At this moment the crowd burst into one of the hymns of the poet Chénier, who, up to his death, most of all men cherished the memory of Voltaire. Madame de Villette and the young girls of the amphitheatre descended into the street, now strewed with flowers, and walked before the car. The Théâtre Français, then situated in the Faubourg St. Germain, had erected a triumphal arch on its peristyle. On each pillar a medallion was fixed, bearing in letters of gilt bronze the title of the principal dramas of the poet; on the pedestal of the statue erected before the door of the theatre was written, "He wrote Irène at eighty-three years; at seventeen he wrote Œdipus."
The immense procession did not arrive at the Pantheon until ten o'clock at night, for the day had not been sufficiently long for this triumph. The coffin of Voltaire was deposited between those of Descartes and Mirabeau,—the spot predestined for this intermediary genius between philosophy and policy, between the design and the execution. This apotheosis of modern philosophy, amidst the great events that agitated the public mind, was a convincing proof that the Revolution comprehended its own aim, and that it sought to be the inauguration of those two principles represented by these cold ashes—Intelligence and Liberty. It was intelligence that triumphantly entered the city of Louis XIV. over the ruins of the prejudices of birth. It was philosophy taking possession of the city and the temple of Sainte Geneviève. The remains of two schools, of two ages, and two creeds were about to strive for the mastery even in the tomb. Philosophy who, up to this hour, had timidly shrunk from the contest, now revealed her latest inspiration—that of transferring the veneration of the age from one great man to another.
V.
Voltaire, the sceptical genius of France in modern ages, combined, in himself, the double passion of this people at such a period—the passion of destruction, and the desire of innovation, hatred of prejudices, and love of knowledge: he was destined to be the standard-bearer of destruction; his genius, although not the most elevated, yet the most comprehensive in France, has hitherto been only judged by fanatics or his enemies. Impiety deified his very vices; superstition anathematised his very virtues; in a word, despotism, when it again seized on the reins of government in France, felt that to reinstate tyranny it would be necessary first to unseat Voltaire from his high position in the national opinion. Napoleon, during fifteen years, paid writers who degrade, vilify, and deny the genius of Voltaire; he hated his name, as might must ever hate intellect; and so long as men yet cherished the memory of Voltaire, so long he felt his position was not secure, for tyranny stands as much in need of prejudice to sustain it as falsehood of uncertainty and darkness; the restored church could no longer suffer his glory to shine with so great a lustre; she had the right to hate Voltaire, not to deny his genius.
If we judge of men by what they have done, then Voltaire is incontestably the greatest writer of modern Europe. No one has caused, through the powerful influence of his genius alone, and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in the minds of men; his pen aroused a world, and has shaken a far mightier empire than that of Charlemagne, the European empire of a theocracy. His genius was not force but light. Heaven had destined him not to destroy but to illuminate, and wherever he trod light followed him, for reason (which is light) had destined him to be first her poet, then her apostle, and lastly her idol.
VI.
Voltaire was born a plebeian in an obscure street of old Paris.[5] Whilst Louis XIV. and Bossuet reigned in all the pomp of absolute power and Catholicism at Versailles, the child of the people, the Moses of incredulity, grew up amidst them: the secrets of destiny seem thus to sport with men, and are alone suspected when they have exploded. The throne and the altar had attained their culminating point in France. The Duc d'Orleans, as regent, governed during an interregnum,—one vice in the room of another, weakness instead of pride. This life was easy and agreeable, and corruption avenged itself for the monacal austerity of the last years of Madame de Mainténon and Letellier. Voltaire, alike precocious by audacity as by talent, began already to sport with those weapons of the mind of which he was destined, after years, to make so terrible a use. The regent, all unsuspicious of danger, suffered him to continue, and repressed, for form's sake alone, some of the most audacious of his outbreaks, at which he laughed even whilst he punished them. The incredulity of the age took its rise in debauchery and not in examination, and the independence of thought was rather a libertinage of manners, than a conclusion arising from reflection. There was vice in irreligion, and of this Voltaire always savoured. His mission began by a contempt and derision of holy things, which, even though doomed to destruction, should be touched with respect. From thence arose that mockery, that irony, that cynicism too often on the lips, and in the heart, of the apostle of reason; his visit to England gave assurance and gravity to his incredulity, for in France he had only known libertines, in London he knew philosophers; he became passionately attached to eternal reason, as we are all eager after what is new, and he felt the enthusiasm of the discovery. In so active a nature as the French, this enthusiasm and this hatred could not remain in mere speculation as in the mind of a native of the north. Scarcely was he himself persuaded, than he wished in his turn to persuade others; his whole life became a multiplied action, tending to one end, the abolition of theocracy, and the establishment of religious toleration and liberty. He toiled at this with all the powers with which God had gifted him; he even employed falsehood (ruse), aspersion, cynicism, and immorality: he used even those arms that respect for God and man denies to the wise; he employed his virtue, his honour, his renown, to aid in this overthrow; and his apostleship of reason had too often the appearance of a profanation of piety; he ravaged the temple instead of protecting it.
From the day when he resolved upon this war against Christianity he sought for allies also opposed to it. His intimacy with the king of Prussia, Frederic II., had this sole inducement. He desired the support of thrones against the priesthood. Frederic, who partook of his philosophy, and pushed it still further, even to atheism and the contempt of mankind, was the Dionysius of this modern Plato. Louis XV., whose interest it was to keep up a good understanding with Prussia, dared not to show his anger against a man whom the king considered as his friend. Voltaire, thus protected by a sceptre, redoubled his audacity. He put thrones on one side, whilst he affected to make their interests mutual with his own, by pretending to emancipate them from the domination of Rome. He handed over to kings the civil liberty of the people, provided that they would aid him in acquiring the liberty of consciences. He even affected—perhaps he felt—respect for the absolute power of kings. He pushed that respect so far as even to worship their weaknesses. He palliated the infamous vices of the great Frederic, and brought philosophy on its knees before the mistresses of Louis XV. Like the courtezan of Thebes, who built one of the pyramids of Egypt from the fruits of her debaucheries, Voltaire did not blush at any prostitution of genius, provided that the wages of his servility enabled him to purchase enemies against Christ. He enrolled them by millions throughout Europe, and especially in France. Kings were reminded of the middle ages, and of the thrones outraged by the popes. They did not see, without umbrage and secret hate, the clergy as powerful as themselves with the people, and who under the name of cardinals, almoners, bishops or confessors, spied, or dictated its creeds even to courts themselves. The parliaments, that civil clergy, a body redoubtable to sovereigns themselves, detested the mass of the clergy, although they protected its faith and its decrees. The nobility, warlike, corrupted, and ignorant, leaned entirely to the unbelief which freed it from all morality. Finally, the bourgeoisie, well-informed or learned, prefaced the emancipation of the third estate by the insurrection of the new condition of ideas.
Such were the elements of the revolution in religious matters. Voltaire laid hold of them, at the precise moment, with that coup d'œil of strong instinct which sees clearer than genius itself. To an age young, fickle, and unreflecting, he did not present reason under the form of an austere philosophy, but beneath the guise of a facile freedom of ideas and a scoffing irony. He would not have succeeded in making his age think, he did succeed in making it smile. He never attacked it in front, nor with his face uncovered, in order that he might not set the laws in array against him; and to avoid the fate of Servetius, he, the modern Æsop, attacked under imaginary names the tyranny which he wished to destroy. He concealed his hate in history, the drama, light poetry, romance, and even in jests. His genius was a perpetual allusion, comprehending all his age, but impossible to be seized on by his enemies. He struck, but his hand was concealed. Yet the struggle of a man against a priesthood, an individual against an institution, a life against eighteen centuries, was by no means destitute of courage.