Chapter X: Book VII: Consequences of the Different Principles of the Three (1)

Governments with Respect to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury, and the
Condition of Women. Book VIII. Of the Corruption of the Principles
of the Three Governments. Book XIV. Of Laws as Relative to the
Nature of the Climate.

The philosophical aim and ambition of the author at once appear in the inquiry which he institutes for the three several animating _principles_ of the three several forms of government respectively distinguished by him; namely, democracy (or republicanism), monarchy, and despotism. What these three principles are, will be seen from the following statement: "As _virtue_ is necessary in a republic, and in monarchy, _honor_, so _fear_ is necessary in a despotic government." The meaning is, that in republics, virtue possessed by the citizens is the spring of national prosperity; that under a monarchy, the desire of preferment at the hands of the sovereign is what quickens men to perform services to the state; that despotism thrives by fear inspired in the breasts of those subject to its sway.

To illustrate the freely discursive character of the work, we give the whole of chapter sixteen--there are chapters still shorter--in Book VII.:--

AN EXCELLENT CUSTOM OF THE SAMNITES.

The Samnites had a custom which in so small a republic, and
especially in their situation, must have been productive of
admirable effects. The young people were all convened in one place,
and their conduct was examined. He that was declared the best of
the whole assembly, had leave given him to take which girl he
pleased for his wife; the second best chose after him, and so on.
Admirable institution! The only recommendation that young men could
have on this occasion, was their virtue, and the service done their
country. He who had the greatest share of these endowments, chose
which girl he liked out of the whole nation. Love, beauty,
chastity, virtue, birth, and even wealth itself, were all, in some
measure, the dowry of virtue. A nobler and grander recompense, less
chargeable to a petty state, and more capable of influencing both
sexes, could scarce be imagined.

The Samnites were descended from the Lacedaemonians; and Plato,
whose institutes are only an improvement of those of Lycurgus,
enacted nearly the same law.

The relation of the foregoing chapter to the subject indicated in the title of the book, is sufficiently obscure and remote, for a work like this purporting to be philosophical. What relation exists, seems to be found in the fact that the Samnite custom described tends to produce that popular virtue by which republics flourish. But the information, at all events, is curious and interesting.

The following paragraphs, taken from the second chapter of Book XIV., contain in germ nearly the whole of the philosophy underlying M. Taine's essays on the history of literature:--

OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MEN IN DIFFERENT CLIMATES.

A cold air constringes the extremities of the external fibres of
the body; this increases their elasticity, and favors the return of
the blood from the extreme parts to the heart. It contracts those
very fibres; consequently it increases also their force. On the
contrary, a warm air relaxes and lengthens the extremes of the
fibres; of course it diminishes their force and elasticity.

People are therefore more vigorous in cold climates. Here the
action of the heart and the reaction of the extremities of the
fibres are better performed, the temperature of the humors is
greater, the blood moves freer towards the heart, and reciprocally
the heart has more power. This superiority of strength must produce
various effects; for instance, a greater boldness,--that is, more
courage; a greater sense of superiority,--that is, less desire of
revenge; a greater opinion of security,--that is, more frankness,
less suspicion, policy and cunning. In short, this must be
productive of very different tempers. Put a man into a close, warm
place, and, for the reasons above given, he will feel a great
faintness. If under this circumstance you propose a bold enterprise
to him, I believe you will find him very little disposed towards
it; his present weakness will throw him into a despondency; he will
be afraid of every thing, being in a state of total incapacity. The
inhabitants of warm countries are, like old men, timorous; the
people in cold countries are, like young men, brave.

In the following extract, from chapter five, Book XXIV., the climatic theory is again applied, this time to the matter of religion, in a style that makes one think of Buckle's "History of Civilization:"--

When the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became unhappily
divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the north
embraced the Protestant, and those south adhered still to the
Catholic.

The reason is plain: the people of the north have, and will forever
have, a spirit of liberty and independence, which the people of the
south have not; and therefore, a religion which has no visible
head, is more agreeable to the independency of the climate, than
that which has one.

Climate is a "great matter" with Montesquieu. In treating of the subject of a state changing its religion, he says:--

The ancient religion is connected with the constitution of the
kingdom, and the new one is not; the former _agrees with the
climate_, and very often the new one is opposite to it.

For the Christian religion, Montesquieu professes profound respect,--rather as a pagan political philosopher might do, than as one intimately acquainted with it by a personal experience of his own. His spirit, however, is humane and liberal. It is the spirit of Montaigne, it is the spirit of Voltaire, speaking in the idiom of this different man, and of this different man as influenced by his different circumstances. Montesquieu had had practical proof of the importance to himself of not offending the dominant hierarchy.

The latter part of "The Spirit of Laws" contains discussions exhibiting no little research on the part of the author. There is, for one example, a discussion of the course of commerce in different ages of the world, and of the influences that have wrought from time to time to bring about the changes occurring. For another example, there is a discussion of the feudal system.

Montesquieu was an admirer of the English constitution. His work, perhaps, contains no extended chapters more likely to instruct the general reader and to furnish a good idea of the writer's genius and method, than the two chapters--chapter six, Book XI., and chapter twenty-seven, Book XIX.--in which the English nation and the English form of government are sympathetically described. We simply indicate, for we have no room to exhibit, these chapters. Voltaire, too, expressed Montesquieu's admiration of English liberty and English law.

On the whole, concerning Montesquieu it may justly be said, that of all political philosophers, he, if not the profoundest, is at least one of the most interesting; if not the most accurate and critical, at least one of the most brilliant and suggestive.

As to Montesquieu the man, it is perhaps sufficient to say that he seems to have been a very good type of the French gentleman of quality. An interesting story told by Sainte-Beuve reveals, if true, a side at once attractive and repellent of his personal character. Montesquieu at Marseilles employed a young boatman, whose manner and speech indicated more cultivation than was to have been looked for in one plying his vocation. The philosopher learned his history. The youth's father was at the time a captive in one of the Barbary States, and this son of his was now working to earn money for his ransom. The stranger listened apparently unmoved, and went his way. Some months later, home came the father, released he knew not how, to his surprised and overjoyed family. The son guessed the secret, and, meeting Montesquieu a year or so after in Marseilles, threw himself in grateful tears at his feet, begged the generous benefactor to reveal his name and to come and see the family he had blessed. Montesquieu, calmly expressing himself ignorant of the whole business, actually shook the young fellow off, and turned away without betraying the least emotion. It was not till after the cold-blooded philanthropist's death that the fact came out.

A tranquil, happy temperament was Montesquieu's. He would seem to have come as near as any one ever did to being the natural master of his part in life. But the world was too much for him, as it is for all--at last. Witness the contrast of these two different sets of expressions from his pen. In earlier manhood he says:--

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy for all the
dissatisfactions of life, having never had a sense of chagrin that
an hour's reading would not dissipate. I wake in the morning with a
secret joy to behold the light. I behold the light with a kind of
ravishment, and all the rest of the day I am happy.

Within a few years of his death, the brave, cheerful tone had declined to this:--

I am broken down with fatigue; I must repose for the rest of my
life.

Then further to this:--

I have expected to kill myself for the last three months, finishing
an addition to my work on the origin and changes of the French
civil law. It will take only three hours to read it; but, I assure
you, it has been such a labor to me, that my hair has turned white
under it all.

Finally it touches nadir:--

It [his work] has almost cost me my life; I must rest; I can work
no more.

My candles are all burned out; I have set off all my cartridges.

When Montesquieu died, only Diderot, among Parisian men of letters, followed him to his tomb.

XV.

VOLTAIRE.

1694-1778.

By the volume and the variety, joined to the unfailing brilliancy, of his production; by his prodigious effectiveness; and by his universal fame,--Voltaire is undoubtedly entitled to rank first, with no fellow, among the eighteenth-century literary men, not merely of France, but of the world. He was not a great man,--he produced no single great work,--but he must nevertheless be pronounced a great writer. There is hardly any species of composition to which, in the long course of his activity, he did not turn his talent. It cannot be said that he succeeded splendidly in all; but in some he succeeded splendidly, and he failed abjectly in none. There is not a great thought, and there is not a flat expression, in the whole bulk of his multitudinous and multifarious works. Read him wherever you will, in the ninety-seven volumes (equivalent, probably, in the aggregate, to three hundred volumes like the present) which, in one leading edition, collect his productions,--you may often find him superficial, you may often find him untrustworthy, you will certainly often find him flippant, but not less certainly you will never find him obscure, and you will never find him dull. The clearness, the vivacity, of this man's mind were something almost preternatural. So, too, were his readiness, his versatility, his audacity. He had no distrust of himself, no awe of his fellow-men, no reverence for God, to deter him from any attempt with his pen, however presuming. If a state ode were required, it should be ready to order at twelve to-morrow; if an epic poem--to be classed with the "Iliad" and the "AEneid"--the "Henriade" was promptly forthcoming, to answer the demand. He did not shrink from flouting a national idol, by freely finding fault with Corneille; and he lightly undertook to extinguish a venerable form of Christianity, simply with pricks, innumerably repeated, of his tormenting pen.

A very large part of the volume of Voltaire's production consists of letters, written by him to correspondents perhaps more numerous, and more various in rank, from kings on the throne down to scribblers in the garret, than ever, in any other case, exchanged such communications with a literary man. Another considerable proportion of his work in literature took the form of pamphlets, either anonymously or pseudonymously published, in which this master-spirit of intellectual disturbance and ferment found it convenient, or advantageous, or safe, to promulge and propagate his ideas. A shower of such publications was incessantly escaping from Voltaire's pen. More formal and regular, more confessedly ambitious, literary essays of his, were poems in every kind,--heroic, mock-heroic, lyric, elegiac, comic, tragic, satiric,--historical and biographical monographs, and tales or novels of a peculiar class.

Voltaire's poetry does not count for very much now. Still, its first success was so great that it will always remain an important topic in literary history. Besides this, it really is, in some of its kinds, remarkable work. Voltaire's epic verse is almost an exception, needful to be made, from our assertion that this author is nowhere dull. "The Henriade" comes dangerously near that mark. It is a tasteless reproduction of Lucan's faults, with little reproduction of Lucan's virtues. Voltaire's comedies are bright and witty, but they are not laughter-provoking; and they do not possess the elemental and creative character of Shakspeare's or Moliere's work. His tragedies are better; but they do not avoid that cast of mechanical which seems necessarily to belong to poetry produced by talent, however consummate, unaccompanied with genius. Voltaire's histories are luminous and readable narratives, but they cannot claim either the merit of critical accuracy or of philosophic breadth and insight. His letters would have to be read in considerable volume in order to furnish a full satisfactory idea of the author. His tales, finally, afford the most available, and, on the whole, likewise, the best, means of coming shortly and easily at a knowledge of Voltaire.

Among Voltaire's tales, doubtless the one most eligible for use, to serve our present purpose, is his "Candide." This is a nondescript piece of fiction, the design of which is, by means of a narrative of travel and adventure, constructed without much regard to the probability of particular incidents, to set forth, in the characteristic mocking vein of Voltaire, the vanity and misery of mankind. The author's invention is often whimsical enough; but it is constantly so ready, so reckless, and so abundant, that the reader never tires, as he is hurried ceaselessly forward from change to change of scene and circumstance. The play of wit is incessant. The style is limpidity itself. Your sympathies are never painfully engaged, even in recitals of experience that ought to be the most heart-rending. There is never a touch of noble moral sentiment, to relieve the monotony of mockery that lightly laughs at you, and tantalizes you, page after page, from the beginning to the end of the book. The banter is not good-natured; though, on the other hand, it cannot justly be pronounced ill-natured; and it is, in final effect upon the reader's mind, bewildering and depressing in the extreme. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,--such is the comfortless doctrine of the book. The apples are the apples of Sodom, everywhere in the world. There is no virtue anywhere, no good, no happiness. Life is a cheat, the love of life is a cruelty, and beyond life there is nothing. At least, there is no glimpse given of any compensating future reserved for men, a future to redress the balance of good and ill experienced here and now. Faith and hope, those two eyes of the soul, are smilingly quenched in their sockets; and you are left blind, in a whirling world of darkness, with a whirling world of darkness before you.

Such is "Candide." We select a single passage for specimen. The passage we select is more nearly free than almost any other passage as long, in this extraordinary romance, would probably be found, from impure implications. It is, besides, more nearly serious in apparent motive, than is the general tenor of the production. Here, however, as elsewhere, the writer keeps carefully down his mocking-mask. At least, you are left tantalizingly uncertain all the time how much the grin you face is the grin of the man, and how much the grin of a visor that he wears.

Candide, the hero, is a young fellow of ingenuous character, brought successively under the lead of several different persons wise in the ways of the world, who act toward him, each in his turn, the part of "guide, philosopher, and friend." Candide, with such a mentor bearing the name Martin, has now arrived at Venice. Candide speaks:--

"I have heard great talk of the Senator Pococurante, who lives in
that fine house at the Brenta, where they say he entertains
foreigners in the most polite manner. They pretend this man is a
perfect stranger to uneasiness."--"I should be glad to see so
extraordinary a being," said Martin. Candide thereupon sent a
messenger to Signor Pococurante, desiring permission to wait on him
the next day.

Candide and his friend Martin went into a gondola on the Brenta,
and arrived at the palace of the noble Pococurante: the gardens
were laid out in elegant taste, and adorned with fine marble
statues; his palace was built after the most approved rules of
architecture. The master of the house, who was a man of sixty, and
very rich, received our two travellers with great politeness, but
without much ceremony, which somewhat disconcerted Candide, but was
not at all displeasing to Martin.

As soon as they were seated, two very pretty girls, neatly dressed,
brought in chocolate, which was extremely well frothed. Candide
could not help making encomiums upon their beauty and graceful
carriage. "The creatures are well enough," said the senator. "I
make them my companions, for I am heartily tired of the ladies of
the town, their coquetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their
humors, their meannesses, their pride, and their folly. I am weary
of making sonnets, or of paying for sonnets to be made, on them;
but, after all, these two girls begin to grow very indifferent to
me."

After having refreshed himself, Candide walked into a large
gallery, where he was struck with the sight of a fine collection of
paintings. "Pray," said Candide, "by what master are the two first
of these?"--"They are Raphael's," answered the senator. "I gave a
great deal of money for them seven years ago, purely out of
curiosity, as they were said to be the finest pieces in Italy: but
I cannot say they please me; the coloring is dark and heavy; the
figures do not swell nor come out enough; and the drapery is very
bad. In short, notwithstanding the encomiums lavished upon them,
they are not, in my opinion, a true representation of nature. I
approve of no paintings but where I think I behold Nature herself;
and there are very few, if any, of that kind to be met with. I have
what is called a fine collection, but I take no manner of delight
in them."

While dinner was getting ready, Pococurante ordered a concert.
Candide praised the music to the skies. "This noise," said the
noble Venetian, "may amuse one for a little time; but if it was to
last above half an hour, it would grow tiresome to everybody,
though perhaps no one would care to own it. Music is become the art
of executing what is difficult; now, whatever is difficult cannot
be long pleasing.

"I believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not
made such a monster of that species of dramatic entertainment as
perfectly shocks me; and I am amazed how people can bear to see
wretched tragedies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for
no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or
four ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of
exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or can die away in raptures at
the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part of Caesar or
Cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage. For my
part, I have long ago renounced these paltry entertainments, which
constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased
by crowned heads." Candide opposed these sentiments, but he did it
in a discreet manner. As for Martin, he was entirely of the old
senator's opinion.

Dinner being served up, they sat down to table, and after a very
hearty repast, returned to the library. Candide, observing Homer
richly bound, commended the noble Venetian's taste. "This," said
he, "is a book that was once the delight of the great Pangloss, the
best philosopher in Germany."--"Homer is no favorite of mine,"
answered Pococurante very coolly. "I was made to believe once that
I took a pleasure in reading him; but his continual repetitions of
battles must have all such a resemblance with each other; his gods
that are forever in a hurry and bustle, without ever doing any
thing; his Helen, that is the cause of the war, and yet hardly acts
in the whole performance; his Troy, that holds out so long without
being taken; in short, all these things together make the poem very
insipid to me. I have asked some learned men whether they are not
in reality as much tired as myself with reading this poet. Those
who spoke ingenuously assured me that he had made them fall asleep,
and yet that they could not well avoid giving him a place in their
libraries; but that it was merely as they would do an antique, or
those rusty medals which are kept only for curiosity, and are of no
manner of use in commerce."

"But your excellency does not surely form the same opinion of
Virgil?" said Candide. "Why, I grant," replied Pococurante, "that
the second, third, fourth, and sixth books of his 'AEneid' are
excellent; but as for his pious AEneas, his strong Cloanthus, his
friendly Achates, his boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his
ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, and some other characters much
in the same strain, I think there cannot in nature be any thing
more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso far
beyond him; nay, even that sleepy tale-teller Ariosto."

"May I take the liberty to ask if you do not receive great pleasure
from reading Horace?" said Candide. "There are maxims in this
writer," replied Pococurante, "from whence a man of the world may
reap some benefit; and the short measure of the verse makes them
more easily to be retained in the memory. But I see nothing
extraordinary in his journey to Brundusium, and his account of his
bad dinner; nor in his dirty, low quarrel between one Rupilius,
whose words, as he expresses it, were full of poisonous filth; and
another, whose language was dipped in vinegar. His indelicate
verses against old women and witches have frequently given me great
offence; nor can I discover the great merit of his telling his
friend Maecenas, that, if he will but rank him in the class of lyric
poets, his lofty head shall touch the stars. Ignorant readers are
apt to advance every thing by the lump in a writer of reputation.
For my part, I read only to please myself. I like nothing but what
makes for my purpose." Candide, who had been brought up with a
notion of never making use of his own judgment, was astonished at
what he heard; but Martin found there was a good deal of reason in
the senator's remarks.

"Oh, here is a Tully!" said Candide; "this great man, I fancy, you
are never tired of reading."--"Indeed, I never read him at all,"
replied Pococurante. "What a deuce is it to me whether he pleads
for Rabirius or Cluentius? I try causes enough myself. I had once
some liking to his philosophical works; but when I found he doubted
of every thing, I thought I knew as much as himself, and had no
need of a guide to learn ignorance."

"Ha!" cried Martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the 'Memoirs of
the Academy of Sciences;' perhaps there may be something curious
and valuable in this collection."--"Yes," answered Pococurante; "so
there might, if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only
invented the art of pin-making. But all these volumes are filled
with mere chimerical systems, without one single article conducive
to real utility."

"I see a prodigious number of plays," said Candide, "in Italian,
Spanish, and French."--"Yes," replied the Venetian; "there are, I
think, three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for any
thing. As to those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous
collections of sermons, they are not all together worth one single
page of Seneca; and I fancy you will readily believe that neither
myself nor any one else ever looks into them."

Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to
the senator, "I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted
with those books, which are most of them written with a noble
spirit of freedom."--"It is noble to write as we think," said
Pococurante; "it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we
write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the
country of the Caesars and Antoninuses dare not acquire a single
idea without the permission of a father Dominican. I should be
enamoured of the spirit of the English nation did it not utterly
frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the
spirit of party."

Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think
that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococurante sharply. "That
barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of
rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly
imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the
Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the
world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole
universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer
who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil; who transforms Lucifer,
sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; who makes him
say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses
him into a school-divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation
of Ariosto's comic invention of fire-arms, represents the devils
and angels cannonading each other in heaven! Neither I, nor any
other Italian, can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy
reveries. But the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing
from the womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick
that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene, whimsical,
and disagreeable poem met with the neglect that it deserved at its
first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was
treated in his own country by his contemporaries."

Candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a great
respect for Homer, and was very fond of Milton. "Alas!" said he
softly to Martin, "I am afraid this man holds our German poets in
great contempt."--"There would be no such great harm in that," said
Martin.--"Oh, what a surprising man!" said Candide to himself.
"What a prodigious genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please
him."

After finishing their survey of the library they went down into the
garden, when Candide commended the several beauties that offered
themselves to his view. "I know nothing upon earth laid out in such
bad taste," said Pococurante; "every thing about it is childish and
trifling; but I shall have another laid out to-morrow upon a nobler
plan."

As soon as our two travellers had taken leave of his excellency,
"Well," said Candide to Martin, "I hope you will own that this man
is the happiest of all mortals, for he is above every thing he
possesses."--"But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he
likewise dislikes every thing he possesses? It was an observation
of Plato long since, that those are not the best stomachs that
reject, without distinction, all sorts of aliments."--"True," said
Candide; "but still, there must certainly be a pleasure in
criticising every thing, and in perceiving faults where others
think they see beauties."--"That is," replied Martin, "there is a
pleasure in having no pleasure."--"Well, well," said Candide, "I
find that I shall be the only happy man at last, when I am blessed
with the sight of my dear Cunegund."--"It is good to hope," said
Martin.

The single citation preceding sufficiently exemplifies, at their best, though at their worst, not, the style and the spirit of Voltaire's "Candide;" as his "Candide" sufficiently exemplifies the style and the spirit of the most characteristic of Voltaire's writings in general. "Pococurantism" is a word, now not uncommon in English, contributed by Voltaire to the vocabulary of literature. To readers of the foregoing extract, the sense of the term will not need to be explained. We respectfully suggest to our dictionary-makers, that the fact stated of its origin in the "Candide" of Voltaire would be interesting and instructive to many. Voltaire coined the name, to suit the character of his Venetian gentleman, from two Italian words which mean together "little-caring." Signor Pococurante is the immortal type of men that have worn out their capacity of fresh sensation and enjoyment.

It was a happy editorial thought of Mr. Henry Morley, in his cheap library, now issuing, of standard books for the people, to bind up Johnson's "Rasselas" in one volume with Voltaire's "Candide." The two stories, nearly contemporaneous in their production, offer a stimulating contrast in treatment, at the hands of two sharply contrasted writers, of much the same subject,--the unsatisfactoriness of the world.

Mr. John Morley, a very different writer and a very different man from his namesake just mentioned, has an elaborate monograph on Voltaire in a volume perhaps twice as large as the present. This work claims the attention of all students desirous of exhaustive acquaintance with its subject. Mr. John Morley writes in sympathy with Voltaire, so far as Voltaire was an enemy of the Christian religion; but in antipathy to him, so far as Voltaire fell short of being an atheist. A similar sympathy, limited by a similar antipathy, is observable in the same author's still more extended monograph on Rousseau. It is only in his two volumes on "Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," that Mr. Morley finds himself able to write without reserve in full moral accord with the men whom he describes. Of course, in all these books the biographer and critic feels, as Englishman, obliged to concede much to his English audience, in the way of condemning impurities in his authors. The concession thus made is made with great adroitness of manner, the writer's aim evidently being to imply that his infidels and atheists, if they are somewhat vicious in taste, had the countenance of good Christian example or parallel for all the lapses they show. Mr. Morley wishes to be fair, but his atheist zeal overcomes him. This is especially evident in his work on "Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," where his propagandist desire to clear the character of his hero bribes him once and again to unconscious false dealing. In his "Voltaire," and in his "Rousseau," Mr. Morley is so lofty in tone, expressing himself against the moral obliquities of the men with whom he is dealing, that often you feel the ethic atmosphere of the books to be pure and bracing, almost beyond the standard of biblical and Christian. But in his "Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," such fine severity is conspicuously absent. Mr. Morley is so deeply convinced that atheism is what we all most need just now, that when he has--not halting mere infidels, like Voltaire and Rousseau--but good thorough-going atheists, like Diderot and his fellows, to exhibit, he can hardly bring himself to injure their exemplary influence with his readers, by allowing to exist any damaging flaws in their character.

Even in Voltaire and Rousseau, but particularly in Voltaire, Mr. Morley, though his sympathy with these writers is, as we have said, not complete, finds far more to praise than to blame. To this eager apostle of atheism, Voltaire was at least on the right road, although he did, unfortunately, stop short of the goal. His influence was potent against Christianity, and potent it certainly was not against atheism. Voltaire might freely be lauded as on the whole a mighty and a beneficent liberalizer of thought.

And we, we who are neither atheists nor deists--let us not deny to Voltaire his just meed of praise. There were streaks of gold in the base alloy of that character of his. He burned with magnanimous heat against the hideous doctrine and practice of ecclesiastical persecution. Carlyle says of Voltaire, that he "spent his best efforts, and as many still think, successfully, in assaulting the Christian religion." This, true though it be, is liable to be falsely understood. It was not against the Christian religion, as the Christian religion really is, but rather against the Christian religion as the Roman hierarchy misrepresented it, that Voltaire ostensibly directed his efforts. "You are right," wrote he to his henchman D'Alembert, in 1762, "in assuming that I speak of superstition only; for as to the Christian religion, I respect it and love it, as you do." This distinction of Voltaire's, with whatever degree of simple sincerity on his part made, ought to be remembered in his favor, when his memorable motto, "_Ecrasez l'Infame_," is interpreted and applied. He did not mean Jesus Christ by _l'Infame_; he did not mean the Christian religion by it; he did not even mean the Christian Church by it; he meant the oppressive despotism and the crass obscurantism of the Roman-Catholic hierarchy. At least, this is what he would have said that he meant, what in fact he substantially did say that he meant, when incessantly reiterating, in its various forms, his watchword, "_Ecrasez l'Infame_," "_Ecrasons l'Infame_,"--"Crush the wretch!" "Let us crush the wretch!" His blows were aimed, perhaps, at "superstition;" but they really fell, in the full half of their effect, on Christianity itself. Whether Voltaire regretted this, whether he would in his heart have had it otherwise, may well, in spite of any protestation from him of love for Christianity, be doubted. Still, it is never, in judgment of Voltaire, to be forgotten that the organized Christianity which he confronted, was in large part a system justly hateful to the true and wise lover whether of God or of man. That system he did well in fighting. Carnal indeed were the weapons with which he fought it; and his victory over it was a carnal victory, bringing, on the whole, but slender net advantage, if any such advantage at all, to the cause of final truth and light. The French Revolution, with its excesses and its horrors, was perhaps the proper, the legitimate, the necessary, fruit of resistance such as was Voltaire's, in fundamental spirit, to the evils in church and in state against which he conducted so gallantly his life-long campaign.

But though we thus bring in doubt the work of Voltaire, both as to the purity of its motive, and as to the value of its fruit, we should wrong our sense of justice to ourselves if we permitted our readers to suppose us blind to the generous things that this arch-infidel did on behalf of the suffering and the oppressed. Voltaire more than once wielded that pen of his, the most dreaded weapon in Europe, like a knight sworn to take on himself the championship of the forlornest of causes. There is the historic case of Jean Calas at Toulouse, Protestant, an old man of near seventy, broken on the wheel, as suspected, without evidence, and against accumulated impossibilities, of murdering his own son, a young man of about thirty, by hanging him. Voltaire took up the case, and pleaded it to the common sense, and to the human feeling, of France, with immense effectiveness. It is, in truth, Voltaire's advocacy of righteousness, in this instance of incredible wrong, that has made the instance itself immortal. His part in the case of Calas, though the most signal, is not the only, example of Voltaire's literary knighthood. He hated oppression, and he loved liberty, for himself and for all men, with a passion as deep and as constant as any passion of which nature had made Voltaire capable. If the liberty that he loved was fundamentally liberty as against God no less than as against men, and if the oppression that he hated was fundamentally the oppression of being put under obligation to obey Christ as lord of life and of thought, this was something of which, probably, Voltaire never had a clear consciousness.

We have now indicated what was most admirable in Voltaire's personal character. On the whole, he was far from being an admirable man. He was vain, he was shallow, he was frivolous, he was deceitful, he was voluptuous, he fawned on the great, he abased himself before them, he licked the dust on which they stood. "_Trajan, est-il content?_" ("Is Trajan satisfied?")--this, asked, in nauseous adulation, and nauseous self-abasement, by Voltaire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan in character--is monumental. The occasion was the production of a piece of Voltaire's written at the instance of Louis XV.'s mistress, the infamous Madame de Pompadour. The king, for answer, simply gorgonized the poet with a stony Bourbon stare.

But, taken altogether, Voltaire's life was a great success. He got on in the world, was rich, was fortunate, was famous, was gay, if he was not happy. He had his friendship with the great Frederick of Prussia, who filled for his false French flatterer a return cup of sweetness, cunningly mixed with exceeding bitterness. His death was an appropriate _coup de theatre_, a felicity of finish to such a life, quite beyond the reach of art. He came back to Paris, whence he had been an exile, welcomed with a triumph transcending the triumph of a conqueror. They made a great feast for him, a feast of flattery, in the theatre. The old man was drunk with delight. The delight was too much for him. It literally killed him. It was as if a favorite actress should be quite smothered to death on the stage, under flowers thrown in excessive profusion at her feet.

Let Carlyle's sentence be our epigraph on Voltaire:--

"No great Man.... Found always at the top, less by power in
swimming than by lightness in floating."

XVI.

ROUSSEAU.

1712-1778.

There are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least, there was a first, until the second effaced him, and became the only.

We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. J. B. Rousseau is still named as a lyric poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when Rousseau, without initials, is spoken of, it is always Jean Jacques Rousseau that is meant.

Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it certainly is one of the most splendid, among French literary names. The squalor belongs chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the writer's. There is hardly another example in the world's literature of a union so striking of these opposites.

Rousseau's life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, and the most imperishable, of his books, the "Confessions." This book is one to which the adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal sense of the word. The spell, however, is repellent as well as attractive. But the attraction of the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more, in triumph over the much there is in the matter to disgust and revolt. It is quite the most offensive, and it is well-nigh the most fascinating, book that we know.

The "Confessions" begin as follows:--

I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose
execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my
fellows a man in all the truth of nature, and that man--myself.

Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with men. I
am made unlike any one I have ever seen,--I dare believe unlike any
living being. If no better than, I am at least different from,
others. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mould
wherein I was cast, can be determined only after having read me.

Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this
book in my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I
will boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such
was I. With equal frankness have I disclosed the good and the evil.
I have omitted nothing bad, added nothing good; and if I have
happened to make use of some unimportant ornament, it has, in every
case, been simply for the purpose of filling up a void occasioned
by my lack of memory. I may have taken for granted as true what I
knew to be possible, never what I knew to be false. Such as I was,
I have exhibited myself,--despicable and vile, when so; virtuous,
generous, sublime, when so. I have unveiled my interior being, such
as Thou, Eternal Existence, hast beheld it. Assemble around me the
numberless throng of my fellow-mortals; let them listen to my
confessions, let them blush at my depravities, let them shrink
appalled at my miseries. Let each of them, in his turn, with equal
sincerity, lay bare his heart at the foot of thy throne, and then
let a single one tell thee, if he dare, _I was better than that
man_.

Notwithstanding our autobiographer's disavowal of debt to example for the idea of his "Confessions," it seems clear that Montaigne here was at least inspiration, if not pattern, to Rousseau. But Rousseau resolved to do what Montaigne had done, more ingenuously and more courageously than Montaigne had done it. This writer will make himself his subject, and then treat his subject with greater frankness than any man before him ever used about himself, or than any man after him would ever use. He undoubtedly succeeded in his attempt. His frankness, in fact, is so forward and eager, that it is probably even inventive of things disgraceful to himself. Montaigne makes great pretence of telling his own faults, but you observe that he generally chooses rather amiable faults of his own to tell. Rousseau's morbid vulgarity leads him to disclose traits in himself, of character or of behavior, that, despite whatever contrary wishes on your part, compel your contempt of the man. And it is for the man who confesses, almost more than for the man who is guilty, that you feel the contempt.

The "Confessions" proceed:--

I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah
Bernard, citizens.... I came into the world weak and sickly. I cost
my mother her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes.

I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I know that
he remained ever after inconsolable.... When he used to say to me,
"Jean Jacques, let us speak of your mother," my usual reply was,
"Well, father, we'll cry, then," a reply which would instantly
bring the tears to his eyes. "Ah!" he would exclaim with agitation,
"give me her back, console me for her loss, fill up the void she
has left in my soul. Could I love thee thus wert thou but _my_
son?" Forty years after having lost her he expired in the arms of a
second wife, but with the name of the first on his lips, and her
image engraven on his heart.

Such were the authors of my being. Of all the gifts Heaven had
allotted them, a feeling heart was the only one I had inherited.
While, however, this had been the source of their happiness, it
became the spring of all my misfortunes.

"A feeling heart!" That expression tells the literary secret of Rousseau. It is hardly too much to say that Rousseau was the first French writer to write with his heart; but heart's blood was the ink in which almost every word of Rousseau's was written. This was the spring of his marvellous power. Rousseau:--

My mother had left a number of romances. These father and I betook
us to reading during the evenings. At first the sole object was, by
means of entertaining books, to improve me in reading; but, ere
long, the charm became so potent, that we read turn about without
intermission, and passed whole nights in this employment. Never
could we break up till the end of the volume. At times my father,
hearing the swallows of a morning, would exclaim, quite ashamed of
himself, "Come, let's to bed; I'm more of a child than you are!"

The elder Rousseau was right respecting himself. And such a father would almost necessarily have such a child. Jean Jacques Rousseau is to be judged tenderly for his faults. What birth and what breeding were his! The "Confessions" go on:--

I soon acquired, by this dangerous course, not only an extreme
facility in reading and understanding, but, for my age, a quite
unprecedented acquaintance with the passions. I had not the
slightest conception of things themselves, at a time when the whole
round of sentiments was already perfectly familiar to me. I had
apprehended nothing--I had felt all.

Some hint now of other books read by the boy:--

With the summer of 1719 the romance-reading terminated.... "The
History of the Church and Empire" by Lesueur, Bossuet's
"Dissertation on Universal History," Plutarch's "Lives," Nani's
"History of Venice," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," "La Bruyere,"
Fontenelle's "Worlds," his "Dialogues of the Dead," and a few
volumes of Moliere, were transported into my father's shop; and I
read them to him every day during his work. For this employment I
acquired a rare, and, for my age, perhaps unprecedented, taste.
Plutarch especially became my favorite reading. The pleasure which
I found in incessantly reperusing him, cured me in some measure of
the romance madness; and I soon came to prefer Agesilaus, Brutus,
and Aristides, to Orondates, Artemenes, and Juba. From these
interesting studies, joined to the conversations to which they gave
rise with my father, resulted that free, republican spirit, that
haughty and untamable character, fretful of restraint or
subjection, which has tormented me my life long, and that in
situations the least suitable for giving it play. Incessantly
occupied with Rome and Athens, living, so to speak, with their
great men, born myself the citizen of a republic [Geneva], the son
of a father with whom patriotism was the ruling passion, I caught
the flame from him--I imagined myself a Greek or a Roman, and
became the personage whose life I was reading.

On such food of reading and of reverie, young Rousseau's imagination and sentiment battened, while his reason and his practical sense starved and died within him. Unconsciously thus in part was formed the dreamer of the "Emile" and of "The Social Contract." Another glimpse of the home-life--if home-life such experience can be called--of this half-orphan, homeless Genevan boy:--

I had a brother, my elder by seven years.... He fell into the ways
of debauchery, even before he was old enough to be really a
libertine.... I remember once when my father was chastising him
severely and in anger, that I impetuously threw myself between
them, clasping him tightly. I thus covered him with my body,
receiving the blows that were aimed at him; and I held out so
persistently in this position, that whether softened by my cries
and tears, or fearing that I should get the worst of it, my father
was forced to forgive him. In the end my brother turned out so bad
that he ran away and disappeared altogether.

It is pathetic--Rousseau's attempted contrast following, between the paternal neglect of his older brother and the paternal indulgence of himself:--

If this poor lad was carelessly brought up, it was quite otherwise
with his brother.... My desires were so little excited, and so
little crossed, that it never came into my head to have any. I can
solemnly aver, that, till the time when I was bound to a master, I
never knew what it was to have a whim.

Poor lad! "Never knew what it was to have a whim!" It well might be, however--his boy's life all one whim uncrossed, unchecked; no contrast of saving restraint, to make him know that he was living by whim alone! The "Confessions" truly say:--

Thus commenced the formation or the manifestation in me of that
heart at once so haughty and so tender, of that effeminate and yet
unconquerable character which, ever vacillating between courage and
weakness, between virtue and yielding to temptation, has all along
set me in contradiction to myself, and has resulted in my failing
both of abstinence and enjoyment, both of prudence and pleasure.

The half-orphan becomes orphan entire, not by the death, but by the withdrawing, of the father. That father, having been accused of a misdemeanor, "preferred," Rousseau somewhat vaguely says, "to quit Geneva for the remainder of his life, rather than give up a point wherein honor and liberty appeared to him compromised." Jean Jacques was sent to board with a parson, who taught him Latin, and, along with Latin, supplied, Rousseau scornfully says, "all the accompanying mass of paltry rubbish styled education." He adds:--

The country was so entirely new to me, that I could never grow
weary in my enjoyment of it; and I acquired so strong a liking for
it, that it has never become extinguished.

Young Jean Jacques was at length apprenticed to an engraver. He describes the contrast of his new situation and the effect of the contrast upon his own character and career:--

I learned to covet in silence, to dissemble, to dissimulate, to
lie, and at last to steal,--a propensity for which I had never
hitherto had the slightest inclination, and of which I have never
since been able quite to cure myself....

My first theft was the result of complaisance, but it opened the
door to others which had not so laudable a motive.

My master had a journeyman named M. Verrat.... [He] took it into
his head to rob his mother of some of her early asparagus and sell
it, converting the proceeds into some extra good breakfasts. As he
did not wish to expose himself, and not being very nimble, he
selected me for this expedition.... Long did I stickle, but he
persisted. I never could resist kindness, so I consented. I went
every morning to the garden, gathered the best of the asparagus,
and took it to "the Molard," where some good creature, perceiving
that I had just been stealing it, would insinuate that little fact,
so as to get it the cheaper. In my terror I took whatever she chose
to give me, and carried it to M. Verrat.

This little domestic arrangement continued for several days before
it came into my head to rob the robber, and tithe M. Verrat for the
proceeds of the asparagus.... I thus learned that to steal was,
after all, not so very terrible a thing as I had conceived; and ere
long I turned this discovery to so good an account, that nothing I
had an inclination for could safely be left within my reach....

And now, before giving myself over to the fatality of my destiny,
let me, for a moment, contemplate what would naturally have been my
lot had I fallen into the hands of a better master. Nothing was
more agreeable to my tastes, nor better calculated to render me
happy, than the calm and obscure condition of a good artisan, more
especially in certain lines, such as that of an engraver at
Geneva.... In my native country, in the bosom of my religion, of my
family, and my friends, I should have led a life gentle and
uncheckered as became my character, in the uniformity of a pleasing
occupation and among connections dear to my heart. I should have
been a good Christian, a good citizen, a good father, a good
friend, a good artisan, and a good man in every respect. I should
have loved my station; it may be I should have been an honor to it:
and after having passed an obscure and simple, though even and
happy, life, I should peacefully have departed in the bosom of my
kindred. Soon, it may be, forgotten, I should at least have been
regretted as long as the remembrance of me survived.

Instead of this... what a picture am I about to draw!

Thus ends the first book of the "Confessions."