About this period, frequenting less the fashionable and trifling society of the capital, and contenting himself with the company of a few congenial minds, he formed amongst others a sympathetic friendship with the Marquise de Châtelet, a lady of extraordinary talents.
“I was tired [thus he begins his unfinished Mémoires], I was tired of the lazy and noisy life led at Paris, of the multitude of petit-maîtres, of bad books printed with the approbation of censors and the privilege of the king, of the cabals and parties among the learned, and of the mean arts of plagiarism and book-making which dishonour Literature.”
The lady was the equal of Madame Dacier in knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, and she was familiar with all the best modern writers. She wrote a commentary on Leibnitz. She also translated the Principia. Her favourite pursuits, however, were mathematics and metaphysics.
“She was none the less fond of the world and those amusements familiar to her age and sex. She determined to leave them all and bury herself in an old ruinous château on the borders of Champagne and Lorraine, situated in a barren and unhealthy soil. This old château she ornamented with sufficiently pretty gardens. I built a gallery, and formed a very good collection of natural history, added to which we had a library not badly furnished. We were visited by several of the savans, who came to philosophise in our retreat.... I taught English to Madame de Châtelet, who, in about three months understood it as well as I did, and read Newton, and Locke, and Pope, with equal ease. We read all the works of Tasso and Ariosto together, so that when Algerotti came to Cirey, where he finished his Newtonianism for Women, he found her sufficiently skilful in his own language to give him some very excellent information by which he profited.”
Voltaire had already (1741) given to the world his Elémens de Newton—a work which, in conjunction with other parts of his writings, proves that had he chosen to apply himself wholly to natural philosophy or to mathematics he might have reached the highest fame in those departments of science. It is in the Elémens that Voltaire records his noble protest at the same time against the monstrous hypothesis of Descartes, to which we have already referred, and against the selfish cruelty of our species.
“There is in man a disposition to compassion as generally diffused as his other instincts. Newton had cultivated this sentiment of humanity, and he extended it to the lower animals. With Locke he was strongly convinced that God has given to them a proportion of ideas, and the same feelings which he has to us. He could not believe that God, who has made nothing in vain, would have given to them organs of feeling in order that they might have no feeling.
“He thought it a very frightful inconsistency to believe that animals feel and at the same time to cause them to suffer. On this point his morality was in accord with his philosophy. He yielded but with repugnance to the barbarous custom of supporting ourselves upon the blood and flesh of beings like ourselves, whom we caress, and he never permitted in his own house the putting them to death by slow and exquisite [recherchées] modes of killing for the sake of making the food more delicious. This compassion, which he felt for other animals, culminated in true charity for men. In truth, without humanity, a virtue which comprehends all virtues, the name of philosopher would be little deserved.”[161]
At Cirey some of his best tragedies were composed—Alzire, Mérope, and Mehemet; the Discours sur l’Homme, a moral poem in the style of Pope’s Essays, pronounced to be one of the finest monuments of French poetry; an Essay on Universal History, (for his friend’s use, to correct as well as supplement Bossuet’s splendid but little philosophic history), the foundation of perhaps his most admirable production the Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations, and many lesser pieces, including a large correspondence. Besides these literary works, he engaged in mathematical and scientific studies, which resulted in some brochures of considerable value.
About this time (1740) news arrived of the death of Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia. Most readers know the extraordinary character of this strange personage, who caned the women and his clergy in the streets of his capital, and who was with difficulty dissuaded from ordering his son’s execution. Narrowly escaping with his life the prince had devoted himself to literary pursuits, and had kept up a correspondence with the leading men of letters of France, and above all with the author of Zaïre whom he regarded as little less than divine. The new king set about inspecting his territories, and proceeded incognito to Brussels, where the first interview between the two future most eminent persons in Europe took place. Repairing to his majesty’s quarters—