A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 10

by Voltaire

The dispute which divided learned Spain, in the same century, on the Mosarabic version, also terminated without ravaging provinces or shedding human blood. The spirit of chivalry, which then prevailed, permitted not the difficulty to be enlightened otherwise than in leaving the decision to two noble knights. As in that of the two Don Quixotes, whichever overthrew his adversary caused his own party to triumph. Don Ruis de Martanza, knight of the Mosarabic ritual, overthrew the Don Quixote of the Latin ritual; but as the laws of chivalry decided not positively that a ritual must be proscribed because its knight was unhorsed, a more certain and established secret was made use of, to know which of the books should be preferred. The expedient alluded to was that of throwing them both into the fire, it not being possible for the sound ritual to perish in the flames. I know not how it happened, however, but they were both burned, and the dispute remained undecided, to the great astonishment of the Spaniards. By degrees, the Latin ritual got the preference; and if any knight afterwards presented himself to maintain the Mosarabic, it was the knight and not the ritual which was thrown into the fire.

In these fine times, we and other polished people, when we were ill, were obliged to have recourse to an Arabian physician. When we would know what day of the moon it was, we referred to the Arabs. If we would buy a piece of cloth, we must pay a Jew for it; and when a farmer wanted rain, he addressed himself to a sorcerer. At last, however, when some of us learned Latin, and had a bad translation of Aristotle, we figured in the world with honor, passing three or four hundred years in deciphering some pages of the Stagyrite, and in adoring and condemning them. Some said that without him we should want articles of faith; others, that he was an atheist. A Spaniard proved that Aristotle was a saint, and that we should celebrate his anniversary; while a council in France caused his divine writings to be burned. Colleges, universities, whole orders of monks, were reciprocally anathematized, on the subject of some passages of this great man—which neither themselves, the judges who interposed their authority, nor the author himself, ever understood. There were many fisticuffs given in Germany in these grave quarrels, but there was not much bloodshed. It is a pity, for the glory of Aristotle, that they did not make civil war, and have some regular battles in favor of quiddities, and of the "universal of the part of the thing." Our ancestors cut the throats of each other in disputes upon points which they understood very little better.

It is true that a much celebrated madman named Occam, surnamed the "invincible doctor," chief of those who stood up for the "universal of the part of thought," demanded from the emperor Louis of Bavaria, that he should defend his pen with his imperial sword against Scott, another Scottish madman, surnamed the "subtle doctor," who fought for the "universal of the part of the thing." Happily, the sword of Louis of Bavaria remained in its scabbard. Who would believe that these disputes have lasted until our days, and that the Parliament of Paris, in 1624, gave a fine sentence in favor of Aristotle?

Towards the time of the brave Occam and the intrepid Scott, a much more serious quarrel arose, into which the reverend father Cordeliers inveigled all the Christian world. This was to know if their kitchen garden belonged to themselves, or if they were merely simple tenants of it. The form of the cowls, and the size of the sleeves, were further subjects of this holy war. Pope John XXII., who interfered, found out to whom he was speaking. The Cordeliers quitted his party for that of Louis of Bavaria, who then drew his sword.

There were, moreover, three or four Cordeliers burned as heretics, which is rather strong; but after all, this affair having neither shaken thrones nor ruined provinces, we may place it in the rank of peaceable follies.

There have been always some of this kind, the greater part of whom have fallen into the most profound oblivion; and of four or five hundred sects which have appeared, there remain in the memory of men those only which have produced either extreme disorder or extreme folly—two things which they willingly retain. Who knows, in the present day, that there were Orebites, Osmites, and Insdorfians? Who is now acquainted with the Anointed, the Cornacians, or the Iscariots?

Dining one day at the house of a Dutch lady, I was charitably warned by one of the guests, to take care of myself, and not to praise Voetius. "I have no desire," said I, "to say either good or evil of your Voetius; but why do you give me this advice?" "Because madam is a Cocceian," said my neighbor. "With all my heart," said I. She added, that there were still four Cocceians in Holland, and that it was a great pity that the sect perished. A time will come in which the Jansenists, who have made so much noise among us, and who are unknown everywhere else, will have the fate of the Cocceians. An old doctor said to me: "Sir, in my youth, I have debated on the 'mandata impossibilia volentibus et conantibus.' I have written against the formulary and the pope, and I thought myself a confessor. I have been put in prison, and I thought myself a martyr. I now no longer interfere in anything, and I believe myself to be reasonable." "What are your occupations?" said I to him. "Sir," replied he, "I am very fond of money." It is thus that almost all men in their old age inwardly laugh at the follies which they ardently embraced in their youth. Sects grow old, like men. Those which have not been supported by great princes, which have not caused great mischief, grow old much sooner than others. They are epidemic maladies, which pass over like the sweating sickness and the whooping-cough.

There is no longer any question on the pious reveries of Madame Guyon. We no longer read the most unintelligible book of Maxims of the Saints, but Telemachus. We no longer remember what the eloquent Bossuet wrote against the elegant and amiable Fénelon; we give the preference to his funeral orations. In all the dispute on what is called quietism, there has been nothing good but the old tale revived of the honest woman who brought a torch to burn paradise, and a cruse of water to extinguish the fire of hell, that God should no longer be served either through hope or fear.

I will only remark one singularity in this proceeding, which is not equal to the story of the good woman; it is, that the Jesuits, who were so much accused in France by the Jansenists of having been founded by St. Ignatius, expressly to destroy the love of God, warmly interfered at Rome in favor of the pure love of Fénelon. It happened to them as to M. de Langeais, who was pursued by his wife to the Parliament of Paris, on account of his impotence, and by a girl to the Parliament of Rennes, for having rendered her pregnant. He ought to have gained one of these two causes; he lost them both. Pure love, for which the Jesuits made so much stir, was condemned at Rome, and they were always supposed at Paris to be against loving God. This opinion was so rooted in the public mind that when, some years ago, an engraving was sold representing our Lord Jesus Christ dressed as a Jesuit, a wit—apparently the loustic of the Jansenist party—wrote lines under the print intimating that the ingenious fathers had habited God like themselves, as the surest means of preventing the love of him:

Admirez l'artifice extrême
Les ces pères ingénieux:
Ils vous ont habillé comme eux,
Mon Dieu, de peur qu'on ne vous aime.