There is a reference to Voltaire’s internationalism and view of life in
the closing chapter of Brandes’ work on the great Frenchman which sums
up his personality in a most conspicuous manner, as follows:
“There exists a curious little planet, the highly gifted population of
which is distinguished among other things by its equally thoughtless
tendency to praise and condemn. It poisons its wise men, it crucifies
its saviors, its heroes and thinkers it burns at the stake, its
deliverer it puts into prison, then releases them, utilizes them,
applauds them after they have died, and then usually puts them into a
hole as one would filth or treasure.
“The giant from Sirius discovered this little planet in the universe
and found that it was populated by what to him seem funny little
creatures, mostly concerned with making existence unpleasant for each
other, to destroy and eliminate each other. He did not underestimate
their many no doubt valuable and lovable qualities. Now and then he saw
them aid each other.
“But he wondered at their marked predilections to misunderstand, ill
use and praise their leading personalities. Those who would drag these
little beings out of that mudbed of stupidity into which they not
unseldom had strayed they liked best of all to drown in this mire.
Afterwards they would raise statues in honor of these same individuals,
in earliest times made of wood or stone, later of gold and ivory, more
recently of marble and bronze. When this was done they took pleasure in
throwing all kinds of filthiness on these statues, cleanse them again,
then once more defile them, and after a long period let them appear
finally in their true shape and color.”
Here we have the story of Francois de Voltaire in a nutshell.
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
A Table of Contents has been added.