Voltaire: A Sketch of His Life and Works

by J. M. Wheeler; G. W. Foote

Heine said: “We should forgive our enemies—but not until they are hung.” Voltaire forgave his when he had gibbeted them in his writings. People who find it difficult to understand his bitterness against “L'Infàme” should remember the revolting cruelty of which religious bigotry was still capable in his day. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the prolonged horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew vibrated still. Condorcet wrote: “The blood of many millions of men, massacred in the name of God, still steams up to heaven around us. The earth on which we tread is everywhere covered with the bones of the victims of barbarous intolerance.” His rhetoric expressed the feeling of a generation who knew by experience the evils of religious bigotry and fanaticism.

It is as a champion of Freethought that Voltaire deserves chiefly to be remembered. In that capacity I can only find words of praise. Complaints of his flippancy, his persiflage, his ridicule, his scurrility, his etc., came, and still come, from the enemy, and show that his blows told and tell. If he did not crush the infamous he at least crippled it. No doubt, under different circumstances,

Voltaire would have fought differently. But he would never have thought of treating atrocities without indignation, or absurdities without ridicule. Gravity is a part of the game of imposture, and there is nothing the hypocrites and humbugs resent so much as having their solemn pretensions laughed at. .

He knew the subtle power of ridicule. It was the most effective weapon, not only for the time and the nation in which he wrote, but for our time also. His blows were all dealt with grace and agility; his pills were sugar-coated. Grimm well said of him: “He makes arrows of every kind of wood, brilliant and rapid in their flight, but with a keen, unerring point. Under his sparkling pen, erudition ceases to be ponderous and becomes full of life. If he cannot sweep the grand chords of the lyre, he can j strike on golden medals his favorite maxims, and is j irreproachable in the lighter order of poetry.” But, I contend, there was a fundamental earnestness in his character; he was the apostle of plain every-day common sense and good feeling.

Voltaire is judged by the character which distinguishes him from other writers, his light touch and superficial raillery. Because he is par excellence a persifleur, he is set down as merely a persifleur. Never was there a greater mistake. It is forgotten that he did not write witty tales and squibs only; that he made France acquainted with the philosophy of Locke and the science of Newton; that he wrote the Age of Louis XIV., the History of the Parliament of Paris, and the Essay on Manners (which revived the historic method), and that he wrote more than twenty tragedies which transformed the French theatre. Voltaire was no mere mocker: his manner was that of a persifleur, but his matter was as solid as that of any theologian.

M. Louis de Brouckere, of the University of Brussels, justly claims for Voltaire a double share in the formation of modern culture and the development of modern science. He contributed to it directly by his personal works, and indirectly by antagonising the forces retarding knowledge and creating an intellectual environment eminently favorable to the formation of synthetic knowledge, and a new public opinion common to the intellectual élite of Europe.

Voltaire knew how to marshal against reigning prejudices and errors all the resources of vast learning and an incomparable wit; but no one more clearly than he saw that the doctrines he destroyed must be replaced by others, that humanity cannot get along without a body of common beliefs; and he contributed more than any one else to the elaboration of the new intellectual code by uniting and harmonising the efforts of special savants and isolated thinkers, by giving them a clear consciousness that what they aimed at was the same thing and common to them all.

He never slackened his efforts to appease the quarrels which broke out in the camp of the philosophers, to group all his spiritual brothers in one compact bundle, capable of joint action, to unite them in a laic church which could be utilised to oppose existing churches. The words I here italicise were underlined by him; they are found on every page of his correspondence, and he loses no opportunity to reiterate them and explain their meaning precisely.

If the publication of the Encyclopœdia was the work of Diderot, the union of the group of men who rendered that publication possible was, in great measure, the work of Voltaire. If Condorcet wrote just before his death his immortal Sketch, Voltaire took a preponderating part in the creation of the intellectual atmosphere in which Condorcet lived and could develop his genius.

Voltaire was assuredly not so coarse as Luther, nor even as his contemporary Warburton. He carried lighter guns than Luther, but was more alert and equally persistent. His war against superstition and intolerance was life-long. Luther smote powerful blows at the church with a bludgeon; Voltaire made delicate passes with a rapier. Catholics often declaim against the coarseness of the monk-trained Protestant champion. They also protest against the trickery of the Jesuit-trained Freethinker. It is sufficient to say Luther could not have done his work had he not been coarse. Nor could Voltaire have done his had he not been a tricksy spirit. Judged by his work, he was one of the best of men, because he did most good to his fellows, and because in his heart was the most burning love of truth, of justice and toleration. In the words of Lecky, he did “more to destroy the greatest of human curses than any other of the sons of men.” His numerous volumes are the fruit and exposition of a spirit of encyclopaedic curiosity. He assimilated all the thought and learning of his time, and brought to bear on it a wit and common sense that was all his own.