VOLTAIRE began to think, to doubt, to inquire. He studied the history of
the church, of the creed. He found that the religion of his time
rested on the inspiration of the Scriptures--the infallibility of
the church--the dreams of insane hermits--the absurdities of the
Fathers--the mistakes and falsehoods of saints--the hysteria of
nuns--the cunning of priests and the stupidity of the people. He found
that the Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power,
murdered his wife Fausta and his eldest son Crispus, the same year that
he convened the Council of Nice, to decide whether Christ was a man or
the Son of God. The Council decided, in the year 325, that Christ was
consubstantial with the Father. He found that the church was indebted
to a husband who assassinated his wife--a father who murdered his son,
for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior. He found
that Theodosius called a council at Constantinople in 381, by which
it was decided that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father--that
Theodosius, the younger, assembled a council at Ephesus in 431, that
declared the Virgin Mary to be the mother of God--that the Emperor
Marcian called another council at Chalcedon in 451, that decided
that Christ had two wills--that Pognatius called another in 680, that
declared that Christ had two natures to go with his two wills--and that
in 1274, at the council of Lyons, the important fact was found that the
Holy Ghost "proceeded," not only from the Father, but also from the Son
at the same time.
So, it took about 1,300 years to find out a few things that had been
revealed by an infinite God to his infallible church.
Voltaire found that this insane creed had filled the world with cruelty
and fear. He found that vestments were more sacred than virtues--that
images and crosses--pieces of old bones and bits of wood were more
precious than the rights and lives of men, and that the keepers of these
relics were the enemies of the human race.
With all the energy of his nature--with every faculty of his mind--he
attacked this "Triumphant Beast."
Voltaire was the apostle of common sense. He knew that there could have
been no primitive or first language from which all other languages had
been formed. He knew that every language had been influenced by the
surroundings of the people. He knew that the language of snow and ice
was not the language of palm and flower. He knew also that there had
been no miracle in language. He knew that it was impossible that the
story of the Tower of Babel should be true. He knew that everything in
the whole world had been natural. He was the enemy of alchemy, not only
in language but in science. One passage from him is enough to show his
philosophy in this regard. He says; "To transmute iron into gold, two
things are necessary: first, the annihilation of the iron; second, the
creation of gold."
Voltaire gave us the philosophy of history.
Voltaire was a man of humor, of good nature, of cheerfulness. He
despised with all his heart the philosophy of Calvin, the creed of the
sombre, of the severe, of the unnatural. He pitied those who needed
the aid of religion to be honest, to be cheerful. He had the courage
to enjoy the present and the philosophy to bear what the future might
bring.
And yet for more than a hundred and fifty years the Christian world has
fought this man and has maligned his memory. In every Christian pulpit
his name has been pronounced with scorn, and every pulpit has been an
arsenal of slander. He is one man of whom no orthodox minister has
ever told the truth. He has been denounced equally by Catholics and
Protestants.
Priests and ministers, bishops and exhorters, presiding elders and popes
have filled the world with slanders, with calumnies about Voltaire. I am
amazed that ministers will not or cannot tell the truth about an enemy
of the church. As a matter of fact, for more than one thousand years,
almost every pulpit has been a mint in which slanders have been coined.
Voltaire made up his mind to destroy the superstition of his time.
He fought with every weapon that genius could devise or use. He was the
greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without
mercy. For pure crystallized wit, he had no equal. The art of flattery
was carried by him to the height of an exact science. He knew and
practiced every subterfuge. He fought the army of hypocrisy and
pretence, the army of faith and falsehood.
Voltaire was annoyed by the meaner and baser spirits of his time, by
the cringers and crawlers, by the fawners and pretenders, by those who
wished to gain the favor of priests, the patronage of nobles. Sometimes
he allowed himself to be annoyed by these wretches; sometimes he
attacked them. And, but for these attacks, long ago they would have been
forgotten. In the amber of his genius Voltaire preserved these insects,
these tarantulas, these scorpions.
It is fashionable to say that he was not profound. This is because he
was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity he laughed, and was called
irreverent. He thought God would not damn even a priest forever--this
was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavored to prevent Christians from
murdering each other, and did what he could to civilize the disciples
of Christ. Had he founded a sect, obtained control of some country, and
burned a few heretics at slow fires, he would have won the admiration,
respect and love of the Christian world. Had he only pretended to
believe all the fables of antiquity, had he mumbled Latin prayers,
counted beads, crossed himself, devoured now and then the flesh of God,
and carried fagots to the feet of Philosophy in the name of Christ, he
might have been in heaven this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned.
If he had only adopted the creed of his time--if he had asserted that
a God of infinite power and mercy had created millions and billions
of human beings to suffer eternal pain, and all for the sake of his
glorious justice--that he had given his power of attorney to a cunning
and cruel Italian Pope, authorizing him to save the soul of his mistress
and send honest wives to hell--if he had given to the nostril's of
this God the odor of burning flesh--the incense of the fagot--if he had
filled his ears with the shrieks of the tortured--the music of the rack,
he would now be known as Saint Voltaire.
For many years this restless man filled Europe with the product of his
brain. Essays, epigrams, epics, comedies, tragedies, histories, poems,
novels, representing every phase and every faculty of the human mind. At
the same time engrossed in business, full of speculation, making money
like a millionaire, busy with the gossip of courts, and even with the
scandals of priests. At the same time alive to all the discoveries
of science and the theories of philosophers, and in this Babel never
forgetting for one moment to assail the monster of superstition.
Sleeping and waking he hated the church. With the eyes of Argus he
watched, and with the arms of Briareus he struck. For sixty years he
waged continuous and unrelenting war, sometimes in the open field,
sometimes striking from the hedges of opportunity--taking care during
all this time to remain independent of all men. He was in the highest
sense successful. He lived like a prince, became one of the powers of
Europe, and in him, for the first time, literature was crowned.
It has been claimed by the Christian critics that Voltaire was
irreverent; that he examined sacred things without solemnity; that he
refused to remove his shoes in the presence of the Burning Bush; that
he smiled at the geology of Moses, the astronomical ideas of Joshua,
and that the biography of Jonah filled him with laughter. They say that
these stories, these sacred impossibilities, these inspired falsehoods,
should be read and studied with a believing mind in humbleness of
spirit; that they should be examined prayerfully, asking God at the same
time to give us strength to triumph over the conclusions of our
reason. These critics imagine that a falsehood can be old enough to be
venerable, and that to stand covered in its presence is the act of
an irreverent scoffer. Voltaire approached the mythology of the Jews
precisely as he did the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, or the
mythology of the Chinese or the Iroquois Indians. There is nothing
in this world too sacred to be investigated, to be understood. The
philosopher does not hide. Secrecy is not the friend of truth. No man
should be reverent at the expense of his reason. Nothing should be
worshiped until the reason has been convinced that it is worthy of
worship.
Against all miracles, against all holy superstition, against sacred
mistakes, he shot the arrows of ridicule.
These arrows, winged by fancy, sharpened by wit, poisoned by truth,
always reached the centre.
It is claimed by many that anything, the best and holiest, can be
ridiculed. As a matter of fact, he who attempts to ridicule the truth,
ridicules himself. He becomes the food of his own laughter.
The mind of man is many-sided. Truth must be and is willing to be tested
in every way, tested by all the senses.
But in what way can the absurdity of the "real presence" be answered,
except by banter, by raillery, by ridicule, by persiflage? How are you
going to convince a man who believes that when he swallows the sacred
wafer he has eaten the entire Trinity, and that a priest drinking a drop
of wine has devoured the Infinite? How are you to reason with a man who
believes that if any of the sacred wafers are left over they should be
put in a secure place, so that mice should not eat God?
What effect will logic have upon a religious gentleman who firmly
believes that a God of infinite compassion sent two bears to tear thirty
or forty children in pieces for laughing at a bald-headed prophet?
How are such people to be answered? How can they be brought to a
sense of their absurdity? They must feel in their flesh the arrows of
ridicule..
So Voltaire has been called a mocker.
What did he mock? He mocked kings that were unjust; kings who cared
nothing for the sufferings of their subjects. He mocked the titled
fools of his day. He mocked the corruption of courts; the meanness,
the tyranny and the brutality of judges. He mocked the absurd and cruel
laws, the barbarous customs. He mocked popes and cardinals and bishops
and priests, and all the hypocrites on the earth. He mocked historians
who filled their books with lies, and philosophers who defended
superstition. He mocked the haters of liberty, the persecutors of their
fellow-men. He mocked the arrogance, the cruelty, the impudence, and the
unspeakable baseness of his time.
He has been blamed because he used the weapon of ridicule.
Hypocrisy has always hated laughter, and always will. Absurdity detests
humor, and stupidity despises wit. Voltaire was the master of ridicule.
He ridiculed the absurd, the impossible. He ridiculed the mythologies
and the miracles, the stupid lives and lies of the saints. He found
pretence and mendacity crowned by credulity. He found the ignorant
many controlled by the cunning and cruel few. He found the historian,
saturated with superstition, filling his volumes with the details of the
impossible, and he found the scientists satisfied with "they say."
Voltaire had the instinct of the probable. He knew the law of average,
the sea level; he had the idea of proportion, and so he ridiculed the
mental monstrosities and deformities--the _non sequiturs_--of his day.
Aristotle said women had more teeth than men. This was repeated again
and again by the Catholic scientists of the eighteenth century.