At Toulouse, October 13, 1761, there was found in a lower story of a
house, a young man hanged. The crowd gathered, the clergy fulminated,
the magistracy investigated. It was a suicide; they made of it an
assassination. In what interest? In the interest of religion. And who
was accused? The father. He was a Huguenot, and he wished to hinder his
son from becoming a Catholic. There was here a moral monstrosity and a
material impossibility; no matter! This father had killed his son; this
old man had hanged this young man. Justice travailled, and this was the
result. On the month of March, 1762, a man with white hair, Jean Calas,
was conducted to a public place, stripped naked, stretched upon a
wheel, the members bound upon it, the head hanging. Three men are there
upon a scaffold, a magistrate, named David, charged to superintend the
punishment, a priest to hold the crucifix, and the executioner with a
bar of iron in his hand. The patient, stupefied and terrible, regards
not the priest, and looks at the executioner. The executioner lifts the
bar of iron, and breaks one of his arms. The victim groans and swoons.
The magistrate comes forward; they make the condemned inhale salts; he
returns to life. Then another stroke of the bar; another groan. Calas
loses consciousness; they revive him, and the executioner begins again;
and, as each limb before being broken in two places receives two blows,
that makes eight punishments. After the eighth swooning the priest
offers him the crucifix to kiss; Calas turns away his head, and the
executioner gives him the _coup de grace_; that is to say, crushes
in his chest with the thick end of the bar of iron. So died Jean Calas.
That lasted two hours. After his death, the evidence of the suicide
came to light. But an assassination had been committed. By whom? By the
judges. [Great sensation. Applause.]
Another fact. After the old man, the young man. Three years later, in
1765, at Abbeville, the day after a night of storm and high wind, there
was found upon the pavement of a bridge an old crucifix of worm-eaten
wood, which for three centuries had been fastened to the parapet. Who
had thrown down this crucifix? Who had committed this sacrilege? It
is not known. Perhaps a passerby. Perhaps the wind. Who is the guilty
one? The Bishop of Amiens launches a _monitoire_. Note what a
_monitoire_ was: it was an order to all the faithful, on pain
of hell, to declare what they knew or believed they knew of such or
such a fact; a murderous injunction, when addressed by fanaticism
to ignorance. The _monitoire_ of the Bishop of Amiens does its
work; the town gossip assumes the character of the crime charged.
Justice discovers, or believes it discovers, that on the night when the
crucifix was thrown down, two men, two officers, one named La Barre,
the other d’Etallonde, passed over the bridge of Abbeville, that they
were drunk, and that they sang a guard-room song. The tribunal was the
Seneschalcy of Abbeville. The Seneschalcy of Abbeville was equivalent
to the court of the Capitouls of Toulouse. It was not less just. Two
orders for arrest were issued. d’Etallonde escaped, La Barre was taken.
Him they delivered to judicial examination. He denied having crossed
the bridge; he confessed to having sung the song. The Seneschalcy of
Abbeville condemned him; he appealed to the Parliament of Paris. He
was conducted to Paris; the sentence was found good and confirmed. He
was conducted back to Abbeville in chains. I abridge. The monstrous
hour arrives. They begin by subjecting the Chevalier de La Barre
to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, to make him reveal his
accomplices. Accomplices in what? In having crossed a bridge and sung
a song. During the torture one of his knees was broken; his confessor,
on hearing the bones crack, fainted away. The next day, June 5, 1766,
La Barre was drawn to the great square of Abbeville, where flamed a
penitential fire; the sentence was read to La Barre; then they cut off
one of his hands; then they tore out his tongue with iron pinchers;
then, in mercy, his head was cut off and thrown into the fire. So died
the Chevalier de La Barre. He was nineteen years of age. [Long and
profound sensation.]
Then, O Voltaire! thou didst utter a cry of horror, and it will be
thine eternal glory! [Thunders of applause.]
Then didst thou enter upon the appalling trial of the past; thou didst
plead, against tyrants and monsters, the cause of the human race,
and thou didst gain it. Great man, blessed be thou forever! [Renewed
applause.]
Gentlemen, the frightful things which I have recalled were accomplished
in the midst of a polite society; its life was gay and light; people
went and came; they looked neither above nor below themselves; their
indifference had become carelessness; graceful poets, Saint-Aulaire,
Boufflers, Gentil-Bernard, composed pretty verses; the court was all
festival; Versailles was brilliant; Paris ignored what was passing; and
then it was that, through religious ferocity, the judges made an old
man die upon the wheel, and the priests tore out a child’s tongue for a
song. [Vivid emotion. Applause.]
In the presence of this society, frivolous and dismal, Voltaire alone,
having before his eyes those united forces, the court, the nobility,
capital; that unconscious power, the blind multitude; that terrible
magistracy, so severe to subjects, so docile to the master, crushing
and flattering, kneeling upon the people before the king [Bravo!] that
clergy, vile _melange_ of hypocrisy and fanaticism; Voltaire
alone, I repeat it, declared war against that coalition of all the
social iniquities, against that enormous and terrible world, and he
accepted battle with it. And what was his weapon? That which has
the lightness of the wind and the power of the thunderbolt. A pen.
[Applause.]
With that weapon he fought; with that weapon he conquered.
Gentlemen, let us salute that memory.
Voltaire conquered; Voltaire waged the splendid kind of warfare, the
war of one alone against all; that is to say, the grand warfare. The
war of thought against matter, the war of reason against prejudice, the
war of the just against the unjust, the war for the oppressed against
the oppressor, the war of goodness, the war of kindness. He had the
tenderness of a woman and the wrath of a hero. He was a great mind, and
an immense heart. [Bravos.]
He conquered the old code and the old dogma. He conquered the feudal
lord, the gothic judge, the Roman priest. He raised the populace to
the dignity of people. He taught, pacificated, and civilized. He fought
for Sirven and Montbailly, as for Calas and La Barre; he accepted all
the menaces, all the outrages, all the persecutions, calumny, and
exile. He was indefatigable and immovable. He conquered violence by
a smile, despotism by sarcasm, infallibility by irony, obstinacy by
perseverance, ignorance by truth.
I have just pronounced the word _smile_. I pause at it. Smile! It
is Voltaire.
Let us say it, gentlemen, pacification (_apaise-ment?_) is the
great side of the philosopher: in Voltaire the equilibrium always
reestablishes itself at last. Whatever may be his just wrath, it
passes, and the irritated Voltaire always gives place to the Voltaire
calmed. Then in that profound eye the SMILE appears.
That smile is wisdom. That smile, I repeat, is Voltaire. That smile
sometimes becomes laughter, but the philosophic sadness tempers it.
Toward the strong, it is mockery; toward the weak, it is a caress.
It disquiets the oppressor, and reassures the oppressed. Against the
great, it is raillery; for the little, it is pity. Ah, let us be moved
by that smile! It had in it the rays of the dawn. It illuminated the
true, the just, the good, and what there is of worthy in the useful.
It lighted up the interior of superstitions. Those ugly things it is
salutary to see; he has shown them. Luminous, that smile was fruitful
also. The new society, the desire for equality and concession, and
that beginning of fraternity which called itself tolerance, reciprocal
good-will, the just accord of men and rights, reason recognized as the
supreme law, the annihilation of prejudices and fixed opinions, the
serenity of souls, the spirit of indulgence and of pardon, harmony,
peace--behold what has come from that great smile!
On the day--very near, without any doubt--when the identity of wisdom
and clemency will be recognized, the day when the amnesty will be
proclaimed, I affirm it, up there, in the stars, Voltaire will smile.
[Triple salvo of applause. Cries, _Vive l’amnestie!_]
Gentlemen, between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen
hundred years apart, there is a mysterious relation.
To combat Pharisaism; to unmask imposture; to overthrow tyrannies,
usurpations, prejudices, falsehoods, superstitions; to demolish the
temple in order to rebuild it, that is to say, to replace the false by
the true; to attack a ferocious magistracy; to attack a sanguinary
priesthood; to take a whip and drive the money-changers from the
sanctuary; to reclaim the heritage of the disinherited; to protect the
weak, the poor, the suffering, the overwhelmed, to struggle for the
persecuted and oppressed--that was the war of Jesus Christ. And who
waged that war? It was Voltaire.
The completion of the evangelical work is the philosophical work; the
spirit of meekness began, the spirit of tolerance continued. Let us say
it with a sentiment of profound respect: Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled.
Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the sweetness
of the present civilization. [Prolonged applause.]
Did Voltaire always smile? No. He was often indignant. You remarked it
in my first words.
Certainly, gentlemen, measure, reserve, proportion are reason’s
supreme law. We can say that moderation is the very respiration of the
philosopher. The effort of the wise man ought to be to condense into
a sort of serene certainty all the approximations of which philosophy
is composed. But at certain moments, the passion for the true rises
powerful and violent, and it is within its right in so doing, like the
stormy winds which purify. Never, I insist upon it, will any wise man
shake those two august supports of social labor, justice and hope; and
all will respect the judge if he is embodied justice, and all will
venerate the priest if he represents hope. But if the magistracy calls
itself torture, if the Church calls itself Inquisition, then Humanity
looks them in the face, and says to the judge: I will none of thy law!
and says to the priest: I will none of thy dogma! I will none of thy
fire upon earth and thy hell in the future! [Wild sensation. Prolonged
applause.] Then philosophy rises in wrath, and arraigns the judge
before justice, and the priest before God! [Redoubled applause.]
This is what Voltaire did. It was grand.
What Voltaire was, I have said; what his age was, I am about to say.
Gentlemen, great men rarely come alone; large trees seem larger when
they dominate a forest; there they are at home. There was a forest of
minds around Voltaire; that forest was the eighteenth century. Among
those minds there were summits, Montesquieu, Buffon, Beaumarchais, and
among others, two, the highest after Voltaire--Rousseau and Diderot.
Those thinkers taught men to reason; reasoning well leads to acting
well; justness in the mind becomes justice in the heart. Those toilers
for progress labored usefully. Buffon founded naturalism; Beaumarchais
discovered outside of Molière, a kind of comedy till then unknown,
almost the social comedy; Montesquieu made in law some excavations so
profound that he succeeded in exhuming the right. As to Rousseau, as
to Diderot, let us pronounce those two names apart; Diderot, a vast
intelligence, inquisitive, a tender heart, a thirst for justice, wished
to give certain notions as the foundation of true ideas, and created
the encyclopaedia. Rousseau rendered to woman an admirable service,
completing the mother by the nurse, placing near one another those two
majesties of the cradle. Rousseau, a writer, eloquent and pathetic, a
profound oratorical dreamer, often divined and proclaimed political
truth; his ideal borders upon the real; he had the glory of being
the first man in France who called himself citizen. The civic fiber
vibrates in Rousseau; that which vibrates in Voltaire is the universal
fiber. One can say that in the fruitful eighteenth century, Rosseau
represented the people; Voltaire, still more vast, represented Man.
Those powerful writers disappeared, but they left us their soul, the
Revolution. [Applause.]
Yes, the French Revolution was their soul. It was their radiant
manifestation. It came from them; we find them everywhere in that blest
and superb catastrophe, which formed the conclusion of the past and
the opening of the future. In that clear light, which is peculiar to
revolutions, and which beyond causes permits us to perceive effects,
and beyond the first plan the second, we see behind Danton Diderot,
behind Robespierre Rousseau, and behind Mirabeau Voltaire. These formed
those.
Gentlemen, to sum up epochs, by giving them the names of men, to name
ages, to make of them in some sort human personages, has only been done
by three peoples, Greece, Italy, France. We say, the Age of Pericles,
the Age of Augustus, the Age of Leo X, the Age of Louis XIV, the Age of
Voltaire. Those appellations have a great significance. This privilege
of giving names to periods belonging exclusively to Greece, to Italy,
and to France, is the highest mark of civilization. Until Voltaire,
they were the names of the chiefs of states; Voltaire is more than the
chief of a state; he is a chief of ideas; with Voltaire a new cycle
begins. We feel that henceforth the supreme governmental power is to
be thought. Civilization obeyed force; it will obey the ideal. It was
the scepter and the sword broken, to be replaced by the ray of light;
that is to say, authority transfigured into liberty. Henceforth, no
other sovereignty than the law for the people, and the conscience for
the individual. For each of us, the two aspects of progress separate
themselves clearly, and they are these: to exercise one’s right; that
is to say, to be a man; to perform one’s duty; that is to say, to be a
citizen.
Such is the signification of that word, the Age of Voltaire; such is
the meaning of that august event, the French Revolution.
The two memorable centuries which preceded the eighteenth, prepared for
it; Rabelais warned royalty in Gargantua, and Molière warned the church
in Tartuffe. Hatred of force and respect for right are visible in those
two illustrious spirits.
Whoever says today, _might makes right_, performs an act of the
Middle Ages, and speaks to men three hundred years behind their time.
[Repeated applause.]
Gentlemen, the nineteenth century glorifies the eighteenth century. The
eighteenth proposed, the nineteenth concludes. And my last word will be
the declaration, tranquil but inflexible, of progress.
The time has come. The right has found its formula: human federation.
Today, force is called violence, and begins to be judged; war is
arraigned. Civilization, upon the complaint of the human race, orders
the trial, and draws up the great criminal indictment of conquerors
and captains. [Emotion.] This witness, History, is summoned. The
reality appears. The factitious brilliancy is dissipated. In many
cases, the hero is a species of assassin. [Applause.] The peoples
begin to comprehend that increasing the magnitude of a crime cannot be
its diminution; that, if to kill is a crime, to kill much cannot be
an extenuating circumstance [Laughter and bravos]; that, if to steal
is a shame, to invade cannot be a glory [Repeated applause]; that
_Te Deums_ do not count for much in this matter; that homicide is
homicide; that bloodshed is bloodshed; that it serves nothing to call
one’s self Caesar or Napoleon; and that in the eyes of the eternal God,
the figure of a murderer is not changed because, instead of a gallow’s
cap, there is placed upon his head an emperor’s crown. [Long continued
acclamation. Triple salvo of applause.]
Ah! let us proclaim absolute truths. Let us dishonor war. No; glorious
war does not exist. No; it is not good, and it is not useful, to make
corpses. No; it cannot be that life travails for death. No; oh, mothers
who surround me, it cannot be that war, the robber, should continue
to take from you your children. No; it cannot be that women should
bear children in pain, that men should be born, that people should
plow and sow, that the farmer should fertilize the fields, and the
workmen enrich the city, that industry should produce marvels, that
genius should produce prodigies, that the vast human activity should,
in presence of the starry sky, multiply efforts and creations, all
to result in that frightful international exposition which is called
a field of battle! [Profound sensation. The whole audience rises and
applauds the orator.]
The true field of battle, behold it’s here! It is this rendezvous of
the masterpieces of human labor which Paris offers the world at this
moment.[1]