Voltaire/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.
The works of this period of his life exhibit to the full the extraordinary fertility of his mind, and the equally extraordinary facility with which he gave form and expression to his thoughts. The tragedies of "Alzire," "Zulime," "Mahomet," and "Merope," the comedy of the "Prodigal Son," many philosophical treatises, the "Seven Discourses on Man," in verse, the satire, also in verse, of the "Worldling," the "Essay on the Morals and Spirit of Nations," and the burlesque epic of the "Maid" (of Orleans), were the most considerable productions of these years.
The "Essay on the Morals and Spirit of Nations" was composed in 1740 for the edification of Madame du Châtelet, who complained that she had found modern history full of trivial and unauthenticated facts, while she had searched it in vain for pictures of manners, the origin of customs and laws, and the progress of humanity. Thereupon Voltaire undertook, as a delicate attention, what would have been to many a learned writer the work of a life, and is reckoned by some critics as his highest achievement. Bossuet had brought a universal history down to the establishment of Charlemagne's empire, and at that point Voltaire took it up, and continued it down to the reign of Louis XIII. In his preface he sets forth his idea of what are the proper subjects of history, and how it should be written:—
"There is no object," he says, "in knowing in what year a prince unworthy of remembrance succeeded a barbarous ruler in a rude nation… The more important it is to know of the great actions of sovereigns who have rendered their people better and happier, the more we should ignore the herd of kings who only load the memory."
Prefacing his essay by a sketch of earlier times, he dwells for a moment on the horrors from which, as he has so often insisted, civilisation has rescued the world. "Let us avert our eyes," he says, "from those times of savagery which are the shame of nature;" and then, after describing the horribly barbarous condition of the peoples of Germany and Gaul at the time when Cæsar was making war on them, he remarks:—
"See what Tacitus has the impudence to praise, in order to disparage the Court of the Roman Emperor by contrast with the virtues of the Germans. It is the part of a mind as just as yours [Madame du Châtelet's] to regard Tacitus as an ingenious satirist, no less profound in his ideas than concise in his expressions, who has written rather a criticism than a history of his own time, and who would have deserved the admiration of ours had he been impartial."
In after-years it seemed to him expedient to introduce his essay by another, which he called the "Philosophy of History," and they now appear as one work. In returning from his last visit to Prussia (to be hereafter adverted to), he passed some time at the Abbey of Sénones, and there he found many rare and precious works, of which, with even more than his accustomed diligence, he took advantage, giving himself, for the time, entirely up to study, and accumulating materials with which he vastly increased the value of the next edition of his essay. "I had chalked," he says in a letter, "the portrait of the human race in profile—here you will see it painted in three-quarters." The vast reading necessary for the work is disguised by the ease and simplicity of the style; and, in order to realise the extraordinary labour which it implies, it is necessary for the modern reader to bear in mind that Voltaire led the way in paths that, now well trodden and familiar, were then enveloped in darkness. It is rendered less flowing and imposing, but more lucid, by being divided into short chapters, each forming an essential but distinct portion of the argument and narrative. Many problems which are discussed and disputed by the philosophers of our day, are here briefly, clearly, and confidently stated. He is, as we have seen, no believer in savage virtue, or in the nobility sometimes deemed to be the accompaniment of a state of pure nature, and strongly insists that every nation has had its beginning in a condition approaching, and in many respects inferior, to that of brutes. "The reason is, that it is not in the nature of man to desire that which he does not know. Not only a prodigious extent of time, but fortunate conditions also, are necessary in order that man may raise himself above the life of animals." In the spirit, though not with the full knowledge, of a modern geologist and ethnologist, he speaks of the great changes of the earth's surface, and their influence on the races of men. The gradual formation of societies and of languages is briefly but pithily noted. Some short extracts from early chapters will illustrate the style and treatment:—
"A long period elapsed before men of singular endowments formed and taught to others the first rudiments of an imperfect and barbarous language, which had not, however, been necessary to the establishment of some degree of society. There were even entire nations which had never succeeded in forming a regular language, or gaining a distinct pronunciation: such were the Troglodytes, according to Pliny; such are still the tribes about the Cape of Good Hope. But what a distance between this barbarous jargon and the art of painting one's thoughts!
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"The most populous countries were doubtless the warm climates, where man found easy and abundant nourishment in the cocoas, dates, pine-apples, and rice which grew of themselves. It is very likely that India, China, and the borders of the Euphrates and Tigris, were thickly populated when the rest of the globe was almost a desert. In our northern climates, on the contrary, it was much easier to encounter a herd of wolves than a society of men.
"The capture of Constantinople alone sufficed to crush the spirit of ancient Greece. The genius of the Romans was destroyed by the Goths, The coasts of Africa, once so flourishing, are now only the haunts of banditti. Still greater changes have taken place in climates less favourable. Physical have joined with moral causes; for if the ocean has not entirely changed its bed, it has, at least, alternately covered and abandoned vast regions. Nature has been exposed to many scourges, many vicissitudes. The fairest, the most fertile territories of western Europe, all the low lands watered by rivers, have been covered with the ocean during a prodigious multitude of ages.
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"What notion had the earliest peoples of the 'soul'? That which our rustics have before they have learned their Catechism, or even afterwards. They get only a confused idea, upon which they never reflect. Nature has been too compassionate to make metaphysicians of them; this Nature is always and everywhere the same. She makes the original societies of men feel that there is something superior to man when they experience extraordinary calamities. She also makes them perceive that there is in man something which acts and thinks. They do not distinguish this faculty from that of life; and the word soul always signifies life with the ancients, whether Syrians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, or those who came at last to establish themselves in a part of Phoenicia.
"By what degrees could the step be gained of imagining, in our physical being, another being which is metaphysical? Certainly, men solely occupied with their wants could not know enough to fancy themselves philosophers. In course of time societies were formed, a little civilised, in which a small number might have sufficient leisure to reflect. It might happen that a man who deeply felt the death of his father, brother, or wife, would see in a dream the person whom he lamented. Two or three dreams of this kind would disquiet a whole tribe. Here is a dead person appearing to the living, yet the decaying body is still in its place. It is, then, something which was in the departed, and which walks abroad; it is his soul, his shade, an airy figure of himself. Such is the natural reasoning of ignorance which begins to reason. This opinion is that of all the earliest times that we know of, and must therefore have been the opinion of those that we know not of.
"The idea of a purely immaterial being could not present itself to minds which knew only of matter. Smiths, carpenters, masons, and labourers, were necessary before a man could exist who would have leisure to meditate. All the arts of handicraft have doubtless, by many ages, preceded metaphysics.
"Let us remark, in passing, that in the middle age of Greece, in the time of Homer, the soul was nothing but an aerial image of the body. Ulysses sees, in hell, shades, spirits. Could he possibly see pure spirits?
"We will examine, by-and-by, how the Greeks borrowed from the Egyptians the ideas of hell, and the apotheosis of the dead; how they believed, like other peoples, in a second life, without suspecting the spirituality of the soul. On the contrary, they could not imagine how an incorporeal being could feel good or ill. And I know not if Plato is not the first who has spoken of a purely spiritual being. That is, perhaps, one of the greatest efforts of the human intellect. Yet the spirituality of Plato is still strongly contested; and the greater part of the fathers of the Church, Platonists as they are, consider the soul as corporeal.
"When, after a great number of ages, some societies were established, it is probable that there was some sort of religion, of rude worship. Men, then solely occupied with the care of sustaining life, could not rise to the Author of life; they could not discern that concert of all parts of the universe, those means, and those innumerable ends which speak to wise men of an Eternal Architect. The knowledge of a God who designs, rewards, and avenges is the fruit of cultivated reason."
He goes on to show how local tutelary deities arose:—
"To know how all these worships, or superstitions, were established, it seems to me that we must follow the march of the human intellect when left to itself. A village inhabited by those who are almost savages, sees the fruits that fed it perish; an inundation destroys some of the huts; the lightning burns others. Who has done them this evil? It cannot be their neighbours, for all suffer alike. It is then some secret power; this has injured them, and this must therefore be appeased. And how? by serving it, as we serve those we wish to please,—by making it little presents. There is a serpent in the neighbourhood—it may very likely be this serpent. Milk is therefore placed near his cave; he thenceforward becomes sacred; his aid is invoked when there is war with a neighbouring village, which, on its side, has chosen another protector. Other small populations find themselves in the same case. But, having no object which fixes their fear or their adoration, they call the being whom they suspect of having worked them ill by the general title of Master, Lord, Chief, Ruler."
Tribes or nations next acknowledge, and even naturalise, each other's gods. Then, but after a long interval, came the apotheosis of great men: the supposed son of a god became himself a god.
"One might write volumes on this subject, but all would reduce themselves to two sentences: it is, that the mass of the human race has been, and long will be, senseless and imbecile; and perhaps the most senseless of all have been they who have wished to find sense in these absurd fables, and to place reason in folly.
"Nature being everywhere the same, men have of necessity adopted the same truths and errors in those matters which are the objects of the senses, and which most strike the imagination. All have attributed the noise and effects of thunder to the power of a superior being inhabiting the air. Peoples bordering on the sea, finding high tides inundating their lands at the full of the moon, have thereupon believed that the moon was the cause of all that happened at the periods of its different phases.
"Amongst animals, the serpent appeared to them to be endowed with superior intelligence, because, seeing him cast his skin, they believed that he renewed his youth. By thus changing his skin he could maintain himself in perpetual youth—therefore he was immortal. Thus he became in Egypt and Greece the symbol of immortality. Large serpents living near fountains prevented the timid from approaching; very soon they were supposed to guard treasures. Thus a serpent guarded the apples of the Hesperides; another watched over the Golden Fleece."
Next came the distinction between malignant and tutelary powers; and then of expiation:—
"Water cleansed the stains of body and vestments, fire purified metals; therefore water and fire must purify souls. Thus no temple was without its salutary water and fire. Men plunged into the Ganges, the Indus, the Euphrates, at the time of the new moon and of eclipses; this immersion expiated sins. If they did not also purify themselves in the Nile, it is because the crocodiles would have eaten the penitents.
"Herodotus recounts in his simple way to the Greeks what the Egyptians had told him: but how is it that in speaking to him of nothing but prodigies they omitted to mention the famous plagues of Egypt; of the magical contest between the sorcerers of Pharaoh and the minister of the God of the Hebrews; and of an entire army swallowed up in the Red Sea, under waters raised like mountains to right and left to let the Hebrews pass, which in falling back drowned the Egyptians? It was, assuredly, the greatest event in the world's history; how is it, then, that neither Herodotus, nor Manethon, nor Eratosthenes, nor any other of the Greeks who were so fond of the marvellous, and always in correspondence with Egypt, has spoken of the miracles which ought to live in the memory of all generations. I do not make this reflection to shake the testimony of the Hebrew books, which I revere as I ought; I confine myself to expressing astonishment at the silence of all the Egyptians and all the Greeks. Providence doubtless does not wish that a history so divine should be transmitted to us by any profane hand.
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"Though the fall of angels transformed into devils was the foundation of the Jewish and the Christian religion, nothing is, nevertheless, said about it in Genesis, nor in the law, nor in any canonical book. Genesis says expressly that a serpent spoke to Eve and beguiled her. It is careful to remark that the serpent is the most subtle of animals; and we have already observed that all nations had this opinion of the serpent. Genesis notes especially that the hatred of men towards serpents springs from the ill office which that animal did the human race; that it is since that time that he endeavours to bite us, and we try to crush him; and that, finally, he is condemned for his evil conduct to crawl upon his belly and to eat the dust of the earth. It is true that earth forms no part of the serpent's food; but all antiquity believed it."
He then takes a review of the creeds and customs of the most ancient nations known to history. One of these nations he distinguishes by special approval, another by special blame. In describing the Chinese, he admires the antiquity of their civilisation, which goes back four thousand years; their annals, which record facts of history and nature instead of the fables which form the early chronicles of other nations; the paternal system by which their vast and populous empire is governed; the absence of imposture in their religion; their freedom from the fanaticism which inspires religious assassinations and religious wars; their industry and skill in manufactures; their superiority in certain branches of learning over all the other peoples of Asia; their success in cultivating morals and laws; and, what was perhaps in his eyes their greatest merit, the fact that they had never been priest-ridden.
On the other hand, the Jewish nation excites in him special antipathy. He enumerates, with horror, the chief examples of that ruthless slaughter of their enemies which was part of their policy:—
"It is not to be wondered at," he says, "that the neighbouring nations united against the Jews, who in the mind of unenlightened people could only pass for execrable brigands, and not for the sacred instruments of divine vengeance and of the future safety of the human race."
After saying that they have never had a country of their own since the time of Vespasian, he remarks:—
"In following the historical thread of the petty Jewish nation, it is seen that no other end was possible for it. It prided itself on having issued from Egypt like a horde of robbers, carrying off all that it had borrowed from the Egyptians; it was its glory never to have spared age or sex in the towns which it had captured. It dared to manifest an irreconcilable hatred for all other nations; it revolted against all its masters; always superstitious, always barbarous, abject in misfortune, and insolent in prosperity. Such were the Jews in the eyes of the Greeks and Romans, who could read their books; but in the eyes of Christians enlightened by faith, they have been our precursors, they have prepared the way for us, they have acted as the heralds of Providence."
A firm believer in the benefits of civilisation, Voltaire, in forming his estimate of the character of a nation, notes carefully the extent and success of its efforts to rise out of barbarism; a constant friend of humanity, he applauds the spirit of mercy and tolerance wherever he finds it; and himself an apostle of natural religion, he seeks carefully for all tokens of its existence, coming to the following conclusion:—
"A very pure religion existed among the nations whom we call Pagans, Gentiles, and Idolators, though the peoples and their priests followed shameful customs, childish ceremonies, and ridiculous doctrines, and though they even poured out human blood in honour of those imaginary gods whom their wise men despised and detested. This pure religion consisted in the recognition of the existence of a supreme God, of His providence, and His justice."
Arriving at the time of Charlemagne, he again takes a survey of the condition of all civilised nations—their religions, customs, and laws—and thence from epoch to epoch down to the age preceding his own, when he thus reviews his work in the same spirit which has directed him throughout:—
"The object has been the history of the human intellect, and not the detail of facts nearly always distorted: it was not intended, for instance, to inquire of what family the lord of Puiset, or the lord of Montlhéri, might be, who made war on the kings of France, but to trace the gradual advances from the barbarous rusticity of those days to the polish of ours.
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"In what a flourishing condition would Europe be without the continual wars which trouble it for very trifling interests, and often for petty caprices! To what a degree of perfection might agriculture have attained, and how widely might manufactures have spread comfort and ease throughout communities, if such astonishing numbers of useless men and women had not been buried in cloisters! A new humanity has tempered the scourge of war, softening its horrors, and still continuing to save nations from that destruction which appeared so imminently to menace them. It is indeed very deplorable to see such a multitude of soldiers maintained by all princes; but this evil produces good. The people do not now mix in the wars which their masters wage; the citizens of besieged towns often pass from one domination to another without loss of life to a single inhabitant; they are only the prize of him who has most soldiers, cannon, and money."
In all this the reader may perhaps discern a spirit which, at least in humanity and liberality, was in advance of his own time, and possibly of ours.