He was a materialist if you will, for his "deism" meant no more to him than a distant blue sky giving the world space and perspective and free air; but a materialism that renders men kind and courteous, urbane and sweet-tempered, honest and clear-headed, is better than a spirituality that leads to intolerance and madness.
He was a ribald and a scoffer in the presence of much that the world holds sacred; but the most sacred thing of all—the sanity of human reason—has never been more splendidly defended.
He mocked at the traditions of men; but he remains a champion of man's highest prerogative. He turned the churches into indecent ridicule; but wherever an honest man strikes at tyrannous superstition, or a solitary "cultivator of his garden" strikes at stupid mob-rule, one stone the more is added to that great "ecclesia" of civilisation, which "Deo erexit Voltaire"; which Voltaire built—and builds—to God.
ROUSSEAU
Nothing is more clear than that the enjoyment of art and letters is forbidden, in any rich or subtle degree, to the apprehension of the moralist. It is also forbidden, for quite other reasons, to the apprehension of the extravagantly vicious.
The moralist is debarred from any free and passionate love of literature by the simple fact that all literature is created out of the vices of men of letters. The extravagantly vicious man is debarred from such a love by the still simpler fact that his own dominant obsession narrows down his interest to the particular writers who share his own vice.
When I encounter a catholic and impassioned lover of books—of many books and many authors—I know two things about him—I know that he is the opposite of a moralist, and I know that he is free from any maniacal vice. I might go further and say that I know he has a rooted hatred of moralists and a tolerant curiosity about every other form of human aberration.
When I say that literature is created out of the vices of men of letters, I use the word in a large and liberal sense. A vice is a pleasant sensation condemned by Puritans. It is an over-emphasis laid upon some normal reaction; or it is a perverse and morbid deviation from the normal path.
It would not require any fantastic stretch of psychological interpretation to show how all the great men of letters are driven forward along their various paths by some demoniac urge, some dynamic impulse, that has its sensual as well as its intellectual origin. The "psychology of genius" is still in its infancy. It seems a pity that so much of the critical interpretation of the great writers of the world should be in the hands of persons who—by the reason of their academic profession—are naturally more interested in the effect of such work upon youthful minds than in its intrinsic quality.