“Some have supposed the cradle of our race to be Hindustan, alleging that the feeblest of all animals must have been born in the softest climate, and in a land which produces without culture the most nourishing and most healthful fruits, like dates and cocoa nuts. The latter especially easily affords men the means of existence, of clothing and of housing themselves—and of what besides has the inhabitant of that Peninsula need?... Our Houses of Carnage, which they call Butcher-Shops [boucheries], where they sell so many carcases to feed our own, would import the plague into the climate of India.
“These peoples need and desire pure and refreshing foods. Nature has lavished upon them forests of citron trees, orange trees, fig trees, palm trees, cocoa-nut trees, and plains covered with rice. The strongest man can need to spend but one or two sous a day for his subsistence.[162] Our workmen spend more in one day than a Malabar native in a month....
“In general, the men of the South-East have received from Nature gentler manners than the people of our West. Their climate disposes them to abstain from strong liquors and from the flesh of animals—foods which excite the blood and often provoke ferocity—and, although superstition and foreign irruptions have corrupted the goodness of their disposition, nevertheless all travellers agree that the character of these peoples has nothing of that irritability, of that caprice, and of that harshness which it has cost much trouble to keep within bounds in the countries of the North.”
In noticing the comparative progress of the various foreign religions in India, Voltaire observes that—
“The Mohammedan religion alone has made progress in India, especially amongst the richer classes, because it is the religion of the Prince, and because it teaches but the divine unity conformably to the ancient teaching of the first Brahmins. Christianity [he adds, only too truly] has not had the same success, notwithstanding the large establishments of the Portuguese, of the French, of the English, of the Dutch, of the Danes. It is, in fact, the conflict of these nations which has injured the progress of our Faith. As they all hate each other, and as several of them often make war one upon the other in their climates, what they teach is naturally hateful to the peaceful inhabitants. Their customs, besides, revolt the Hindus. Those people are scandalised at seeing us drinking wine and eating flesh, which they themselves abhor.”[163]
This—one of the chief obstacles to the spread of Christian civilisation in the East, and especially in India, viz., the eating of flesh and the drinking of alcohol, its legitimate attendant—has been acknowledged by Christian missionaries themselves of late years.
Employed as he was in various literary undertakings he had been watching with great interest, not, perhaps, without a secret wish for vengeance, the important political and military complications of Europe. After some brilliant successes the Prussian king had been reduced to the last extremity. At this juncture the former friends agreed to forget, as far as possible, their old quarrel, and Voltaire enjoyed the satisfaction of having succeeded in dissuading Friedrich from suicide. The victories of Rosbach and Breslau not long afterwards changed the condition of things once again. From this time the prince and the philosopher resumed the name, if not the cordiality, of friends. A curious accident put the arbitrament of peace and war for some weeks into the hands of Voltaire. The Prussian king, while inactive in his fortified camp, wrote, as his custom was, a quantity of verse and sent the packet to Ferney. Amongst the mass—good, bad, and indifferent—was a satire on Louis and his mistress. The packet had been opened before reaching its destination.
“Had I been inclined to amuse myself, it depended only on me to set the King of France and the King of Prussia to war in rhyme, which would have been a novel farce on earth. But I enjoyed another pleasure—that of being more prudent than Friedrich. I wrote him word that his Ode was beautiful, but that he ought not to publish it.... To make the pleasantry complete I thought it possible to lay the foundation of the peace of Europe on these poetical pieces. My correspondence with the Duc de Choiseul [the French Premier] gave birth to that idea, and it appeared so ridiculous, so worthy of the transactions of the times, that I indulged it, and had the satisfaction of proving on what weak and invisible pivots the destinies of nations turn.”
Several letters passed between the three before the danger was averted.
The limited space at our disposal will allow us only rapidly to notice some of the remaining chefs-d’œuvre of Voltaire. The celebrated Encyclopédie, under the auspices of D’Alembert and Diderot, had been lately commenced. To this great work, to which he looked with some hope as promising a severe assault on ignorance and prejudice, Voltaire contributed a few articles. It is not the place here to narrate the history of the fierce war of words to which the Encyclopédie gave birth. It was completed in about fifteen years, in 1775—a memorable year in literature.