Joseph McCabe

“ No man in France had a larger command of such knowledge as the time afforded, and the use he made of it was serious and high-purposed. It is only the superficial who cannot see the depth below that sparkling surface; only the insensible who cannot i feel the strong, steady beat of a human heart behind the rippling laughter. ”

“ The position of Voltaire in the development of religious thought in Europe is unique. Even if his words had no application in our age, it merits the most grateful consideration. Trace to its sources the spirit that has led modern France and modern Portugal to raise civic ideals above creeds, and that will, within a few decades, find the same expression in Spain, Italy, Belgium, and half of America. ”

“ He never believed that the supreme intelligence was infinite in power, and the haunting problem of evil always made him hesitate to ascribe more than limited moral attributes to his deity. His one unwavering dogma — it does not waver for an instant in the poem — is that the world was designed by a supreme intelligence and is moved by a supreme power. ”

“ The satire of Voltaire is not out of place in modern England. As long as the Bible is, however insincerely, pressed on us as the Word of God, and retained in our schools, we are compelled to point out in it features which make such claims ludicrous. ”

“ The volume closes with the famous poem which Voltaire wrote, in the year 1755, when he heard that an earthquake had destroyed between 30,000 and 40,000 people in Portugal. It was one of the chief festivals of the Catholic year, the Feast of All Saints (November 1) , and the crowded churches were in the very act of worship, when the ground shook. In a few minutes 16,000 men, women, and children were slain, and as many more perished in the subsequent fires and horrors. Voltaire was at Geneva, and the horrible news threw him into the deepest distress. ”

“ Had he lived one hundred years later, when evolution began to throw its magical illumination upon the order of the universe and the wonderful adaptation of its parts, his position would clearly have been modified. ”

“ The second of these Homilies is one of the most effective indictments of the Old Testament, considered as an inspired book. Nowhere in rationalistic literature is there an exposure of the essential humanity of the Old Testament so condensed yet so fluent, so original in form, comprehensive in range, and unanswerable in argument. It was published, it is believed, in 1767, though the first edition is marked 1766. Its humour it malicious from the first line, as the "Dr. Tamponet" whose name is put to it was really an orthodox champion of the Sorbonne. ”

“ The doctrines attacked here by Voltaire are wholly discredited. Yet they are still the official teaching of the Churches (except of the Congregationalists) ; they are largely enforced on innocent children, and they are literally accepted by some millions of our people. I see no reason to refrain from letting the irony of Voltaire fall on them once more.
The reader must not, however, conclude at once that the following pages are so many red-hot charges into the tottering ranks of mediaeval dogmas. ”

“ They are mainly words of the Old Testament, and comments inspired only by those words, that have been omitted. In the eighteenth century one could quote and comment in public on these grossnesses. Indeed, by some singular mental process, which Voltaire alone could characterise, the books containing these crudely sexual passages are still thrust into the hands of children and of confined criminals by the joint authority of Church and State in England; and grave bishops and gentle women say that they are the Word of God. ”

“ It seems useful, in presenting to English readers this selection of the works of Voltaire, to recall the position and personality of the writer and the circumstances in which the works were written. It is too lightly assumed, even by m^any who enjoy the freedom which he, more than any, won for Europe, and who may surpass him in scepticism, that Voltaire is a figure to be left in a discreetly remote niche of memory. ”

“ He was now a man of mature judgment, vast erudition, and grave humanitarian purpose. The common notion in England of Voltaire's works, as superficial gibes thrown out by the way in a brilliant career, is sheer nonsense. ”

“ Could a prince of irony restrain himself in such circumstances? The other reason is the character of the dogmas and practices he assailed. Read them in the following pages.
It is true that there are passages in Voltaire which none of us would, if we could, write to-day. The taste of the eighteenth century, still fouled by the Middle Ages, is not the taste of the twentieth. ”

“ He became a precocious, sharp-eared boy. His godfather was an abbé, a kind of ecclesiastic — not usually a priest — in the France of the time who drew his income from the Church, and therefore felt more entitled than the ordinary layman to scoff at its dogmas and ignore its morals. He could plead the example of his bishops. Several of these abbés visited the home of the Arouets, and gave little "Zozo" his first lessons in Biblical criticism. In the great college of the Jesuits he learned to articulate his scepticism. In his seventeenth year he set out on the career of letters. ”

“ One incident will suffice to justify his disdain. His latest English biographer, S. G. Tallentyre, who is not biassed in his favour, says that it is most probable, if not certain, that while the Catholic authorities were burning his books in Paris, and shuddering at his infidelity, they were secretly tempting him, with the prospect of a car- dinal's hat, to join the clergy. It is certain that they invited him to do religious work, and that, at the height of his anti-clerical work, he received direct from the Pope certain relics to put in a chapel he had built for his poor neighbours. ”

“ All 's right with the world " was a very familiar cry in the eighteenth century. The English Deists, and J. J. Rousseau in France, held obstinately to this most singular optimism. Although Rousseau made a feeble and friendly reply to the poem, it proved a deadly blow to his somewhat fantastic teaching on that point. Immediately preceding this poem I have given a — translation of Voltaire's philosophical essay, II faut choisir. ”