Voltaire
The infidels of one age have often been the aureoled saints of the next.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1894)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 3.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/voltaire/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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THE infidels of one age have often been the aureoled saints of the next.

The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new.

As time sweeps on the old passes away and the new in its turn becomes
old.

There is in the intellectual world, as in the physical, decay and
growth, and ever by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy.

The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of
infidels.

Political rights have been preserved by traitors, the liberty of mind by
heretics.

To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest was blasphemy.

For many centuries the sword and cross were allies. Together they
attacked the rights of man. They defended each other.

The throne and altar were twins—two vultures from the same egg.

James I. said: "No bishop, no king." He might have added: "No cross,
no crown." The king owned the bodies of men; the priest, the souls.
One lived on taxes collected by force, the other on alms collected by
fear—both robbers, both beggars.

These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds. The king made
laws, the priest made creeds. Both obtained their authority from God,
both were the agents of the Infinite.

With bowed backs the people carried the burdens of one, and with
wonder's open mouth received the dogmas of the other.

If the people aspired to be free, they were crushed by the king, and
every priest was a Herod who slaughtered the children of the brain.

The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both by both.

The king said to the people: "God made you peasants, and He made me
king; He made you to labor, and me to enjoy; He made rags and hovels for
you, robes and palaces for me. He made you to obey, and me to command.
Such is the justice of God."

And the priest said: "God made you ignorant and vile; He made me holy
and wise; you are the sheep, I am the shepherd; your fleeces belong to
me. If you do not obey me here, God will punish you now and torment you
forever in another world. Such is the mercy of God."

"You must not reason. Reason is a rebel. You must not
contradict—contradiction is born of egotism; you must believe. He that
hath ears to hear let him hear." Heaven was a question of ears.

Fortunately for us, there have been traitors and there have been
heretics, blasphemers, thinkers, investigators, lovers of liberty, men
of genius who have given their lives to better the condition of their
fellow-men.

It may be well enough here to ask the question: What is greatness?

A great man adds to the sum of knowledge, extends the horizon of
thought, releases souls from the Bastile of fear, crosses unknown and
mysterious seas, gives new islands and new continents to the domain of
thought, new constellations to the firmament of mind. A great man does
not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to
happiness, and what he ascertains he gives to others.

A great man throws pearls before swine, and the swine are sometimes
changed to men. If the great had always kept their pearls, vast
multitudes would be barbarians now.

A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's
night, an inspiration and a prophecy.

Greatness is not the gift of majorities; it cannot be thrust upon any
man; men cannot give it to another; they can give place and power, but
not greatness.

The place does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king. Greatness is
from within.

The great men are the heroes who have freed the bodies of men; they are
the philosophers and thinkers who have given liberty to the soul; they
are the poets who have transfigured the common and filled the lives of
many millions with love and song.

They are the artists who have covered the bare walls of weary life with
the triumphs of genius.

They are the heroes who have slain the monsters of ignorance and fear,
who have outgazed the Gorgon and driven the cruel gods from their
thrones.

They are the inventors, the discoverers, the great mechanics, the kings
of the useful who have civilized this world.

At the head of this heroic army, foremost of all, stands Voltaire, whose
memory we are honoring tonight.

Voltaire! a name that excites the admiration of men, the malignity of
priests. Pronounce that name in the presence of a clergyman, and you
will find that you have made a declaration of war. Pronounce that name,
and from the face of the priest the mask of meekness will fall, and
from the mouth of forgiveness will pour a Niagara of vituperation and
calumny. And yet Voltaire was the greatest man of his century, and did
more to free the human race than any other of the sons of men.

On Sunday, the 21st of November, 1694, a babe was born—a babe so
exceedingly frail that the breath hesitated about remaining, and the
parents had him baptized as soon as possible. They were anxious to save
the soul of this babe, and they knew that if death came before baptism
the child would be doomed to an eternity of pain. They knew that God
despised an unsprinkled child. The priest who, with a few drops of
water, gave the name of Francois-Marie Arouet to this babe and saved
his soul—little thought that before him, wrapped in many folds, weakly
wailing, scarcely breathing, was the one destined to tear from the white
throat of Liberty the cruel, murderous claws of the "Triumphant Beast."

When Voltaire came to this "great stage of fools," his country had been
Christianized—not civilized—for about fourteen hundred years. For a
thousand years the religion of peace and good-will had been supreme. The
laws had been given by Christian kings, and sanctioned by "wise and
holy men." Under the benign reign of universal love, every court had its
chamber of torture, and every priest relied on the thumb-screw and rack.

Such had been the success of the blessed gospel that every science was
an outcast.

To speak your honest thoughts, to teach your fellow-men, to investigate
for yourself, to seek the truth, these were all crimes, and the
"holy-mother church" pursued the criminals with sword and flame.

The believers in a God of love—an infinite father—punished hundreds of
offences with torture and death. Suspected persons were tortured to
make them confess. Convicted persons were tortured to make them give the
names of their accomplices. Under the leadership of the church, cruelty
had become the only reforming power.

In this blessed year, 1694, all authors were at the mercy of king and
priest. The most of them were cast into prisons, impoverished by fines
and costs, exiled or executed.

The little time that hangmen could snatch from professional duties was
occupied in burning books.

The courts of justice were traps, in which the innocent were caught.
The judges were almost as malicious and cruel as though they had been
bishops or saints. There was no trial by jury, and the rules of
evidence allowed the conviction of the supposed criminal by the proof of
suspicion or hearsay.

The witnesses, being liable to be tortured, generally told what the
judges wished to hear.

The supernatural and the miraculous controlled the world. Everything was
explained, but nothing was understood. The church was at the head. The
sick bought from monks little amulets of consecrated paper. They did not
send for a doctor, but for a priest, and the priest sold the diseased
and the dying these magical amulets. These little pieces of paper with
the help of some saint would cure diseases of every kind. If you would
put one in a cradle, it would keep the child from being bewitched. If
you would put one in the barn, the rats would not eat your corn. If you
would keep one in the house, evil spirits would not enter your doors,
and if you buried them in the fields, you would have good weather, the
frost would be delayed, rain would come when needed, and abundant crops
would bless your labor. The church insisted that all diseases could
be cured in the name of God, and that these cures could be effected
by prayers, exorcism, by touching bones of saints, pieces of the true
cross; by being sprinkled with holy water or with sanctified salt, or
touched with magical oil.

In that day the dead saints were the best physicians; St. Valentine
cured the epilepsy; St. Gervasius was exceedingly good for rheumatism;
St. Michael for cancer; St. Judas for coughs and colds; St. Ovidius
restored the hearing; St. Sebastian was good for the bites of snakes and
the stings of poisonous insects; St. Apollonia for toothache; St. Clara
for any trouble with the eyes; and St. Hubert for hydrophobia. It
was known that doctors reduced the revenues of the church; that was
enough—science was the enemy of religion.

The church thought that the air was filled with devils; that every
sinner was a kind of tenement house inhabited by evil spirits; that
angels were on one side of men and evil spirits on the other, and that
God would, when the subscriptions and donations justified the effort,
drive the evil spirits from the field.

Satan had power over the air; consequently he controlled the frost, the
mildew, the lightning and the flood; and the principal business of the
church was with bells, and holy water, and incense, and crosses, to
defeat the machinations of that prince of the power of the air.

Great reliance was placed upon the bells; they were sprinkled with holy
water, and their clangor cleared the air of imps and fiends. And bells
also protected the people from storms and lightning. In that day the
church used to anathematize insects. Suits were commenced against rats,
and judgment rendered. Every monastery had its master magician, who
sold incense and salt and tapers and consecrated palms and relics.
Every science was regarded as an enemy; every fact held the creed of the
church in scorn. Investigators were regarded as dangerous; thinkers
were traitors, and the church exerted its vast power to prevent the
intellectual progress of man.

There was no real liberty, no real education, no real philosophy, no
real science—-nothing but credulity and superstition. The world was
under the control of Satan and the church.

The church firmly believed in the existence of witches and devils and
fiends. In this way the church had every enemy within her power. It
simply had to charge him with being a wizard, of holding communications
with devils, and the ignorant mob were ready to tear him to pieces. So
prevalent was this belief, this belief in the supernatural, that the
poor people were finally driven to make the best possible terms they
could with the spirit of evil. This frightful doctrine filled every
friend with suspicion of his friend; it made the husband denounce the
wife, children their parents, parents their children. It destroyed the
amenities of humanity; it did away with justice in courts; it broke the
bond of friendship; it filled with poison the golden cup of life; it
turned earth into a very perdition peopled with abominable, malicious
and hideous fiends. Such was the result of a belief in the supernatural;
such was the result of giving up the evidence of their own senses and
relying upon dreams, visions and fears. Such was the result of the
attack upon the human reason; such the result of depending on the
imagination, on the supernatural; such the result of living in this
world for another; of depending upon priests instead of upon ourselves.
The Protestants vied with Catholics; Luther stood side by side with the
priests he had deserted in promoting this belief in devils and fiends.
To the Catholic every Protestant was possessed by a devil; to the
Protestant every Catholic was the home of a fiend. All order, all
regular succession of causes and effects were known no more; the natural
ceased to exist; the learned and the ignorant were on a level. The
priest was caught in the net he had spread for the peasant, and
Christendom became a vast madhouse, with the insane for keepers.

When Voltaire was born the church ruled and owned France. It was
a period of almost universal corruption. The priests were mostly
libertines, the judges cruel and venal. The royal palace was a house of
prostitution. The nobles were heartless, proud, arrogant and cruel to
the last degree. The common people were treated as beasts. It took the
church a thousand years to bring about this happy condition of things.

The seeds of the Revolution unconsciously were being scattered by every
noble and by every priest.

They were germinating slowly in the hearts of the wretched; they were
being watered by the tears of agony; blows began to bear interest. There
was a faint longing for blood. Workmen, blackened by the sun, bowed by
labor, deformed by want, looked at the white throats of scornful ladies
and thought about cutting them.

In those days witnesses were cross-examined with instruments of torture;
the church was the arsenal of superstition; miracles, relics, angels and
devils were as common as lies.

In order to appreciate a great man we must know his surroundings. We
must understand the scope of the drama in which he played—the part he
acted, and we must also know his audience.

In England George I. was disporting with the "May-pole" and "Elephant,"
and then George II., jealous and choleric, hating the English and their
language, making, however, an excellent image or idol before whom the
English were glad to bow—snobbery triumphant—the criminal code getting
bloodier every day—223 offences punishable with death—the prisons
filled and the scaffolds crowded—efforts on every hand to repress
the ambition of men to be men—the church relying on superstition and
ceremony to make men good—and the state dependent on the whip, the rope
and axe to make men patriotic.

In Spain the Inquisition in full control—all the instruments of torture
used to prevent the development of the mind, Spain, that had driven out
the Jews, that is to say, her talent; that had driven out the Moors,
that is to say, her taste and her industry, was still endeavoring by all
religious means to reduce the land to the imbecility of the true faith.

In Portugal they were burning women and children for having eaten meat
on a holy day, and this to please the most merciful God.

In Italy the nation prostrate, covered with swarms of cardinals and
bishops and priests and monks and nuns and every representative of holy
sloth. The Inquisition there also—while hands that were clasped in
prayer or stretched for alms, grasped with eagerness and joy the lever
of the rack, or gathered fagots for the holy flame.

In Germany they were burning men and women charged with having made a
compact with the enemy of man.

And in our own fair land, persecuting Quakers, stealing men and women
from another shore, stealing children from their mother's breasts, and
paying labor with the cruel lash.

Superstition ruled the world!

There is but one use for law, but one excuse for government—the
preservation of liberty—to give to each man his own, to secure to the
farmer what he produces from the soil, the mechanic what he invents
and makes, to the artist what he creates, to the thinker the right to
express his thoughts. Liberty is the breath of progress.

In France, the people were the sport of a king's caprice. Everywhere was
the shadow of the Bastile.

It fell upon the sunniest field, upon the happiest home. With the king
walked the headsman; back of the throne was the chamber of torture. The
Church appealed to the rack, and Faith relied on the fagot. Science was
an outcast, and Philosophy, so-called, was the pander of superstition.

Nobles and priests were sacred. Peasants were vermin. Idleness sat at
the banquet, and Industry gathered the crumbs and the crusts.

II. The Days of Youth.

VOLTAIRE was of the people. In the language of that day, he had no
ancestors. His real name was Francois-Marie Arouet. His mother was
Marguerite d'Aumard. This mother died when he was seven years of age.
He had an elder brother, Armand, who was a devotee, very religious and
exceedingly disagreeable. This brother used to present offerings to the
church, hoping to make amends for the unbelief of his brother. So far as
we know, none of his ancestors were literary people.

The Arouets had never written a line. The Abbe de Chaulieu was his
godfather, and, although an abbe, was a Deist who cared nothing about
religion except in connection with his salary. Voltaire's father wanted
to make a lawyer of him, but he had no taste for law. At the age of ten
he entered the college of Louis Le Grand. This was a Jesuit school,
and here he remained for seven years, leaving at seventeen, and never
attending any other school. According to Voltaire, he learned nothing at
this school but a little Greek, a good deal of Latin and a vast amount
of nonsense.

In this college of Louis Le Grand they did not teach geography, history,
mathematics or any science. This was a Catholic institution, controlled
by the Jesuits. In that day the religion was defended, was protected or
supported by the state. Behind the entire creed were the bayonet, the
axe, the wheel, the fagot and the torture chamber.

While Voltaire was attending the college of Louis Le Grand the soldiers
of the king were hunting Protestants in the mountains of Cevennes for
magistrates to hang on gibbets, to put to torture, to break on the
wheel, or to burn at the stake.

At seventeen Voltaire determined to devote his life to literature. The
father said, speaking of his two sons Armand and Francois, "I have a
pair of fools for sons, one in verse and the other in prose."

In 1713, Voltaire, in a small way, became a diplomat. He went to The
Hague attached to the French minister, and there he fell in love. The
girl's mother objected. Voltaire sent his clothes to the young lady that
she might visit him. Everything was discovered and he was dismissed.
To this girl he wrote a letter, and in it you will find the key note of
Voltaire: "Do not expose yourself to the fury of your mother. You know
what she is capable of. You have experienced it too well. Dissemble; it
is your only chance. Tell her that you have forgotten me, that you hate
me; then after telling her, love me all the more."

On account of this episode Voltaire was formally disinherited by his
father. The father procured an order of arrest and gave his son the
choice of going to prison or beyond the seas. He finally consented to
become a lawyer, and says: "I have already been a week at work in the
office of a solicitor learning the trade of a pettifogger."

About this time he competed for a prize, writing a poem on the king's
generosity in building the new choir in the Cathedral Notre Dame. He did
not win it. After being with the solicitor a little while, he hated the
law, began to write poetry and the outlines of tragedy. Great questions
were then agitating the public mind, questions that throw a flood of
light upon that epoch.

In 1552 Dr. Baius took it into his head to sustain a number of
propositions touching predestination to the prejudice of the doctrine of
free will. The Cordelian monks selected seventy-six of the propositions
and denounced them to the Pope as heretical, and from the Pope obtained
what was called a Bull. This Bull contained a doubtful passage, the
meaning of which was dependent upon the position of a comma. The friends
of Dr. Baius wrote to Rome to find where the comma ought to be placed.
Rome, busy with other matter, sent as an answer a copy of the Bull in
which the doubtful sentence was left without any comma. So the dispute
continued.

Then there was the great controversy between the Jansenists and
Molinists. Molini was a Spanish Jesuit, who sustained the doctrine of
free will with a subtlety of his own, "man's will is free, but God sees
exactly how he will use it." The Presbyterians of our country are still
wrestling with this important absurdity.

Jansenius was a French Jesuit who carried the doctrine of predestination
to the extreme, asserting that God commands things that are impossible,
and that Christ did not die for all.

In 1641 the Jesuits obtained a Bull condemning five propositions
of Jansenius. The Jansenists there upon denied that the five
propositions—or any of them—were found in the works of Jansenius.

This question of Jansenism and Molinism occupied France for about two
hundred years.

In Voltaire's time the question had finally dwindled down to whether the
five propositions condemned by the Papal Bull were in fact in the works
of Jansenius. The Jansenists proved that the five propositions were not
in his book, because a niece of Pascal had a diseased eye cured by the
application of a thorn from the crown of Christ.

The Bull Unigenitus was launched in 1713, and then all the prisons were
filled with Jansenists. This great question of predestination and free
will, of free moral agency and accountability, and being saved by the
grace of God, and damned for the glory of God, have occupied the mind of
what we call the civilized world for many centuries. All these questions
were argued pro and con through Switzerland; all of them in Holland
for centuries; in Scotland and England and New England, and millions
of people are still busy harmonizing foreordination and free will,
necessity and morality, predestination and accountability.

Louis XIV. having died, the Regent took possession, and then the prisons
were opened. The Regent called for a list of all persons then in the
prisons sent there at the will of the king. He found that, as to many
prisoners, nobody knew any cause why they had been in prison. They had
been forgotten. Many of the prisoners did not know themselves, and
could not guess why they had been arrested. One Italian had been in the
Bastile thirty-three years without ever knowing why. On his arrival in
Paris, thirty-three years before, he was arrested and sent to prison.
He had grown old. He had survived his family and friends. When the rest
were liberated he asked to remain where he was, and lived there the
rest of his life. The old prisoners were pardoned, but in a little while
their places were taken by new ones.

At this time Voltaire was not interested in the great world—knew very
little of religion or of government. He was busy writing poetry, busy
thinking of comedies and tragedies. He was full of life. All his fancies
were winged like moths.

He was charged with having written some cutting epigrams. He was exiled
to Tulle, three hundred miles away. From this place he wrote in the true
vein—"I am at a chateau, a place that would be the most agreeable in
the world if I had not been exiled to it, and where there is nothing
wanting for my perfect happiness except the liberty of leaving. It would
be delicious to remain, if I only were allowed to go."

At last the exile was allowed to return. Again he was arrested; this
time sent to the Bastile, where he remained for nearly a year. While in
prison he changed his name from Francois-Marie Arouet to Voltaire, and
by that name he has since been known.

Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his
ideas upon all subjects at the expense of prince and king, was exiled
to England. From sunny France he took his way to the mists and fogs of
Albion. He became acquainted with the highest and the best in Britain.
He met Pope, a most wonderful verbal mechanic, a maker of artificial
flowers, very much like natural ones, except that they lack perfume and
the seeds of suggestion. He made the acquaintance of Young, who wrote
the "Night Thoughts;" Young, a fine old hypocrite with a virtuous
imagination, a gentleman who electioneered with the king's mistress that
he might be made a bishop. He became acquainted with Chesterfield—all
manners, no man; with Thomson, author of "The Seasons," who loved to
see the sun rise in bed and visit the country in town; with Swift, whose
poisoned arrows were then festering in the flesh of Mr. Bull—Swift, as
wicked as he was witty, and as heartless as he was humorous—with Swift,
a dean and a devil; with Congreve, whom Addison thought superior to
Shakespeare, and who never wrote but one great line, "The cathedral
looking tranquillity."

III. The Morn of Manhood.

VOLTAIRE began to think, to doubt, to inquire. He studied the history of
the church, of the creed. He found that the religion of his time
rested on the inspiration of the Scriptures—the infallibility of
the church—the dreams of insane hermits—the absurdities of the
Fathers—the mistakes and falsehoods of saints—the hysteria of
nuns—the cunning of priests and the stupidity of the people. He found
that the Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power,
murdered his wife Fausta and his eldest son Crispus, the same year that
he convened the Council of Nice, to decide whether Christ was a man or
the Son of God. The Council decided, in the year 325, that Christ was
consubstantial with the Father. He found that the church was indebted
to a husband who assassinated his wife—a father who murdered his son,
for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior. He found
that Theodosius called a council at Constantinople in 381, by which
it was decided that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father—that
Theodosius, the younger, assembled a council at Ephesus in 431, that
declared the Virgin Mary to be the mother of God—that the Emperor
Marcian called another council at Chalcedon in 451, that decided
that Christ had two wills—that Pognatius called another in 680, that
declared that Christ had two natures to go with his two wills—and that
in 1274, at the council of Lyons, the important fact was found that the
Holy Ghost "proceeded," not only from the Father, but also from the Son
at the same time.

So, it took about 1,300 years to find out a few things that had been
revealed by an infinite God to his infallible church.

Voltaire found that this insane creed had filled the world with cruelty
and fear. He found that vestments were more sacred than virtues—that
images and crosses—pieces of old bones and bits of wood were more
precious than the rights and lives of men, and that the keepers of these
relics were the enemies of the human race.

With all the energy of his nature—with every faculty of his mind—he
attacked this "Triumphant Beast."

Voltaire was the apostle of common sense. He knew that there could have
been no primitive or first language from which all other languages had
been formed. He knew that every language had been influenced by the
surroundings of the people. He knew that the language of snow and ice
was not the language of palm and flower. He knew also that there had
been no miracle in language. He knew that it was impossible that the
story of the Tower of Babel should be true. He knew that everything in
the whole world had been natural. He was the enemy of alchemy, not only
in language but in science. One passage from him is enough to show his
philosophy in this regard. He says; "To transmute iron into gold, two
things are necessary: first, the annihilation of the iron; second, the
creation of gold."

Voltaire gave us the philosophy of history.

Voltaire was a man of humor, of good nature, of cheerfulness. He
despised with all his heart the philosophy of Calvin, the creed of the
sombre, of the severe, of the unnatural. He pitied those who needed
the aid of religion to be honest, to be cheerful. He had the courage
to enjoy the present and the philosophy to bear what the future might
bring.

And yet for more than a hundred and fifty years the Christian world has
fought this man and has maligned his memory. In every Christian pulpit
his name has been pronounced with scorn, and every pulpit has been an
arsenal of slander. He is one man of whom no orthodox minister has
ever told the truth. He has been denounced equally by Catholics and
Protestants.

Priests and ministers, bishops and exhorters, presiding elders and popes
have filled the world with slanders, with calumnies about Voltaire. I am
amazed that ministers will not or cannot tell the truth about an enemy
of the church. As a matter of fact, for more than one thousand years,
almost every pulpit has been a mint in which slanders have been coined.

Voltaire made up his mind to destroy the superstition of his time.

He fought with every weapon that genius could devise or use. He was the
greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without
mercy. For pure crystallized wit, he had no equal. The art of flattery
was carried by him to the height of an exact science. He knew and
practiced every subterfuge. He fought the army of hypocrisy and
pretence, the army of faith and falsehood.

Voltaire was annoyed by the meaner and baser spirits of his time, by
the cringers and crawlers, by the fawners and pretenders, by those who
wished to gain the favor of priests, the patronage of nobles. Sometimes
he allowed himself to be annoyed by these wretches; sometimes he
attacked them. And, but for these attacks, long ago they would have been
forgotten. In the amber of his genius Voltaire preserved these insects,
these tarantulas, these scorpions.

It is fashionable to say that he was not profound. This is because he
was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity he laughed, and was called
irreverent. He thought God would not damn even a priest forever—this
was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavored to prevent Christians from
murdering each other, and did what he could to civilize the disciples
of Christ. Had he founded a sect, obtained control of some country, and
burned a few heretics at slow fires, he would have won the admiration,
respect and love of the Christian world. Had he only pretended to
believe all the fables of antiquity, had he mumbled Latin prayers,
counted beads, crossed himself, devoured now and then the flesh of God,
and carried fagots to the feet of Philosophy in the name of Christ, he
might have been in heaven this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned.

If he had only adopted the creed of his time—if he had asserted that
a God of infinite power and mercy had created millions and billions
of human beings to suffer eternal pain, and all for the sake of his
glorious justice—that he had given his power of attorney to a cunning
and cruel Italian Pope, authorizing him to save the soul of his mistress
and send honest wives to hell—if he had given to the nostril's of
this God the odor of burning flesh—the incense of the fagot—if he had
filled his ears with the shrieks of the tortured—the music of the rack,
he would now be known as Saint Voltaire.

For many years this restless man filled Europe with the product of his
brain. Essays, epigrams, epics, comedies, tragedies, histories, poems,
novels, representing every phase and every faculty of the human mind. At
the same time engrossed in business, full of speculation, making money
like a millionaire, busy with the gossip of courts, and even with the
scandals of priests. At the same time alive to all the discoveries
of science and the theories of philosophers, and in this Babel never
forgetting for one moment to assail the monster of superstition.

Sleeping and waking he hated the church. With the eyes of Argus he
watched, and with the arms of Briareus he struck. For sixty years he
waged continuous and unrelenting war, sometimes in the open field,
sometimes striking from the hedges of opportunity—taking care during
all this time to remain independent of all men. He was in the highest
sense successful. He lived like a prince, became one of the powers of
Europe, and in him, for the first time, literature was crowned.

It has been claimed by the Christian critics that Voltaire was
irreverent; that he examined sacred things without solemnity; that he
refused to remove his shoes in the presence of the Burning Bush; that
he smiled at the geology of Moses, the astronomical ideas of Joshua,
and that the biography of Jonah filled him with laughter. They say that
these stories, these sacred impossibilities, these inspired falsehoods,
should be read and studied with a believing mind in humbleness of
spirit; that they should be examined prayerfully, asking God at the same
time to give us strength to triumph over the conclusions of our
reason. These critics imagine that a falsehood can be old enough to be
venerable, and that to stand covered in its presence is the act of
an irreverent scoffer. Voltaire approached the mythology of the Jews
precisely as he did the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, or the
mythology of the Chinese or the Iroquois Indians. There is nothing
in this world too sacred to be investigated, to be understood. The
philosopher does not hide. Secrecy is not the friend of truth. No man
should be reverent at the expense of his reason. Nothing should be
worshiped until the reason has been convinced that it is worthy of
worship.

Against all miracles, against all holy superstition, against sacred
mistakes, he shot the arrows of ridicule.

These arrows, winged by fancy, sharpened by wit, poisoned by truth,
always reached the centre.

It is claimed by many that anything, the best and holiest, can be
ridiculed. As a matter of fact, he who attempts to ridicule the truth,
ridicules himself. He becomes the food of his own laughter.

The mind of man is many-sided. Truth must be and is willing to be tested
in every way, tested by all the senses.

But in what way can the absurdity of the "real presence" be answered,
except by banter, by raillery, by ridicule, by persiflage? How are you
going to convince a man who believes that when he swallows the sacred
wafer he has eaten the entire Trinity, and that a priest drinking a drop
of wine has devoured the Infinite? How are you to reason with a man who
believes that if any of the sacred wafers are left over they should be
put in a secure place, so that mice should not eat God?

What effect will logic have upon a religious gentleman who firmly
believes that a God of infinite compassion sent two bears to tear thirty
or forty children in pieces for laughing at a bald-headed prophet?

How are such people to be answered? How can they be brought to a
sense of their absurdity? They must feel in their flesh the arrows of
ridicule..

So Voltaire has been called a mocker.

What did he mock? He mocked kings that were unjust; kings who cared
nothing for the sufferings of their subjects. He mocked the titled
fools of his day. He mocked the corruption of courts; the meanness,
the tyranny and the brutality of judges. He mocked the absurd and cruel
laws, the barbarous customs. He mocked popes and cardinals and bishops
and priests, and all the hypocrites on the earth. He mocked historians
who filled their books with lies, and philosophers who defended
superstition. He mocked the haters of liberty, the persecutors of their
fellow-men. He mocked the arrogance, the cruelty, the impudence, and the
unspeakable baseness of his time.

He has been blamed because he used the weapon of ridicule.

Hypocrisy has always hated laughter, and always will. Absurdity detests
humor, and stupidity despises wit. Voltaire was the master of ridicule.
He ridiculed the absurd, the impossible. He ridiculed the mythologies
and the miracles, the stupid lives and lies of the saints. He found
pretence and mendacity crowned by credulity. He found the ignorant
many controlled by the cunning and cruel few. He found the historian,
saturated with superstition, filling his volumes with the details of the
impossible, and he found the scientists satisfied with "they say."

Voltaire had the instinct of the probable. He knew the law of average,
the sea level; he had the idea of proportion, and so he ridiculed the
mental monstrosities and deformities—the non sequiturs—of his day.
Aristotle said women had more teeth than men. This was repeated again
and again by the Catholic scientists of the eighteenth century.

Voltaire counted the teeth. The rest were satisfied with "they say."

Voltaire for many years, in spite of his surroundings, in spite of
almost universal tyranny and oppression, was a believer in God and what
he was pleased to call the religion of Nature. He attacked the creed of
his time because it was dishonorable to his God. He thought of the Deity
as a father, as the fountain of justice, intelligence and mercy, and
the creed of the Catholic Church made him a monster of cruelty and
stupidity. He attacked the Bible with all the weapons at his command. He
assailed its geology, its astronomy, its ideas of justice, its laws
and customs, its absurd and useless miracles, its foolish wonders, its
ignorance on all subjects, its insane prophecies, its cruel threats and
its extravagant promises.

At the same time he praised the God of nature, the God who gives us rain
and light and food and flowers and health and happiness—who fills the
world with youth and beauty.

Attacked on every side, he fought with every weapon that wit, logic,
reason, scorn, contempt, laughter, pathos and indignation could sharpen,
form, devise or use. He often apologized, and the apology was an insult.
He often recanted, and the recantation was a thousand times worse than
the thing recanted. He took it back by giving more. In the name of
eulogy he flayed his victim. In his praise there was poison. He often
advanced by retreating, and asserted by retraction.

He did not intend to give priests the satisfaction of seeing him burn or
suffer. Upon this very point of recanting he wrote:

"They say I must retract. Very willingly. I will declare that Pascal is
always right. That if St. Luke and St. Mark contradict one another, it
is only another proof of the truth of religion to those who know how
to understand such things; and that another lovely proof of religion
is that it is unintelligible. I will even avow that all priests are
gentle and disinterested; that Jesuits are honest people; that
monks are neither proud nor given to intrigue, and that their odor is
agreeable; that the Holy Inquisition is the triumph of humanity
and tolerance. In a word, I will say all that may be desired of me,
provided they leave me in repose, and will not persecute a man who has
done harm to none."

He gave the best years of his wondrous life to succor the oppressed,
to shield the defenceless, to reverse infamous decrees, to rescue the
innocent, to reform the laws of France, to do away with torture, to
soften the hearts of priests, to enlighten judges, to instruct kings,
to civilize the people, and to banish from the heart of man the love and
lust of war.

You may think that I have said too much; that I have placed this man too
high. Let me tell you what Goethe, the great German, said of this man:

"If you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility,
philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy,
rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety,
fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep of
vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent, urbanity,
suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, clearness, eloquence, harmony,
brilliancy, rapidity, gaiety, pathos, sublimity and universality,
perfection indeed, behold Voltaire."

Even Carlyle, that old Scotch terrier, with the growl of a grizzly
bear, who attacked shams, as I have sometimes thought, because he hated
rivals, was forced to admit that Voltaire gave the death stab to modern
superstition.

It is the duty of every man to destroy the superstitions of his time,
and yet there are thousands of men and women, fathers and mothers, who
repudiate with their whole hearts the creeds of superstition, and
still allow their children to be taught these lies. They allow their
imaginations to be poisoned with the dogma of eternal pain. They allow
arrogant and ignorant parsons, meek and foolish teachers, to sow the
seeds of barbarism in the minds of their children—seeds that will fill
their lives with fear and pain. Nothing can be more important to a human
being than to be free and to live without fear.

It is far better to be a mortal free man than an immortal slave.

Fathers and mothers should do their utmost to make their children free.
They should teach them to doubt, to investigate, to inquire, and every
father and mother should know that by the cradle of every child, as by
the cradle of the infant Hercules, crawls the serpent of superstition.

IV. The Scheme of Nature.

AT that time it was pretended by the believers in God that the plan, or
the scheme of nature, was not cruel; that the lower was sacrificed
for the benefit of the higher; that while life lived upon life, while
animals lived upon each other, and while man was the king or sovereign
of all, still the higher lived upon the lower. Consequently, a lower
life was sacrificed that a higher life might exist. This reasoning
satisfied many. Yet there were thousands that could not see why the
lower should be sacrificed, or why all joy should be born of pain. But,
since the construction of the microscope, since man has been allowed
to look toward the infinitely small, as well as toward the infinitely
great, he finds that our fathers were mistaken when they laid down the
proposition that only the lower life was sacrificed for the sake of the
higher.

Now we find that the lives of all visible animals are liable to be, and
in countless cases are, destroyed by a far lower life; that man himself
is destroyed by the microbes, the bacilli, the infinitesimal. We find
that for the sake of preserving the yellow fever germs millions and
millions have died, and that whole nations have been decimated for the
sake of the little beast that gives us the cholera. We have also found
that there are animals, call them what you please, that live on the
substance of the human heart, others that prefer the lungs, others again
so delicate in their palate that they insist on devouring the optic
nerve, and when they have destroyed the sight of one eye have sense
enough to bore through the cartilage of the nose to attack the other.
Thus we find the other side of this proposition. At first sight the
lower seemed to be sacrificed for the sake of the higher, but on closer
inspection the highest are sacrificed for the sake of the lowest.

Voltaire was, for a long time, a believer in the optimism of Pope—"All
partial evil, universal good." This is a very fine philosophy for the
fortunate. It suits the rich. It is flattering to kings and priests. It
sounds well. It is a fine stone to throw at a beggar. It enables you to
bear with great fortitude the misfortunes of others.

It is not the philosophy for those who suffer—for industry clothed in
rags, for patriotism in prison, for honesty in want, or for virtuous
outcasts. It is a philosophy of a class, of a few, and of the few who
are fortunate; and, when misfortune overtakes them, this philosophy
fades and withers.

In 1755 came the earthquake at Lisbon. This frightful disaster became an
immense interrogation. The optimist was compelled to ask, "What was my
God doing? Why did the Universal Father crush to shapelessness thousands
of his poor children, even at the moment when they were upon their knees
returning thanks to him?"

What could be done with this horror? If earthquake there must be, why
did it not occur in some uninhabited desert, on some wide waste of
sea? This frightful fact changed the theology of Voltaire. He became
convinced that this is not the best possible of all worlds. He became
convinced that evil is evil here, now, and forever.

The Theist was silent. The earthquake denied the existence of God.

V. His Humanity.

TOULOUSE was a favored town. It was rich in relics. The people were as
ignorant as wooden images, but they had in their possession the dried
bodies of seven apostles—the bones of many of the infants slain by
Herod—part of a dress of the Virgin Mary, and lots of skulls and
skeletons of the infallible idiots known as saints.

In this city the people celebrated every year with great joy two holy
events: The expulsion of the Huguenots, and the blessed massacre of St.
Bartholomew. The citizens of Toulouse had been educated and civilized by
the church.

A few Protestants, mild because in the minority, lived among these
jackals and tigers.

One of these Protestants was Jean Calas—a small dealer in dry goods.
For forty years he had been in this business, and his character was
without a stain. He was honest, kind and agreeable. He had a wife and
six children—four sons and two daughters. One of the sons became a
Catholic. The eldest son, Marc Antoine, disliked his father's business
and studied law. He could not be allowed to practice unless he became
a Catholic. He tried to get his license by concealing that he was
a Protestant. He was discovered—grew morose. Finally he became
discouraged and committed suicide, by hanging himself one evening in his
father's store.

The bigots of Toulouse started the story that his parents had killed him
to prevent his becoming a Catholic.

On this frightful charge the father, mother, one son, a servant, and one
guest at their house, were arrested.

The dead son was considered a martyr, the church taking possession of
the body.

This happened in 1761.

There was what was called a trial. There was no evidence, not the
slightest, except hearsay. All the facts were in favor of the accused.

The united strength of the defendants could not have done the deed.

Jean Calas was doomed to torture and to death upon the wheel. This was
on the 9th of March, 1762, and the sentence was to be carried out the
next day.

On the morning of the 10th the father was taken to the torture room. The
executioner and his assistants were sworn on the cross to administer the
torture according to the judgment of the court.

They bound him by the wrists to an iron ring in the stone wall four feet
from the ground, and his feet to another ring in the floor. Then they
shortened the ropes and chains until every joint in his arms and
legs was dislocated. Then he was questioned. He declared that he was
innocent. Then the ropes were again shortened until life fluttered in
the torn body; but he remained firm.

This was called "the question ordinaire."

Again the magistrates exhorted the victim to confess, and again he
refused, saying that there was nothing to confess.

Then came "the question extraordinaire."

Into the mouth of the victim was placed a horn holding three pints of
water. In this way thirty pints of water were forced into the body
of the sufferer. The pain was beyond description, and yet Jean Calas
remained firm.

He was then carried to the scaffold in a tumbril.

He was bound to a wooden cross that lay on the scaffold. The executioner
then took a bar of iron, broke each leg and each arm in two places,
striking eleven blows in all. He was then left to die if he could. He
lived for two hours, declaring his innocence to the last. He was slow
to die, and so the executioner strangled him. Then his poor lacerated,
bleeding and broken body was chained to a stake and burned.

All this was a spectacle—a festival for the savages of Toulouse. What
would they have done if their hearts had not been softened by the glad
tidings of great joy—peace on earth and good will to men?

But this was not all. The property of the family was confiscated; the
son was released on condition that he become a Catholic; the servant
if she would enter a convent. The two daughters were consigned to a
convent, and the heart-broken widow was allowed to wander where she
would.

Voltaire heard of this case. In a moment his soul was on fire. He took
one of the sons under his roof. He wrote a history of the case. He
corresponded with kings and queens, with chancellors and lawyers. If
money was needed, he advanced it. For years he filled Europe with the
echoes of the groans of Jean Calas. He succeeded. The horrible judgment
was annulled—the poor victim declared innocent and thousands of dollars
raised to support the mother and family.

This was the work of Voltaire.

The Sirven Family

Sirven, a Protestant, lived in Languedoc with his wife and three
daughters. The housekeeper of the bishop wanted to make one of the
daughters a Catholic.

The law allowed the bishop to take the child of Protestants from their
parents for the sake of its soul. This little girl was so taken and
placed in a convent. She ran away and came back to her parents. Her poor
little body was covered with the marks of the convent whip.

"Suffer little children to come unto me."

The child was out of her mind—suddenly she disappeared, and a few days
after her little body was found in a well, three miles from home.

The cry was raised that her folks had murdered her to keep her from
becoming a Catholic.

This happened only a little way from the Christian City of Toulouse
while Jean Calas was in prison. The Sirvens knew that a trial would end
in conviction. They fled. In their absence they were convicted, their
property confiscated, the parents sentenced to die by the hangman, the
daughters to be under the gallows during the execution of their mother,
and then to be exiled.

The family fled in the midst of winter; the married daughter gave birth
to a child in the snows of the Alps; the mother died, and, at last
reaching Switzerland, the father found himself without means of support.

They went to Voltaire. He espoused their cause. He took care of them,
gave them the means to live, and labored to annul the sentence that had
been pronounced against them for nine long and weary years. He appealed
to kings for money, to Catharine II. of Russia, and to hundreds of
others. He was successful. He said of this case: The Sirvens were tried
and condemned in two hours in January, 1762, and now in January, 1772,
after ten years of effort, they have been restored to their rights.

This was the work of Voltaire. Why should the worshipers of God hate the
lovers of men?

The Espenasse Case

Espenasse was a Protestant, of good estate. In 1740 he received into his
house a Protestant clergyman, to whom he gave supper and lodging.

In a country where priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan,"
this was a crime.

For this crime Espenasse was tried, convicted and sentenced to the
galleys for life.

When he had been imprisoned for twenty-three years his case came to
the knowledge of Voltaire, and he was, through the efforts of Voltaire,
released and restored to his family.

This was the work of Voltaire. There is not time to tell of the case of
General Lally, of the English General Byng, of the niece of Corneille,
of the Jesuit Adam, of the writers, dramatists, actors, widows and
orphans for whose benefit he gave his influence, his money and his time.
But I will tell another case:

In 1765, at the town of Abbeville, an old wooden cross on a bridge had
been mutilated—whittled with a knife—a terrible crime. Sticks, when
crossing each other, were far more sacred than flesh and blood. Two
young men were suspected—the Chevalier de la Barre and D'Etallonde.
D'Etallonde fled to Prussia and enlisted as a common soldier.

La Barre remained and stood his trial.

He was convicted without the slightest evidence, and he and D'Etallonde
were both sentenced:

First, to endure the torture, ordinary and extraordinary.

Second, to have their tongues torn out by the roots with pincers of
iron.

Third, to have their right hands cut off at the door of the church.

Fourth, to be bound to stakes by chains of iron and burned to death by
a slow fire.

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Remembering this, the judges mitigated the sentence by providing that
their heads should be cut off before their bodies were given to the
flames.

The case was appealed to Paris; heard by a court composed of twenty-five
judges, learned in the law, and the judgment was confirmed.

The sentence was carried out on the first day of July, 1766.

When Voltaire heard of this judicial infamy he made up his mind
to abandon France. He wished to leave forever a country where such
cruelties were possible.

He wrote a pamphlet, giving the history of the case.

He ascertained the whereabouts of D'Etallonde, wrote in his behalf to
the King of Prussia; got him released from the army; took him to his
own house; kept him for a year and a half; saw that he was instructed
in drawing, mathematics, engineering, and had at last the happiness of
seeing him a captain of engineers in the army of Frederick the Great.

Such a man was Voltaire. He was the champion of the oppressed and the
helpless. He was the Cæsar to whom the victims of church and state
appealed. He stood for the intellect and heart of his time.

And yet for a hundred and fifty years those who love their enemies have
exhausted the vocabulary of hate, the ingenuity of malice and mendacity,
in their efforts to save their stupid creeds from the genius of
Voltaire.

From a great height he surveyed the world. His horizon was large. He had
some vices—these he shared in common with priests—his virtues were his
own.

He was in favor of universal education—of the development of the brain.
The church despised him. He wished to put the knowledge of the whole
world within the reach of all. Every priest was his enemy. He wished to
drive from the gate of Eden the cherubim of superstition, so that
the children of Adam might return and eat of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge. The church opposed this because it had the fruit of the tree
of ignorance for sale.

He was one of the foremost friends of the Encyclopedia—of Diderot, and
did all in his power to give information to all. So far as principles
were concerned, he was the greatest lawyer of his time. I do not mean
that he knew the terms and decisions, but that he clearly perceived not
only what the law should be, but its application and administration. He
understood the philosophy of evidence, the difference between suspicion
and proof, between belief and knowledge, and he did more to reform the
laws of the kingdom and the abuses at courts than all the lawyers and
statesmen of his time.

At school, he read and studied the works of Cicero—the lord of
language—probably the greatest orator that has uttered speech, and the
words of the Roman remained in his brain. He became, in spite of the
spirit of caste, a believer in the equality of men. He said:

"Men are born equal."

"Let us respect virtue and merit."

"Let us have it in the heart that men are equal." He was an
abolitionist—the enemy of slavery in all its forms. He did not think
that the color of one man gave him the right to steal from another man
on account of that man's color. He was the friend of serf and peasant,
and did what he could to protect animals, wives and children from the
fury of those who loved their neighbors as themselves.

It was Voltaire who sowed the seeds of liberty in the heart and brain of
Franklin, of Jefferson and Thomas Paine.

Pufendorf had taken the ground that slavery was, in part, founded on
contract.

Voltaire said: "Show me the contract, and if it is signed by the party
to be the slave, I may believe."

He thought it absurd that God should drown the fathers, and then come
and die for the children. This is as good as the remark of Diderot: "If
Christ had the power to defend himself from the Jews and refused to use
it, he was guilty of suicide."

He had sense enough to know that the flame of the fagot does not
enlighten the mind. He hated the cruel and pitied the victims of church
and state. He was the friend of the unfortunate—the helper of the
striving. He laughed at the pomp of kings—the pretensions of priests.
He was a believer in the natural and abhorred with all his heart the
miraculous and absurd.

Voltaire was not a saint. He was educated by the Jesuits. He was never
troubled about the salvation of his soul. All the theological disputes
excited his laughter, the creeds his pity, and the conduct of bigots his
contempt. He was much better than a saint.

Most of the Christians in his day kept their religion not for every day
use but for disaster, as ships carry life boats to be used only in the
stress of storm.

Voltaire believed in the religion of humanity—of good and generous
deeds. For many centuries the church had painted virtue so ugly, sour
and cold, that vice was regarded as beautiful. Voltaire taught the
beauty of the useful, the hatefulness and hideousness of superstition.

He was not the greatest of poets, or of dramatists, but he was the
greatest man of his time, the greatest friend of freedom and the
deadliest foe of superstition.

He did more to break the chains of superstition—to drive the phantoms
of fear from the heart and brain, to destroy the authority of the church
and to give liberty to the world than any other of the sons of men. In
the highest, the holiest sense he was the most profoundly religious man
of his time.

VI. The Return.

AFTER an exile of twenty-seven years, occupying during all that time
a first place in the civilized world, Voltaire returned to Paris. His
journey was a triumphal march. He was received as a conqueror. The
Academy, the Immortals, came to meet him—a compliment that had never
been paid to royalty. His tragedy of "Irene" was performed. At the
theatre he was crowned with laurel, covered with flowers; he was
intoxicated with perfume and with incense of worship. He was the supreme
French poet, standing above them all. Among the literary men of the
world he stood first—a monarch by the divine right of genius. There
were three mighty forces in France—the throne, the altar and Voltaire.

The king was the enemy of Voltaire. The court could have nothing to do
with him. The church, malign and morose, was waiting for her revenge,
and yet, such was the reputation of this man—such the hold he had upon
the people—that he became, in spite of Throne, in spite of Church, the
idol of France.

He was an old man of eighty-four. He had been surrounded with the
comforts, the luxuries of life. He was a man of great wealth, the
richest writer that the world had known. Among the literary men of the
earth he stood first. He was an intellectual king—one who had built his
own throne and had woven the purple of his own power. He was a man of
genius. The Catholic God had allowed him the appearance of success.
His last years were filled with the intoxication of flattery—of almost
worship. He stood at the summit of his age.

The priests became anxious. They began to fear that God would forget, in
a multiplicity of business, to make a terrible example of Voltaire.

Towards the last of May, 1778, it was whispered in Paris that Voltaire
was dying. Upon the fences of expectation gathered the unclean birds of
superstition, impatiently waiting for their prey.

"Two days before his death, his nephew went to seek the Curé of Saint
Sulpice and the Abbé Gautier, and brought them into his uncle's sick
chamber. 'Ah, well!' said Voltaire, 'give them my compliments and my
thanks.' The Abbé spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience.
The curé of Saint Sulpice then came forward, having announced himself,
and asked of Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the
divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sick man pushed one of his hands
against the curés coif, shoving him back and cried, turning abruptly to
the other side, 'Let me die in peace.' The curé seemingly considered his
person soiled and his coif dishonored by the touch of a philosopher. He
made the nurse give him a little brushing and went out with the Abbé
Gautier."

He expired, says Wagnière, on the 30th of May, 1778, at about a
quarter-past eleven at night, with the most perfect tranquillity. A few
minutes before his last breath he took the hand of Morand, his _valet de
chambre_, who was watching by him, pressed it, and said: "Adieu, my dear
Morand, I am gone." These were his last words. Like a peaceful river
with green and shaded banks, he flowed without a murmur into the
waveless sea, where life is rest.

From this death, so simple and serene, so kind, so philosophic and
tender, so natural and peaceful; from these words, so utterly destitute
of cant or dramatic touch, all the frightful pictures, all the
despairing utterances, have been drawn and made. From these materials,
and from these alone, or rather, in spite of these facts, have been
constructed by priests and clergymen and their dupes all the shameless
lies about the death of this great and wonderful man. A man, compared
with whom all of his calumniators, dead and living, were, and are, but
dust and vermin.

Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth
of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a
work for the civilization of the world as Voltaire or Diderot? Did all
the ministers of Scotland add as much to the sum of human knowledge as
David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests,
bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last
election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine?

What would the world be if infidels had never been?

The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all
the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and
love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and
prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the
battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.

Why should it be taken for granted that the men who devoted their lives
to the liberation of their fellow-men should have been hissed at in
the hour of death by the snakes of conscience, while men who defended
slavery—practiced polygamy—-justified the stealing of babes from
the breasts of mothers, and lashed the naked back of unpaid labor, are
supposed to have passed smilingly from earth to the embraces of the
angels? Why should we think that the brave thinkers, the investigators,
the honest men, must have left the crumbling shore of time in dread
and fear, while the instigators of the massacre of St. Bartholomew;
the inventors and users of thumb-screws, of iron boots and racks; the
burners and tearers of human flesh; the stealers, the whippers and the
enslavers of men; the buyers and beaters of maidens, mothers and babes;
the founders of the Inquisition; the makers of chains; the builders of
dungeons; the calumniators of the living; the slanderers of the
dead, and even the murderers of Jesus Christ, all died in the odor of
sanctity, with white, forgiven hands folded upon the breasts of peace,
while the destroyers of prejudice, the apostles of humanity, the
soldiers of liberty, the breakers of fetters, the creators of light,
died surrounded by the fierce fiends of God?

In those days the philosophers—that is to say, the thinkers—were
not buried in holy ground. It was feared that their principles might
contaminate the ashes of the just. And they also feared that on the
morning of the resurrection they might, in a moment of confusion, slip
into heaven. Some were burned, and their ashes scattered; and the bodies
of some were thrown naked to beasts, and others buried in unholy earth.

Voltaire knew the history of Adrienne Le Couvreur, a beautiful actress,
denied burial.

After all, we do feel an interest in what is to become of our bodies.
There is a modesty that belongs to death. Upon this subject Voltaire
was infinitely sensitive. It was that he might be buried that he
went through the farce of confession, of absolution, and of the last
sacrament. The priests knew that he was not in earnest, and Voltaire
knew that they would not allow him to be buried in any of the cemeteries
of Paris.

His death was kept a secret. The Abbé Mignot made arrangements for
the burial at Romilli-on-the-Seine, more than 100 miles from Paris. On
Sunday evening, on the last day of May, 1778, the body of Voltaire, clad
in a dressing gown, clothed to resemble an invalid, posed to simulate
life, was placed in a carriage; at its side, a servant, whose business
it was to keep it in position. To this carriage were attached six
horses, so that people might think a great lord was going to his
estates. Another carriage followed, in which were a grand nephew and two
cousins of Voltaire. All night they traveled, and on the following day
arrived at the courtyard of the Abbey. The necessary papers were shown,
the mass was performed in the presence of the body, and Voltaire found
burial. A few moments afterwards, the prior, who "for charity had given
a little earth," received from his bishop a menacing letter forbidding
the burial of Voltaire. It was too late.

Voltaire was dead. The foundations of State and Throne had been sapped.
The people were becoming acquainted with the real kings and with the
actual priests. Unknown men born in misery and want, men whose fathers
and mothers had been pavement for the rich, were rising toward the
light, and their shadowy faces were emerging from darkness. Labor and
thought became friends. That is, the gutter and the attic fraternized.
The monsters of the Night and the angels of the Dawn—the first thinking
of revenge, and the others dreaming of equality, liberty and fraternity.

VII. The Death-bed Argument.

ALL kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable
serenity. As a rule, there is nothing in the death of a pirate to cast
any discredit on his profession. The murderer upon the scaffold, with
a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in
heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell, meets death
without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the
divinity of Christ, or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost. The
king who has waged cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with
widows and fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who
has succeeded in offering to the Moloch of ambition the best and bravest
of his subjects, dies like a saint.

All the believing kings are in heaven—all the doubting philosophers in
perdition. All the persecutors sleep in peace, and the ashes of those
who burned their brothers, sleep in consecrated ground. Libraries could
hardly contain the names of the Christian wretches who have filled the
world with violence and death in defence of book and creed, and yet
they all died the death of the righteous, and no priest, no minister,
describes the agony and fear, the remorse and horror with which their
guilty souls were filled in the last moments of their lives. These men
had never doubted—they had never thought—they accepted the creed as
they did the fashion of their clothes. They were not infidels, they
could not be—they had been baptized, they had not denied the divinity
of Christ, they had partaken of the "last supper." They respected
priests, they admitted that Christ had two natures and the same number
of wills; they admitted that the Holy Ghost had "proceeded," and that,
according to the multiplication table of heaven, once one is three, and
three times one is one, and these things put pillows beneath their heads
and covered them with the drapery of peace.

They admitted that while kings and priests did nothing worse than to
make their fellows wretched, that so long as they only butchered and
burnt the innocent and helpless, God would maintain the strictest
neutrality; but when some honest man, some great and tender soul,
expressed a doubt as to the truth of the Scriptures, or prayed to the
wrong God, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real God
leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering
flesh tore his wretched soul.

There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has been
paralyzed—no truthful account in all the literature of the world of
the innocent child being shielded by God. Thousands of crimes are being
committed every day—men are at this moment lying in wait for their
human prey—wives are whipped and crushed, driven to insanity and
death—little children begging for mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled
eyes to the brutal faces of fathers and mothers—sweet girls are
deceived, lured and outraged, but God has no time to prevent these
things—no time to defend the good and protect the pure. He is too busy
numbering hairs and watching sparrows. He listens for blasphemy; looks
for persons who laugh at priests; examines baptismal registers; watches
professors in college who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the
astronomy of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing, if you
won't swear. A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking
God's name in vain, but millions of men, women and children have been
stolen from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no one engaged
in this infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful hand of God.

Now and then a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty, has
appeared. Such men have denounced the superstitions of their day. They
have pitied the multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the
people—priests who made begging one of the learned professions—filled
them with loathing and contempt. These men were honest enough to
tell their thoughts, brave enough to speak the truth. Then they were
denounced, tried, tortured, killed by rack or flame. But some escaped
the fury of the fiends who love their enemies, and died naturally in
their beds. It would not do for the church to admit that they died
peacefully. That would show that religion was not essential at the last
moment. Superstition gets its power from the terror of death. It would
not do to have the common people understand that a man could deny the
Bible—refuse to kiss the cross—contend that Humanity was greater than
Christ, and then die as sweetly as Torquemada did, after pouring molten
lead into the ears of an honest man; or as calmly as Calvin after he had
burned Servetus; or as peacefully as King David after advising with his
last breath one son to assassinate another.

The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments of all
infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were infinitely
wretched and despairing. It was alleged that words could not paint the
horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every good Christian was
expected to, and generally did, believe these accounts. They have been
told and retold in every pulpit of the world. Protestant ministers have
repeated the lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a kind
of theological comity, have sworn to the lies told by the Protestants.
Upon this point they have always stood together, and will as long as the
same falsehood can be used by both.

Instead of doing these things, Voltaire wilfully closed his eyes to
the light of the gospel, examined the Bible for himself, advocated
intellectual liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an arrogant
faith, assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of man, appealed
to reason, endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored the
indigent, and defended the oppressed.

He demonstrated that the origin of all religions is the same—the same
mysteries—the same miracles—the same imposture—the same temples and
ceremonies—the same kind of founders, apostles and dupes—the same
promises and threats—the same pretence of goodness and forgiveness and
the practice of the same persecution and murder. He proved that religion
made enemies—philosophy friends—and that above the rights of Gods were
the rights of man.

These were his crimes. Such a man God would not suffer to die in peace.
If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might follow his example,
until none would be left to light the holy fires of the auto da fe. It
would not do for so great, so successful, an enemy of the church to
die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some
ghastly prayer of chattered horror uttered by lips covered with blood
and foam.

For many centuries the theologians have taught that an unbeliever—an
infidel—one who spoke or wrote against their creed, could not meet
death with composure; that in his last moments God would fill his
conscience with the serpents of remorse.

For a thousand years the clergy have manufactured the facts to fit this
theory—this infamous conception of the duty of man and the justice of
God.

The theologians have insisted that crimes against man were, and are, as
nothing compared with crimes against God.

Upon the death-bed subject the clergy grow eloquent. When describing the
shudderings and shrieks of the dying unbeliever, their eyes glitter with
delight.

It is a festival.

They are no longer men. They become hyenas. They dig open graves. They
devour the dead.

It is a banquet.

Unsatisfied still, they paint the terrors of hell. They gaze at the
souls of the infidels writhing in the coils of the worm that never dies.
They see them in flames—in oceans of fire—in gulfs of pain—in abysses
of despair. They shout with joy. They applaud.

It is an auto da fe, presided over by God.

VIII. The Second Return.

FOR four hundred years the Bastile had been the outward symbol of
oppression. Within its walls the noblest had perished. It was a
perpetual threat. It was the last, and often the first, argument of
king and priest. Its dungeons, damp and rayless, its massive towers, its
secret cells, its instruments of torture, denied the existence of God.

In 1789, on the 14th of July, the people, the multitude, frenzied by
suffering, stormed and captured the Bastile. The battle-cry was "Vive
Voltaire."

In 1791 permission was given to place in the Pantheon the ashes of
Voltaire. He had been buried 110 miles from Paris. Buried by stealth, he
was to be removed by a nation. A funeral procession of a hundred miles;
every village with its flags and arches; all the people anxious to
honor the philosopher of France—the Savior of Calas—the Destroyer of
Superstition.

On reaching Paris the great procession moved along the Rue St. Antoine.
Here it paused, and for one night upon the ruins of the Bastile rested
the body of Voltaire—rested in triumph, in glory—rested on fallen wall
and broken arch, on crumbling stone still damp with tears, on rusting
chain and bar and useless bolt—above the dungeons dark and deep, where
light had faded from the lives of men and hope had died in breaking
hearts.

The conqueror resting upon the conquered.—Throned upon the Bastile,
the fallen fortress of Night, the body of Voltaire, from whose brain had
issued the Dawn.

For a moment his ashes must have felt the Promethean fire, and the old
smile must have illumined once more the face of death.

The vast multitude bowed in reverence, hushed with love and awe heard
these words uttered by a priest: "God shall be avenged."

The cry of the priest was a prophecy. Priests skulking in the shadows
with faces sinister as night, ghouls in the name of the gospel,
desecrated the grave. They carried away the ashes of Voltaire.

The tomb is empty.

God is avenged.

The world is filled with his fame.

Man has conquered.

Was there in the eighteenth century, a man wearing the vestments of the
church, the equal of Voltaire?

What cardinal, what bishop, what priest in France raised his voice for
the rights of men? What ecclesiastic, what nobleman, took the side of
the oppressed—of the peasant? Who denounced the frightful criminal
code—the torture of suspected persons? What priest pleaded for the
liberty of the citizen? What bishop pitied the victims of the rack? Is
there the grave of a priest in France on which a lover of liberty would
now drop a flower or a tear? Is there a tomb holding the ashes of a
saint from which emerges one ray of light?

If there be another life—a day of judgment, no God can afford to
torture in another world the man who abolished torture in this. If God
be the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, he should not imprison there
the men who broke the chains of slavery here. He cannot afford to make
an eternal convict of Voltaire.

Voltaire was a perfect master of the French language, knowing all its
moods, tenses and declinations, in fact and in feeling—playing upon it
as skillfully as Paganini on his violin, finding expression for every
thought and fancy, writing on the most serious subjects with the gayety
of a harlequin, plucking jests from the crumbling mouth of death,
graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings that
covered the asp with flowers and flattery—master of satire and
compliment—mingling them often in the same line, always interested
himself, and therefore interesting others—handling thoughts, questions,
subjects as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air with perfect
ease—dressing old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, pathetic,
mingling mirth with tears, wit and wisdom, and sometimes wickedness,
logic and laughter. With a woman's instinct knowing the sensitive
nerves—just where to touch—hating arrogance of place, the stupidity of
the solemn—snatching masks from priest and king, knowing the springs of
action and ambition's ends—perfectly familiar with the great world—the
intimate of kings and their favorites, sympathizing with the oppressed
and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising
superstition, and loving liberty with all his heart. Such was Voltaire
writing "Odipus" at seventeen, "Irene" at eighty-three, and crowding
between these two tragedies the accomplishment of a thousand lives.

From his throne at the foot of the Alps, he pointed the finger of scorn
at every hypocrite in Europe. For half a century, past rack and stake,
past dungeon and cathedral, past altar and throne, he carried with brave
hands the sacred torch of Reason, whose light at last will flood the
world.
