Ignorer ton être suprême, Grand Dieu! c’est un moindre blasphème, Et moins digne de ton courroux Que de te croire impitoyable, De nos malheurs insatiable, Jaloux, injuste comme nous. Lorsqu’un dévot atrabilaire Nourri de superstition, A par cette affreuse chimère, Corrompu sa religion, Le voilà stupide et farouche: Le fiel découle de sa bouche, Le fanatisme arme son bras: Et dans sa piété profonde Sa rage immolerait le monde A son Dieu, qu’il ne connaît pas.[223]
To have a conception of perfect goodness was a manifest convenience in confronting men who were to be proved masters of badness. But when the pressure of circumstance forced Voltaire to seek in earnest for an explanation of the world, which he had formerly been content to take in an easy way upon trust, then the deism, which had been barely more than nominal at best, was transformed into a very different and far sincerer mood. It would obviously be a gross blunder from a logical point to confound optimism with deism, but it is clear that what shook Voltaire’s conviction of the existence of a deity was the awakening in him of a keener sense of the calamities that afflict the race of man. Personal misfortunes perhaps had their share. It was after the loss of Madame du Châtelet, and after the rude dispersion of his illusions as to Frederick, when he barely knew whither to turn for shelter or a home, that the optimism which he had learnt in England began to lose its hold upon him. We must do him the justice to add that he was yet more sensible of disasters which affected others. The horrid tide of war which devastated Europe and America, the yet more hateful tide of persecution for opinion which swept over France, and the cruel maladministration of justice which disgraced her tribunals, stirred all that was best in him to the very depths. The only non-dramatic poem of his which has strength, sincerity, and profundity of meaning enough firmly to arrest the reader’s attention, and stimulate both thought and feeling, is that fine and powerful piece which he wrote on the occasion of the great earthquake of Lisbon.[224] Here he threw into energetic and passionately argumentative verse the same protest against the theory that whatever is is best, which he afterwards urged in a very different form in the ‘refined insolence’ of Candide.[225] He approaches more nearly than a quarter of a century before he would have thought possible, to the deep gloom of the Pascal against whose terrible pictures he had then so warmly protested. He sees mankind imprisoned in a circle of appalling doom, from which there is no way of escape. Unlike Pascal, he can find no solution, and he denounces that mockery of a solution which cries that all is well in accents stifled with lamentation. He protests against the delusion of forcing the course of the world’s destiny into a moral formula, that shall contain the terms of justice and mercy in their human sense.
Aux cris demi-formés de leurs voix expirantes, Au spectacle effrayant de leurs cendres fumantes, Direz-vous: C’est l’effet des éternelles lois, Qui d’un Dieu libre et bon nécessitent le choix? Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes: Dieu s’est vengé, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes? Quelle crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfans Sur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglans? Lisbonne, qui n’est plus, eut-elle plus de vices Que Londres, que Paris, plongés dans les délices? Lisbonne est abîmée, et l’on danse á Paris.
He equally refuses, though not in terms, to comfort himself by the reflection that, in default of a better, the current ragged theory of the providential government of the universe, because it may be possible, must be true. He can find no answer, and confesses his belief that no answer is to be found by human effort. Whatever side we take, we can only shudder; there is nothing that we know, nothing that we have not to fear. Nature is mute, and we interrogate her in vain; the book of destiny is closed to our eyes.
L’homme, étranger à soi, de l’homme est ignoré. Que suis-je? où suis-je? où vais-je? et d’où suis-je tiré? Atomes tourmentés sur cet amas de boue, Que la mort engloutit, et dont le sort se joue, Mais atomes pensans, atomes dont les yeux, Guidés par la pensée, ont mesuré les cieux, Au sein de l’infini nous élaçons notre être, Sans pouvoir un moment nous voir et nous connaître. ***** Le passé n’est pour nous qu’un triste souvenir; Le présent est affreux, s’il n’est point d’avenir, Si la nuit du tombeau détruit l’être qui pense.
He abandons Plato and rejects Epicurus. Bayle knows more than they, as, with the balance in his hand, he teaches men to doubt; wise enough, great enough, to be without a system.
In a note he adds to this glorification of Bayle, whom he styles the advocate-general of the philosophers—the thinker in whose pages all opinions are set forth, all the reasons which shake them and all which uphold are equally investigated, while he abstains from giving any conclusions.[226] Elsewhere he explains that when he describes reason as having made immense progress in Germany, he does not refer to those who openly embrace the system of Spinoza; but the good folk who have no fixed principles on the nature of things, who do not know what is, but know very well what is not, these are my true philosophers.[227]
It would not be difficult to find a score of passages in which the writer assumes or declares certainty on this high matter to be attainable, and to be entirely in one direction. His opinions undoubtedly shifted with the veering of his moods, but on the whole these axioms of suspense mark the central point to which they constantly tended to return, and at which they rested longest. That dark word, Shut thine eyes and thou shalt see, opened no road for him. The saying that the Most High may be easily known, provided one does not press for definition, offered no treasure of spiritual acquisition to the man who never let go, even if he did not always accurately appreciate, Locke’s injunction to us to be careful to define our terms. We cannot label Voltaire either spiritualist or materialist. The success with which he evades these two appellations is one of the best available tests of a man’s capacity for approaching the great problems with that care and positive judgment, which are quite as proper to them as to practical affairs or to physical science.
Thus with reference to the other great open question, he habitually insisted that the immortality of the soul can never possibly be demonstrated, and that this is why it has been revealed to us by religion,[228] which is perhaps Voltaire’s way of saying that it is no near concern of his. Sometimes he argued from considerations of general probability. The brutes feel and think up to a certain point, and men have only the advantage over them of a greater combination of ideas; the more or less makes no difference in kind. ‘Well, nobody thinks of giving an immortal soul to a flea; why should you give one any the more to an elephant, or a monkey, or my Champagne valet, or a village steward who has a trifle more instinct than my valet?’[229] Again, he retorted significantly on those who contended with a vehemence of prejudice known in some places even to this day, that belief in the immortality of the soul is an indispensable condition of probity; as if the first Jews accepted that dogma, and as if there were no honest men among them, and no instruction in virtue.[230]