Voltaire: A Sketch of his Life and Works Part 6

A.: It is you who mock. It is physically impossible that both are right, and it is absurd and barbarous that the people should perish because one of these two princes has reasoned badly. Let them fight together in a closed field if they wish, but that an entire people should be sacrificed to their interests, there is the horror.-_l' A.B.C._

Politics

They have discovered in their fine politics the art of causing those to die of hunger who, by cultivating the earth, give the means of life to others.-_Sottisier._

Society has been too long like a game of cards, where the rogues cheat the dupes, while sensible people dare not warn the losers that they are deceived.-_Questions sur les Miracles_.

They have only inculcated belief in absurdities to men in order to subdue them.-_Ibid._

The most tolerable of all governments is doubtless the republican, since that approaches the nearest towards natural equality.-_Idees Republicaines._

A Republican is ever more attached to his country than a subject to his, for the same reason that one loves better his own possessions than those of a master.-_Pensees sur le Gouvernement._

Give too much power to anybody and be sure they will abuse it. Were the monks of La Trappe spread throughout the world, let them confess princesses, educate youth, preach and write, and in about ten years they would be similar to the Jesuits, and it would be necessary to repress them.-_Mel. Balance Egale_.

What are politics beyond the art of lying a propos?-_Contant D'Orville_.

"Reasons of State" is a phrase invented to serve as excuse for tyrants.-_Commentaire sur le traite des Delits._

The best government is that where there are the fewest useless men.-Dial. 4.

Man is born free. The best government is that which most preserves to each mortal this gift of nature.-_Histoire de Russie_.

To be free, to have only equals, is the true life, the natural life of man; all other is an unworthy artifice, a poor comedy, where one plays the role of master, the other of slave, this one a parasite, and that other a pander.-_Dial. 24._

Why is liberty so rare? Because it is the best possession.-_Dict. Phil_.

("Venise").

Those who say that all men are equal, say truth if they mean that men have an equal right to liberty, to the property of their own goods, and the protection of the laws. They are much deceived if they think that men should be equal in their employments, since they are not so by their faculties.-_Essai sur les Murs_, i.

Despotism is the punishment of the bad conduct of men. If a community is mastered by one man or by several, it is plainly because it has not the courage and ability necessary for self-government.-_Idees Republic-aines_, 1765.

I do not give myself up to my fellow-citizens without reserve. I do not give them the power to kill or to rob me by plurality of votes. I submit to help them, and to be aided, to do justice, and to receive it. No other agreement.-_Notes on Rousseau's "Social Contract"_

The Population Question

_The Man of Forty Crowns_: I have heard much talk of population. Were we to take it into our heads to beget double the number of children we now do; were our country doubly peopled, so that we had forty millions of inhabitants instead of twenty, what would happen?

_The Geometrician_: Each would have, instead of forty, but twenty crowns to live upon; or the land would have to produce the double of what it now does; or there would be the double of the nation's industry, or of gain from foreign countries; or one half of the nation sent to America; or the one half of the nation should eat the other.-_The Man of Forty Crowns._

Nature's Way

Nature cares very little for individuals. There are other insects which do not live above one day, but of which the species is perpetual. Nature resembles those great princes who reckon as nothing the loss of four hundred thousand men, so they but accomplish their august designs.- _The Man of Forty Crowns._

Prayer

When the man of forty crowns saw himself the father of a son, he began to think himself a man of some weight in the state; he hoped to furnish, at least, ten subjects to the king, who should all prove useful. He made the best baskets in the world, and his wife was an excellent sempstress.

She was born in the neighborhood of a rich abbey of a hundred thousand livres a year. Her husband asked me, one day, why those gentlemen, who were so few in number, had swallowed so many of the forty crown lots?

"Are they more useful to their country than I am?"-"No, dear neighbor."-"Do they, like me, contribute at least to the population of it?"-"No, not to appearance, at least."-"Do they cultivate the land? Do they defend the state when it is attacked?"-"No, they pray to G.o.d for us."-"Well, then, I will pray to G.o.d for them, and let us go snacks."-_The Man of Forty Crowns._

Doubt and Speculation

_The Man of Forty Crowns_: I have sometimes a great mind to laugh at all I have been told.

_The Geometrician_: And a very good mind it is. I advise you to doubt of everything, except that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, and that triangles which have the same bases and height are equal to one another; or like propositions, as, for example, that two and two make four.

_The Man of Forty Crowns_: Yes; I hold it very wise to doubt; but I am curious since I have made my fortune and have leisure. I could wish, when my will moves my arm or my leg, to discover the spring, for surely there is one, by which my will moves them. I wonder sometimes why I can lift or lower my eyes, yet cannot move my ears. I think-and I wish I could know a little how-I mean,-there, to have my thought palpable to me, to touch it, as it were. That would surely be very curious. I want to find out whether I think from myself, or whether it is G.o.d that gives me my ideas; whether my soul came into my body at six weeks, or at one day old; how it lodged itself in my brain; whether I think much when in a profound sleep, or in a lethargy. I torture my brains to know how one body impels another. My sensations are no less a wonder to me; I find something divine in them, and especially in pleasure. I have striven sometimes to imagine a new sense, but could never arrive at it.

Geometricians know all these things; kindly be so good as to teach me.

_The Geometrician_: Alas! We are as ignorant as you. Apply to the Sorbonne.

Dr. Pangloss and the Dervish

In the neighborhood lived a very famous dervish, who was deemed the best philosopher in Turkey; him they went to consult. Pangloss was spokesman and addressed him thus:-

"Master, we come to beg you to tell us why so strange an animal as man has been formed?"

"Why do you trouble your head about it?" said the dervish; "is it any business of yours?"

"But, reverend father," said Candide, "there is a horrible amount of evil on the earth."

"What signifies it," says the dervish, "whether there is evil or good?

When His Highness sends a s.h.i.+p to Egypt does he trouble whether the rats aboard are comfortable or not?"

"What is to be done, then?" says Pangloss.