The Life of Voltaire
by Caspar Hewett
Casper Hewitt
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I am going to introduce you to Voltaire, poet, novelist, playwright, historian,
scientist and philosopher. Seen by many as the
embodiment of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire was a complex, contradictory
character. A tireless campaigner against injustice and advocate of religious
and social tolerance, he was also fiercely anti-Semitic, describing the Jews as
“an ignorant and barbarous people" and arguing that Africans are a separate
species “as different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of
greyhounds." A great polemicist, who persistently denounced the hypocrisy of
the ruling class and the Catholic Church, he rarely stood by his own words,
choosing instead to claim his works were falsely attributed to him. However,
none of these things should be taken out of context. This was a time when the
ideas of universal humanity and equality were mere babes in arms and the France
that Voltaire grew up in was one in which the monarchy, nobility and clergy
ruled with an iron hand, keeping the majority of the people in a state of
poverty and virtual slavery. It was an age of burning of books and imprisonment
without trial at the whim of the ruling class. No wonder then that Voltaire,
especially after some of his early experiences of the injustices of the regime,
chose not to acknowledge his own words. Less of an original thinker than many
of the Enlightenment thinkers, he is particularly important for
challenging the church and promoting the ideas of
John Locke and Isaac Newton in France.
Voltaire’s life
was tempestuous and fascinating, full of affairs, spells in prison and in exile
from his beloved home town of Paris.
Born François Marie Arouet in November 1694, he was a sickly child who was not
expected to live beyond a few days, so right from the beginning he managed to
surprise everyone by surviving. His father, François Arouet, was a minor
treasury official of some property, but it was his mother Marie Marguerite
D’Aumard who was probably to thank for his introduction to good society, having
been a close friend of the abbe de Chateauneuf, who was his sponsor and tutor
in his early years. Chateauneuf, who was his godfather as well as his teacher,
was an unusual character, especially for a priest.
Skeptical and irreligious, he
encouraged his pupil to reject the superstition which was rife at the time.
Amongst other things he taught the bright young boy deism and literature and
there can be no doubt how influential this was on Voltaire.
In 1704, some
two years after the death of his mother, Voltaire was packed off to the Collège
Louis-le-Grand in Paris,
where he was educated by the Jesuits for seven years. He was an unusual pupil,
caring little for games or sport, mixing little with his peers and spending
much of his time talking to the teachers. Although he later claimed that he
learned nothing but “Latin and the Stupidities" there this period was almost
certainly important in the early development of his literary talents. Here he
wrote poetry and was introduced to theatre. There was a tradition at Jesuit
schools, dating back to the Renaissance, of performing plays in Latin and in
the vernacular and the young Voltaire took to the stage with enthusiasm. This left
a deep impression on him, so much so that by the time he left the Collège at
the age of 17 he had decided that he wanted to become a writer.
On his return
from school his father was somewhat dismayed by the young man’s ambitions,
having mapped out a career in law for his son. “Literature," he said, “is the
profession of the man who wishes to be useless to society, and a burden to his
relatives, and to die of hunger." Voltaire was thus forced to take a job as
assistant to a lawyer, but spent as little time as possible working, devoting
his energy to writing satirical poetry. However, it was not long before his
father found him out and sent him off to the provinces where he studied law for
two years. During this time he devoted his time to writing poetry, essays and
historical studies and consequently did poorly in his studies. Exasperated,
François Arouet tried once again to influence his son’s choice of career, obtaining
a job for him as secretary to the French ambassador in
Holland.
Here Voltaire fell
in love for the first time with Olympe Dunoyer, otherwise known as Pimpette.
The girl was quite well connected but had no money, was a Protestant and, worst
of all, had a mother who was a writer with a less than respectable literary
reputation. The barriers were to prove too great for the young lovers.
Pimpette’s mother disapproved of the relationship and Voltaire’s father
attempted to intervene by obtaining a lettre de cachet to ban the match. Lettres
de cachets were sealed warrants issued by the king, usually used to secure the
imprisonment without trial of people who were disliked or distrusted by the
crown. In the end the lettre de cachet was not used as Pimpette decided that
their future together was too uncertain and she withdrew from the relationship
herself.
Heartbroken and
miserable, Voltaire turned more seriously than ever to literature, and was
never to stop writing until his death at the age of 83. Returning to France he
worked for a short time in a lawyer’s office, but got into trouble for writing
libellous poetry and his father sent him to the country where he stayed for
nearly a year with Louis de Caumartin, the marquis de Saint-Ange. His father’s
idea was that he continued to study law, but in true character Voltaire instead
directed his energy into writing essays and historical research.
In 1715 Louis XIV died, and around the same time Voltaire returned to
Paris once again. The king’s reign had been
coloured by misery, tyranny and hunger and news of his death was received with
great joy by the majority of the population. His funeral, which Voltaire
attended, was treated more like a day of celebration than mourning. Hopes were
high that things were going to change for the better. These hopes were to be
dashed and it was not until the French revolution nearly 70 years later that
things were really going to change, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Voltaire was
welcomed into the literary society of Paris
as his work and his reputation for audacity were widespread by this time. Falling
into the circle of duchess of Maine, he once
again got himself into trouble by contributing to a libellous satirical poem
ridiculing the prince regent Orleans,
with whom the duchess had something of a feud. As a consequence he was exiled
from Paris in
May 1716, first to Tulle and then to Sully. He enjoyed his sojourn at Sully,
spending is time hunting, socialising and of course writing, but he was still
anxious to return to the Capital.
Utilising some
tactical flattery in his poems and epigrams he managed to bring his exile to a
close in less than a year, returning to Paris early in 1717, but his freedom
was to be short lived. This time he was not the author of the work that got him
into trouble, but his reputation for brilliant satire was such that many works
were being falsely attributed to him by this time. He was accused of writing
two anonymous libels, the Puero Regnante
and J’ai vu and in May 1717 found
himself in Paris’s
notorious prison, the Bastille, for the first time. He was to spend eleven
months there. This was a turning point for Voltaire, for he felt the sting of
injustice most keenly, and it surely influenced his later campaigning against
the injustices dealt out to others.
Despite it being
some time before he could obtain pen and ink, he set to work on a new play from
the outset, and the resulting tragedy, Oedipe
was to be his first theatrical success. It was also during this stay in the
Bastille that he began the Henriade,
an epic poem about Henry IV, and decided to adopt the pen name Voltaire, saying
“I was very unlucky under my first name. I want to see if this one will succeed
any better." There are various theories as to where the name Voltaire originates,
but the most likely is that it is simply an anagram of “Arovet l.i" which is a Latinized,
shortened form of “Arouet le jeune" [Arouet the young]. From this time on he
was known as Arouet de Voltaire, or simply Voltaire, to all.
On his release
from prison in 1718, Oedipe was
produced in Paris,
playing to packed houses and huge acclaim. The tragedy ran for forty-five
nights, establishing Voltaire’s reputation as a great playwright at the early
age of 23 and making the young man a considerable amount of money in the
process. It also secured him a pension from the regent, but thankfully for
posterity, this was not to keep Voltaire quiet. Pensions to artists, as favours
from the rich and powerful, all too often stifled criticism but Voltaire refused
to allow his sponsorship to hinder his thoughts or writings. He could at this
point easily have accepted an easy life of luxury spent in good society, but
keeping his mouth shut was just not in Voltaire’s nature and he carried on
regardless, criticising the church and state and poking fun at the powerful. It
was not long before this landed him in trouble again.
Late in 1725 he
had a run in with a powerful young nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan, who
insulted Voltaire and of course consequently found himself at the sharp end of
the poet’s tongue. Soon after, Voltaire was called out while dining with the
Duke of Sully and was soundly beaten by Rohan’s hirelings. Voltaire found
himself isolated with regard to this affair and eventually, some three months
later, challenged Rohan to a duel. However Rohan’s family obtained a lettre de
cachet and Voltaire was arrested on the morning of the duel and was thrown into
the Bastille for the second time.
During his short
spell of imprisonment Voltaire had a stream of admiring visitors but this did
not mitigate his circumstances: He was confronted with two options; another
term in prison or exile. This was to be a turning point in Voltaire’s life as
he plumped for exile in England,
where he spent most of the next three years, and the ideas he was exposed to
there were to prove more influential than any he had encountered before. Voltaire
was impressed by a number of things that stood in stark contrast to how things
were in France
at that time, in particular the respect for freedom of speech and the religious
tolerance he found there. He was also quite taken with
England’s constitutional monarchy and remained a
monarchist for the remainder of his days despite the actions of the kings of
France
against himself and the people during his lifetime.
Voltaire’s
timing was good for a change. George I died soon after his arrival in
England and
although the new king, George II, was not a fan of literature, Queen Caroline loved
poetry and he was welcomed into society. Making the most of this in a
characteristically astute move he published an English edition of the Henriade
dedicated to the queen and made
a small fortune. Mastering the English language in a mere six months, he made
friends with a fascinating and stimulating range of people, including the Prime
Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Bolingbroke, the poet Alexander Pope and the
playwright William Congreve. He also came across the Quakers and was struck by
their tolerance and simplicity, and even more so by the absence of priests in
that religion. Most important of all, though, he came across the work of two of
the great thinkers of the 17th century: the greatest natural scientist of them all,
Isaac Newton and the philosopher
of freedom John Locke.
They were to influence him deeply and his later philosophical rationalism
and study of the natural sciences stems from this most important of
introductions. While in England Voltaire of course kept on writing, producing
his Essay Upon Epic Poetry and Essay Upon the Civil Wars in France,
published in 1727 and beginning a ground-breaking biography of Charles XII of
Sweden
published in 1731. In the work on Charles XII Voltaire suggested that humans
control their own destiny, rejecting the idea that divine intervention guides
history and this marks the beginning of his rejection of religion, a position
that was of course very dangerous to hold.
Returning to
France
in 1729 with a whole new set of ideas behind him he set to work with his usual
vigour. His Letters Concerning the
English Nation, published first in English in 1733, openly praised the more
tolerant society he found in England
and characterised England’s
constitutional monarchy as a better, more progressive form of government than
that of France.
Voltaire knew that it was dangerous to publish the book in
Paris and held it back for a while, but
somehow it got out of his hands and was published in French as Lettres
Philosophiques sur les Anglais
in 1734. Predictably this caused a storm: the publisher was sent to the
Bastille, and copies of the book were burned publicly in
Paris by the hangman, denounced as
“scandalously contrary to religion, morals and society." This time Voltaire
managed to avoid prison, but was forced to flee Paris
once again, this time moving to the Château de Cirey on the borders of
France, Champagne
and Lorraine.
From this time on, having become acutely aware of the dangers of speaking (and
writing) his mind, Voltaire began his habit of disowning his own works. This
has been interpreted by some as an act of cowardice, which in some ways it was,
but it did provide him with the freedom to continue to criticise without
risking his liberty and without finding himself exiled time and again.
The Cirey
residence which, apart from a brief period of refuge spent in
Holland in 1736-7, was to last until 1740, was
the beginning of a new era for Voltaire and has been described as “the first
stage of his literary manhood." A few months earlier, in 1733, Voltaire had met
a brilliant young woman, Emilie de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet, who he
quickly realised was on his wavelength and it was at her invitation that he
moved to Cirey. Emilie, or ‘Madame du Châtelet’ as she is generally known, was
twelve years his junior, married and had three children. Nevertheless they
began an affair that was to last over fifteen years until her death in 1749.
Her husband was well aware of their affair and tolerated it.
Voltaire and
Madame du Châtelet set forth on a voyage of discovery together, studying the
natural sciences and performing their own experiments. They also studied
history, focusing on people they thought had contributed to civilisation up to
that point, and philosophy, in particular metaphysics. Their relationship was
stormy, full of arguments and difficulties, but their common intellectual
interests ensured that they did not part. Together they collected over 21000
books on a variety of subjects, which they studied and discussed at length. They
thought of themselves as ‘Newtonians’ and Madame du Châtelet even invented a
verb ‘to newtonise’ to characterise their thinking. She was an able mathematician
and scientist, exciting and difficult and a constant stimulation to Voltaire. Some
of the work they produced, in particular Madame du Châtelet’s translation of
Newton’s Principia and Voltaire’s Elements de la Philosophie de Newton
(Elements of Newton’s Philosophy), which they worked on together, were
extremely important in introducing the new ideas in natural philosophy to the
Continent. Voltaire produced a number of other works during the Cirey
residence, including Essai sur la poesie
epique (Essay on Epic Poetry), which introduced the famous story of
Newton recognising the
existence of the force of gravity thanks to an apple falling from a tree.
In March 1736
Voltaire received a letter from the crown prince of Prussia,
Frederick,
which was to mark the beginning of a long and important relationship. They
eventually met in September 1740 after a long correspondence in which
Frederick had repeatedly tried to get Voltaire to come to
live in Prussia.
However, it was not until after the death of Madame du Châtelet several years
later that he eventually succeeded, at least in part thanks to the fact that he
omitted to include Madame du Châtelet in his invitations, earning her hatred in
the process.
Between 1740 and
1749 Voltaire moved about quite a bit, dividing his time primarily between
Brussels, Cirey and Paris.
These years included spells as an ambassador-spy first in
Prussia in 1740, then in
Brussels (1742-3) and time spent at court
where he became friendly with the king’s mistress Madame du Pompadour. He also
wrote his most successful play in this period, Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le
Prophète, (Fanaticism, or Mohammed the prophet) which played in Lille first
in 1741 and in Paris the following August. The play portrayed
Mohammed as a power-hungry intriguer, and there was no doubt in the minds of
the Catholic clergy that this was a veiled attack on Christian fanaticism. They
promptly pronounced it profane and sacrilegious and had it burned. However,
Voltaire was becoming wilier in his advancing years and wrote to the pope
asking his permission to dedicate Mahomet
to him. The pope agreed, sending Voltaire his blessing and accepting the
dedication of “your admirable tragedy." The cardinals had no choice but to go along
with it – Voltaire had won for once.
By this time Voltaire’s genius was recognised far and wide. In France
he was hailed by many as the greatest poet and playwright, he had been placed
in Germany’s Hall of Fame and had been elected a member of the Royal Society in
England, butthe recognition he really wanted had eluded him thus far. The Académie
Française had passed him over time and again, considering him too controversial
a figure and this frustrated Voltaire greatly. Finally, in 1746, with Madame du
Pompadour, the king and the pope behind him, they could no longer refuse and he
was admitted to the Académie. Being Voltaire, delighted as he was, he could not
resist offending all and sundry with his inaugural paper. It was typically
witty, cheeky and sacrilegious and resulted in him having to retreat to Cirey
once again.
He did not know at the time of course, but another turning point was on the horizon
for Voltaire. In September 1749 Madame du Châtelet died after the birth of a child,
and poor Voltaire was devastated. He was fifty five and somewhat lost, not
knowing which direction to turn or where he wanted to be. He spent some time in
Paris, and even
thought of resettling there, but he could never stay out of trouble for long
enough to be safe in the French capital and eventually, in 1751, accepted the
invitation of Frederick of Prussia, who was king by this time, to move there.
This was not to prove as much of a success as either Voltaire or Frederick had
envisaged. Their long correspondence had convinced them both of the wisdom of
Voltaire’s move,but actually being in close proximity with each other turned
out to be very hard. They fought all the time and Voltaire stirred up lots of
trouble in Frederick’s court. He was
neither humble nor confident enough for this type of life, and it exaggerated
all his worst traits – jealousy, greed and a barely controllable restlessness.
After two years both of them had had enough and Voltaire was granted a leave of
absence, leaving Potsdam in 1753. All these tensions of course did not stop him
writing and it is during his time in Potsdam that he produced
an interesting little work that is probably the first piece of science fiction.
His Micromégas (1752) features two ambassadors from another planet who visit
Earth and witness the folly of the human race.
Finding himself unable to obtain permission to return to France,
especially after the publication in January 1754 of Essai sur les moeurs,
Voltaire bought a country house just outside Geneva, which he called
Les Délices. By this time he was a man of considerable wealth, fitting out Les
Délices with great style, including the installation of a private theatre, and
buying a number of smaller properties around the region in different jurisdictions
so that he always had a bolt-hole in times of trouble. He entertained
constantly, performing in his own plays and living the sort of life he had
always wanted. His work continued to go from strength to strength, writing
plays and verses which well reflected his experience and literary skill. There
were however a few problems yet to haunt him.
Geneva had at the time a law forbidding all
theatrical performances and, although Les Délices was outside the city state a
resolution was passed by the Consistory of Geneva urging people not to attend
plays at Voltaire’s residence. Voltaire was not happy about this, but his past
experience at the wrong end of the law guided him on this occasion and he
shifted his performances to his house in Lausanne.
It is almost certainly as an indirect consequence of this that D’Alembert
criticised the theatre ban in his article on Geneva in the Encyclopedie
probably at Voltaire’s instigation.
At the end of
1758 Voltaire bought an even more extensive property on the
shore of Lake Geneva,
a few miles from Geneva
itself and on French soil. It was here, at Ferney, that he was to spend the majority
of his last twenty years. Ferney was to become the intellectual capital of
Europe. There he continued to entertain the great and the
good and, more importantly, continued to write, producing some of his best
work.
His satirical story Candide, published in 1759, is one of
his best loved and most widely read works. Full of his usual wit this ‘philosophical
romance’ is an outright attack on the religious and philosophical optimism
popular at the time. The protagonist, Candide, is young, innocent and naïve and
goes through a bizarre set of adventures plagued by bad luck, preyed on by a
rich cast of characters full of hypocrisy, greed and treachery, while
throughout he attempts to reconcile his experiences with the philosophy he was
taught by his friend and teacher ‘the best philosopher in the world’ Doctor
Pangloss. The character of Pangloss, who teaches that “all is for the best in this
best of all possible worlds", is widely thought to be a caricature of Gottfried
Leibniz the great Prussian engineer, logician, mathematician and rival of
Newton, but it is likely that Pangloss is at least in
part also based on the French philosopher-scientist Pierre-Louis Moreau de
Maupertuis, with whom Voltaire had had a dispute during his time in Prussia and
whom Voltaire had previously ridiculed in L’histoire
du Docteur Akakia (The story of Dr Akakia) in 1752.
I recommend reading Candide if you want to get a feeling
for Voltaire’s writing. It is only a short novel and it is very entertaining.
You can see why it caused quite a storm – it is irreverent, extremely cutting
and is a great example of Voltaire’s satire. I will quote a few sections from
John Butt’s translation to give you an idea of what I mean. At one point he
asks his rather brilliant servant Cacambo about the Jesuits of Paraguay, who
tells him:
‘I was once a servant in the College of Assumption, so I know how the reverend
fathers govern as well as I know the streets of Cadiz. It’s a wonderful
system they have. There are thirty provinces in their kingdom, and it is more
than three hundred leagues across. The reverend fathers own the whole lot, and
the people own nothing: that’s what I call a masterpiece of reason and justice.
I don’t think I have ever seen such godlike creatures as the reverend fathers.
They fight the Kings of Spain and Portugal over here and give them absolution
in Europe. In this country they kill Spaniards, and in Madrid
they send them to Heaven. Delightful isn’t it? …’
Later, speakingto an old man in the legendary country of Eldorado Candide asks
“Do you mean to say you have no monks teaching and disputing, governing and
intriguing, and having people burned if they don’t subscribe to their opinions?"
To which the old man replies “We should be stupid if we had … we are all of the
same opinion here, and we don’t know what you mean by monks."
When Candide passes through France
on his journeys Voltaire takes full advantage to poke fun at his own nation.
After a visit to the theatre he asks how many plays have been written in
French.
‘About five or six thousand,’ replied the abbé.
‘That’s a lot,’ he remarked; ‘how many are good?’
‘Fifteen or sixteen,’ replied the other.
‘That’s a lot,’ said Martin.
And when they
later go to dinner Voltaire describes it as follows:
The supper was like most
Parisian suppers, first of all silence followed by an indistinguishable noise
of words, then some witticisms, most of which were insipid, some scandal, some
false reasoning, a little politics and a good deal of slander.
Five years after
the publication of Candide Voltaire published
his greatest work of philosophy the Dictionnaire
Philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary). The Dictionnaire consists of a series of articles on a range of
subjects, many of which were written for the Encyclopedie.
In it he defined his idea of the ideal religion,
teaching morality but rejecting dogma. These were of course dangerous views to
hold and Voltaire denied his own authorship once more, especially as the book
was condemned in Paris, Amsterdam
and Geneva.
Like Candide this is a great work to
read if you want get a feel for Voltaire’s character – his wit, his passion,
his strengths and weaknesses are all here.
Before I come to
the close of the story of Voltaire’s life I have to make some mention of his
tireless campaigning on behalf of the oppressed which took up much of his time
and energy in the last years of his life. Voltaire had of course experienced
first hand the injustices of the judicial system in
France and this was certainly a
major factor in cementing his commitment to its reform. The Calas affair is
perhaps the best known case that he took up, and I will outline it here for you
as an example, although it is just one of many.
Jean Calas was a
Protestant and respectable merchant who lived in the town of
Toulouse. One of his sons wanted to study law
but at this time that was only possible if you were a member of the Catholic
Church. The son got very depressed and killed himself, something that was
considered a mortal sin at the time. His family, finding the poor man hanging
by the neck, decided to conceal the suicide as they did not want to see his
body drawn and quartered and fed to dogs as was the common practice for those
who took their own lives. However, things were to go horribly wrong as a rumour
started that Jean Calas had murdered his son because he wanted to become a
Catholic, renouncing the Protestantism of his family. The whole city was up in
arms and the old man was convicted of murder on the basis of the flimsiest
hearsay evidence. Refusing to confess even after horrendous torture, Calas was
tied to a wooden cross, had his arms and legs broken and was strangled publicly
by the executioner, after which his body was burned at the stake. The state
then confiscated his property, leaving his widow homeless and destitute, and
placed his children in Catholic institutions.
Voltaire heard
about this terrible affair and decided to investigate the case. He took one of
the old man’s sons to Ferney, found out what had happened and set out to clear
Calas, writing dozens of letters to important people throughout
Europe, including Catherine of Russia and his old friend
Frederick the Great, hiring a lawyer, raising money for the family and
preparing a case to vindicate Calas. He worked tirelessly for six years,
eventually securing a unanimous vote in the parliament of
Paris declaring Calas innocent. Calas himself
was of course dead, but the reversal of his conviction meant that his estate
was returned to his family and the children returned to their mother. Voltaire
also gave them an estate to live in once the case was over.
This was to be
just one of many such cases taken up by Voltaire in his Ferney years. Many of
them, like Calas, were sadly proven innocent after their execution, but there
can be little doubt that the lives of many other innocents were saved as a
consequence of Voltaire’s campaigns. This Voltaire is the one who should really
be remembered, for this was a heroic struggle against oppression forged at no
small risk to himself for, in his own words ‘it is dangerous to be right when
the government is wrong.’ After a lifetime of denying authorship of his own
work when it threatened his own safety, this mature Voltaire was a man of
principle and bravery who did a great service to the cause of liberty and
justice.
In 1778, after nearly twenty years of exile in Ferney, Voltaire had an
unbearable longing to return to Paris. He
had just completed his latest tragedy Irene
and its first performance was to take place at the National Theatre in
Paris. Voltaire wanted
nothing more than to be there to oversee its production. His niece Madame
Denis, who had been his companion for many years, was also very keen to return
to the buzz of life in the French capital and encouraged him to go. So, in
February they set out on the five day journey to his longed-for home, arriving
to a hero’s welcome, the streets lined with cheering fans.
The journey and
the excitement were too much for the 83 year old man and he fell seriously ill
after a couple of weeks. On 28th February, believing he was about to
die, he wrote ‘I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and
detesting superstition.’ However, this was not to be the end. He recovered and
resumed preparations for the opening of Irene.
At the end of March he attended a performance of this, his last completed work.
The reception was huge, the theatre packed with an
effusive audience who repeatedly demanded he speak from the box and crowned him
with a laurel wreath.
Voltaire decided
to begin a new life in Paris, buying a house,
working on another tragedy and attending meetings of the
French Academy,
but his health would not permit it. In May he became seriously ill again and
died at the end of the month. Having refused to sign a general retraction of
his works before his death, the church refused to give him a Christian burial,
but his body was taken secretly to the abbey of Scellieres
in Champagne and
buried there. His heart was embalmed and given to Madame Denis.
In 1791, some
thirteen years later, the National Assembly ordered that his body be brought
back to Paris,
and in July of that year his remains were transferred to the Pantheon. However,
even this was not to be the end of the story, for in 1814 his remains were
stolen by a group of religious zealots and dumped in a pit. It was only fifty
years later when it was decided to return his embalmed heart to the other
remains that this was discovered.
Thus there was a
remarkable end to the history of this remarkable multi-faceted man. Voltaire is
the perfect example of an Enlightenment figure whose contribution to the Age of
Reason was incredibly important. The sheer volume of work he produced in his 83
years is mind-boggling. Not only was he one of the most renowned playwrights of
all time, he was instrumental in propagating the new methods of the natural
sciences in Europe and in arguing for freedom
of thought and the civil rights.
There is a certain
irony related to his legacy, for the French Revolution was to begin eleven
years after his death and his writings and his campaigns certainly influenced
the turn of events, but Voltaire would have been quite horrified by that
knowledge. He was a strong advocate of progress but he distrusted the judgement
of the masses, who he considered stupid and uneducated. As
a consequence, he was opposed to democracy. Having been highly influenced by
his stay in England,
he believed rather in an enlightened monarchy in which the king would be advised
by philosophers like himself.
Although it has
been argued that he contributed little in terms of original thought I think
that this is a little unfair when you consider that, amongst other things, he
presented history for the first time without the idea of divine intervention
(Charles XII, 1731), attempted the first
history of the world as a whole (Essai sur l’histoire generale set sur
les moeurs et l’esprit des nations,
1756) and wrote what is possibly the first work of science fiction (Micromégas, 1752).
Most of all, though, what I love about him as figure is his disrespect for
authority and his genuine wish to see an end to tyranny and oppression.
C J M Hewett, August 2006
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