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Title: Oration on Voltaire
Author: Victor Hugo
Julius Moritzen
Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius
Translator: James Parton
Release date: September 1, 2025 [eBook #76789]
Language: English
Original publication: Girard: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1923
Credits: Tim Miller, Laura Natal and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORATION ON VOLTAIRE ***
TEN CENT POCKET SERIES NO. =52=
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Oration on Voltaire
Victor Hugo
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright 1923,
Haldeman-Julius Company.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ORATION ON VOLTAIRE
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 5
VICTOR HUGO’S ORATION ON VOLTAIRE 10
A SKETCH OF VOLTAIRE 28
GEORG BRANDES ON VOLTAIRE 36
ORATION ON VOLTAIRE
Translated by James Parton.
INTRODUCTION
This oration of Victor Hugo brings out in
clear contrast a strange contradiction. Our
progress is but an evolution from and at the
same time it is a revolt against the past.
“The thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.”
“Yet the mighty dead still rule us from their urns.”
This apparent contradiction exists because the peoples are not as yet
familiar with the law of evolution in social progress. The picture of
a child imprisoned within the ribs of a skeleton is the picture of the
world that many have for want of this conception of time and growth.
They revolt against the order of time, because time is not solid, and
is only visible to the eye of the intellect.
Therefore such revolts have been necessary. They are the great
revolutions and social volcanoes of which Paris has been the favorite
crater in Europe. Hugo’s great soul has seized the lights and shadows
of the great catastrophes of the 18th century, and, their meaning
visible to mankind forever in his wonderful oration.
It is a warning, a consecration, and a hope. It tells that progress is
the only condition of human safety. It consecrates the noble Voltaire
who made its conditions possible. It is a prophecy of hope and peace in
evolution under the light of knowledge and love. It is the inspiration
of every liberated soul to realize this aspiration for “peace on
earth and good will to men,” which rises immeasurably higher than any
Christian myth ever dreamed.
The magnificent word painting of this oration and its inspiration is
one of the highest points humanity has ever reached. We are at a loss
to find anything superior to it. Compare with it the great orations of
Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, Chatham, Mirabeau, Henry, Webster, or
the consecration of the dead at Gettysburg of Abraham Lincoln, and you
will feel that those mighty voices were limited by local and temporary
interests and feelings.
Hugo has spoken for all the races of earth and for all time. He has
realized to the heart and eye humanity’s heaven of progress sustained
by all of the powers of the good in the human soul. To those who
can but catch a glimpse of its mighty meaning it will be a treasure
forever. No one can read and understand it and be the same person he
was before.
Hugo, the greatest French poet of his century, perhaps the greatest
French poet of all time, was a fervent Theist, reverencing the prophet
of Nazareth as a man, and holding that “the divine tear” of Jesus and
“the human smile” of Voltaire “compose the sweetness of the present
civilization.” But he was perfectly free from the trammels of creeds,
and he hated priestcraft, like despotism, with a perfect hatred. In
one of his striking later poems, _Religien et les Religions_, he
derides and denounces the tenets and pretensions of Christianity. The
Devil, he says to the clergy, is only the monkey of superstition; your
Hell is an outrage on Humanity and a blasphemy against God; and when
you tell me that your deity made you in his own image, I reply that he
must be very ugly.
As a man, as well as a writer, there was something magnificently
grandiose about him. Subtract him from the nineteenth century, and you
rob it of much of its glory. For nineteen years on a lonely channel
island, an exile from the land of his birth and his love, he nursed
the conscience of humanity within his mighty heart, brandishing the
lightnings and thunders of chastisement over the heads of the political
brigands who were stifling a nation, and prophesying their certain
doom. When it came, after Sedan, he returned to Paris, and for fifteen
years he was idolised by its people. There was great mourning at his
death, and “all Paris” attended his funeral. But true to the simplicity
of his life he ordered that his body should lie in a common coffin,
which contrasted vividly with the splendid procession. France buried
him, as she did Gambetta; he was laid to rest in the Church of St.
Genevieve, re-secularized as the pantheon for the occasion; and the
interment took place without any religious rites.
Hugo’s great oration on Voltaire, in 1878, roused the ire of the Bishop
of Orleans, who reprimanded him in a public letter. The free-thinking
poet sent a crushing reply:
“France had to pass an ordeal. France was free. A man traitorously
seized her in the night, threw her down and garrotted her. If a
people could be killed, that man had slain France. He made her dead
enough for him to reign over her. He began his reign, since it was
a reign, with perjury, lying in wait, and massacre. He continued
it by oppression, by tyranny, by despotism, by an unspeakable
parody of religion and justice. He was monstrous and little. The
Deum Magnificat, Salvum fac, Gloria tibi, were sung for him. Who
sang them? Ask yourself. The law delivered the people up to him.
The church delivered God up to him. Under that man sank down right,
honor, country; he had beneath his feet oath, equity, probity, the
glory of the flag, the dignity of men, the liberty of citizens. That
man’s prosperity disconcerted the human conscience. It lasted nineteen
years. During that time you were in a palace. I was in exile. I pity
you, sir.”
Despite this terrible rebuff to Bishop Dupanloup, another priest,
Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris, had the temerity and bad taste
to obtrude himself when Victor Hugo lay dying in 1885. Being born on
February 25, 1802, the poet was in his eighty-fourth year, and expiring
naturally of old age. Had the rites of the Church been performed on him
in such circumstances, it would have been an insufferable farce. Yet
the Archbishop wrote to Madame Lockroy, offering to bring personally
“the succor and consolation so much needed in these cruel ordeals.”
Monsieur Lockroy at once replied as follows:
“Madame Lockroy, who cannot leave the bedside of her father-in-law,
begs me to thank you for the sentiments which you have expressed with
so much eloquence and kindness. As regards M. Victor Hugo, he has
again said within the last few days, that he had no wish during his
illness to be attended by a priest of any persuasion. We should be
wanting in our duty if we did not respect his resolution.”
VICTOR HUGO’S ORATION ON VOLTAIRE
Delivered at Paris, May 30, 1878, the hundredth anniversary of
Voltaire’s death.
A hundred years ago today a man died. He died immortal. He departed
laden with years, laden with works, laden with the most illustrious and
the most fearful of responsibilities, the responsibility of the human
conscience informed and rectified. He went cursed and blessed, cursed
by the past, blessed by the future; and these, gentlemen, are the two
superb forms of glory. On his death bed he had, on the one hand, the
acclaim of contemporaries and of posterity; on the other, that triumph
of hooting and of hate which the implacable past bestows upon those
who have combatted it. He was more than a man; he was an age. He had
exercised a function and fulfilled a mission. He had been evidently
chosen for the work which he had done, by the supreme will, which
manifests itself as visibly in the laws of destiny as in the laws of
nature.
The eighty-four years which this man lived occupy the interval that
separates the monarchy at its apogee from the revolution at its dawn.
When he was born Louis XIV still reigned, when he died Louis XVI
reigned already; so that his cradle could see the last rays of the
great throne, and his coffin the first gleams from the great abyss.
[Applause.]
Before going further, let us come to an understanding, gentlemen, upon
the word abyss. There are good abysses: such are the abysses in which
evil is engulfed. [Bravo!]
Gentlemen, since I have interrupted myself, allow me to complete my
thought. No word imprudent or unsound will be pronounced here. We are
here to perform an act of civilization. We are here to make affirmation
of progress, to pay respect to philosophers for the benefits of
philosophy, to bring to the eighteenth century the testimony of the
nineteenth, to honor magnanimous combatants and good servants, to
felicitate the noble effort of peoples, industry, science, the valiant
march in advance, the toil to cement human accord; in one word, to
glorify peace, that sublime, universal desire. Peace is the virtue
of civilization; war is its crime. [Applause.] We are here, at this
grand moment, in this solemn hour to bow religiously before the moral
law, and to say to the world, which hears France, this: There is only
one power, conscience in the service of justice; and there is only
one glory, genius in the service of truth. [Movement.] That said, I
continue.
Before the revolution, gentlemen, the social structure was this:
At the base, the people:
Above the people, religion represented by the clergy;
By the side of religion, justice represented by the magistracy.
And, at that period of human society, what was the people? It was
ignorance. What was religion? It was intolerance. And what was justice?
It was injustice. Am I going too far in my words? Judge.
I will confine myself to the citation of two facts, but decisive.
At Toulouse, October 13, 1761, there was found in a lower story of a
house, a young man hanged. The crowd gathered, the clergy fulminated,
the magistracy investigated. It was a suicide; they made of it an
assassination. In what interest? In the interest of religion. And who
was accused? The father. He was a Huguenot, and he wished to hinder his
son from becoming a Catholic. There was here a moral monstrosity and a
material impossibility; no matter! This father had killed his son; this
old man had hanged this young man. Justice travailled, and this was the
result. On the month of March, 1762, a man with white hair, Jean Calas,
was conducted to a public place, stripped naked, stretched upon a
wheel, the members bound upon it, the head hanging. Three men are there
upon a scaffold, a magistrate, named David, charged to superintend the
punishment, a priest to hold the crucifix, and the executioner with a
bar of iron in his hand. The patient, stupefied and terrible, regards
not the priest, and looks at the executioner. The executioner lifts the
bar of iron, and breaks one of his arms. The victim groans and swoons.
The magistrate comes forward; they make the condemned inhale salts; he
returns to life. Then another stroke of the bar; another groan. Calas
loses consciousness; they revive him, and the executioner begins again;
and, as each limb before being broken in two places receives two blows,
that makes eight punishments. After the eighth swooning the priest
offers him the crucifix to kiss; Calas turns away his head, and the
executioner gives him the _coup de grace_; that is to say, crushes
in his chest with the thick end of the bar of iron. So died Jean Calas.
That lasted two hours. After his death, the evidence of the suicide
came to light. But an assassination had been committed. By whom? By the
judges. [Great sensation. Applause.]
Another fact. After the old man, the young man. Three years later, in
1765, at Abbeville, the day after a night of storm and high wind, there
was found upon the pavement of a bridge an old crucifix of worm-eaten
wood, which for three centuries had been fastened to the parapet. Who
had thrown down this crucifix? Who had committed this sacrilege? It
is not known. Perhaps a passerby. Perhaps the wind. Who is the guilty
one? The Bishop of Amiens launches a _monitoire_. Note what a
_monitoire_ was: it was an order to all the faithful, on pain
of hell, to declare what they knew or believed they knew of such or
such a fact; a murderous injunction, when addressed by fanaticism
to ignorance. The _monitoire_ of the Bishop of Amiens does its
work; the town gossip assumes the character of the crime charged.
Justice discovers, or believes it discovers, that on the night when the
crucifix was thrown down, two men, two officers, one named La Barre,
the other d’Etallonde, passed over the bridge of Abbeville, that they
were drunk, and that they sang a guard-room song. The tribunal was the
Seneschalcy of Abbeville. The Seneschalcy of Abbeville was equivalent
to the court of the Capitouls of Toulouse. It was not less just. Two
orders for arrest were issued. d’Etallonde escaped, La Barre was taken.
Him they delivered to judicial examination. He denied having crossed
the bridge; he confessed to having sung the song. The Seneschalcy of
Abbeville condemned him; he appealed to the Parliament of Paris. He
was conducted to Paris; the sentence was found good and confirmed. He
was conducted back to Abbeville in chains. I abridge. The monstrous
hour arrives. They begin by subjecting the Chevalier de La Barre
to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, to make him reveal his
accomplices. Accomplices in what? In having crossed a bridge and sung
a song. During the torture one of his knees was broken; his confessor,
on hearing the bones crack, fainted away. The next day, June 5, 1766,
La Barre was drawn to the great square of Abbeville, where flamed a
penitential fire; the sentence was read to La Barre; then they cut off
one of his hands; then they tore out his tongue with iron pinchers;
then, in mercy, his head was cut off and thrown into the fire. So died
the Chevalier de La Barre. He was nineteen years of age. [Long and
profound sensation.]
Then, O Voltaire! thou didst utter a cry of horror, and it will be
thine eternal glory! [Thunders of applause.]
Then didst thou enter upon the appalling trial of the past; thou didst
plead, against tyrants and monsters, the cause of the human race,
and thou didst gain it. Great man, blessed be thou forever! [Renewed
applause.]
Gentlemen, the frightful things which I have recalled were accomplished
in the midst of a polite society; its life was gay and light; people
went and came; they looked neither above nor below themselves; their
indifference had become carelessness; graceful poets, Saint-Aulaire,
Boufflers, Gentil-Bernard, composed pretty verses; the court was all
festival; Versailles was brilliant; Paris ignored what was passing; and
then it was that, through religious ferocity, the judges made an old
man die upon the wheel, and the priests tore out a child’s tongue for a
song. [Vivid emotion. Applause.]
In the presence of this society, frivolous and dismal, Voltaire alone,
having before his eyes those united forces, the court, the nobility,
capital; that unconscious power, the blind multitude; that terrible
magistracy, so severe to subjects, so docile to the master, crushing
and flattering, kneeling upon the people before the king [Bravo!] that
clergy, vile _melange_ of hypocrisy and fanaticism; Voltaire
alone, I repeat it, declared war against that coalition of all the
social iniquities, against that enormous and terrible world, and he
accepted battle with it. And what was his weapon? That which has
the lightness of the wind and the power of the thunderbolt. A pen.
[Applause.]
With that weapon he fought; with that weapon he conquered.
Gentlemen, let us salute that memory.
Voltaire conquered; Voltaire waged the splendid kind of warfare, the
war of one alone against all; that is to say, the grand warfare. The
war of thought against matter, the war of reason against prejudice, the
war of the just against the unjust, the war for the oppressed against
the oppressor, the war of goodness, the war of kindness. He had the
tenderness of a woman and the wrath of a hero. He was a great mind, and
an immense heart. [Bravos.]
He conquered the old code and the old dogma. He conquered the feudal
lord, the gothic judge, the Roman priest. He raised the populace to
the dignity of people. He taught, pacificated, and civilized. He fought
for Sirven and Montbailly, as for Calas and La Barre; he accepted all
the menaces, all the outrages, all the persecutions, calumny, and
exile. He was indefatigable and immovable. He conquered violence by
a smile, despotism by sarcasm, infallibility by irony, obstinacy by
perseverance, ignorance by truth.
I have just pronounced the word _smile_. I pause at it. Smile! It
is Voltaire.
Let us say it, gentlemen, pacification (_apaise-ment?_) is the
great side of the philosopher: in Voltaire the equilibrium always
reestablishes itself at last. Whatever may be his just wrath, it
passes, and the irritated Voltaire always gives place to the Voltaire
calmed. Then in that profound eye the SMILE appears.
That smile is wisdom. That smile, I repeat, is Voltaire. That smile
sometimes becomes laughter, but the philosophic sadness tempers it.
Toward the strong, it is mockery; toward the weak, it is a caress.
It disquiets the oppressor, and reassures the oppressed. Against the
great, it is raillery; for the little, it is pity. Ah, let us be moved
by that smile! It had in it the rays of the dawn. It illuminated the
true, the just, the good, and what there is of worthy in the useful.
It lighted up the interior of superstitions. Those ugly things it is
salutary to see; he has shown them. Luminous, that smile was fruitful
also. The new society, the desire for equality and concession, and
that beginning of fraternity which called itself tolerance, reciprocal
good-will, the just accord of men and rights, reason recognized as the
supreme law, the annihilation of prejudices and fixed opinions, the
serenity of souls, the spirit of indulgence and of pardon, harmony,
peace--behold what has come from that great smile!
On the day--very near, without any doubt--when the identity of wisdom
and clemency will be recognized, the day when the amnesty will be
proclaimed, I affirm it, up there, in the stars, Voltaire will smile.
[Triple salvo of applause. Cries, _Vive l’amnestie!_]
Gentlemen, between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen
hundred years apart, there is a mysterious relation.
To combat Pharisaism; to unmask imposture; to overthrow tyrannies,
usurpations, prejudices, falsehoods, superstitions; to demolish the
temple in order to rebuild it, that is to say, to replace the false by
the true; to attack a ferocious magistracy; to attack a sanguinary
priesthood; to take a whip and drive the money-changers from the
sanctuary; to reclaim the heritage of the disinherited; to protect the
weak, the poor, the suffering, the overwhelmed, to struggle for the
persecuted and oppressed--that was the war of Jesus Christ. And who
waged that war? It was Voltaire.
The completion of the evangelical work is the philosophical work; the
spirit of meekness began, the spirit of tolerance continued. Let us say
it with a sentiment of profound respect: Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled.
Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the sweetness
of the present civilization. [Prolonged applause.]
Did Voltaire always smile? No. He was often indignant. You remarked it
in my first words.
Certainly, gentlemen, measure, reserve, proportion are reason’s
supreme law. We can say that moderation is the very respiration of the
philosopher. The effort of the wise man ought to be to condense into
a sort of serene certainty all the approximations of which philosophy
is composed. But at certain moments, the passion for the true rises
powerful and violent, and it is within its right in so doing, like the
stormy winds which purify. Never, I insist upon it, will any wise man
shake those two august supports of social labor, justice and hope; and
all will respect the judge if he is embodied justice, and all will
venerate the priest if he represents hope. But if the magistracy calls
itself torture, if the Church calls itself Inquisition, then Humanity
looks them in the face, and says to the judge: I will none of thy law!
and says to the priest: I will none of thy dogma! I will none of thy
fire upon earth and thy hell in the future! [Wild sensation. Prolonged
applause.] Then philosophy rises in wrath, and arraigns the judge
before justice, and the priest before God! [Redoubled applause.]
This is what Voltaire did. It was grand.
What Voltaire was, I have said; what his age was, I am about to say.
Gentlemen, great men rarely come alone; large trees seem larger when
they dominate a forest; there they are at home. There was a forest of
minds around Voltaire; that forest was the eighteenth century. Among
those minds there were summits, Montesquieu, Buffon, Beaumarchais, and
among others, two, the highest after Voltaire--Rousseau and Diderot.
Those thinkers taught men to reason; reasoning well leads to acting
well; justness in the mind becomes justice in the heart. Those toilers
for progress labored usefully. Buffon founded naturalism; Beaumarchais
discovered outside of Molière, a kind of comedy till then unknown,
almost the social comedy; Montesquieu made in law some excavations so
profound that he succeeded in exhuming the right. As to Rousseau, as
to Diderot, let us pronounce those two names apart; Diderot, a vast
intelligence, inquisitive, a tender heart, a thirst for justice, wished
to give certain notions as the foundation of true ideas, and created
the encyclopaedia. Rousseau rendered to woman an admirable service,
completing the mother by the nurse, placing near one another those two
majesties of the cradle. Rousseau, a writer, eloquent and pathetic, a
profound oratorical dreamer, often divined and proclaimed political
truth; his ideal borders upon the real; he had the glory of being
the first man in France who called himself citizen. The civic fiber
vibrates in Rousseau; that which vibrates in Voltaire is the universal
fiber. One can say that in the fruitful eighteenth century, Rosseau
represented the people; Voltaire, still more vast, represented Man.
Those powerful writers disappeared, but they left us their soul, the
Revolution. [Applause.]
Yes, the French Revolution was their soul. It was their radiant
manifestation. It came from them; we find them everywhere in that blest
and superb catastrophe, which formed the conclusion of the past and
the opening of the future. In that clear light, which is peculiar to
revolutions, and which beyond causes permits us to perceive effects,
and beyond the first plan the second, we see behind Danton Diderot,
behind Robespierre Rousseau, and behind Mirabeau Voltaire. These formed
those.
Gentlemen, to sum up epochs, by giving them the names of men, to name
ages, to make of them in some sort human personages, has only been done
by three peoples, Greece, Italy, France. We say, the Age of Pericles,
the Age of Augustus, the Age of Leo X, the Age of Louis XIV, the Age of
Voltaire. Those appellations have a great significance. This privilege
of giving names to periods belonging exclusively to Greece, to Italy,
and to France, is the highest mark of civilization. Until Voltaire,
they were the names of the chiefs of states; Voltaire is more than the
chief of a state; he is a chief of ideas; with Voltaire a new cycle
begins. We feel that henceforth the supreme governmental power is to
be thought. Civilization obeyed force; it will obey the ideal. It was
the scepter and the sword broken, to be replaced by the ray of light;
that is to say, authority transfigured into liberty. Henceforth, no
other sovereignty than the law for the people, and the conscience for
the individual. For each of us, the two aspects of progress separate
themselves clearly, and they are these: to exercise one’s right; that
is to say, to be a man; to perform one’s duty; that is to say, to be a
citizen.
Such is the signification of that word, the Age of Voltaire; such is
the meaning of that august event, the French Revolution.
The two memorable centuries which preceded the eighteenth, prepared for
it; Rabelais warned royalty in Gargantua, and Molière warned the church
in Tartuffe. Hatred of force and respect for right are visible in those
two illustrious spirits.
Whoever says today, _might makes right_, performs an act of the
Middle Ages, and speaks to men three hundred years behind their time.
[Repeated applause.]
Gentlemen, the nineteenth century glorifies the eighteenth century. The
eighteenth proposed, the nineteenth concludes. And my last word will be
the declaration, tranquil but inflexible, of progress.
The time has come. The right has found its formula: human federation.
Today, force is called violence, and begins to be judged; war is
arraigned. Civilization, upon the complaint of the human race, orders
the trial, and draws up the great criminal indictment of conquerors
and captains. [Emotion.] This witness, History, is summoned. The
reality appears. The factitious brilliancy is dissipated. In many
cases, the hero is a species of assassin. [Applause.] The peoples
begin to comprehend that increasing the magnitude of a crime cannot be
its diminution; that, if to kill is a crime, to kill much cannot be
an extenuating circumstance [Laughter and bravos]; that, if to steal
is a shame, to invade cannot be a glory [Repeated applause]; that
_Te Deums_ do not count for much in this matter; that homicide is
homicide; that bloodshed is bloodshed; that it serves nothing to call
one’s self Caesar or Napoleon; and that in the eyes of the eternal God,
the figure of a murderer is not changed because, instead of a gallow’s
cap, there is placed upon his head an emperor’s crown. [Long continued
acclamation. Triple salvo of applause.]
Ah! let us proclaim absolute truths. Let us dishonor war. No; glorious
war does not exist. No; it is not good, and it is not useful, to make
corpses. No; it cannot be that life travails for death. No; oh, mothers
who surround me, it cannot be that war, the robber, should continue
to take from you your children. No; it cannot be that women should
bear children in pain, that men should be born, that people should
plow and sow, that the farmer should fertilize the fields, and the
workmen enrich the city, that industry should produce marvels, that
genius should produce prodigies, that the vast human activity should,
in presence of the starry sky, multiply efforts and creations, all
to result in that frightful international exposition which is called
a field of battle! [Profound sensation. The whole audience rises and
applauds the orator.]
The true field of battle, behold it’s here! It is this rendezvous of
the masterpieces of human labor which Paris offers the world at this
moment.[1]
The true victory is the victory of Paris. [Applause.]
Alas! we cannot hide it from ourselves, that the present hour, worthy
as it is of admiration and respect, has still some mournful aspects;
there are still shadows upon the horizon; the tragedy of the peoples
is not finished; war, wicked war, is still there, and it has the
audacity to lift its head in the midst of this august festival of
peace. Princes, for two years past, obstinately adhere to a fatal
misunderstanding; their discord forms an obstacle to our concord, and
they are ill-inspired to condemn us to the statement of such a contrast.
Let this contrast lead us back to Voltaire. In the presence of menacing
possibilities, let us be more pacific than ever. Let us turn toward
that great death, toward that great life, toward that great spirit. Let
us bend before the venerated tombs. Let us take counsel of him whose
life, useful to men, was extinguished a hundred years ago, but whose
work is immortal. Let us take counsel of the other powerful thinkers,
the auxiliaries of this glorious Voltaire, of Jean Jacques, of Diderot,
of Montesquieu. Let us give the word to those great voices. Let us stop
the effusion of human blood. Enough! enough! despots. Ah! barbarism
persists; very well, let civilization be indignant. Let the eighteenth
century come to the help of the nineteenth. The philosophers, our
predecessors, are the apostles of the true; let us invoke those
illustrious shades; let them, before monarchies meditate wars,
proclaim the right of man to life, the right of conscience to liberty,
the sovereignty of reason, the holiness of labor, the beneficence of
peace; and since night issues from the thrones, let the light come from
the tombs. [Acclamations unanimous and prolonged. From all sides bursts
the cry: “Vive Victor Hugo.”]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The exposition of 1878 was then open in Paris.]
A SKETCH OF VOLTAIRE
Francois Marie Arouet, generally known by the name of Voltaire, was
born at Chatenay on February 20, 1694. To write his life during those
eighty-three years would be to give the intellectual history of Europe.
While Voltaire was living at Ferney in 1768, he gave a curious
exhibition of that profane sportiveness which was a strong element in
his character. On Easter Sunday he took his secretary Wagnière with
him to commune at the village church, and also “to lecture a little
those scoundrels who steal continually.” Apprised of Voltaire’s sermon
on theft, the Bishop of Anneci rebuked him, and finally “forbade every
curate, priest, and monk of his diocese to confess, absolve or give the
communion to the seigneur of Ferney, with his express orders, under
pain of interdiction.” With a wicked light in his eyes, Voltaire said
he could commune in spite of the Bishop; nay, that the ceremony should
be gone through in his chamber. Then ensued an exquisite comedy, which
shakes one’s side even as described by the stolid Wagnière. Feigning
a deadly sickness, Voltaire took to his bed. The surgeon, who found
his pulse was excellent, was bamboozled into certifying that he was in
danger of death. Then the priest was summoned to administer the last
consolation. The poor devil at first objected, but Voltaire threatened
him with legal proceedings for refusing to bring the sacrament to a
dying man, who had never been excommunicated. This was accompanied
with a grave declaration that M. de Voltaire “had never ceased to
respect and to practice the Catholic religion.” Eventually the priest
came “half dead with fear.” Voltaire demanded absolution at once, but
the Capuchin pulled out of his pocket a profession of faith, drawn up
by the Bishop, which Voltaire was required to sign. Then the comedy
deepened. Voltaire kept demanding absolution, and the distracted priest
kept presenting the document for his signature. At last the Lord
of Ferney had his way. The priest gave him the wafer, and Voltaire
declared “Having my God in my mouth,” that he forgave his enemies.
Directly he left the room, Voltaire leaped briskly out of bed, where a
minute before he seemed unable to move. “I have had a little trouble,”
he said to Wagnière, “with this comical genius of a Capuchin; but that
was only for amusement, and to accomplish a good purpose. Let us take a
turn in the garden. I told you I would be confessed and commune in my
bed, in spite of M. Biord.”
Voltaire treated Christianity so lightly that he confessed and took the
sacrament for a joke. Is it wonderful if he did the same thing on his
death-bed to secure the decent burial for his corpse? He remembered his
own bitter sorrow and indignation, which he expressed in burning verse,
when the remains of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur were refused sepulture
because she died outside the pale of the Church. Fearing similar
treatment himself, he arranged to cheat the Church again. By the agency
of his nephew, the Abbé Mignot, the Abbé Gautier was brought to his
bedside, and according to Condorcet he “confessed Voltaire, receiving
from him a profession of faith, by which he declared that he died in
the Catholic religion, wherein he was born.” This story is generally
credited, but its truth is by no means indisputable; for in the Abbé
Gautier’s declaration to the Prior of the Abbey of Scellieres, where
Voltaire’s remains were interred, he says that when he visited M. de
Voltaire, he found him “_unfit to be confessed_.”
The curate of St. Sulpice was annoyed at being forestalled by the Abbé
Gautier, and as Voltaire was his parishioner he demanded “a detailed
profession of faith and a disavowal of all heretical doctrines.” He
paid the dying Freethinker many unwelcome visits, in the vain hope of
obtaining a full recantation, which would be a fine feather in his hat.
The last of these visits is thus described by Wagnière, who was an
eye-witness to the scene. I take Carlyle’s translation:
“Two days before that mournful death, M. l’Abbé Mignot, his nephew,
went to seek the Curé of St. Sulpice and the Abbé Gautier, and brought
them into his uncle’s sick room; who, on being informed that the Abbé
Gautier was there, ‘Ah, well!’ said he, ‘give him my compliments
and my thanks.’ The Abbé spoke some words to him, exhorting him to
patience. The Curé of St. Sulpice then came forward, having announced
himself, and asked of M. de Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he
acknowledged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ? The sick man
pushed one of his hands against the Curé’s calotte (coif), shoving him
back, and cried, turning abruptly to the other side, ‘Let me die in
peace (Laissez-moi mourir en paix).’ The Curé seemingly considered
his person soiled, and his coif dishonored, by the touch of the
philosopher. He made the sick-nurse give him a little brushing, and
then went out with the Abbé Gautier.”
A further proof that Voltaire made no real recantation lies in the
fact that the Bishop of Troyes sent a peremptory dispatch to the Prior
of Scellieres, which lay in his diocese, forbidding him to inter
the heretic’s remains. The dispatch, however, arrived too late, and
Voltaire’s ashes remained there until 1791, when they were removed to
Paris and placed in the Pantheon, by order of the National Assembly.
Voltaire’s last moments are described by Wagnière. I again take
Carlyle’s translation:
“He expired about a quarter past eleven at night, _with the most
perfect tranquility_, after having suffered the cruelest pains
in consequence of those fatal drugs, which his own imprudence, and
especially that of the persons who should have looked to it, made
him swallow. Ten minutes before his last breath he took the hand
of Morand, his valet-de-chambre, who was watching him, pressed it,
and said, ‘_Adieu, mon cher Morand, je me meurs_’--‘Adieu, my
dear Morand, I am gone.’ These are the last words uttered by M. de
Voltaire.”
Such are the facts of Voltaire’s decease. He made no recantation,
he refused to utter or sign a confession of faith, but with the
connivance of his nephew, the Abbé Mignot, he tricked the Church into
granting him a decent burial, not choosing to be flung into a ditch or
buried like a dog. His heresy was never seriously questioned at the
time, and the clergy actually clamored for the expulsion of the Prior
who had allowed his body to be interred in a church vault.
Many years afterwards the priests pretended that Voltaire died raving.
They declared that Marshal Richelieu was horrified by the scene and
obliged to leave the chamber. From France the pious concoction spread
to England, until it was exposed by Sir Charles Morgan, who published
the following extracts from a letter by Dr. Burard, who, as assistant
physician, was constantly about Voltaire in his last moments:
“I feel happy in being able, while paying homage to the truth,
to destroy the effects of the lying stories which have been told
respecting the last moments of Mons. de Voltaire. I was, by office,
one of those who were appointed to watch the whole progress of his
illness, with M. M. Tronchin, Lorry, and Try, his medical attendants.
I never left him for an instant during his last moments, and I can
certify that we invariably observed in him the same strength of
character, though his disease was necessarily attended with horrible
pain. (Here follow the details of his case.) We positively forbade him
to speak in order to prevent the increase of a spitting of blood,
with which he was attacked; still he continued to communicate with us
by means of little cards, on which he wrote his questions; we replied
to him verbally, and if he was not satisfied, he always made his
observations to us in writing. He therefore, retained his faculties up
to the last moment, and the fooleries which have been attributed to
him are deserving of the greatest contempt. It could not even be said
that such or such person had related any circumstance of his death,
as being witness to it; for at the last, admission to his chamber
was forbidden to any person. Those who came to obtain intelligence
respecting the patient, waited in the saloon, and other apartments at
hand. The proposition, therefore, which has been put in the mouth of
Marshal Richelieu is as unfounded as the rest.
“Paris, April 3rd, 1819.
(Signed) BURARD.”
Another slander appears to emanate from the Abbé Barruel, who was so
well informed about Voltaire that he calls him “the dying Atheist,”
when, as all the world knows, he was a Deist.
“In his last illness he sent for Dr. Tronchin. When the doctor came,
he found Voltaire in the greatest agony, exclaiming with the utmost
horror--‘I am abandoned by God and man.’ He then said, ‘Doctor, I will
give you half of what I am worth, if you will give me six months’
life.’ The doctor answered, ‘Sir, you cannot live six weeks.’ Voltaire
replied, ‘Then I shall go to hell, and you will go with me!’ and soon
after expired.”
When, the clergy are reduced to manufacture such contemptible
rubbish as this, they must indeed be in great straits. It is flatly
contradicted by the evidence of every contemporary of Voltaire.
My readers will, I think, be fully satisfied that Voltaire neither
recanted nor died raving, but remained a skeptic to the last; passing
away quietly, at a ripe old age, to “the undiscovered country from
whose bourne no traveler returns,” and leaving behind him a name that
brightens the track of time.
GEORG BRANDES ON VOLTAIRE
By Julius Moritzen.
It is hardly to be expected that 144 years after the death of Francois
de Voltaire any new and startling facts should have been discovered
anent the career of one of the greatest Frenchmen that ever lived. But
there is that in the writings of Georg Brandes that when this Danish
critic and internationalist undertakes a task like that of writing a
new history of Voltaire we are very sure to find an old subject given
a new interpretation. That Brandes’ “Francois de Voltaire” is today
considered perhaps the most picturesque presentation of a personality
whose influence on the history of France has been most profound is
but a natural corollary considering what the author of “William
Shakespeare, a Critical Study,” did in the case of England when
analyzing the character of Shakespeare.
Georg Brandes places Voltaire in the various environments that went to
widen the horizon of the French satirist, and it is quite apart from
his literary achievements that Voltaire rises before the reader’s mind
as having done so much for making nations better acquainted with each
other. Himself a man with an international vision, Brandes for this
reason emphasizes Voltaire’s English education and what English culture
of that period did toward infusing the spirit of liberalism into a
France surcharged with the dominance of a Louis XV through an arrogant
court circle. Whether or not Voltaire led the way for the Revolution
that swept aside a regime that became unbearable, the fact is not to
be denied that his last stay at Ferney saw him prepare unconsciously
for an event that he had inspired while he himself was far from being
revolutionary in spirit.
Banished from French soil for so great a part of his life, Francois de
Voltaire could not fail to discern the weak points of his own country’s
national life as compared with what England had to show him. Brandes is
very explicit on this score.
“Voltaire was released from the Bastile on the second day of May on
orders of the King and his royal highness, the Duke,” writes Brandes,
“and Conde was instructed to accompany him to Calais and watch him go
on board and leave the harbor. His exile, designed as a punishment,
proved in every way an advantage to his development.”
Differing as day from night, English social conditions as compared with
the France of the period could not fail to impress the young exile.
“Landing at Greenwich,” Brandes continues, “Voltaire slept his first
night in London at Lord Bolingbroke’s palace in Pall Mall, after
spending the evening in the company of ladies and gentlemen of the most
exclusive society. Bolingbroke knew the foremost writers of England, so
that through him Voltaire could immediately make their acquaintance,
except where language prevented. Bolingbroke called the triumvirate
of the English Parnassus, Pope, Swift and Gray, by their first names.
Voltaire could not have had a better introduction to the literary and
aristocratic world of England.”
It was characteristic of the manners and customs of the day that
Voltaire arrived in England supplied with letters of introduction
from members of the very French government that had exiled him. The
abler men among the ministers were apparently ashamed that they had
been obliged to exile a man, not because of what wrongs he had done
but because of the injustice he had suffered. The French minister of
foreign affairs, M. de Morville, requested Horatio Walpole, a brother
of the English Premier, Sir Robert Walpole, and Stair’s successor as
England’s ambassador to France, to do all he could for the welfare of
Voltaire on English soil.
Brandes places emphasis on a letter Walpole wrote the Duke of
Newcastle as follows: “I trust you will pardon me when, at the earnest
solicitation of M. de Morville, I recommend to you M. de Voltaire, a
writer and a most talented one who has recently come to England in
order to have published through subscription a splendid poem, called
‘Henry IV.’ It is true that he has been imprisoned in the Bastile, but
not on account of anything having to do with the government. It was
merely through a dispute with a private individual, and I therefore
hope that your Excellency will bestow on him your favor and protection
by furthering the subscription.”
Walpole wrote a similar letter to Bubb Dodington, Duke of Melcombe,
the rich and highly placed patron of men of letters in whose house
in Eastbury Voltaire lived for more than three months, and whom he
always remembered with gratitude as a wealthy and active man, of
keen intelligence and sound character. Voltaire at a later period
introduced Thierot to him with the remark that he had once sent
Dodington his “History of Charles XII” but that now he sent him
something much better.
In Eastbury, Voltaire made the acquaintance of Edward Young who, later,
was to win repute as a devotional writer, and eventually became his
friend. Young had not then become a clergyman and had not yet written
his “Night Thoughts” which Voltaire later called a “confusing mixture
of bombastical and obscure trivialities.” In Eastbury Voltaire met also
James Thomson, the popular author of “The Seasons,” and the impression
he left on him was that of a “great genius and great simplicity.”
Very characteristic of Brandes’ style and analytical skill is the
following: “From the very first Voltaire had access to the Minister
Robert Walpole, the Duke of Newcastle, the Archduchess of Marlborough,
and the two courts, that of the King and of the Prince and Princess
of Wales. Some years before he had paid his respects, though only in
a literary fashion, to King George I, when in 1718 he sent him his
‘Ædipe’ with flattering verses which have a humorous effect today. He
termed the clumsy boarish Hanoveranian a man of wisdom and a hero,
whereupon the King sent Lord Stair a watch as a gift to Voltaire. A
letter from Voltaire to his Lordship requests that he send the watch
to his father, for Voltaire evidently hoped to raise himself in his
parent’s eyes when he saw that he had a son who received presents from
an English monarch.”
“What most impressed Voltaire,” Brandes continues, “who had come from
a country where the gag was the sceptre, the chief instrument of the
art of government, was the utter absence of such a thing in England.
Here every writer, from Swift downward, could attack the policy of
the cabinet with a derisive violence that in France would have put
him behind the bars for life. Here no one touched a hair on his head.
Most remarkable of all, he found this freedom of speech was perfectly
consistent with peace and order.
“Voltaire discovered that in England nobility did not stand for caste,
but that the great merchant whose trade benefited England and the
world was raised to the nobility while he gave the younger sons to
civic enterprise and industry. It is unquestionably true that while
Voltaire’s exile was meant as a punishment it brought the young writer
knowledge and insight. It sharpened his sense for what was actual and
his instinct for the possible. It gave to his inborn elasticity of
mind that practical understanding without which there can be no great
writer.”
II.
While there is no lack of historical accounts about the relations
existing between Voltaire and Frederick the Great, yet there are
phases of that relationship which still lend themselves to fresh
interpretation when viewed by one so keenly analytical as Georg
Brandes. The Danish critic declares emphatically that history can
show few instances where a ruler in his relations with a great
productive mentality has proceeded in such a way as to make the contact
significant to both principals.
“In ancient times,” Brandes writes, “Aristotle was the teacher of
Alexander, and the latter, when on his campaign would send Aristotle
books and material for study. But Alexander could exert no influence on
the philosopher. Caesar and Cicero knew each other thoroughly. Cicero
was Caesar’s political opponent. Nevertheless, Caesar paid homage to
Cicero as the representative of literature and repaid his attacks by
showing him knightly attention. But neither Caesar nor Cicero owed
each other any intellectual enrichment.
“In later times the relations between Goethe and Karl August lasted
from the early youth of both until the death of the prince. Goethe
was indebted to the Duke of Weimar for a secure position and received
through this connection much experience. But intellectual impression
he did not obtain from this source, for in spite of Karl August’s
considerable capability, a genius he was not.
“In even later times there is the relationship between Richard Wagner
and Ludwig II. Wagner had King Ludwig to thank for comfort and a place
where he could work in quiet. But the King did not influence the
composer intellectually.
“The historical relation between Voltaire and Frederick the Great
stands alone. This is no harmonious relationship. In the course of
the first fifteen years enthusiasm is abroad; then the friendship is
undermined through Voltaire’s undisciplined methods and Frederick’s
exasperation. Then again the relationship is renewed, the break is
healed and the friendliness is maintained through the lives of both.
This is striking evidence of the spirit of world-citizenship that
prevailed in the eighteenth century, since the ruler and the writer
belong to two different people, even while their language is the same.
But the decisive fact here is that both the writer and the ruler are
geniuses, the acknowledged geniuses of the period, and that they
influence each other.”
Where Georg Brandes excels in portraying great men of the past is in
his masterful pictures of contrasts, the analytical and synthetic so
nicely proportioned that in its final presentation the picture leaves
no doubt but what scholarly devotion to a set task leaves little to be
said on the subject beyond what Brandes himself contributes. On the
question of the Voltaire relationship with Frederick he writes further:
“When in August, 1736, Voltaire received the first letter from the
Crown Prince of Prussia he was in his forty-second year. The writer was
24 years old. Voltaire was famed throughout Europe and looked upon as
the most important author of the period. Frederick was a young prince,
unknown except for what he had gone through. He had had to suffer for
his inclination and peculiar intellectuality, just as Voltaire had to
pay a price for his wit and the revolutionary might of his thinking.
Both had been the victims of the brutality of the time and the
arbitrariness of the system of government.
“The father of Frederick, whom Carlyle idealized, in spite of all his
good qualities as organizer, was restive and quick tempered; with all
his rectitude often raw and cruel. He had prescribed an educational
program for his son that excluded everything unnecessary, among this
Latin and literature. The King detested everything foreign. If he
permitted French this was simply because German was then scarcely
considered a language. He took pleasure in personally giving his
subjects a beating on the street in case the one or other incident gave
him dissatisfaction.
“When Frederick as a youth studied forbidden things, got into debt,
cared nothing for parades of the troops, the father demanded that
he should renounce his right to the throne. When he refused he was
treated barbarously, called a coward because he did not resist. In 1730
he made an attempt to escape to England. But an intercepted letter
to his friend Katte revealed the scheme to the King. Again he was
treated abominably and a court-martial was appointed for the purpose
of sentencing him to death. That was the custom of the time. Twelve
years before, Peter the Great had his son Alexei beaten to death and
he himself wielded the knout. When the Prussian court-martial failed to
act as blindly as the Russian the King had the prince put in prison in
Kuestrin.”
Passing over the years intervening between that earlier time and when
Frederick ascended the throne, May 31, 1740, a period replete with
letter writing and exchange of compliments describing in Brandes’
inimitable manner, the Danish critic tells of Frederick’s joy that now
at last he can come face to face with the object of his admiration.
“Frederick, in spite of the many things to occupy him, makes his debut
as a true disciple of Voltaire,” declares Brandes. “His first act is
the doing away with torture as punishment, the dissolution of the
Potsdam guard, the guard that the father had hired, secured at whatever
cost, and calling back a thinker like Wolff to become once more
professor at Halle.”
The first meeting between Voltaire and Frederick the Great gives
Brandes an opportunity for bringing into play his exceptional faculty
for entering into the very minutest description of these contrasting
personalities, and while German culture of that day affected the French
satirist quite differently from what he experienced on English soil,
still there is no doubt that Voltaire’s international outlook was
broadened through contact with the King who in his own way stood head
and shoulders over his people.
Badly as Voltaire was being treated at home, the fact that the King of
Prussia made so much of him and gave his admiration public expression
did not fail to improve his status in the eyes of the leading men of
France. The time had gone by when Louis XIV dominated Europe so that
fear prevailed because of the French generals and armies. A number of
defeats like that at Dettingen resulted in the fact that Europe as a
whole made merry on account of French politics and French militarism.
Outside of France Louis the Beloved did not count. All eyes were
directed toward the King of Prussia. Every power tried to draw him
within its particular circle. The English strove to keep alive his
dislike of France. It would mean much to the French nation, who so far
had been unable to retain her former allies and had been unsuccessful
in gaining new ones, if it by any possibility could enter into an
alliance with just that King whose name spelled ingenious energy.
Frederick was a hero to Voltaire. On the other hand, Voltaire was the
idol of the King. At any rate, therefore, it was worth the trial to
utilize the poet as secret diplomat.
What followed has been dealt with exhaustively by many able pens, but
Brandes manages to give the historical facts a setting so picturesque
and informing that the entire relationships between Frederick the
Great and Voltaire appears in a new light and illustrates pointedly
what the French nation owed to the man whose doctrines were the cause
of a persecution that reflects little glory on the period so far as
France was concerned. Nevertheless, Francois de Voltaire has found in
the twentieth century no writer who to better purpose brings out the
particular qualities that places him among the great internationalists
than Georg Brandes has done in his monumental work.
III.
“Voltaire’s ‘Charles XII,’” says Brandes, “stands as a portrait of
a remarkable man, executed by a master. It caused Europe to take an
interest in the Sweden of that time comparable with what Denmark must
thank Shakespeare for in the case of Hamlet.
“Characteristically enough, Voltaire starts his story by a dramatic
contrast between the two main persons, Charles XII and Peter the
Great, both of whom are sketched in detail. Peter is immediately
brought on the scene because no matter how great the interest of
the author in the Swedish King’s grandly-planned character and his
remarkable fate, his real hero is not Charles, but Peter; not only
that bellicose and obstinate in Peter’s character that plunged his
country into misfortune, but the sovereign who in spite of the brutal
in the pleasures that he sought, in spite of the wildness and cruel
vengefulness was an educator, a civilizing influence who conquered
a barbarism many centuries old, and introduced industry, technique,
building art, science among a people gifted in a way, but fighting
against innovations.
“With that clarity that is Voltaire’s foundation quality as historian
he places Polish society and the Polish nation side by side with
the Swedish and the Russian, and thus the description of August
the Strong’s and later Stanislaw Leszczynski’s personalities is as
necessary as a background as the characterization of the Swedish and
Russian nature through the presentation of Charles XII and Peter the
Great.”
With regard to Voltaire’s relations to Russia as a whole, Brandes tells
how Frederick the Great looked with jealous eyes on the attention
that Voltaire paid to the Russian people in depicting the life-work
of Peter, since he looked for undivided devotion of the man whose
pen in that day was enough to shed luster on a country. Elizabeth,
the daughter of Peter the Great, while uncouth in many ways, was not
without taste for intellect and wit, and in approaching Voltaire after
becoming Empress sent him her portrait surrounded by large diamonds.
But it was in the person of Catherine II that Voltaire a second time
enters into acquaintance with a sovereign who is also a genius, a
decided and reformative genius, who puts herself into apprenticeship
under him and does everything to show him how grateful she is for what
he has done.
“There are certain parallels between Frederick and Catherine,” states
Brandes. “Both were of German antecedents and had in their blood German
respect for intellectual superiority, the German taste for knowledge
and mental values. But neither one stood in any cultural relation
to Germanism; both wrote and spoke French to perfection. Both were
Voltairians to their fingers’ tips. But in spite of their love for
French civilization neither one of them had ever seen Paris or France.”
IV.
There is a reference to Voltaire’s internationalism and view of life in
the closing chapter of Brandes’ work on the great Frenchman which sums
up his personality in a most conspicuous manner, as follows:
“There exists a curious little planet, the highly gifted population of
which is distinguished among other things by its equally thoughtless
tendency to praise and condemn. It poisons its wise men, it crucifies
its saviors, its heroes and thinkers it burns at the stake, its
deliverer it puts into prison, then releases them, utilizes them,
applauds them after they have died, and then usually puts them into a
hole as one would filth or treasure.
“The giant from Sirius discovered this little planet in the universe
and found that it was populated by what to him seem funny little
creatures, mostly concerned with making existence unpleasant for each
other, to destroy and eliminate each other. He did not underestimate
their many no doubt valuable and lovable qualities. Now and then he saw
them aid each other.
“But he wondered at their marked predilections to misunderstand, ill
use and praise their leading personalities. Those who would drag these
little beings out of that mudbed of stupidity into which they not
unseldom had strayed they liked best of all to drown in this mire.
Afterwards they would raise statues in honor of these same individuals,
in earliest times made of wood or stone, later of gold and ivory, more
recently of marble and bronze. When this was done they took pleasure in
throwing all kinds of filthiness on these statues, cleanse them again,
then once more defile them, and after a long period let them appear
finally in their true shape and color.”
Here we have the story of Francois de Voltaire in a nutshell.
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
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