In fine, then, we search Voltaire in vain for a positive creed, which logic may hold in coherent bonds, or social philosophy accept as a religious force. The old word about his faith must be pronounced true. It remains a creed of negation. But still, be it always understood, negation of darkness. And this inevitably leads in the direction of the day. It was an indispensable step in the process of transition. Men, it is constantly being said since the violent breaking-up of French society, will never consent to live on no better base than articles of denial and formulas of suspense, for are not the deepest parts of human character moved by strong yearning for relationship with the unknowable? It may be so, and if it be, the Voltairean movement was the great instrument in leading, not merely a scanty group of speculative intellects, but vast bodies, large nations, of common folk to perceive, or dimly to conjecture, that this object of adoration which their eyes strain after is unknowable, and that there is no attainable external correlative of their deep desire. Voltaire never went so far in the direction of assertion as Rousseau, and he never went so far in the direction of denial as Holbach. And, whatever we may say generally of the horror of the world for the spirit that denies, all that was best and most truly progressive in French society during the eighteenth century, Turgot and Condorcet no less than Beaumarchais, showed itself content to follow him in this middle path. His appreciation of religion was wanting in a hundred vital things, just as some may say that Luther’s was, but it contained the one idea which the deepest spirit of the time prompted men to desire, the decisive repudiation of the religious notions of the past. We must call this negative, no doubt, but no word should frighten us away from seeing how much positive aspiration lay underneath. When men are in the mood of France a century and a quarter since, when all that an old civilisation has bestowed on them of what is best and strongest, rises up against all that the same civilisation has bequeathed to them of what is pestilent and dangerous, they are never nice critics. They do not decline a reinvigorating article of faith, because it is not a system, nor do they measure a deliverer by syllogism. The smallest chink may shine like light of the sun to prisoners long held in black and cavernous recesses.
When Bayle’s Dictionary came out, we read, so great was the avidity to have sight of it, that long before the doors of the Mazarin library were open, a little crowd assembled in the early morning of each day, and there was as great a struggle for the first access to the precious book, as for the front row at the performance of a piece for which there is a rage.[231] This was the beginning of an immense impulse of curiosity, eager to fill the vacuum occasioned by the slow subsidence of the old religion, which had once covered not only faith, but science, history, dialectic, and philosophy, all in a single synthesis. It was this impulse which Voltaire both represented and accelerated. In these periods of agitation, men forgive all to one who represents without compromise or diminution their own dominant passions. Vehemence of character counts for more than completeness of doctrine, and they crave a battle-cry, not a dissertation. They need to have their own sentiment aggressively presented, and their own defects of boldness or courage at once rebuked and supplemented by a leader whose purpose can never be mistaken, and whose words are never nipped by the frost of intellectual misgiving. All through the century there was slowly growing up an inner France, full of angry disgust against the past. Its germ was the crowd eager to read Bayle. Its outcome was the night of the Fourth of August 1789, when the civil order of society was overthrown between a sunset and a dawn. Voltaire, as we have seen, studiously abstained from any public word upon things political, but it was he who in the long interval between these two events held men by a watchword to which the political decay of the country gave such meaning, that of hatred to the old. And there was no such steadfast symbol of the old as the church, to him and his school a lurid beacon on a monster-haunted shore.
Voltaire’s selection of the church as the object of his attacks marks an important difference between him and the other great revolutionary precursor. Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar was perfectly willing to accept the cultus of Christianity, even when he had ceased to accept its dogma. He regarded all particular religions as so many salutary institutions, all good so long as they were the organs for a due service of God. He actually celebrated mass with more veneration after the acquisition of his new principles, than he had been accustomed to do when he supposed that the mass was an occasion of personal divine presence. This kind of teaching was clearly to perpetuate and transfix for ever the form of religion which each country, or any given set of men in it, might possess. It was to stereotype belief, as it is stereotyped among the millions in the East. Whence was reform to come, whence any ray of new light, whence a principle of growth and activity for the intelligence of men? How on these terms is truth to win the battle at a single point? This was the beginning of a fatal substitution of bland emotional complacency for robust cultivation of the reason, and firm reverence for its lessons as the highest that we can learn. Voltaire no doubt did in practice many a time come to terms with his adversary while he was yet on the way with him; but, disagreeable as these temporisings are to us who live in an easier day, they never deceived any one, nor could they ever be mistaken for the establishment of intellectual treason as a principle, or of philosophic indifference as a climax. As has been said, though he writes in the midst of the old régime, in the face of the Bastille, and with the fetters of the enemy in some sort actually upon him, he still finds a thousand means of reaching you.[232] He is always the representative of reason, and never of sentimentalism. He was not above superficial compromises in matters of conduct, and these it is hard or impossible to condone; but at any rate he is free from the deeper and more penetrating reproach of erecting hypocrisy into a deliberate doctrine.
We do not know how far he ever seriously approached the question, so much debated since the overthrow of the old order in France, whether a society can exist without a religion? He says in one place that to believe God and spirits corporeal is an old metaphysical error, but absolutely not to believe in any god would be an error incompatible with wise government. But even this much was said for the sake of introducing a taunt against the orthodox, who by a strange contradiction had risen up with fury against Bayle for believing it possible that a society of atheists could hold together, while they insisted with just as much violence that the empire of China was established on a basis of atheism.[233] His natural sagacity would most likely have shown him that this is one of the sterile problems, with which the obstructive defender of things as they are tries to draw the soldier of improvement away from his strongest posts. Whether a society can exist without religion or not, at least its existence as a structure for whose duration we can be anxious, must depend on the number of men in it who deal honestly with their own understandings. And, further, is no man to be counted to have a religion who, like Voltaire, left great questions open, and put them aside, as all questions, that must from the limitations of human faculty eternally remain open, well deserve to be put aside? Must we ever call an unknown God by one name? Are there so few tasks for one on earth, that he must strain all his soul to fix the regimen of high heaven?
Voltaire, there is every reason to think, did in an informal kind of way suppose in the bottom of his heart that there is nothing in human nature to hinder a very advanced society from holding perfectly well together, with all its opinions in a constant state of analysis. Whatever we may think of it, this dream of what is possible, if the activity of human intelligence were only sufficiently stimulated and the conditions of social union were once so adjusted as to give it fair play, unquestionably lies at the root of the revolutionary ideas with all those who were first stirred by Voltaire rather than by Rousseau. Condorcet, for instance, manifestly depends with the firmest confidence upon that possibility being realised. It is the idea of every literary revolutionist, as distinguished from the social or economic revolutionist, in France at the present day. The knowledge that this was the case, added to the sound conviction that men can never live by analysis alone, gave its fire to De Maistre’s powerful attack, and its immense force to Burke’s plea for what he called prejudice. But the indispensable synthesis need never be immovably fixed, nor can it soon again be one and single for our civilisation; for progress consists in gradual modifications of it, as increase of knowledge and unforeseen changes in the current of human affairs disclose imperfections in it, and wherever progress is a law the stages of men’s advance are unequal. Above all, it is monstrous to suppose that because a man does not accept your synthesis, he is therefore a being without a positive creed or a coherent body of belief capable of guiding and inspiring conduct.
There are new solutions for him, if the old are fallen dumb. If he no longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of God’s justice, but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the future of his brothers. And he will be less effectually raised from inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation, so meanly comfortable to his own individuality, than by hearing full in the ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succour from her children. That swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, may still remain; for how shall the universe ever cease to be a sovereign wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman fixedness of law? And a man will be already in no mean paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive a constant augmentation, and each good cause yet find worthy defenders, when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been blotted out of the brief recollection of men for ever.