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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at the fair of St. Lawrence. He appears to me to be much lower and more despicable than Plutarch represents him. Let us see what the wise Plutarch says of this buffoon: "The language of Aristophanes bespeaks his miserable quackery; it is made up of the lowest and most disgusting puns; he is not even pleasing to the people; and to men of judgment and honor he is insupportable; his arrogance is intolerable, and all good men detest his malignity."
This, then, is the jack-pudding whom Madame Dacier, an admirer of Socrates, ventures to admire! Such was the man who, indirectly, prepared the poison by which infamous judges put to death the most virtuous man in Greece.
The tanners, cobblers, and seamstresses of Athens applauded a farce in which Socrates was represented lifted in the air in a hamper, announcing that there was no God, and boasting of having stolen a cloak while he was teaching philosophy. A whole people, whose government sanctioned such infamous licences, well deserved what has happened to them, to become slaves to the Romans, and, subsequently, to the Turks. The Russians, whom the Greeks of old would have called barbarians, would neither have poisoned Socrates, nor have condemned Alcibiades to death.
We pass over the ages between the Roman commonwealth and our own times. The Romans, much more wise than the Greeks, never persecuted a philosopher for his opinions. Not so the barbarous nations which succeeded the Roman Empire. No sooner did the Emperor Frederick II. begin to quarrel with the popes, than he was accused of being an atheist, and being the author of the book of "The Three Impostors," conjointly with his chancellor De Vincis.
Does our high-chancellor, de l'Hôpital, declare against persecution? He is immediately charged with atheism—"Homo doctus, sed vetus atheus." There was a Jesuit, as much beneath Aristophanes as Aristophanes is beneath Homer—a wretch, whose name has become ridiculous even among fanatics—the Jesuit Garasse, who found atheists everywhere. He bestows the name upon all who are the objects of his virulence. He calls Theodore Beza an atheist. It was he, too, that led the public into error concerning Vanini.
The unfortunate end of Vanini does not excite our pity and indignation like that of Socrates, because Vanini was only a foreign pedant, without merit; however, Vanini was not, as was pretended, an atheist; he was quite the contrary.
He was a poor Neapolitan priest, a theologian and preacher by trade, an outrageous disputer on quiddities and universals, and "utrum chimæra bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones." But there was nothing in him tending to atheism. His notion of God is that of the soundest and most approved theology: "God is the beginning and the end, the father of both, without need of either, eternal without time, in no one place, yet present everywhere. To him there is neither past nor future; he is within and without everything; he has created all, and governs all; he is immutable, infinite without parts; his power is his will." This is not very philosophical, but it is the most approved theology.
Vanini prided himself on reviving Plato's fine idea, adopted by Averroës, that God had created a chain of beings from the smallest to the greatest, the last link of which was attached to his eternal throne; an idea more sublime than true, but as distant from atheism as being from nothing.
He travelled to seek his fortune and to dispute; but, unfortunately, disputation leads not to fortune; a man makes himself as many irreconcilable enemies as he finds men of learning or of pedantry to argue against. Vanini's ill-fortune had no other source. His heat and rudeness in disputation procured him the hatred of some theologians; and having quarrelled with one Franconi, this Franconi, the friend of his enemies, charged him with being an atheist and teaching atheism.
Franconi, aided by some witnesses, had the barbarity, when confronted with the accused, to maintain what he had advanced. Vanini, on the stool, being asked what he thought of the existence of a God, answered that he, with the Church, adored a God in three persons. Taking a straw from the ground, "This," said he, "is sufficient to prove that there is a creator." He then delivered a very fine discourse on vegetation and motion, and the necessity of a Supreme Being, without whom there could be neither motion nor vegetation.
The president Grammont, who was then at Toulouse, repeats this discourse in his history of France, now so little known; and the same Grammont, through some unaccountable prejudice, asserts that Vanini said all this "through vanity, or through fear, rather than from inward conviction."
On what could this atrocious, rash judgment of the president be founded? It is evident, from Vanini's answer, that he could not but be acquitted of the charge of atheism. But what followed? This unfortunate foreign priest also dabbled in medicine. There was found in his house a large live toad, which he kept in a vessel of water; he was forthwith accused of being a sorcerer. It was maintained that this toad was the god which he adored. An impious meaning was attributed to several passages of his books, a thing which is both common and easy, by taking objections for answers, giving some bad sense to a loose phrase, and perverting an innocent expression. At last, the faction which oppressed him forced from his judges the sentence which condemned him to die.
In order to justify this execution it was necessary to charge the unfortunate man with the most enormous of crimes. The grey friar—the very grey friar Marsenne, was so besotted as to publish that "Vanini set out from Naples, with twelve of his apostles, to convert the whole world to atheism." What a pitiful tale! How should a poor priest have twelve men in his pay? How should he persuade twelve Neapolitans to travel at great expense, in order to spread this revolting doctrine at the peril of their lives? Would a king himself have it in his power to pay twelve preachers of atheism? No one before Father Marsenne had advanced so enormous an absurdity. But after him it was repeated; the journals and historical dictionaries caught it, and the world, which loves the extraordinary, has believed the fable without examination.
Even Bayle, in his miscellaneous thoughts (Pensées Diverses), speaks of Vanini as of an atheist. He cites his example in support of his paradox, that "a society of atheists might exist." He assures us that Vanini was a man of very regular morals, and that he was a martyr to his philosophical opinions. On both these points he is equally mistaken. Vanini informs us in his "Dialogues," written in imitation of Erasmus, that he had a mistress named Isabel. He was as free in his writings as in his conduct; but he was not an atheist.
A century after his death, the learned Lacroze, and he who took the name of Philaletes, endeavored to justify him. But as no one cares anything about the memory of an unfortunate Neapolitan, scarcely any one has read these apologies.
The Jesuit Hardouin, more learned and no less rash than Garasse, in his book entitled "Athei Detecti" charges the Descartes, the Arnaulds, the Pascals, the Malebranches, with atheism. Happily, Vanini's fate was not theirs.
SECTION IV.
A word on the question in morals, agitated by Bayle, "Whether a society of atheists can exist." Here let us first observe the enormous self-contradictions of men in disputation. Those who have been most violent in opposing the opinion of Bayle, those who have denied with the greatest virulence the possibility of a society of atheists, are the very men who have since maintained with equal ardor that atheism is the religion of the Chinese government.
They have most assuredly been mistaken concerning the government of China; they had only to read the edicts of the emperors of that vast country, and they would have seen that those edicts are sermons, in which a Supreme Being—governing, avenging, and rewarding—is continually spoken of.
But, at the same time, they are no less deceived respecting the impossibility of a society of atheists; nor can I conceive how Bayle could forget a striking instance which might have rendered his cause victorious.
In what does the apparent impossibility of a society of atheists consist? In this: It is judged that men without some restraint could not live together; that laws have no power against secret crimes; and that it is necessary to have an avenging God—punishing, in this world or in the next, such as escape human justice.
The laws of Moses, it is true, did not teach the doctrine of a life to come, did not threaten with chastisements after death, nor even teach the primitive Jews the immortality of the soul; but the Jews, far from being atheists, far from believing that they could elude the divine