The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Read online

  The law which gives the whole estate to the eldest son is very good in times of anarchy and pillage. Then the eldest son is the captain of the castle which the brigands will attack sooner or later; the younger sons will be his chief officers, the husbandmen his soldiers. The only danger is that the younger son may assassinate or poison the Salian lord, his elder brother, in order to become in his turn the master of the hovel; but these cases are rare, because nature has so combined our instincts and our passions that our horror of assassinating our elder brother is stronger than our envy of his position. But this law, suitable for the owners of dungeons in Chilperic’s time, is detestable when it is a question of sharing revenues in a city.

  To the shame of mankind, it is well known that the laws which govern our games are the only ones which are completely just, clear, inviolable and enforced. Why is the Indian who gave us the rules of the game of chess willingly obeyed all over the world, and why are the popes’ decretals, for example, today an object of horror and scorn? The reason is that the inventor of chess arranged everything with precision for the satisfaction of the players, while the popes, in their decretals, had nothing in view but their own interest. The Indian wished to exercise men’s minds equally, and give them pleasure; the popes wished to besot men’s minds. Also, the essence of the game of chess has remained the same for five thousand years, it is common to all the inhabitants of the earth; and the decretals are known only at Spoletto, Orvieto, Loretto, where the shallowest lawyer secretly hates and despises them.

  Full of all these reflections, I like to think that there is a natural law independent of all human conventions. the fruit of my work must belong to me; I must honor my father and my mother; I have no right over my fellow’s life, and my fellow has none over mine, etc. But when I reflect that from the days of Chedorlaomer to those of Mentzel 1 everyone has gone about loyally killing and pillaging his neighbors, with a license in his pocket, I am very sad.

  I am told that there are laws among thieves, and also laws of war. I ask what are these laws of war. I learn that they mean hanging a brave officer who has stood fast in a bad post without cannon against a royal army; that they mean having a prisoner hanged, if the enemy has hanged one of yours; that they mean putting to fire and sword villages which have not made their required contributions on an appointed day, according to the orders of the gracious sovereign of the district. “Good,” say I, “this is the Spirit of the Laws.”

  It seems to me that almost everyone has received from nature enough common sense to make laws, but that no one is just enough to make good laws.

  LENT

  I. Our questions on Lent will concern only police regulation. It appeared useful to have a season in the year when we should eat fewer oxen, calves, lambs, and poultry. Young fowls and pigeons are not ready in February and March, the time in which Lent falls; and it is good to cease the carnage for some weeks in countries in which pastures are not so rich as those of England and Holland.

  1 Chedorlaomer was king of the Elamites, and contemporary with Abraham. See Genesis 14.

  Mentzel was a famous chief of Austrian partisans in the war of 1741. At the head of five thousand men, he made Munich capitulate on February 13, 1742.

  The police magistrates have very wisely ordered that meat should be a little dearer at Paris during this time, and that the profit should be given to the hospitals. It is an almost insensible tribute paid by luxury and gluttony to indigence; for it is the rich who are not able to keep Lent—the poor fast all the year.

  There are very few farming men who eat meat once a month. If they ate of it every day, there would not be enough for the most flourishing kingdom. Twenty millions of pounds of meat a day would make seven thousand three hundred millions of pounds a year. This calculation is appalling.

  The small number of the rich, financiers, prelates, principal magistrates, great lords, and great ladies who condescend to have Lenten fare served at their tables, fast during six weeks on sole, salmon, turbot, and sturgeon.

  One of our most famous financiers had couriers, who for a hundred crowns brought him fresh sea fish every day to Paris. This expense supported the couriers, the dealers who sold the horses, the fishermen who furnished the fish, the makers of nets, the boatbuilders, and the druggists from whom came the refined spices which give a fish a taste superior to that of meat. Lucullus could not have kept Lent more voluptuously.

  It should further be remarked that fresh sea fish, in coming to Paris, pays a considerable tax. The secretaries of the rich, their valets, ladies’ maids, and stewards, partake of the dessert of Croesus, and fast as deliciously as he.

  It is not the same with the poor; not only if for four sous they partake of a small portion of tough mutton do they commit a great sin, but they seek in vain for this miserable aliment. What, then, do they eat? Chestnuts, rye bread, cheeses which they have pressed from the milk of their cows, goats or sheep, and a few eggs from their hens.

  There are churches which forbid them eggs and milk. What then remains for them to eat? Nothing. They consent to fast; but they do not consent to die. It is absolutely necessary that they should live, if it be only to cultivate the lands of the fat rectors and lazy monks.

  We therefore ask, if it is not the business of the magistrates of the police of the kingdom, charged with watching over the health of the inhabitants, to give them permission to eat the cheeses which their own hands have formed, and the eggs which their fowls have laid?

  It appears that milk, eggs, cheese, and all which can nourish the farmer, are regulated by the police, and not by a religious rule.

  We are not told that Jesus Christ forbade omelets to His apostles; on the contrary He said to them: “Eat such things as are set before you.”

  The Holy Church has ordained Lent, but in its quality of Church it commands only the heart; it can inflict spiritual pains alone; it cannot as formerly bum a poor man, who, having only some rusty bacon, put a slice of it on a piece of black bread the day after Shrove Tuesday.

  Sometimes in the provinces the pastors go beyond their duty, and forgetting the rights of the magistracy, undertake to go among the innkeepers and cooks, to see if they have not some ounces of meat in their saucepans, some old fowls on their hooks, or some eggs in a cupboard; for eggs are forbidden in Lent. They intimidate the poor people, and even use violence against these unfortunates, who do not know that this police duty is the business of the magistrates alone. It is an odious and punishable inquisition.

  Only the magistrates can be accurately informed as to the quantity of provisions available to feed the poor people of the provinces. The clergy have more sublime occupations. Should it not therefore belong to the magistrates to regulate what the people eat in Lent? Who should inspect the food supply of a country if not the police of that country?

  II. Did the first man who decided to fast adopt this regimen by order of a physician, because of indigestion? The want of appetite which we feel in grief—was this the origin of fast-days prescribed in melancholy religions?

  Did the Jews take the custom of fasting from the Egyptians, all of whose rites they imitated, including flagellation and the scapegoat? Why did Jesus fast for forty days in the desert, where He was taken by the devil? St. Matthew remarks that after this Lent He was hungry. Does this mean that He was not hungry during the fast?

  Why, on days of abstinence, does the Roman Church consider it a sin to eat terrestrial animals, and a good work to be served with sole and salmon? The rich Papist who has five hundred francs’ worth of fish on his table shall be saved, and the poor wretch dying with hunger, who has eaten four sous’ worth of salt pork, shall be damned.

  Why must we ask permission of our bishop to eat eggs? If a king ordered his people never to eat eggs, would he not be thought the most ridiculous of tyrants? How strange the aversion of bishops to omelets!

  Can we believe that among Papists there have been tribunals imbecile, dull, and barbarous enough to condemn to death poor citizens, who had comm
itted no other crime than that of having eaten horseflesh in Lent? The fact is but too true; I have in my hands a judgment of this kind. What renders it still stranger is that the judges who passed such sentences believed themselves superior to the Iroquois.

  Foolish and cruel priests, for whom do you order Lent? Is it for the rich? They take good care to observe it. Is it for the poor? They keep Lent all the year. The unhappy peasant scarcely ever eats meat, and has not the wherewithal to buy fish. Fools that you are, when Will you correct your absurd laws?

  LIBERTY

  Either I am very much mistaken, or that great definer, Locke, has well defined liberty as “power.” I am mistaken again, or Collins, the celebrated London magistrate, is the only philosopher who has really sifted this idea; and Clark’s answer to him was merely that of a theologian. But of all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little dialogue seems to me the clearest.

  A: There is a battery of guns firing in your ears. Have you the liberty to hear them or not to hear them?

  B; Obviously, I can’t help hearing them.

  A: Do you want this cannon to carry away your head and the heads of your wife and daughter, who are walk ing with you?

  B: What are you talking about? As long as I am of sound mind, I cannot want such a thing; it is impossible.

  A: Good. You hear this gun necessarily, and you wish necessarily that neither you nor your family shall die from a cannon shot while you are out for a walk. You have not the power either of not hearing or of wishing to remain here?

  B: Clearly.

  A: You have consequently taken some thirty steps in order to be sheltered from the gun; you have had the power to walk these few steps with me?

  B: Again very clearly.

  A: And if you had been a paralytic, you could not have avoided being exposed to this battery, you would necessarily have heard and received a gun shot; and you would be dead necessarily?

  B: Nothing could be truer.

  A: In what then does your liberty consist, unless it be in the power that you have exercised in performing what your will required of absolute necessity?

  B: You embarrass me. Do you mean that liberty is nothing but the power of doing what I want to do?

  A: Think about it, and see if liberty can be understood otherwise.

  B: In that case my hunting dog is as free as I am; he has necessarily the will to run when he sees a hare, and the power of running if he has not a pain in his legs. In that case, I am in no way superior to my dog; you reduce me to the state of the beasts.

  A: What poor sophistry from the poor sophists who have taught you! You are certainly in a bad way if you are merely free like your dog! Do you not eat, sleep, and propagate like him, almost in the same positions? Would you smell other than through your nose? Why do you wish to be free in a way that your dog is not?

  B: But I have a soul which reasons a great deal, while my dog reasons hardly at all. He has only the simplest of ideas, and I have a thousand metaphysical ideas.

  A: Very well, then, you are a thousand times freer than he is; that is, you have a thousand times more power of thinking than he has. But you do not think otherwise than he does.

  B: What! I am not free to wish what I wish?

  A: What do you mean by that?

  B: I mean what everyone means. Isn’t it a proverb that wishes are free?

  A: A proverb is not a reason; explain yourself more clearly.

  B: I mean that I am free to wish as I please.

  A: Begging your pardon, that is nonsense. Don’t you see that it is ridiculous to say, I wish to wish? You wish necessarily, as a result of the ideas that have offered themselves to you. Do you wish to be married? Yes or no?

  B: But what if I tell you that I wish neither the one nor the other?

  A: You will be answering like someone who says: “Some believe Cardinal Mazarin to be dead, others believe him to be alive, but as for me I believe neither the one nor the other.”

  B: Well, I wish to be married.

  A: Ah! that is an answer. Why do you wish to be married?

  B: Because I am in love with a beautiful, sweet, well-bred young girl, who is fairly rich and sings very well, whose parents are very nice people, and because I flatter myself I am loved by her, and very welcome to her family.

  A: That is a reason. You see that you cannot wish without reason. I declare to you that you are free to marry; that is, that you have the power to sign the contract, have your nuptials, and sleep with your wife.

  B: What! I cannot wish without reason? And what will become of that other proverb: Sit pro ratione voluntas ; my will is my reason, I wish because I wish?

  A: That is absurd, my dear fellow. In that case, there would be an effect without a cause.

  B: What! When I play at odds and evens, I have a reason for choosing evens rather than odds?

  A: Yes, undoubtedly.

  B: And what is the reason, if you please?

  A: The reason is that the idea of even rather than the opposite idea presents itself to your mind. It would be absurd if there were cases in which you wished because there was a cause of wishing, and cases in which you wished without any cause. When you wish to be married, you are obviously conscious of the dominating reason. You are not conscious of it when you are playing at odds and evens, and yet there certainly must be one.

  B: But, I repeat, this means that I am not free.

  A: Your will is not free, but your actions are. You are free to act, when you have the power to act.

  B: But all the books I have read on “the liberty of indifference ...”

  A: What do you mean by “the liberty of indifference?”

  B: I mean the liberty of spitting to the right or to the left, of sleeping on my right side or on my left, of taking a walk of four turns or five.

  A: That would certainly be a wonderful sort of liberty! God would have given you a fine gift! It would really be something to boast of! Of what use to you would be a power which was exercised only on such futile occasions? But the fact is that it is ridiculous to assume the will to wish to spit to the right. Not only is this will to wish absurd, but it is certain that several trifling circumstances determine you in these acts that you call “indifferent.” You are no more free in these acts than in the others. But, I repeat, you are free at all time, in all places—as soon as you do what you wish to do.

  B: I suspect you are right. I will think about it.17

  LIBERTY OF THE PRESS

  What harm can the prediction of Jean-Jacques18 do to Russia? None. He is free to explain it in a mystical, typical, allegorical sense, according to custom. The nations which will destroy the Russians will be belles-lettres, mathematics, wit, and social graces which degrade man and pervert nature.

  From five to six thousand pamphlets have been printed in Holland against Louis XIV, none of which helped to make him lose the battles of Blenheim, Turin, and Ramillies.

  In general, we have as natural a right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk, and hazard. I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil. Theologians, or pretended politicians, cry: “Religion is destroyed, the government is lost, if you print certain truths or certain paradoxes. Never dare to think, till you have asked permission from a monk or a clerk. It is against the public welfare for a man to think for himself. Homer, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Pliny, Horace, never published anything but with the approbation of the doctors of the Sorbonne and of the holy Inquisition.

  “See into what horrible decadence the liberty of the press has brought England and Holland. It is true that they possess the commerce of the whole world, and that England is victorious on sea and land; but it is merely a false greatness, a false opulence: they are hastening to their ruin. An enlightened people cannot exist.”

  No one could reason more justly, my friends; but let us see, if you please, what state has been ruined by a book. The most dangerous, the most pernicious book of all,
is that of Spinoza. Not only in the character of a Jew does he attack the New Testament, but in the character of a scholar he ruins the Old. His system of atheism is a thousand times better constructed and reasoned than those of Straton and of Epicurus. It requires the most profound sagacity to answer to the arguments by which he endeavors to prove that one substance cannot form another.

  Like yourself, I detest this book, which I perhaps understand better than you, and to which you have replied very badly. But have you discovered that it has changed the face of the world? Has any preacher lost a florin of his income by the publication of the works of Spinoza? Is there a bishop whose rents have diminished? On the contrary, their revenues have doubled since his time: all the ill is limited to a small number of peaceable readers, who have examined Spinoza’s arguments in their studies, and who have written for or against them in works that are little known.

  For ourselves, you have hardly been consistent in having printed, ad usum Delphini, the atheism of Lucretius—as you have already been reproached with doing. No trouble, no scandal, has ensued from it; so Spinoza might be left to live in peace in Holland, as was Lucretius in Rome.

  But if there appears among you any new book, the ideas of which shock your own—supposing you have any—or of which the author may be of a party contrary to yours—or what is worse, of which the author may not be of any party at all—then you cry out “Fire!” and all is noise, scandal, and uproar in your small comer of the earth. There is an abominable man who has declared in print that if we had no hands we would not be able to make shoes nor stockings. The devout cry out, furred doctors assemble, alarms multiply from college to college, from house to house, whole communities are disturbed. And why? For five or six pages, about which no one will give a fig at the end of three months. Does a book displease you? Refute it. Does it bore you? Don’t read it.

  Oh! you say to me, the books of Luther and Calvin have destroyed the Roman Catholic religion in one-half of Europe? Why not say also, that the books of the patriarch Photius have destroyed this Roman religion in Asia, Africa, Greece, and Russia?