DEMOCRACY
Ordinarily there is no comparison between the crimes of the great who are always ambitious, and the crimes of the people who always want, and can want only liberty and equality. These two sentiments, Liberty and Equality, do not lead direct to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, the devastation of one's neighbours' lands, etc.; but ambitious might and the mania for power plunge into all these crimes whatever be the time, whatever be the place.
Popular government is in itself, therefore, less iniquitous, less abominable than despotic power.
The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature.
The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to devour everything.
Democracy seems suitable only to a very little country, and further it must be happily situated. Small though it be, it will make many mistakes, because it will be composed of men. Discord will reign there as in a monastery; but there will be no St. Bartholomew, no Irish massacres, no Sicilian vespers, no inquisition, no condemnation to the galleys for having taken some water from the sea without paying for it, unless one supposes this republic composed of devils in a corner of hell.
One questions every day whether a republican government is preferable to a king's government? The dispute ends always by agreeing that to govern men is very difficult. The Jews had God Himself for master; see what has happened to them on that account: nearly always have they been beaten and slaves, and to-day do you not find that they cut a pretty figure?
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:33 pm
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Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:33 pm
DESTINY
Of all the books of the Occident which have come down to us, the most ancient is Homer; it is there that one finds the customs of profane antiquity, of the gross heroes, of the gross gods, made in the image of men; but it is there that among the reveries and inconsequences, one finds too the seeds of philosophy, and above all the idea of the destiny which is master of the gods, as the gods are masters of the world.
When the magnanimous Hector wishes absolutely to fight the magnanimous Achilles, and with this object starts fleeing with all his might, and three times makes the circuit of the city before fighting, in order to have more vigour; when Homer compares fleet-of-foot Achilles, who pursues him, to a man who sleeps; when Madame Dacier goes into ecstasies of admiration over the art and mighty sense of this passage, then Jupiter wants to save great Hector who has made so many sacrifices to him, and he consults the fates; he weighs the destinies of Hector and Achilles in the balance (Iliad, liv. xxii.): he finds that the Trojan must absolutely be killed by the Greek; he cannot oppose it; and from this moment, Apollo, Hector's guardian genius, is forced to abandon him. It is not that Homer is not often prodigal, and particularly in this place, of quite contrary ideas, following the privilege of antiquity; but he is the first in whom one finds the notion of destiny. This notion, therefore, was very much in vogue in his time.
The Pharisees, among the little Jewish people, did not adopt destiny until several centuries later; for these Pharisees themselves, who were the first literates among the Jews, were very new fangled. In Alexandria they mixed a part of the dogmas of the Stoics with the old Jewish ideas. St. Jerome claims even that their sect is not much anterior to the Christian era.
The philosophers never had need either of Homer or the Pharisees to persuade themselves that everything happens through immutable laws, that everything is arranged, that everything is a necessary effect. This is how they argued.
Either the world exists by its own nature, by its physical laws, or a supreme being has formed it according to his supreme laws: in both cases, these laws are immutable; in both cases everything is necessary; heavy bodies tend towards the centre of the earth, without being able to tend to pause in the air. Pear-trees can never bear pineapples. A spaniel's instinct cannot be an ostrich's instinct; everything is arranged, in gear, limited.
Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas; there comes a time when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair and ideas.
It would be a contradiction that what was yesterday was not, that what is to-day is not; it is also a contradiction that what must be cannot be.
If you could disturb the destiny of a fly, there would be no reason that could stop your making the destiny of all the other flies, of all the other animals, of all men, of all nature; you would find yourself in the end more powerful than God.
Imbeciles say: "My doctor has extricated my aunt from a mortal malady; he has made my aunt live ten years longer than she ought to have lived." Others who affect knowledge, say: "The prudent man makes his own destiny."
But often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; it is destiny which makes them prudent.
Profound students of politics affirm that, if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton and a dozen other parliamentarians had been assassinated a week before Charles I.'s head was cut off, this king might have lived longer and died in his bed; they are right; they can add further that if the whole of England had been swallowed up in the sea, this monarch would not have perished on a scaffold near Whitehall; but things were arranged so that Charles had to have his neck severed.
Cardinal d'Ossat was doubtless more prudent than a madman in Bedlam; but is it not clear that the organs of d'Ossat the sage were made otherwise than those of the scatter-brain? just as a fox's organs are different from a stork's and a lark's.
Your doctor saved your aunt; but assuredly he did not in that contradict nature's order; he followed it. It is clear that your aunt could not stop herself being born in such and such town, that she could not stop herself having a certain malady at a particular time, that the doctor could not be elsewhere than in the town where he was, that your aunt had to call him, that he had to prescribe for her the drugs which cured her, or which one thinks cured her, when nature was the only doctor.
A peasant thinks that it has hailed on his field by chance; but the philosopher knows that there is no chance, and that it was impossible, in the constitution of this world, for it not to hail on that day in that place.
There are persons who, frightened by this truth, admit half of it as debtors who offer half to their creditors, and ask respite for the rest. "There are," they say, "some events which are necessary, and others which are not." It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and that the other were not; that a part of what happens had to happen, and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly, others not to reason at all, others to persecute those who reason.
Some say to you: "Do not believe in fatalism; for then everything appearing inevitable, you will work at nothing, you will wallow in indifference, you will love neither riches, nor honours, nor glory; you will not want to acquire anything, you will believe yourself without merit as without power; no talent will be cultivated, everything will perish through apathy."
Be not afraid, gentlemen, we shall ever have passions and prejudices, since it is our destiny to be subjected to prejudices and passions: we shall know that it no more depends on us to have much merit and great talent, than to have a good head of hair and beautiful hands: we shall be convinced that we must not be vain about anything, and yet we shall always have vanity.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you.
The owl, which feeds on mice in its ruins, said to the nightingale: "Finish singing under your beautiful shady trees, come into my hole, that I may eat you"; and the nightingale answered: "I was born to sing here, and to laugh at you."
You ask me what will become of liberty? I do not understand you. I do not know what this liberty is of which you speak; so long have you been disputing about its nature, that assuredly you are not acquainted with it. If you wish, or rather, if you are able to examine peaceably with me what it is, pass to the letter L.
Of all the books of the Occident which have come down to us, the most ancient is Homer; it is there that one finds the customs of profane antiquity, of the gross heroes, of the gross gods, made in the image of men; but it is there that among the reveries and inconsequences, one finds too the seeds of philosophy, and above all the idea of the destiny which is master of the gods, as the gods are masters of the world.
When the magnanimous Hector wishes absolutely to fight the magnanimous Achilles, and with this object starts fleeing with all his might, and three times makes the circuit of the city before fighting, in order to have more vigour; when Homer compares fleet-of-foot Achilles, who pursues him, to a man who sleeps; when Madame Dacier goes into ecstasies of admiration over the art and mighty sense of this passage, then Jupiter wants to save great Hector who has made so many sacrifices to him, and he consults the fates; he weighs the destinies of Hector and Achilles in the balance (Iliad, liv. xxii.): he finds that the Trojan must absolutely be killed by the Greek; he cannot oppose it; and from this moment, Apollo, Hector's guardian genius, is forced to abandon him. It is not that Homer is not often prodigal, and particularly in this place, of quite contrary ideas, following the privilege of antiquity; but he is the first in whom one finds the notion of destiny. This notion, therefore, was very much in vogue in his time.
The Pharisees, among the little Jewish people, did not adopt destiny until several centuries later; for these Pharisees themselves, who were the first literates among the Jews, were very new fangled. In Alexandria they mixed a part of the dogmas of the Stoics with the old Jewish ideas. St. Jerome claims even that their sect is not much anterior to the Christian era.
The philosophers never had need either of Homer or the Pharisees to persuade themselves that everything happens through immutable laws, that everything is arranged, that everything is a necessary effect. This is how they argued.
Either the world exists by its own nature, by its physical laws, or a supreme being has formed it according to his supreme laws: in both cases, these laws are immutable; in both cases everything is necessary; heavy bodies tend towards the centre of the earth, without being able to tend to pause in the air. Pear-trees can never bear pineapples. A spaniel's instinct cannot be an ostrich's instinct; everything is arranged, in gear, limited.
Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas; there comes a time when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair and ideas.
It would be a contradiction that what was yesterday was not, that what is to-day is not; it is also a contradiction that what must be cannot be.
If you could disturb the destiny of a fly, there would be no reason that could stop your making the destiny of all the other flies, of all the other animals, of all men, of all nature; you would find yourself in the end more powerful than God.
Imbeciles say: "My doctor has extricated my aunt from a mortal malady; he has made my aunt live ten years longer than she ought to have lived." Others who affect knowledge, say: "The prudent man makes his own destiny."
But often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; it is destiny which makes them prudent.
Profound students of politics affirm that, if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton and a dozen other parliamentarians had been assassinated a week before Charles I.'s head was cut off, this king might have lived longer and died in his bed; they are right; they can add further that if the whole of England had been swallowed up in the sea, this monarch would not have perished on a scaffold near Whitehall; but things were arranged so that Charles had to have his neck severed.
Cardinal d'Ossat was doubtless more prudent than a madman in Bedlam; but is it not clear that the organs of d'Ossat the sage were made otherwise than those of the scatter-brain? just as a fox's organs are different from a stork's and a lark's.
Your doctor saved your aunt; but assuredly he did not in that contradict nature's order; he followed it. It is clear that your aunt could not stop herself being born in such and such town, that she could not stop herself having a certain malady at a particular time, that the doctor could not be elsewhere than in the town where he was, that your aunt had to call him, that he had to prescribe for her the drugs which cured her, or which one thinks cured her, when nature was the only doctor.
A peasant thinks that it has hailed on his field by chance; but the philosopher knows that there is no chance, and that it was impossible, in the constitution of this world, for it not to hail on that day in that place.
There are persons who, frightened by this truth, admit half of it as debtors who offer half to their creditors, and ask respite for the rest. "There are," they say, "some events which are necessary, and others which are not." It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and that the other were not; that a part of what happens had to happen, and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly, others not to reason at all, others to persecute those who reason.
Some say to you: "Do not believe in fatalism; for then everything appearing inevitable, you will work at nothing, you will wallow in indifference, you will love neither riches, nor honours, nor glory; you will not want to acquire anything, you will believe yourself without merit as without power; no talent will be cultivated, everything will perish through apathy."
Be not afraid, gentlemen, we shall ever have passions and prejudices, since it is our destiny to be subjected to prejudices and passions: we shall know that it no more depends on us to have much merit and great talent, than to have a good head of hair and beautiful hands: we shall be convinced that we must not be vain about anything, and yet we shall always have vanity.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you.
The owl, which feeds on mice in its ruins, said to the nightingale: "Finish singing under your beautiful shady trees, come into my hole, that I may eat you"; and the nightingale answered: "I was born to sing here, and to laugh at you."
You ask me what will become of liberty? I do not understand you. I do not know what this liberty is of which you speak; so long have you been disputing about its nature, that assuredly you are not acquainted with it. If you wish, or rather, if you are able to examine peaceably with me what it is, pass to the letter L.
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Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:33 pm
DEVOUT
The word "devout" signifies "devoted"; and in the strict sense of the term this qualification should belong only to monks and nuns who make vows. But as in the Gospel there is no more mention of vows than of devout persons, this title does not in fact belong to anyone. Everyone should be equally righteous. A man who styles himself devout resembles a commoner who styles himself a marquis; he arrogates to himself a quality he does not possess. He thinks himself more worthy than his neighbour. One can forgive such foolishness in women; their frailty and their frivolity render them excusable; the poor creatures pass from a lover to a director in good faith: but one cannot pardon the rogues who direct them, who abuse their ignorance, who establish the throne of their pride on the credulity of the sex. They resolve themselves into a little mystic seraglio composed of seven or eight aged beauties, subdued by the weight of their lack of occupation, and almost always do these persons pay tribute to their new masters. No young woman without a lover, no aged devout woman without a director. Oh! the Orientals are wiser than we are! Never does a pasha say: "We supped yesterday with the Aga of the Janissaries who is my sister's lover, and the vicar of the mosque who is my wife's director."
The word "devout" signifies "devoted"; and in the strict sense of the term this qualification should belong only to monks and nuns who make vows. But as in the Gospel there is no more mention of vows than of devout persons, this title does not in fact belong to anyone. Everyone should be equally righteous. A man who styles himself devout resembles a commoner who styles himself a marquis; he arrogates to himself a quality he does not possess. He thinks himself more worthy than his neighbour. One can forgive such foolishness in women; their frailty and their frivolity render them excusable; the poor creatures pass from a lover to a director in good faith: but one cannot pardon the rogues who direct them, who abuse their ignorance, who establish the throne of their pride on the credulity of the sex. They resolve themselves into a little mystic seraglio composed of seven or eight aged beauties, subdued by the weight of their lack of occupation, and almost always do these persons pay tribute to their new masters. No young woman without a lover, no aged devout woman without a director. Oh! the Orientals are wiser than we are! Never does a pasha say: "We supped yesterday with the Aga of the Janissaries who is my sister's lover, and the vicar of the mosque who is my wife's director."
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Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:33 pm
THE ECCLESIASTICAL MINISTRY
The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous.
Instruction, exhortation, menaces of pains to come, promises of immortal beatitude, prayers, counsels, spiritual help are the only means ecclesiastics may use to try to make men virtuous here below, and happy for eternity.
All other means are repugnant to the liberty of the reason, to the nature of the soul, to the inalterable rights of the conscience, to the essence of religion and of the ecclesiastical ministry, to all the rights of the sovereign.
Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make a slave of me, I shall be no better for it.
The sovereign even has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which supposes essentially choice and liberty. My thought is subordinate to authority no more than is sickness or health.
In order to disentangle all the contradictions with which books on canon law have been filled, and to fix our ideas on the ecclesiastical ministry, let us investigate amid a thousand equivocations what the Church is.
The Church is the assembly of all the faithful summoned on certain days to pray in common, and at all times to do good actions.
The priests are persons established under the authority of the sovereign to direct these prayers and all religious worship.
A numerous Church could not exist without ecclesiastics; but these ecclesiastics are not the Church.
It is no less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who are part of civil society, had acquired rights which might trouble or destroy society, these rights ought to be suppressed.
It is still more evident that, if God has attached to the Church prerogatives or rights, neither these rights nor these prerogatives should belong exclusively either to the chief of the Church or to the ecclesiastics, because they are not the Church, just as the magistrates are not the sovereign in either a democratic state or in a monarchy.
Finally, it is quite evident that it is our souls which are under the clergy's care, solely for spiritual things.
Our soul acts internally; internal acts are thought, volition, inclinations, acquiescence in certain truths. All these acts are above all coercion, and are within the ecclesiastical minister's sphere only in so far as he must instruct and never command.
This soul acts also externally. External actions are under the civil law. Here coercion may have a place; temporal or corporal pains maintain the law by punishing those who infringe it.
Obedience to ecclesiastical order must consequently always be free and voluntary: no other should be possible. Submission, on the other hand, to civil order may be coerced and compulsory.
For the same reason, ecclesiastical punishments, always spiritual, do not reach here below any but those who are convinced inwardly of their fault. Civil pains, on the contrary, accompanied by a physical ill, have their physical effects, whether or no the guilty recognize their justice.
From this it results obviously that the authority of the clergy is and can be spiritual only; that it should not have any temporal power; that no coercive force is proper to its ministry, which would be destroyed by it.
It follows from this further that the sovereign, careful not to suffer any partition of his authority, must permit no enterprise which puts the members of society in external and civil dependence on an ecclesiastical body.
Such are the incontestable principles of real canon law, of which the rules and decisions should be judged at all times by the eternal and immutable truths which are founded on natural law and the necessary order of society.
The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous.
Instruction, exhortation, menaces of pains to come, promises of immortal beatitude, prayers, counsels, spiritual help are the only means ecclesiastics may use to try to make men virtuous here below, and happy for eternity.
All other means are repugnant to the liberty of the reason, to the nature of the soul, to the inalterable rights of the conscience, to the essence of religion and of the ecclesiastical ministry, to all the rights of the sovereign.
Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make a slave of me, I shall be no better for it.
The sovereign even has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which supposes essentially choice and liberty. My thought is subordinate to authority no more than is sickness or health.
In order to disentangle all the contradictions with which books on canon law have been filled, and to fix our ideas on the ecclesiastical ministry, let us investigate amid a thousand equivocations what the Church is.
The Church is the assembly of all the faithful summoned on certain days to pray in common, and at all times to do good actions.
The priests are persons established under the authority of the sovereign to direct these prayers and all religious worship.
A numerous Church could not exist without ecclesiastics; but these ecclesiastics are not the Church.
It is no less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who are part of civil society, had acquired rights which might trouble or destroy society, these rights ought to be suppressed.
It is still more evident that, if God has attached to the Church prerogatives or rights, neither these rights nor these prerogatives should belong exclusively either to the chief of the Church or to the ecclesiastics, because they are not the Church, just as the magistrates are not the sovereign in either a democratic state or in a monarchy.
Finally, it is quite evident that it is our souls which are under the clergy's care, solely for spiritual things.
Our soul acts internally; internal acts are thought, volition, inclinations, acquiescence in certain truths. All these acts are above all coercion, and are within the ecclesiastical minister's sphere only in so far as he must instruct and never command.
This soul acts also externally. External actions are under the civil law. Here coercion may have a place; temporal or corporal pains maintain the law by punishing those who infringe it.
Obedience to ecclesiastical order must consequently always be free and voluntary: no other should be possible. Submission, on the other hand, to civil order may be coerced and compulsory.
For the same reason, ecclesiastical punishments, always spiritual, do not reach here below any but those who are convinced inwardly of their fault. Civil pains, on the contrary, accompanied by a physical ill, have their physical effects, whether or no the guilty recognize their justice.
From this it results obviously that the authority of the clergy is and can be spiritual only; that it should not have any temporal power; that no coercive force is proper to its ministry, which would be destroyed by it.
It follows from this further that the sovereign, careful not to suffer any partition of his authority, must permit no enterprise which puts the members of society in external and civil dependence on an ecclesiastical body.
Such are the incontestable principles of real canon law, of which the rules and decisions should be judged at all times by the eternal and immutable truths which are founded on natural law and the necessary order of society.
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Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:34 pm
EMBLEM
In antiquity everything is symbol or emblem. In Chaldea it starts by putting a ram, two kids, a bull in the sky, to mark the productions of the earth in the spring. Fire is the symbol of the Deity in Persia; the celestial dog warns the Egyptians of the Nile floods; the serpent which hides its tail in its head, becomes the image of eternity. The whole of nature is represented and disguised.
In India again you find many of those old statues, uncouth and frightful, of which we have already spoken, representing virtue provided with ten great arms with which to combat vice, and which our poor missionaries have taken for the picture of the devil.
Put all these symbols of antiquity before the eyes of a man of the soundest sense, who has never heard speak of them, he will not understand anything: it is a language to be learned.
The old theological poets were in the necessity of giving God eyes, hands, feet; of announcing Him in the form of a man. St. Clement of Alexandria records some verses of Xenophanes the Colophonian (Stromates liv. v.), from which one sees that it is not merely from to-day that men have made God in their own image. Orpheus of Thrace, the first theologian of the Greeks, long before Homer, expresses himself similarly, according to the same Clement of Alexandria.
Everything being symbol and emblem, the philosophers, and especially those who had travelled in India, employed this method; their precepts were emblems and enigmas.
Do not stir the fire with a sword, that is, do not irritate angry men.
Do not hide the light under the bushel.—Do not hide the truth from men.
Abstain from beans.—Flee frequently public assemblies in which one gave one's suffrage with black or white beans.
Do not have swallows in your house.—That it may not be filled with chatterers.
In the tempest worship the echo.—In times of public trouble retire to the country.
Do not write on the snow.—Do not teach feeble and sluggish minds.
Do not eat either your heart or your brain.—Do not give yourself up to either grief or to too difficult enterprises, etc.
Such are the maxims of Pythagoras, the sense of which is not hard to understand.
The most beautiful of all the emblems is that of God, whom Timæus of Locres represents by this idea: A circle the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Plato adopted this emblem; Pascal had inserted it among the material which he intended using, and which has been called his "Thoughts."
In metaphysics, in moral philosophy, the ancients have said everything. We coincide with them, or we repeat them. All modern books of this kind are only repetitions.
It is above all among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, that these emblems, which to us appear most strange, were consecrated. It is there that the two organs of generation, the two symbols of life, were carried in procession with the greatest respect. We laugh at it, we dare treat these peoples as barbarous idiots, because they innocently thanked God for having given them existence. What would they have said if they had seen us enter our temples with the instrument of destruction at our side?
At Thebes the sins of the people were represented by a goat. On the coast of Phœnicia a naked woman, with a fish's tail, was the emblem of nature.
One must not be astonished, therefore, if this use of symbols reached the Hebrews when they had formed a body of people near the Syrian desert.
One of the most beautiful emblems of the Judaic books is this passage of Ecclesiastes: "... when the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, when the almond-tree shall flourish and the grasshopper shall be a burden: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain...."
That signifies that the old men lose their teeth, that their sight is dim, that their hair whitens like the flower of the almond-tree, that their feet swell like the grasshopper, that they are no more fit for engendering children, and that then they must prepare for the great journey.
The "Song of Songs" is (as one knows) a continual emblem of the marriage of Jesus Christ with the Church. It is an emblem from beginning to end. Especially does the ingenious Dom Calmet demonstrate that the palm-tree to which the well-beloved goes is the cross to which our Lord Jesus Christ was condemned. But it must be avowed that a pure and healthy moral philosophy is still preferable to these allegories.
One sees in this people's books a crowd of typical emblems which revolt us to-day and which exercise our incredulity and our mockery, but which appeared ordinary and simple to the Asiatic peoples.
In Ezekiel are images which appear to us as licentious and revolting: in those times they were merely natural. There are thirty examples in the "Song of Songs," model of the most chaste union. Remark carefully that these expressions, these images are always quite serious, and that in no book of this distant antiquity will you find the least mockery on the great subject of generation. When lust is condemned it is in definite terms; but never to excite to passion, nor to make the smallest pleasantry. This far-distant antiquity did not have its Martial, its Catullus, or its Petronius.
It results from all the Jewish prophets and from all the Jewish books, as from all the books which instruct us in the usages of the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Phœnicians, the Syrians, the Indians, the Egyptians; it results, I say, that their customs were not ours, that this ancient world in no way resembled our world. Go from Gibraltar to Mequinez merely, the manners are no longer the same; no longer does one find the same ideas; two leagues of sea have changed everything.
In antiquity everything is symbol or emblem. In Chaldea it starts by putting a ram, two kids, a bull in the sky, to mark the productions of the earth in the spring. Fire is the symbol of the Deity in Persia; the celestial dog warns the Egyptians of the Nile floods; the serpent which hides its tail in its head, becomes the image of eternity. The whole of nature is represented and disguised.
In India again you find many of those old statues, uncouth and frightful, of which we have already spoken, representing virtue provided with ten great arms with which to combat vice, and which our poor missionaries have taken for the picture of the devil.
Put all these symbols of antiquity before the eyes of a man of the soundest sense, who has never heard speak of them, he will not understand anything: it is a language to be learned.
The old theological poets were in the necessity of giving God eyes, hands, feet; of announcing Him in the form of a man. St. Clement of Alexandria records some verses of Xenophanes the Colophonian (Stromates liv. v.), from which one sees that it is not merely from to-day that men have made God in their own image. Orpheus of Thrace, the first theologian of the Greeks, long before Homer, expresses himself similarly, according to the same Clement of Alexandria.
Everything being symbol and emblem, the philosophers, and especially those who had travelled in India, employed this method; their precepts were emblems and enigmas.
Do not stir the fire with a sword, that is, do not irritate angry men.
Do not hide the light under the bushel.—Do not hide the truth from men.
Abstain from beans.—Flee frequently public assemblies in which one gave one's suffrage with black or white beans.
Do not have swallows in your house.—That it may not be filled with chatterers.
In the tempest worship the echo.—In times of public trouble retire to the country.
Do not write on the snow.—Do not teach feeble and sluggish minds.
Do not eat either your heart or your brain.—Do not give yourself up to either grief or to too difficult enterprises, etc.
Such are the maxims of Pythagoras, the sense of which is not hard to understand.
The most beautiful of all the emblems is that of God, whom Timæus of Locres represents by this idea: A circle the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Plato adopted this emblem; Pascal had inserted it among the material which he intended using, and which has been called his "Thoughts."
In metaphysics, in moral philosophy, the ancients have said everything. We coincide with them, or we repeat them. All modern books of this kind are only repetitions.
It is above all among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, that these emblems, which to us appear most strange, were consecrated. It is there that the two organs of generation, the two symbols of life, were carried in procession with the greatest respect. We laugh at it, we dare treat these peoples as barbarous idiots, because they innocently thanked God for having given them existence. What would they have said if they had seen us enter our temples with the instrument of destruction at our side?
At Thebes the sins of the people were represented by a goat. On the coast of Phœnicia a naked woman, with a fish's tail, was the emblem of nature.
One must not be astonished, therefore, if this use of symbols reached the Hebrews when they had formed a body of people near the Syrian desert.
One of the most beautiful emblems of the Judaic books is this passage of Ecclesiastes: "... when the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, when the almond-tree shall flourish and the grasshopper shall be a burden: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain...."
That signifies that the old men lose their teeth, that their sight is dim, that their hair whitens like the flower of the almond-tree, that their feet swell like the grasshopper, that they are no more fit for engendering children, and that then they must prepare for the great journey.
The "Song of Songs" is (as one knows) a continual emblem of the marriage of Jesus Christ with the Church. It is an emblem from beginning to end. Especially does the ingenious Dom Calmet demonstrate that the palm-tree to which the well-beloved goes is the cross to which our Lord Jesus Christ was condemned. But it must be avowed that a pure and healthy moral philosophy is still preferable to these allegories.
One sees in this people's books a crowd of typical emblems which revolt us to-day and which exercise our incredulity and our mockery, but which appeared ordinary and simple to the Asiatic peoples.
In Ezekiel are images which appear to us as licentious and revolting: in those times they were merely natural. There are thirty examples in the "Song of Songs," model of the most chaste union. Remark carefully that these expressions, these images are always quite serious, and that in no book of this distant antiquity will you find the least mockery on the great subject of generation. When lust is condemned it is in definite terms; but never to excite to passion, nor to make the smallest pleasantry. This far-distant antiquity did not have its Martial, its Catullus, or its Petronius.
It results from all the Jewish prophets and from all the Jewish books, as from all the books which instruct us in the usages of the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Phœnicians, the Syrians, the Indians, the Egyptians; it results, I say, that their customs were not ours, that this ancient world in no way resembled our world. Go from Gibraltar to Mequinez merely, the manners are no longer the same; no longer does one find the same ideas; two leagues of sea have changed everything.
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Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:34 pm
ON THE ENGLISH THEATRE
I have cast my eyes on an edition of Shakespeare issued by Master Samuel Johnson. I saw there that foreigners who are astonished that in the plays of the great Shakespeare a Roman senator plays the buffoon, and that a king appears on the stage drunk, are treated as little-minded. I do not desire to suspect Master Johnson of being a sorry jester, and of being too fond of wine; but I find it somewhat extraordinary that he counts buffoonery and drunkenness among the beauties of the tragic stage: and no less singular is the reason he gives, that the poet disdains accidental distinctions of circumstance and country, like a painter who, content with having painted the figure, neglects the drapery. The comparison would be more just if he were speaking of a painter who in a noble subject should introduce ridiculous grotesques, should paint Alexander the Great mounted on an ass in the battle of Arbela, and Darius' wife drinking at an inn with rapscallions.
But there is one thing more extraordinary than all, that is that Shakespeare is a genius. The Italians, the French, the men of letters of all other countries, who have not spent some time in England, take him only for a clown, for a joker far inferior to Harlequin, for the most contemptible buffoon who has ever amused the populace. Nevertheless, it is in this same man that one finds pieces which exalt the imagination and which stir the heart to its depths. It is Truth, it is Nature herself who speaks her own language with no admixture of artifice. It is of the sublime, and the author has in no wise sought it.
What can one conclude from this contrast of grandeur and sordidness, of sublime reason and uncouth folly, in short from all the contrasts that we see in Shakespeare? That he would have been a perfect poet had he lived in the time of Addison.
The famous Addison, who flourished under Queen Anne, is perhaps of all English writers the one who best knew how to guide genius with taste. He had a correct style, an imagination discreet in expression, elegance, strength and simplicity in his verse and in his prose. A friend of propriety and orderliness, he wanted tragedy to be written with dignity, and it is thus that his "Cato" is composed.
From the very first act the verses are worthy of Virgil, and the sentiments worthy of Cato. There is no theatre in Europe where the scene of Juba and Syphax was not applauded as a masterpiece of skill, of well-developed characters, of fine contrasts, and of pure and noble diction. Literary Europe, which knows the translations of this piece, applauded even to the philosophic traits with which the rôle of Cato is filled.
The piece had the great success which its beauty of detail merited, and which was assured to it by the troubles in England to which this tragedy was in more than one place a striking allusion. But the appositeness of these allusions having passed, the verse being only beautiful, the maxims being only noble and just, and the piece being cold, people no longer felt anything more than the coldness. Nothing is more beautiful than Virgil's second canto; recite it on the stage, it will bore: on the stage one must have passion, live dialogue, action. People soon returned to Shakespeare's uncouth but captivating aberrations.
I have cast my eyes on an edition of Shakespeare issued by Master Samuel Johnson. I saw there that foreigners who are astonished that in the plays of the great Shakespeare a Roman senator plays the buffoon, and that a king appears on the stage drunk, are treated as little-minded. I do not desire to suspect Master Johnson of being a sorry jester, and of being too fond of wine; but I find it somewhat extraordinary that he counts buffoonery and drunkenness among the beauties of the tragic stage: and no less singular is the reason he gives, that the poet disdains accidental distinctions of circumstance and country, like a painter who, content with having painted the figure, neglects the drapery. The comparison would be more just if he were speaking of a painter who in a noble subject should introduce ridiculous grotesques, should paint Alexander the Great mounted on an ass in the battle of Arbela, and Darius' wife drinking at an inn with rapscallions.
But there is one thing more extraordinary than all, that is that Shakespeare is a genius. The Italians, the French, the men of letters of all other countries, who have not spent some time in England, take him only for a clown, for a joker far inferior to Harlequin, for the most contemptible buffoon who has ever amused the populace. Nevertheless, it is in this same man that one finds pieces which exalt the imagination and which stir the heart to its depths. It is Truth, it is Nature herself who speaks her own language with no admixture of artifice. It is of the sublime, and the author has in no wise sought it.
What can one conclude from this contrast of grandeur and sordidness, of sublime reason and uncouth folly, in short from all the contrasts that we see in Shakespeare? That he would have been a perfect poet had he lived in the time of Addison.
The famous Addison, who flourished under Queen Anne, is perhaps of all English writers the one who best knew how to guide genius with taste. He had a correct style, an imagination discreet in expression, elegance, strength and simplicity in his verse and in his prose. A friend of propriety and orderliness, he wanted tragedy to be written with dignity, and it is thus that his "Cato" is composed.
From the very first act the verses are worthy of Virgil, and the sentiments worthy of Cato. There is no theatre in Europe where the scene of Juba and Syphax was not applauded as a masterpiece of skill, of well-developed characters, of fine contrasts, and of pure and noble diction. Literary Europe, which knows the translations of this piece, applauded even to the philosophic traits with which the rôle of Cato is filled.
The piece had the great success which its beauty of detail merited, and which was assured to it by the troubles in England to which this tragedy was in more than one place a striking allusion. But the appositeness of these allusions having passed, the verse being only beautiful, the maxims being only noble and just, and the piece being cold, people no longer felt anything more than the coldness. Nothing is more beautiful than Virgil's second canto; recite it on the stage, it will bore: on the stage one must have passion, live dialogue, action. People soon returned to Shakespeare's uncouth but captivating aberrations.
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Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:34 pm
ENVY
One knows well enough what antiquity has said of this shameful passion, and what the moderns have repeated. Hesiod is the first classic author who speaks of it.
"The potter is envious of the potter, the artisan of the artisan, the poor man even of the poor man, the musician of the musician (or if one would give another sense to the word Aoidos) the poet of the poet."
Long before Hesiod, Job had said: "Envy slayeth the silly one" (Job. chap. v. verse 2).
I think that Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," was the first to try to prove that envy is a very good thing, a very useful passion. His first reason is that envy is as natural to man as hunger and thirst; that it can be found in children, as well as in horses and dogs. Do you want your children to hate each other, kiss one more than the other; the secret is infallible.
He maintains that the first thing that two young women meeting each other do is to cast about for what is ridiculous in each other, and the second to flatter each other.
He believes that without envy the arts would be indifferently cultivated, and that Raphael would not have been a great painter if he had not been jealous of Michael Angelo.
Mandeville has taken emulation for envy, maybe; maybe, also, emulation is only envy kept within the bounds of decency.
Michael Angelo might say to Raphael: "Your envy has only led you to work still better than me; you have not decried me, you have not intrigued against me with the Pope, you have not tried to have me excommunicated for having put cripples and one-eyed men in paradise, and succulent cardinals with beautiful women naked as your hand in hell, in my picture of the last judgment. Your envy is very praiseworthy; you are a fine envious fellow; let us be good friends."
But if the envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the turpitude of his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus," some "Letters of Madame la Comtesse," some "Années Littéraires," this animal displays an envy that is good for nothing, and for which Mandeville could never make an apology.
One asks why the ancients thought that the eye of the envious man bewitched those who looked at it. It is the envious, rather, who are bewitched.
Descartes says: "That envy impels the yellow bile which comes from the lower part of the liver, and the black bile which comes from the spleen, which is diffused from the heart through the arteries, etc." But as no kind of bile is formed in the spleen, Descartes, by speaking thus, does not seem to merit too much that his natural philosophy should be envied.
A certain Voët or Voëtius, a theological scamp, who accused Descartes of atheism, was very ill with the black bile; but he knew still less than Descartes how his detestable bile was diffused in his blood.
Madame Pernelle is right: "The envious will die, but envy never." (Tartufe, Act v, Scene iii.)
But it is good proverb which says that "it is better to be envious than to have pity." Let us be envious, therefore, as hard as we can.
One knows well enough what antiquity has said of this shameful passion, and what the moderns have repeated. Hesiod is the first classic author who speaks of it.
"The potter is envious of the potter, the artisan of the artisan, the poor man even of the poor man, the musician of the musician (or if one would give another sense to the word Aoidos) the poet of the poet."
Long before Hesiod, Job had said: "Envy slayeth the silly one" (Job. chap. v. verse 2).
I think that Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," was the first to try to prove that envy is a very good thing, a very useful passion. His first reason is that envy is as natural to man as hunger and thirst; that it can be found in children, as well as in horses and dogs. Do you want your children to hate each other, kiss one more than the other; the secret is infallible.
He maintains that the first thing that two young women meeting each other do is to cast about for what is ridiculous in each other, and the second to flatter each other.
He believes that without envy the arts would be indifferently cultivated, and that Raphael would not have been a great painter if he had not been jealous of Michael Angelo.
Mandeville has taken emulation for envy, maybe; maybe, also, emulation is only envy kept within the bounds of decency.
Michael Angelo might say to Raphael: "Your envy has only led you to work still better than me; you have not decried me, you have not intrigued against me with the Pope, you have not tried to have me excommunicated for having put cripples and one-eyed men in paradise, and succulent cardinals with beautiful women naked as your hand in hell, in my picture of the last judgment. Your envy is very praiseworthy; you are a fine envious fellow; let us be good friends."
But if the envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the turpitude of his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus," some "Letters of Madame la Comtesse," some "Années Littéraires," this animal displays an envy that is good for nothing, and for which Mandeville could never make an apology.
One asks why the ancients thought that the eye of the envious man bewitched those who looked at it. It is the envious, rather, who are bewitched.
Descartes says: "That envy impels the yellow bile which comes from the lower part of the liver, and the black bile which comes from the spleen, which is diffused from the heart through the arteries, etc." But as no kind of bile is formed in the spleen, Descartes, by speaking thus, does not seem to merit too much that his natural philosophy should be envied.
A certain Voët or Voëtius, a theological scamp, who accused Descartes of atheism, was very ill with the black bile; but he knew still less than Descartes how his detestable bile was diffused in his blood.
Madame Pernelle is right: "The envious will die, but envy never." (Tartufe, Act v, Scene iii.)
But it is good proverb which says that "it is better to be envious than to have pity." Let us be envious, therefore, as hard as we can.
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Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:35 pm
EQUALITY
SECTION I
It is clear that men, enjoying the faculties connected with their nature, are equal; they are equal when they perform animal functions, and when they exercise their understanding. The King of China, the Great Mogul, the Padisha of Turkey, cannot say to the least of men: "I forbid you to digest, to go to the privy and to think." All the animals of each species are equal among themselves. Animals by nature have over us the advantage of independence. If a bull which is wooing a heifer is driven away with the blows of the horns by a stronger bull, it goes in search of another mistress in another field, and lives free. A cock, beaten by a cock, consoles itself in another poultry-house. It is not so with us. A little vizier exiles a bostangi to Lemnos: the vizier Azem exiles the little vizier to Tenedos: the padisha exiles the little vizier Azem to Rhodes: the Janissaries put the padisha in prison, and elect another who will exile good Mussulmans as he chooses; people will still be very obliged to him if he limits his sacred authority to this little exercise.
If this world were what it seems it should be, if man could find everywhere in it an easy subsistence, and a climate suitable to his nature, it is clear that it would be impossible for one man to enslave another. If this globe were covered with wholesome fruits; if the air, which should contribute to our life, gave us no diseases and a premature death; if man had no need of lodging and bed other than those of the buck and the deer; then the Gengis-kans and the Tamerlans would have no servants other than their children, who would be folk honourable enough to help them in their old age.
In the natural state enjoyed by all untamed quadrupeds, birds and reptiles, man would be as happy as they; domination would then be a chimera, an absurdity of which no one would think; for why seek servants when you have no need of their service?
If it came into the head of some individual of tyrannous mind and brawny arm to enslave a neighbour less strong than he, the thing would be impossible; the oppressed would be on the Danube before the oppressor had taken his measures on the Volga.
All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs; the poverty connected with our species subordinates one man to another; it is not the inequality which is the real misfortune, it is the dependence. It matters very little that So-and-so calls himself "His Highness," and So-and-so "His Holiness"; but to serve the one or the other is hard.
A big family has cultivated fruitful soil; two little families near by have thankless and rebellious fields; the two poor families have to serve the opulent family, or slaughter it: there is no difficulty in that. One of the two indigent families offers its arms to the rich family in order to have bread; the other goes to attack it and is beaten. The serving family is the origin of the servants and the workmen; the beaten family is the origin of the slaves.
In our unhappy world it is impossible for men living in society not to be divided into two classes, the one the rich that commands, the other the poor that serves; and these two are subdivided into a thousand, and these thousand still have different gradations.
When the prizes are drawn you come to us: "I am a man like you," you say. "I have two hands and two feet, as much pride as you, nay more, a mind as disordered, at least, as inconsequent, as contradictory as yours. I am a citizen of San Marino, or of Ragusa, or Vaugirard: give me my share of the land. In our known hemisphere there are about fifty thousand million arpents to cultivate, some passable, some sterile. We are only about a thousand million featherless bipeds in this continent; that makes fifty arpents apiece: be just; give me my fifty arpents."
"Go and take them in the land of the Cafres," we answer, "or the Hottentots, or the Samoyedes; come to an amicable arrangement with them; here all the shares are taken. If among us you want to eat, be clothed, lodged, warmed, work for us as your father did; serve us or amuse us, and you will be paid; otherwise you will be obliged to ask charity, which would be too degrading to your sublime nature, and would stop your being really the equal of kings, and even of country parsons, according to the pretensions of your noble pride."
SECTION II
All the poor are not unhappy. The majority were born in that state, and continual work stops their feeling their position too keenly; but when they feel it, then one sees wars, like that of the popular party against the senate party in Rome, like those of the peasants in Germany, England and France. All these wars finish sooner or later with the subjection of the people, because the powerful have money, and money is master of everything in a state: I say in a state; for it is not the same between nations. The nation which makes the best use of the sword will always subjugate the nation which has more gold and less courage.
All men are born with a sufficiently violent liking for domination, wealth and pleasure, and with much taste for idleness; consequently, all men want their money and the wives or daughters of others, to be their master, to subject them to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at least to do only very agreeable things. You see clearly that with these fine inclinations it is as impossible for men to be equal as it is impossible for two predicants or two professors of theology not to be jealous of each other.
The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless there is an infinity of useful men who possess nothing at all; for it is certain that a man who is well off will not leave his own land to come to till yours; and if you have need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary to the Privy Council who will make them for you. Equality, therefore, is at once the most natural thing and the most fantastic.
As men go to excess in everything when they can, this inequality has been exaggerated. It has been maintained in many countries that it was not permissible for a citizen to leave the country where chance has caused him to be born; the sense of this law is visibly: "This land is so bad and so badly governed, that we forbid any individual to leave it, for fear that everyone will leave it." Do better: make all your subjects want to live in your country, and foreigners to come to it.
All men have the right in the bottom of their hearts to think themselves entirely equal to other men: it does not follow from that that the cardinal's cook should order his master to prepare him his dinner; but the cook can say: "I am a man like my master; like him I was born crying; like me he will die with the same pangs and the same ceremonies. Both of us perform the same animal functions. If the Turks take possession of Rome, and if then I am cardinal and my master cook, I shall take him into my service." This discourse is reasonable and just; but while waiting for the Great Turk to take possession of Rome, the cook must do his duty, or else all human society is perverted.
As regards a man who is neither a cardinal's cook, nor endowed with any other employment in the state; as regards a private person who is connected with nothing, but who is vexed at being received everywhere with an air of being patronized or scorned, who sees quite clearly that many monsignors have no more knowledge, wit or virtue than he, and who at times is bored at waiting in their antechambers, what should he decide to do? Why, to take himself off.
SECTION I
It is clear that men, enjoying the faculties connected with their nature, are equal; they are equal when they perform animal functions, and when they exercise their understanding. The King of China, the Great Mogul, the Padisha of Turkey, cannot say to the least of men: "I forbid you to digest, to go to the privy and to think." All the animals of each species are equal among themselves. Animals by nature have over us the advantage of independence. If a bull which is wooing a heifer is driven away with the blows of the horns by a stronger bull, it goes in search of another mistress in another field, and lives free. A cock, beaten by a cock, consoles itself in another poultry-house. It is not so with us. A little vizier exiles a bostangi to Lemnos: the vizier Azem exiles the little vizier to Tenedos: the padisha exiles the little vizier Azem to Rhodes: the Janissaries put the padisha in prison, and elect another who will exile good Mussulmans as he chooses; people will still be very obliged to him if he limits his sacred authority to this little exercise.
If this world were what it seems it should be, if man could find everywhere in it an easy subsistence, and a climate suitable to his nature, it is clear that it would be impossible for one man to enslave another. If this globe were covered with wholesome fruits; if the air, which should contribute to our life, gave us no diseases and a premature death; if man had no need of lodging and bed other than those of the buck and the deer; then the Gengis-kans and the Tamerlans would have no servants other than their children, who would be folk honourable enough to help them in their old age.
In the natural state enjoyed by all untamed quadrupeds, birds and reptiles, man would be as happy as they; domination would then be a chimera, an absurdity of which no one would think; for why seek servants when you have no need of their service?
If it came into the head of some individual of tyrannous mind and brawny arm to enslave a neighbour less strong than he, the thing would be impossible; the oppressed would be on the Danube before the oppressor had taken his measures on the Volga.
All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs; the poverty connected with our species subordinates one man to another; it is not the inequality which is the real misfortune, it is the dependence. It matters very little that So-and-so calls himself "His Highness," and So-and-so "His Holiness"; but to serve the one or the other is hard.
A big family has cultivated fruitful soil; two little families near by have thankless and rebellious fields; the two poor families have to serve the opulent family, or slaughter it: there is no difficulty in that. One of the two indigent families offers its arms to the rich family in order to have bread; the other goes to attack it and is beaten. The serving family is the origin of the servants and the workmen; the beaten family is the origin of the slaves.
In our unhappy world it is impossible for men living in society not to be divided into two classes, the one the rich that commands, the other the poor that serves; and these two are subdivided into a thousand, and these thousand still have different gradations.
When the prizes are drawn you come to us: "I am a man like you," you say. "I have two hands and two feet, as much pride as you, nay more, a mind as disordered, at least, as inconsequent, as contradictory as yours. I am a citizen of San Marino, or of Ragusa, or Vaugirard: give me my share of the land. In our known hemisphere there are about fifty thousand million arpents to cultivate, some passable, some sterile. We are only about a thousand million featherless bipeds in this continent; that makes fifty arpents apiece: be just; give me my fifty arpents."
"Go and take them in the land of the Cafres," we answer, "or the Hottentots, or the Samoyedes; come to an amicable arrangement with them; here all the shares are taken. If among us you want to eat, be clothed, lodged, warmed, work for us as your father did; serve us or amuse us, and you will be paid; otherwise you will be obliged to ask charity, which would be too degrading to your sublime nature, and would stop your being really the equal of kings, and even of country parsons, according to the pretensions of your noble pride."
SECTION II
All the poor are not unhappy. The majority were born in that state, and continual work stops their feeling their position too keenly; but when they feel it, then one sees wars, like that of the popular party against the senate party in Rome, like those of the peasants in Germany, England and France. All these wars finish sooner or later with the subjection of the people, because the powerful have money, and money is master of everything in a state: I say in a state; for it is not the same between nations. The nation which makes the best use of the sword will always subjugate the nation which has more gold and less courage.
All men are born with a sufficiently violent liking for domination, wealth and pleasure, and with much taste for idleness; consequently, all men want their money and the wives or daughters of others, to be their master, to subject them to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at least to do only very agreeable things. You see clearly that with these fine inclinations it is as impossible for men to be equal as it is impossible for two predicants or two professors of theology not to be jealous of each other.
The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless there is an infinity of useful men who possess nothing at all; for it is certain that a man who is well off will not leave his own land to come to till yours; and if you have need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary to the Privy Council who will make them for you. Equality, therefore, is at once the most natural thing and the most fantastic.
As men go to excess in everything when they can, this inequality has been exaggerated. It has been maintained in many countries that it was not permissible for a citizen to leave the country where chance has caused him to be born; the sense of this law is visibly: "This land is so bad and so badly governed, that we forbid any individual to leave it, for fear that everyone will leave it." Do better: make all your subjects want to live in your country, and foreigners to come to it.
All men have the right in the bottom of their hearts to think themselves entirely equal to other men: it does not follow from that that the cardinal's cook should order his master to prepare him his dinner; but the cook can say: "I am a man like my master; like him I was born crying; like me he will die with the same pangs and the same ceremonies. Both of us perform the same animal functions. If the Turks take possession of Rome, and if then I am cardinal and my master cook, I shall take him into my service." This discourse is reasonable and just; but while waiting for the Great Turk to take possession of Rome, the cook must do his duty, or else all human society is perverted.
As regards a man who is neither a cardinal's cook, nor endowed with any other employment in the state; as regards a private person who is connected with nothing, but who is vexed at being received everywhere with an air of being patronized or scorned, who sees quite clearly that many monsignors have no more knowledge, wit or virtue than he, and who at times is bored at waiting in their antechambers, what should he decide to do? Why, to take himself off.
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Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:35 pm
EXPIATION
Maybe the most beautiful institution of antiquity is that solemn ceremony which repressed crimes by warning that they must be punished, and which calmed the despair of the guilty by making them atone for their transgressions by penitences. Remorse must necessarily have preceded the expiations; for the maladies are older than the medicine, and all needs have existed before relief.
It was, therefore, before all the creeds, a natural religion, which troubled man's heart when in his ignorance or in his hastiness he had committed an inhuman action. A friend killed his friend in a quarrel, a brother killed his brother, a jealous and frantic lover even killed her without whom he could not live. The head of a nation condemned a virtuous man, a useful citizen. These are men in despair, if they have sensibility. Their conscience harries them; nothing is more true; and it is the height of unhappiness. Only two choices remain, either reparation, or a settling in crime. All sensitive souls choose the first, monsters choose the second.
As soon as religions were established, there were expiations; the ceremonies accompanying them were ridiculous: for what connection between the water of the Ganges and a murder? how could a man repair a homicide by bathing himself? We have already remarked this excess of aberration and absurdity, of imagining that he who washes his body washes his soul, and wipes away the stains of bad actions.
The water of the Nile had later the same virtue as the water of the Ganges: to these purifications other ceremonies were added: I avow that they were still more impertinent. The Egyptians took two goats, and drew lots for which of the two should be thrown below, charged with the sins of the guilty. The name of "Hazazel," the expiator, was given to this goat. What connection, I ask you, between a goat and a man's crime?
It is true that since, God permitted this ceremony to be sanctified among the Jews our fathers, who took so many Egyptian rites; but doubtless it was the repentance, and not the goat, which purified the Jewish souls.
Jason, having killed Absyrthe his step-brother, comes, it is said, with Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great magician. Circe absolves them with a sucking-pig and salt cakes. That may make a fairly good dish, but can barely either pay for Absyrthe's blood or render Jason and Medea more honourable people, unless they avow a sincere repentance while eating their sucking-pig.
Orestes' expiation (he had avenged his father by murdering his mother) was to go to steal a statue from the Tartars of Crimea. The statue must have been very badly made, and there was nothing to gain on such an effect. Since then we have done better, we have invented the mysteries; the guilty might there receive their absolution by undergoing painful ordeals, and by swearing that they would lead a new life. It is from this oath that the new members were called among all nations by a name which corresponds to initiates, qui ineunt vitam novam, who began a new career, who entered into the path of virtue.
The Christian catechumens were called initiates only when they were baptised.
It is undoubted that in these mysteries one was washed of one's faults only by the oath to be virtuous; that is so true that the hierophant in all the Greek mysteries, in sending away the assembly, pronounced these two Egyptian words—"Koth, ompheth, watch, be pure"; which is a proof at once that the mysteries came originally from Egypt, and that they were invented only to make men better.
The sages in all times did what they could, therefore, to inspire virtue, and not to reduce human frailty to despair; but also there are crimes so horrible that no mystery accorded expiation for them. Nero, for all that he was emperor, could not get himself initiated into the mysteries of Ceres. Constantine, on the Report of Zosimus, could not obtain pardon for his crimes: he was stained with the blood of his wife, his son and all his kindred. It was in the interest of the human race that such great transgressions should remain without expiation, in order that absolution should not invite their committal, and that universal horror might sometimes stop the villains.
The Roman Catholics have expiations which are called "penitences."
By the laws of the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire, crimes were expiated with money. That was called compounding, componat cum decem, viginti, triginta solidis. It cost two hundred sous of that time to kill a priest, and four hundred for killing a bishop; so that a bishop was worth precisely two priests.
Having thus compounded with men, one compounded with God, when confession was generally established. Finally, Pope John XXII., who made money out of everything, prepared a tariff of sins.
The absolution of an incest, four turonenses for a layman; ab incestu pro laico in foro conscientiæ turonenses quatuor. For the man and the woman who have committed incest, eighteen turonenses four ducats and nine carlins. That is not just; if one person pays only four turonenses, the two owed only eight turonenses.
Sodomy and bestiality are put at the same rate, with the inhibitory clause to title XLIII: that amounts to ninety turonenses twelve ducats and six carlins: cum inhibitione turonenses 90, ducatos 12, carlinos 6, etc.
It is very difficult to believe that Leo X. was so imprudent as to have this impost printed in 1514, as is asserted; but it must be considered that no spark appeared at that time of the conflagration which reformers kindled later, that the court of Rome slumbered on the people's credulity, and neglected to cover its exactions with the lightest veil. The public sale of indulgences, which followed soon after, makes it clear that this court took no precaution to hide the turpitudes to which so many nations were accustomed. As soon as complaints against the Church's abuses burst forth, the court did what it could to suppress the book; but it could not succeed.
If I dare give my opinion of this impost, I think that the various editions are not reliable; the prices are not at all proportionate: these prices do not agree with those which are alleged by d'Aubigné, grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, in the "Confession de Sanci"; he rates virginity at six gros, and incest with his mother and sister at five gros; this account is ridiculous. I think that there was in fact a tariff established in the datary's office, for those who came to Rome to be absolved, or to bargain for dispensations; but that the enemies of Rome added much to it in order to render it more odious.
What is quite certain is that these imposts were never authorized by any council; that it was an enormous abuse invented by avarice, and respected by those whose interest it was not to abolish it. The buyers and the sellers were equally satisfied: thus, barely anybody protested, until the troubles of the reformation. It must be admitted that an exact note of all these imposts would be of great service to the history of the human mind.
Maybe the most beautiful institution of antiquity is that solemn ceremony which repressed crimes by warning that they must be punished, and which calmed the despair of the guilty by making them atone for their transgressions by penitences. Remorse must necessarily have preceded the expiations; for the maladies are older than the medicine, and all needs have existed before relief.
It was, therefore, before all the creeds, a natural religion, which troubled man's heart when in his ignorance or in his hastiness he had committed an inhuman action. A friend killed his friend in a quarrel, a brother killed his brother, a jealous and frantic lover even killed her without whom he could not live. The head of a nation condemned a virtuous man, a useful citizen. These are men in despair, if they have sensibility. Their conscience harries them; nothing is more true; and it is the height of unhappiness. Only two choices remain, either reparation, or a settling in crime. All sensitive souls choose the first, monsters choose the second.
As soon as religions were established, there were expiations; the ceremonies accompanying them were ridiculous: for what connection between the water of the Ganges and a murder? how could a man repair a homicide by bathing himself? We have already remarked this excess of aberration and absurdity, of imagining that he who washes his body washes his soul, and wipes away the stains of bad actions.
The water of the Nile had later the same virtue as the water of the Ganges: to these purifications other ceremonies were added: I avow that they were still more impertinent. The Egyptians took two goats, and drew lots for which of the two should be thrown below, charged with the sins of the guilty. The name of "Hazazel," the expiator, was given to this goat. What connection, I ask you, between a goat and a man's crime?
It is true that since, God permitted this ceremony to be sanctified among the Jews our fathers, who took so many Egyptian rites; but doubtless it was the repentance, and not the goat, which purified the Jewish souls.
Jason, having killed Absyrthe his step-brother, comes, it is said, with Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great magician. Circe absolves them with a sucking-pig and salt cakes. That may make a fairly good dish, but can barely either pay for Absyrthe's blood or render Jason and Medea more honourable people, unless they avow a sincere repentance while eating their sucking-pig.
Orestes' expiation (he had avenged his father by murdering his mother) was to go to steal a statue from the Tartars of Crimea. The statue must have been very badly made, and there was nothing to gain on such an effect. Since then we have done better, we have invented the mysteries; the guilty might there receive their absolution by undergoing painful ordeals, and by swearing that they would lead a new life. It is from this oath that the new members were called among all nations by a name which corresponds to initiates, qui ineunt vitam novam, who began a new career, who entered into the path of virtue.
The Christian catechumens were called initiates only when they were baptised.
It is undoubted that in these mysteries one was washed of one's faults only by the oath to be virtuous; that is so true that the hierophant in all the Greek mysteries, in sending away the assembly, pronounced these two Egyptian words—"Koth, ompheth, watch, be pure"; which is a proof at once that the mysteries came originally from Egypt, and that they were invented only to make men better.
The sages in all times did what they could, therefore, to inspire virtue, and not to reduce human frailty to despair; but also there are crimes so horrible that no mystery accorded expiation for them. Nero, for all that he was emperor, could not get himself initiated into the mysteries of Ceres. Constantine, on the Report of Zosimus, could not obtain pardon for his crimes: he was stained with the blood of his wife, his son and all his kindred. It was in the interest of the human race that such great transgressions should remain without expiation, in order that absolution should not invite their committal, and that universal horror might sometimes stop the villains.
The Roman Catholics have expiations which are called "penitences."
By the laws of the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire, crimes were expiated with money. That was called compounding, componat cum decem, viginti, triginta solidis. It cost two hundred sous of that time to kill a priest, and four hundred for killing a bishop; so that a bishop was worth precisely two priests.
Having thus compounded with men, one compounded with God, when confession was generally established. Finally, Pope John XXII., who made money out of everything, prepared a tariff of sins.
The absolution of an incest, four turonenses for a layman; ab incestu pro laico in foro conscientiæ turonenses quatuor. For the man and the woman who have committed incest, eighteen turonenses four ducats and nine carlins. That is not just; if one person pays only four turonenses, the two owed only eight turonenses.
Sodomy and bestiality are put at the same rate, with the inhibitory clause to title XLIII: that amounts to ninety turonenses twelve ducats and six carlins: cum inhibitione turonenses 90, ducatos 12, carlinos 6, etc.
It is very difficult to believe that Leo X. was so imprudent as to have this impost printed in 1514, as is asserted; but it must be considered that no spark appeared at that time of the conflagration which reformers kindled later, that the court of Rome slumbered on the people's credulity, and neglected to cover its exactions with the lightest veil. The public sale of indulgences, which followed soon after, makes it clear that this court took no precaution to hide the turpitudes to which so many nations were accustomed. As soon as complaints against the Church's abuses burst forth, the court did what it could to suppress the book; but it could not succeed.
If I dare give my opinion of this impost, I think that the various editions are not reliable; the prices are not at all proportionate: these prices do not agree with those which are alleged by d'Aubigné, grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, in the "Confession de Sanci"; he rates virginity at six gros, and incest with his mother and sister at five gros; this account is ridiculous. I think that there was in fact a tariff established in the datary's office, for those who came to Rome to be absolved, or to bargain for dispensations; but that the enemies of Rome added much to it in order to render it more odious.
What is quite certain is that these imposts were never authorized by any council; that it was an enormous abuse invented by avarice, and respected by those whose interest it was not to abolish it. The buyers and the sellers were equally satisfied: thus, barely anybody protested, until the troubles of the reformation. It must be admitted that an exact note of all these imposts would be of great service to the history of the human mind.
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Re: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire
by admin » Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:35 pm
EXTREME
We shall try to extract from this word extreme a notion which may be useful.
One disputes every day if, in war, luck or leadership produces successes.
If, in disease, nature acts more than medicine for curing or killing.
If, in jurisprudence, it is not very advantageous to come to terms when one is in the right, and to plead when one is in the wrong.
If literature contributes to the glory of a nation or to its decadence.
If one should or should not make the people superstitious.
If there is anything true in metaphysics, history and moral philosophy.
If taste is arbitrary, and if there is in fact good taste and bad taste, etc., etc.
To decide all these questions right away, take an example of what is the most extreme in each; compare the two opposed extremes, and you will at once discover which is true.
You wish to know if leadership can infallibly determine the success of the war; look at the most extreme case, the most opposed situations, in which leadership alone will infallibly triumph. The enemy's army is forced to pass through a deep mountain gorge; your general knows it: he makes a forced march, he takes possession of the heights, he holds the enemy shut in a pass; they must either die or surrender. In this extreme case, luck cannot have any part in the victory. It is therefore demonstrated that skill can determine the success of a campaign; from that alone is it proved that war is an art.
Now imagine an advantageous but less decisive position; success is not so certain, but it is always very probable. You arrive thus, step by step, to a perfect equality between the two armies. What will decide then? luck, that is to say an unforeseen event, a general officer killed when he is on his way to execute an important order, a corps which is shaken by a false rumour, a panic and a thousand other cases which cannot be remedied by prudence; but it still remains certain that there is an art, a generalship.
As much must be said of medicine, of this art of operating on the head and the hand, to restore life to a man who is about to lose it.
The first man who at the right moment bled and purged a sufferer from an apoplectic fit; the first man who thought of plunging a knife into the bladder in order to extract a stone, and of closing the wound again; the first man who knew how to stop gangrene in a part of the body, were without a doubt almost divine persons, and did not resemble Molière's doctors.
Descend from this obvious example to experiments that are less striking and more equivocal; you see fevers, ills of all kinds which are cured, without it being well proved if it be nature or the doctor who has cured them; you see diseases of which the result cannot be guessed; twenty doctors are deceived; the one that has the most intelligence, the surest eye, guesses the character of the malady. There is therefore an art; and the superior man knows the finenesses of it. Thus did La Peyronie guess that a man of the court had swallowed a pointed bone which had caused an ulcer, and put him in danger of death; thus did Boerhaave guess the cause of the malady as unknown as cruel of a count of Vassenaar. There is therefore really an art of medicine; but in all arts there are men like Virgil and Mævius.
In jurisprudence, take a clear case, in which the law speaks clearly; a bill of exchange properly prepared and accepted; the acceptor must be condemned to pay it in every country. There is therefore a useful jurisprudence, although in a thousand cases judgments are arbitrary, to the misfortune of the human race, because the laws are badly made.
Do you desire to know if literature does good to a nation; compare the two extremes, Cicero and an uncouth ignoramus. See if it is Pliny or Attila who caused the fall of Rome.
One asks if one should encourage superstition in the people; see above all what is most extreme in this disastrous matter, St. Bartholomew, the massacres in Ireland, the crusades; the question is soon answered.
Is there any truth in metaphysics? Seize first of all the points that are most astonishing and the most true; something exists for all eternity. An eternal Being exists by Himself; this Being cannot be either wicked or inconsequent. One must surrender to these truths; almost all the rest is given over to dispute, and the justest mind unravels the truth while the others are seeking in the shadows.
It is with all things as with colours; the weakest eyes distinguish black from white; the better, more practised eyes, discern shades that resemble each other.
We shall try to extract from this word extreme a notion which may be useful.
One disputes every day if, in war, luck or leadership produces successes.
If, in disease, nature acts more than medicine for curing or killing.
If, in jurisprudence, it is not very advantageous to come to terms when one is in the right, and to plead when one is in the wrong.
If literature contributes to the glory of a nation or to its decadence.
If one should or should not make the people superstitious.
If there is anything true in metaphysics, history and moral philosophy.
If taste is arbitrary, and if there is in fact good taste and bad taste, etc., etc.
To decide all these questions right away, take an example of what is the most extreme in each; compare the two opposed extremes, and you will at once discover which is true.
You wish to know if leadership can infallibly determine the success of the war; look at the most extreme case, the most opposed situations, in which leadership alone will infallibly triumph. The enemy's army is forced to pass through a deep mountain gorge; your general knows it: he makes a forced march, he takes possession of the heights, he holds the enemy shut in a pass; they must either die or surrender. In this extreme case, luck cannot have any part in the victory. It is therefore demonstrated that skill can determine the success of a campaign; from that alone is it proved that war is an art.
Now imagine an advantageous but less decisive position; success is not so certain, but it is always very probable. You arrive thus, step by step, to a perfect equality between the two armies. What will decide then? luck, that is to say an unforeseen event, a general officer killed when he is on his way to execute an important order, a corps which is shaken by a false rumour, a panic and a thousand other cases which cannot be remedied by prudence; but it still remains certain that there is an art, a generalship.
As much must be said of medicine, of this art of operating on the head and the hand, to restore life to a man who is about to lose it.
The first man who at the right moment bled and purged a sufferer from an apoplectic fit; the first man who thought of plunging a knife into the bladder in order to extract a stone, and of closing the wound again; the first man who knew how to stop gangrene in a part of the body, were without a doubt almost divine persons, and did not resemble Molière's doctors.
Descend from this obvious example to experiments that are less striking and more equivocal; you see fevers, ills of all kinds which are cured, without it being well proved if it be nature or the doctor who has cured them; you see diseases of which the result cannot be guessed; twenty doctors are deceived; the one that has the most intelligence, the surest eye, guesses the character of the malady. There is therefore an art; and the superior man knows the finenesses of it. Thus did La Peyronie guess that a man of the court had swallowed a pointed bone which had caused an ulcer, and put him in danger of death; thus did Boerhaave guess the cause of the malady as unknown as cruel of a count of Vassenaar. There is therefore really an art of medicine; but in all arts there are men like Virgil and Mævius.
In jurisprudence, take a clear case, in which the law speaks clearly; a bill of exchange properly prepared and accepted; the acceptor must be condemned to pay it in every country. There is therefore a useful jurisprudence, although in a thousand cases judgments are arbitrary, to the misfortune of the human race, because the laws are badly made.
Do you desire to know if literature does good to a nation; compare the two extremes, Cicero and an uncouth ignoramus. See if it is Pliny or Attila who caused the fall of Rome.
One asks if one should encourage superstition in the people; see above all what is most extreme in this disastrous matter, St. Bartholomew, the massacres in Ireland, the crusades; the question is soon answered.
Is there any truth in metaphysics? Seize first of all the points that are most astonishing and the most true; something exists for all eternity. An eternal Being exists by Himself; this Being cannot be either wicked or inconsequent. One must surrender to these truths; almost all the rest is given over to dispute, and the justest mind unravels the truth while the others are seeking in the shadows.
It is with all things as with colours; the weakest eyes distinguish black from white; the better, more practised eyes, discern shades that resemble each other.
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