image or idol before whom the
English were glad to bow--snobbery triumphant--the criminal code getting
bloodier every day--223 offences punishable with death--the prisons
filled and the scaffolds crowded--efforts on every hand to repress
the ambition of men to be men--the church relying on superstition and
ceremony to make men good--and the state dependent on the whip, the rope
and axe to make men patriotic.
In Spain the Inquisition in full control--all the instruments of torture
used to prevent the development of the mind, Spain, that had driven out
the Jews, that is to say, her talent; that had driven out the Moors,
that is to say, her taste and her industry, was still endeavoring by all
religious means to reduce the land to the imbecility of the true faith.
In Portugal they were burning women and children for having eaten meat
on a holy day, and this to please the most merciful God.
In Italy the nation prostrate, covered with swarms of cardinals and
bishops and priests and monks and nuns and every representative of holy
sloth. The Inquisition there also--while hands that were clasped in
prayer or stretched for alms, grasped with eagerness and joy the lever
of the rack, or gathered fagots for the holy flame.
In Germany they were burning men and women charged with having made a
compact with the enemy of man.
And in our own fair land, persecuting Quakers, stealing men and women
from another shore, stealing children from their mother's breasts, and
paying labor with the cruel lash.
Superstition ruled the world!
There is but one use for law, but one excuse for government--the
preservation of liberty--to give to each man his own, to secure to the
farmer what he produces from the soil, the mechanic what he invents
and makes, to the artist what he creates, to the thinker the right to
express his thoughts. Liberty is the breath of progress.
In France, the people were the sport of a king's caprice. Everywhere was
the shadow of the Bastile.
It fell upon the sunniest field, upon the happiest home. With the king
walked the headsman; back of the throne was the chamber of torture. The
Church appealed to the rack, and Faith relied on the fagot. Science was
an outcast, and Philosophy, so-called, was the pander of superstition.
Nobles and priests were sacred. Peasants were vermin. Idleness sat at
the banquet, and Industry gathered the crumbs and the crusts.