A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 07. Voltaire
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necessary to side with one of the opposing parties. We must therefore believe that Julian submitted to the Pagan ceremonies, as the majority of princes and great men attend the forms of worship in the public temples. They are led thither by the people themselves, and are often obliged to appear what in fact they are not; and to be in public the first and greatest slaves of credulity. The Turkish sultan must bless the name of Omar. The Persian sophi must bless the name of Ali. Marcus Aurelius himself was initiated in the mysteries of Eleusis.
We ought not therefore to be surprised that Julian should have debased his reason by condescending to the forms and usages of superstition; but it is impossible not to feel indignant against Theodoret, as the only historian who relates that he sacrificed a woman in the temple of the moon at Carres. This infamous story must be classed with the absurd tale of Ammianus, that the genius of the empire appeared to Julian before his death, and with the other equally ridiculous one, that when Julian attempted to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem, there came globes of fire out of the earth, and consumed all the works and workmen without distinction.
Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra.– Horace, book i, ep. ii, 16.
Both Christians and Pagans equally, circulated fables concerning Julian; but the fables of the Christians, who were his enemies, were filled with calumny. Who could ever be induced to believe that a philosopher sacrificed a woman to the moon, and tore out her entrails with his own hands? Is such atrocity compatible with the character of a rigid Stoic?
He never put any Christians to death. He granted them no favors, but he never persecuted them. He permitted them, like a just sovereign, to keep their own property; and he wrote in opposition to them like a philosopher. He forbade their teaching in the schools the profane authors, whom they endeavored to decry – this was not persecuting them; and he prevented them from tearing one another to pieces in their outrageous hatred and quarrels – this was protecting them. They had in fact therefore nothing with which they could reproach him, but with having abandoned them, and with not being of their opinion. They found means, however, of rendering execrable to posterity a prince, who, but for his change of religion, would have been admired and beloved by all the world.
Although we have already treated of Julian, under the article on "Apostate"; although, following the example of every sage, we have deplored the dreadful calamity he experienced in not being a Christian, and have done justice elsewhere to his various excellences, we must nevertheless say something more upon the subject.
We do this in consequence of an imposture equally absurd and atrocious, which we casually met with in one of those petty dictionaries with which France is now inundated, and which unfortunately are so easily compiled. This dictionary of theology which I am now alluding to proceeds from an ex-Jesuit, called Paulian, who repeats the story, so discredited and absurd, that the emperor Julian, after being mortally wounded in a battle with the Persians, threw some of his blood towards heaven, exclaiming, "Galilean, thou hast conquered" – a fable which destroys itself, as Julian was conqueror in the battle, and Jesus Christ certainly was not the God of the Persians.
Paulian, notwithstanding, dares to assert that the fact is incontestable. And upon what ground does he assert it? Upon the ground of its being related by Theodoret, the author of so many distinguished lies; and even this notorious writer himself relates it only as a vague report; he uses the expression, "It is said." This story is worthy of the calumniators who stated that Julian had sacrificed a woman to the moon, and that after his death a large chest was found among his movables filled with human heads.
This is not the only falsehood and calumny with which this ex-Jesuit Paulian is chargeable. If these contemptible wretches knew what injury they did to our holy religion, by endeavoring to support it by imposture, and by the abominable abuse with which they assail the most respectable characters, they would be less audacious and infuriated. They care not, however, for supporting religion; what they want is to gain money by their libels; and despairing of being read by persons of sense, and taste, and fashion, they go on gathering and compiling theological trash, in hopes that their productions will be adopted in the seminaries.
We sincerely ask pardon of our well-informed and respectable readers for introducing such names as those of the ex-Jesuits Paulian, Nonnotte, and Patouillet; but after having trampled to death serpents, we shall probably be excused for crushing fleas.
JUST AND UNJUST
Who has given us the perception of just and unjust? God, who gave us a brain and a heart. But when does our reason inform us that there are such things as vice and virtue? Just at the same time it teaches us that two and two make four. There is no innate knowledge, for the same reason that there is no tree that bears leaves and fruit when it first starts above the earth. There is nothing innate, or fully developed in the first instance; but – we repeat here what we have often said – God causes us to be born with organs, which, as they grow and become unfolded, make us feel all that is necessary for our species to feel, for the conservation of that species.
How is this continual mystery performed? Tell me, ye yellow inhabitants of the Isles of Sunda, ye black Africans, ye beardless Indians; and you – Plato, Cicero, and Epictetus. You all equally feel that it is better to give the superfluity of your bread, your rice, or your manioc, to the poor man who meekly requests it, than to kill him or scoop his eyes out. It is evident to the whole world that a benefit is more honorable to the performer than an outrage, that gentleness is preferable to fury.
The only thing required, then, is to exercise our reason in discriminating the various shades of what is right and wrong. Good and evil are often neighbors; our passions confound them; who shall enlighten and direct us? Ourselves, when we are calm and undisturbed. Whoever has written on the subject of human duties, in all countries throughout the world, has written well, because he wrote with reason. All have said the same thing; Socrates and Epictetus, Confucius and Cicero, Marcus Antoninus and Amurath II. had the same morality.
We would repeat every day to the whole of the human race: Morality is uniform and invariable; it comes from God: dogmas are different; they come from ourselves.
Jesus never taught any metaphysical dogmas; He wrote no theological courses; He never said: I am consubstantial; I have two wills and two natures with only one person. He left for the Cordeliers and the Jacobins, who would appear twelve hundred years after Him, the delicate and difficult topic of argument, whether His mother was conceived in original sin. He never pronounced marriage to be the visible sign of a thing invisible; He never said a word about concomitant grace; He instituted neither monks nor inquisitors; He appointed nothing of what we see at the present day.
God had given the knowledge of just and unjust, right and wrong, throughout all the ages which preceded Christianity. God never changed nor can change. The constitution of our souls, our principles of reason and morality, will ever be the same. How is virtue promoted by theological distinctions, by dogmas founded on those distinctions, by persecutions founded on those dogmas? Nature, terrified and horror-struck at all these barbarous inventions, calls aloud to all men: Be just, and not persecuting sophists.
You read in the "Zend-Avesta," which is the summary of the laws of Zoroaster, this admirable maxim: "When it is doubtful whether the action you are about to perform is just or unjust, abstain from doing it." What legislator ever spoke better? We have not here the system of "probable opinions", invented by people who call themselves "the Society of Jesus".
JUSTICE
That "justice" is often extremely unjust, is not an observation merely of the present day; "summum jus, summa injuria," is one of the most ancient proverbs in existence. There are many dreadful ways of being unjust; as, for example, that of racking the innocent Calas upon equivocal evidence, and thus incurring the guilt of shedding innocent blood by a too strong reliance on vain presumptions.
Another method of being unjust is condemning to execution a man who at most deserves only three months' imprisonment; this species of injustice is that of tyrants, and particularly of fanatics, who always become tyrants whenever they obtain the power of doing mischief.
We cannot more completely demonstrate this truth than by the letter of a celebrated barrister, written in 1766, to the marquis of Beccaria, one of the most celebrated professors of jurisprudence, at this time, in