VOLTAIRE was of the people. In the language of that day, he had no
ancestors. His real name was Francois-Marie Arouet. His mother was
Marguerite d'Aumard. This mother died when he was seven years of age.
He had an elder brother, Armand, who was a devotee, very religious and
exceedingly disagreeable. This brother used to present offerings to the
church, hoping to make amends for the unbelief of his brother. So far as
we know, none of his ancestors were literary people.
The Arouets had never written a line. The Abbe de Chaulieu was his
godfather, and, although an abbe, was a Deist who cared nothing about
religion except in connection with his salary. Voltaire's father wanted
to make a lawyer of him, but he had no taste for law. At the age of ten
he entered the college of Louis Le Grand. This was a Jesuit school,
and here he remained for seven years, leaving at seventeen, and never
attending any other school. According to Voltaire, he learned nothing at
this school but a little Greek, a good deal of Latin and a vast amount
of nonsense.
In this college of Louis Le Grand they did not teach geography, history,
mathematics or any science. This was a Catholic institution, controlled
by the Jesuits. In that day the religion was defended, was protected or
supported by the state. Behind the entire creed were the bayonet, the
axe, the wheel, the fagot and the torture chamber.
While Voltaire was attending the college of Louis Le Grand the soldiers
of the king were hunting Protestants in the mountains of Cevennes for
magistrates to hang on gibbets, to put to torture, to break on the
wheel, or to burn at the stake.
At seventeen Voltaire determined to devote his life to literature. The
father said, speaking of his two sons Armand and Francois, "I have a
pair of fools for sons, one in verse and the other in prose."
In 1713, Voltaire, in a small way, became a diplomat. He went to The
Hague attached to the French minister, and there he fell in love. The
girl's mother objected. Voltaire sent his clothes to the young lady that
she might visit him. Everything was discovered and he was dismissed.
To this girl he wrote a letter, and in it you will find the key note of
Voltaire: "Do not expose yourself to the fury of your mother. You know
what she is capable of. You have experienced it too well. Dissemble; it
is your only chance. Tell her that you have forgotten me, that you hate
me; then after telling her, love me all the more."
On account of this episode Voltaire was formally disinherited by his
father. The father procured an order of arrest and gave his son the
choice of going to prison or beyond the seas. He finally consented to
become a lawyer, and says: "I have already been a week at work in the
office of a solicitor learning the trade of a pettifogger."
About this time he competed for a prize, writing a poem on the king's
generosity in building the new choir in the Cathedral Notre Dame. He did
not win it. After being with the solicitor a little while, he hated the
law, began to write poetry and the outlines of tragedy. Great questions
were then agitating the public mind, questions that throw a flood of
light upon that epoch.
In 1552 Dr. Baius took it into his head to sustain a number of
propositions touching predestination to the prejudice of the doctrine of
free will. The Cordelian monks selected seventy-six of the propositions
and denounced them to the Pope as heretical, and from the Pope obtained
what was called a Bull. This Bull contained a doubtful passage, the
meaning of which was dependent upon the position of a comma. The friends
of Dr. Baius wrote to Rome to find where the comma ought to be placed.
Rome, busy with other matter, sent as an answer a copy of the Bull in
which the doubtful sentence was left without any comma. So the dispute
continued.
Then there was the great controversy between the Jansenists and
Molinists. Molini was a Spanish Jesuit, who sustained the doctrine of
free will with a subtlety of his own, "man's will is free, but God sees
exactly how he will use it." The Presbyterians of our country are still
wrestling with this important absurdity.
Jansenius was a French Jesuit who carried the doctrine of predestination
to the extreme, asserting that God commands things that are impossible,
and that Christ did not die for all.
In 1641 the Jesuits obtained a Bull condemning five propositions
of Jansenius. The Jansenists there upon denied that the five
propositions--or any of them--were found in the works of Jansenius.
This question of Jansenism and Molinism occupied France for about two
hundred years.
In Voltaire's time the question had finally dwindled down to whether the
five propositions condemned by the Papal Bull were in fact in the works
of Jansenius. The Jansenists proved that the five propositions were not
in his book, because a niece of Pascal had a diseased eye cured by the
application of a thorn from the crown of Christ.
The Bull Unigenitus was launched in 1713, and then all the prisons were
filled with Jansenists. This great question of predestination and free
will, of free moral agency and accountability, and being saved by the
grace of God, and damned for the glory of God, have occupied the mind of
what we call the civilized world for many centuries. All these questions
were argued pro and con through Switzerland; all of them in Holland
for centuries; in Scotland and England and New England, and millions
of people are still busy harmonizing foreordination and free will,
necessity and morality, predestination and accountability.
Louis XIV. having died, the Regent took possession, and then the prisons
were opened. The Regent called for a list of all persons then in the
prisons sent there at the will of the king. He found that, as to many
prisoners, nobody knew any cause why they had been in prison. They had
been forgotten. Many of the prisoners did not know themselves, and
could not guess why they had been arrested. One Italian had been in the
Bastile thirty-three years without ever knowing why. On his arrival in
Paris, thirty-three years before, he was arrested and sent to prison.
He had grown old. He had survived his family and friends. When the rest
were liberated he asked to remain where he was, and lived there the
rest of his life. The old prisoners were pardoned, but in a little while
their places were taken by new ones.
At this time Voltaire was not interested in the great world--knew very
little of religion or of government. He was busy writing poetry, busy
thinking of comedies and tragedies. He was full of life. All his fancies
were winged like moths.
He was charged with having written some cutting epigrams. He was exiled
to Tulle, three hundred miles away. From this place he wrote in the true
vein--"I am at a chateau, a place that would be the most agreeable in
the world if I had not been exiled to it, and where there is nothing
wanting for my perfect happiness except the liberty of leaving. It would
be delicious to remain, if I only were allowed to go."
At last the exile was allowed to return. Again he was arrested; this
time sent to the Bastile, where he remained for nearly a year. While in
prison he changed his name from Francois-Marie Arouet to Voltaire, and
by that name he has since been known.
Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his
ideas upon all subjects at the expense of prince and king, was exiled
to England. From sunny France he took his way to the mists and fogs of
Albion. He became acquainted with the highest and the best in Britain.
He met Pope, a most wonderful verbal mechanic, a maker of artificial
flowers, very much like natural ones, except that they lack perfume and
the seeds of suggestion. He made the acquaintance of Young, who wrote
the "Night Thoughts;" Young, a fine old hypocrite with a virtuous
imagination, a gentleman who electioneered with the king's mistress that
he might be made a bishop. He became acquainted with Chesterfield--all
manners, no man; with Thomson, author of "The Seasons," who loved to
see the sun rise in bed and visit the country in town; with Swift, whose
poisoned arrows were then festering in the flesh of Mr. Bull--Swift, as
wicked as he was witty, and as heartless as he was humorous--with Swift,
a dean and a devil; with Congreve, whom Addison thought superior to
Shakespeare, and who never wrote but one great line, "The cathedral
looking tranquillity."