The Philosophy of Voltaire - Collected Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato's Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable…. Вольтер
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All this might be very well in one of La Fontaine's tales—setting apart the weakness of the verse; and there are a hundred historical anecdotes which could be tolerated there only.
SECTION II.
Assassination being, next to poisoning, the crime most cowardly and most deserving of punishment, it is not astonishing that it has found an apologist in a man whose singular reasoning is, in some things, at variance with the reason of the rest of mankind.
In a romance entitled "Emilius," he imagines that he is the guardian of a young man, to whom he is very careful to give an education such as is received in the military school—teaching him languages, geometry, tactics, fortification, and the history of his country. He does not seek to inspire him with love for his king and his country, but contents himself with making him a joiner. He would have this gentleman-joiner, when he has received a blow or a challenge, instead of returning it and fighting, "prudently assassinate the man." Molière does, it is true, say jestingly, in "L'Amour Peintre," "assassination is the safest"; but the author of this romance asserts that it is the most just and reasonable. He says this very seriously, and, in the immensity of his paradoxes, this is one of the three or four things which he first says. The same spirit of wisdom and decency which makes him declare that a preceptor should often accompany his pupil to a place of prostitution, makes him decide that this disciple should be an assassin. So that the education which Jean Jacques would give to a young man consists in teaching him how to handle the plane, and in fitting him for salivation and the rope.
We doubt whether fathers of families will be eager to give such preceptors to their children. It seems to us that the romance of Emilius departs rather too much from the maxims of Mentor in "Telemachus"; but it must also be acknowledged that our age has in all things very much varied from the great age of Louis XIV.
Happily, none of these horrible infatuations are to be found in the "Encyclopædia." It often displays a philosophy seemingly bold, but never that atrocious and extravagant babbling which two or three fools have called philosophy, and two or three ladies, eloquence.
ASTROLOGY.
Astrology might rest on a better foundation than magic. For if no one has seen farfadets, or lemures, or dives, or peris, or demons, or cacodemons, the predictions of astrologers have often been found true. Let two astrologers be consulted on the life of an infant, and on the weather; if one of them say that the child shall five to the age of man, the other that he shall not; if one foretell rain and the other fair weather, it is quite clear that there will be a prophet.
The great misfortune of astrologers is that the heavens have changed since the rules of the art were laid down. The sun, which at the equinox was in the Ram in the time of the Argonauts, is now in the Bull; and astrologers, most unfortunately for their art, now attribute to one house of the sun that which visibly belongs to another. Still, this is not a demonstrative argument against astrology. The masters of the art are mistaken; but it is not proved that the art cannot exist.
There would be no absurdity in saying, "Such a child was born during the moon's increase, in a stormy season, at the rising of a certain star; its constitution was bad, and its life short and miserable, which is the ordinary lot of weak temperaments; another, on the contrary, was born when the moon was at the full, and the sun in all his power, in calm weather, at the rising of another particular star; his constitution was good, and his life long and happy." If such observations had been frequently repeated, and found just, experience might, at the end of a few thousand centuries, have formed an art which it would have been difficult to call in question; it would have been thought, not without some appearance of truth, that men are like trees and vegetables, which must be planted only in certain seasons. It would have been of no service against the astrologers to say, "My son was born in fine weather, yet he died in his cradle." The astrologer would have answered, "It often happens that trees planted in the proper season perish prematurely; I will answer for the stars, but not for the particular conformation which you communicated to your child; astrology operates only when there is no cause opposed to the good which they have power to work."
An Astrologer.
Nor would astrology have suffered any more discredit from it being said: "Of two children who were born in the same minute, one became a king, the other nothing more than churchwarden of his parish;" for a defence would easily have been made by showing that the peasant made his fortune in becoming churchwarden, just as much as the prince did in becoming king.
And if it were alleged that a bandit, hung up by order of Sixtus the Fifth, was born at the same time as Sixtus, who, from being a swineherd, became pope, the astrologers would say that there was a mistake of a few seconds, and that, according to the rules, the same star could not bestow the tiara and the gallows. It was, then, only because long-accumulated experience gave the lie to the predictions that men at length perceived that the art was illusory; but their credulity was of long duration.
One of the most famous mathematicians of Europe, named Stoffler, who flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, foretold a universal deluge for the year 1524. This deluge was to happen in the month of February, and nothing can be more plausible, for Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars were then in conjunction in the sign of the Fishes. Every nation in Europe, Asia, and Africa that heard of the prediction was in consternation. The whole world expected the deluge, in spite of the rainbow. Several contemporary authors relate that the inhabitants of the maritime provinces of Germany hastened to sell their lands, at any price, to such as had more money and less credulity than themselves. Each one provided himself with a boat to serve as an ark. A doctor of Toulouse, in particular, named Auriol, had an ark built for himself, his family, and friends; and the same precautions were taken in a great part of Italy. At last the month of February arrived, and not a drop of rain fell, never was a month more dry, never were the astrologers more embarrassed. However, we neither discouraged nor neglected them; almost all our princes continued to consult them.
I have not the honor to be a prince; nevertheless, the celebrated Count de Boulainvilliers and an Italian, named Colonna, who had great reputation at Paris, both foretold to me that I should assuredly die at the age of thirty-two. I have already been so malicious as to deceive them thirty years in their calculation—for which I most humbly ask their pardon.
ASTRONOMY,
WITH A FEW MORE REFLECTIONS ON ASTROLOGY.
M. Duval, who, if I mistake not, was librarian to the Emperor Francis I., gives us an account of the manner in which, in his childhood, pure instinct gave him the first ideas of astronomy. He was contemplating the moon which, as it declined towards the west, seemed to touch the trees of a wood. He doubted not that he should find it behind the trees, and, on running thither, was astonished to see it at the extremity of the horizon.
The following days his curiosity prompted him to watch the course of this luminary, and he was still more surprised to find that it rose and set at various hours. The different forms which it took from week to week, and its total disappearance for some nights, also contributed to fix his attention. All that a child could do was to observe and to admire, and this was doing much; not one in ten thousand has this curiosity and perseverance.
He studied, as he could, for three years, with no other book than the heavens, no other master than his eyes. He observed that the stars did not change their relative positions; but the brilliancy of the planet Venus having caught his attention, it seemed to him to have a particular course, like that of the moon. He watched it every night; it disappeared for a long time; and at length he saw