A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 07. Voltaire
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ill to another, nor rejoicing at it, when from any cause whatsoever it befalls him.
B. I conceive that man neither loves ill nor does it with any other view than to his own advantage. But so many men are urged on to obtain advantage to themselves by the injury of another; revenge is a passion of such violence; there are examples of it so terrible and fatal; and ambition, more terrible and fatal still, has so drenched the world with blood; that when I survey the frightful picture, I am tempted to confess, that a man is a being truly diabolical. I may certainly possess, deeply rooted in my heart, the notion of what is just and unjust; but an Attila, whom St. Leon extols and pays his court to; a Phocas, whom St. Gregory flatters with the most abject meanness; Alexander VI., polluted by so many incests, murders, and poisonings, and with whom the feeble Louis XII., commonly called "the Good," enters into the most strict and base alliance; a Cromwell, whose protection Cardinal Mazarin eagerly solicits, and to gratify whom he expels from France the heirs of Charles I., cousins-german of Louis XIV. – these, and a thousand similar examples, easily to be found in the records of history, totally disturb and derange my ideas, and I no longer know what I am doing or where I am.
A. Well; but should the knowledge that storms are coming prevent our enjoying the beautiful sunshine and gentle and fragrant gales of the present day? Did the earthquake that destroyed half the city of Lisbon prevent your making a very pleasant journey from Madrid? If Attila was a bandit, and Cardinal Mazarin a knave, are there not some princes and ministers respectable and amiable men? Has it not been remarked, that in the war of 1701, the Council of Louis XIV. consisted of some of the most virtuous of mankind – the duke of Beauvilliers, the Marquis de Torcy, Marshal Villars, and finally Chamillard, who was not indeed considered a very able but still an honorable man? Does not the idea of just and unjust still exist? It is in fact on this that all laws are founded. The Greeks call laws "the daughters of heaven", which means simply, the daughters of nature. Have you no laws in your country?
B. Yes; some good, and others bad.
A. Where could you have taken the idea of them, but from the notions of natural law which every well-constructed mind has within itself? They must have been derived from these or nothing.
B. You are right; there is a natural law, but it is still more natural to many people to forget or neglect it.
A. It is natural also to be one-eyed, humpbacked, lame, deformed, and sickly; but we prefer persons well made and healthy.
B. Why are there so many one-eyed and deformed minds?
A. Hush! Consult, however, the article on "Omnipotence."
LAW (SALIC)
He who says that the Salic law was written with a pen from the wing of a two-headed eagle, by Pharamond's almoner, on the back of the patent containing Constantine's donation, was not, perhaps, very much mistaken.
It is, say the doughty lawyers, the fundamental law of the French Empire. The great Jerome Bignon, in his book on "The Excellence of France," says that this law is derived from natural law, according to the great Aristotle, because "in families it was the father who governed, and no dower was given to daughters, as we read in relation to the father, mother, and brothers of Rebecca."
He asserts that the kingdom of France is so excellent that it has religiously preserved this law, recommended both by Aristotle and the Old Testament. And to prove this excellence of France, he observes also, that the emperor Julian thought the wine of Surêne admirable.
But in order to demonstrate the excellence of the Salic law, he refers to Froissart, according to whom the twelve peers of France said that "the kingdom of France is of such high nobility that it never ought to pass in succession to a female."
It must be acknowledged that this decision is not a little uncivil to Spain, England, Naples, and Hungary, and more than all the rest to Russia, which has seen on its throne four empresses in succession.
The kingdom of France is of great nobility; no doubt it is; but those of Spain, of Mexico, and Peru are also of great nobility, and there is great nobility also in Russia.
It has been alleged that Sacred Scripture says the lilies neither toil nor spin; and thence it has been inferred that women ought not to reign in France. This certainly is another instance of powerful reasoning; but it has been forgotten that the leopards, which are – it is hard to say why – the arms of England, spin no more than the lilies which are – it is equally hard to say why – the arms of France. In a word, the circumstance that lilies have never been seen to spin does not absolutely demonstrate the exclusion of females from the throne to have been a fundamental law of the Gauls.
Of Fundamental Laws.
The fundamental law of every country is, that if people are desirous of having bread, they must sow corn; that if they wish for clothing, they must cultivate flax and hemp; that every owner of a field should have the uncontrolled management and dominion over it, whether that owner be male or female; that the half-barbarous Gaul should kill as many as ever he can of the wholly barbarous Franks, when they come from the banks of the Main, which they have not the skill and industry to cultivate, to carry off his harvests and flocks; without doing which the Gaul would either become a serf of the Frank, or be assassinated by him.
It is upon this foundation that an edifice is well supported. One man builds upon a rock, and his house stands firm; another on the sands, and it falls to the ground. But a fundamental law, arising from the fluctuating inclinations of men, and yet at the same time irrevocable, is a contradiction in terms, a mere creature of imagination, a chimera, an absurdity; the power that makes the laws can change them. The Golden Bull was called "the fundamental law of the empire." It was ordained that there should never be more than seven Teutonic electors, for the very satisfactory and decisive reason that a certain Jewish chandelier had had no more than seven branches, and that there are no more than seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. This fundamental law had the epithet "eternal" applied to it by the all-powerful authority and infallible knowledge of Charles IV. God, however, did not think fit to allow of this assumption of "eternal" in Charles's parchments. He permitted other German emperors, out of their all-powerful authority and infallible knowledge, to add two branches to the chandelier, and two presents to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly the electors are now nine in number.
It was a very fundamental law that the disciples of the Lord Jesus should possess no private property, but have all things in common. There was afterwards a law that the bishops of Rome should be rich, and that the people should choose them. The last fundamental law is, that they are sovereigns, and elected by a small number of men clothed in scarlet, and constituting a society absolutely unknown in the time of Jesus. If the emperor, king of the Romans, always august, was sovereign master of Rome in fact, as he is according to the style of his patents and heraldry, the pope would be his grand almoner, until some other law, forever irrevocable, was announced, to be destroyed in its turn by some succeeding one.
I will suppose – what may very possibly and naturally happen – that an emperor of Germany may have no issue but an only daughter, and that he may be a quiet, worthy man, understanding nothing about war. I will suppose that if Catherine II. does not destroy the Turkish Empire, which she has severely shaken in the very year in which I am now writing my reverie (the year 1771), the Turk will come and invade this good prince, notwithstanding his' being cherished and beloved by all his nine electors; that his daughter puts herself at the head of the troops with two young electors deeply enamored of her; that she beats the Ottomans, as Deborah beat General Sisera, and his three hundred thousand soldiers, and his three thousand chariots of war, in a little rocky plain at the foot of Mount Tabor; that this warlike princess drives the Mussulman even beyond Adrianople; that her father dies through joy at her success, or from any other cause; that the two lovers of the princess induce their seven colleagues to crown her empress, and that all the princes of the empire, and all the cities give their consent to it; what, in this case, becomes of the fundamental and eternal law which enacts that the holy Roman Empire cannot possibly pass from the lance to the distaff, that the two-headed eagle cannot spin, and that it is impossible to sit on the imperial throne without breeches? The old and absurd law would be derided, and the heroic empress reign at once in safety and in glory.
How The Salic Law Came To Be Established.