The author of “The System of Nature” says of the English Jesuit’s creation
of eels by spontaneous generation from rye meal: “After moistening meal
with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found after a little time,
with the aid of the microscope, that it has produced organized beings, of
whose production the water and meal were believed to be incapable. Thus
inanimate nature can pass into life, which is itself but an assemblage of
motions.”—_Part 1, p. 23. For Needham’s Eels, see the Volume of Physics_.
Voltaire says: “Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous
reasoning I do not see how it would prove there is no God.”
He says, it is really strange that men, while denying a creator should
have attributed to themselves the power of creating eels. But it is yet
more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better information, adopted
the Jesuit Needham’s ridiculous system, and joined it to that of Maillet,
who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps and the Pyrenees, and that
men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails changed in the course of
time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are worthy to be placed with the
eels formed by meal.
Voltaire says the ridiculous story of the spontaneous production of eels
by rye meal is the foundation of D’Holbach’s “System of Nature.” He says:
“We were assured, not long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth
half a dozen rabbits.” He then adds, “Needham’s eels soon followed the
Brussels hen.” D’Holbach says: “Experience proves to us that the matter
which we regard as inert and dead, assumes action, intelligence, and life,
when it is combined in a certain way.” Voltaire responds: “This is
precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life?”
The author of the “System of Nature” says: “Matter is eternal and
necessary; but its forms and its combinations are transitory and
contingent.” Upon the supposition that _all is __ matter_, Voltaire
answers, it is hard to comprehend, matter being, according to our author,
_necessary_, and without freedom, how there can be anything contingent.
Again, the atheistic author of the “System of Nature” asserts that order
and disorder do not exist. This is strongly refuted by Voltaire, who says
the author is to be distrusted very often, both in physics and in morals.
Spinosa was a pantheist. He, like many modern sciolists, repudiated design
in nature. Voltaire, treating upon Spinosism, says: “I am aware that
various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have denied final causes.
I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very chaste, is a very great
poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but in philosophy I own he
appears to me to be very far behind a college porter or a parish beadle.
To affirm that the eye is not made to see, nor the ear to hear, nor the
stomach to digest, is not this the most revolting folly that ever entered
the human mind? Doubter as I am, this _insanity_ seems to me _evident_,
and _I say so_. For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final
causes; and I believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I
believe that a watch is made to tell the hour.” Voltaire charges Warburton
with calumniating Cicero, by saying that Cicero said, “It is unworthy of
the majesty of the empire to adore one only God.” Voltaire’s words are
these: “Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and
ancient Rome.” He then gives the above quotation, along with a short
comment in Cicero’s defense, and closes with the following words: “It is
then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that it did
not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a Supreme God. Their
Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the Phœnicians, was always
considered as the master of the secondary gods. This great truth can not
be too forcibly inculcated.” Voltaire was a Deist.
Lucretius, according to Voltaire, denied design in nature. Voltaire said,
in philosophy, he was very far behind a college porter or a parish beadle.
Spinosa was a Pantheist. Voltaire says, “He frequently contradicted
himself; that he had not always clear ideas; that he sometimes clung to
one plank, sometimes to another.”
Voltaire says: “A natural philosopher of some reputation had no doubt that
this ‘Needham,’ who made the eels, ‘was a profound Atheist,’ who concluded
that since eels could be made of rye meal, men might be made of wheat
flour; that nature and chemistry produce all; and that it was demonstrated
we may very well dispense with an all forming God.” Voltaire calls this
_an unparalleled blunder_. D’Holbach, the author of the “System de la
Nature,” was an Atheist, so were his assistants in the production of that
work.
Voltaire addresses the author of that work in the following words: “In the
state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you, with Pascal,
‘choose the safest.’ There is no safety in uncertainty. We are here not to
talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not determined by
our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant things in order
to escape embarassment. I do not say to you, ‘Go to Mecca, and instruct
yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a cow’s tail, muffle
yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical to acquire the favor
of the Being of beings.’ I say to you, ‘Continue to cultivate virtue, to
be beneficent, to regard all superstition with horror, or with pity; but
adore, with me, the design which is manifested in all nature, and
consequently the author of that design—the primordial and final cause of
all; hope with me that our monade, which reasons on the great eternal
Being, may be happy through that same great Being. There is no
contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate its impossibility than
I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so. In metaphysics we scarcely
reason on anything but probabilities. We are all swimming in a sea of
which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to those who fight while they
swim! Land who can; but he that cries out to me, “You swim in vain, there
is no land,” disheartens me, and deprives me of all my strength. What is
the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who consoles
it—you or I? You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the
belief in a God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me this
acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten
assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the
earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.’ ”—_Voltaire’s
Philosophical Dictionary._
This Voltaire says: “The laws punished public crimes; it was necessary to
establish a check upon secret crimes; this check was to be found only in
religion.” In the same article we find the following: “We are obliged to
hold intercourse and transact business and mix up in life with knaves
possessing little or no reflection; with vast numbers of persons addicted
to brutality, intoxication and rapine. You may, if you please, preach to
them that there is no hell, and that the soul of man is mortal. As for
myself, I will be sure to thunder in their ears that if they rob me they
will inevitably be damned.” His true position upon the hell question is,
that it is necessary to preach hell to the blind and brutal populace, that
there is a real necessity for such teaching, whether it be true or false.
He seems to regard it untrue, but necessary. What an idea! The harmony and
consistency of unbelievers is (?) grand. It is no wonder that Voltaire’s
name should stand, along with the names of Atheists and Pantheists and
Deists, above the head line upon the first page of the _Boston
Investigator_.