Some Of The Beauties (?) Of Harmony Among Unbelievers.
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 [pg 067] 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 [pg 068] 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 [pg 069] 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.