Part 37

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When Voltaire left Prussia, it was voluntary exile. Paris was forbidden--all of France was for him unsafe; England he had hopelessly offended. By slow stages he made his way to Switzerland. But on the way there his courage failed him and he wrote back to Frederick, suggesting reconciliation. But Frederick promptly reminded him that he had repeatedly broken promises by writing about Frederick's personal friends, and "Voltaire and Frederick had better keep apart, that their love for each other might not grow cold"--a subtle bit of sarcasm.

At Geneva, where Calvin had instituted a little tyranny of his own, Voltaire was made welcome. Nominally no Catholics were allowed in Geneva, and when Voltaire wrote to the authorities, explaining that he was a good Catholic, the matter was taken as a great joke. He bought a beautiful little farm a few miles away, on the banks of the river Rhone, overlooking the city of Geneva and the lake. It was an ideal spot, and rightly he called it "Delices." Here he was going to end his days amid flowers and birds and books and bees, an onlooker and possibly a commentator on the times, but not a doer. His days of work were over. Of the world of strife he had had enough--thus he wrote to Frederick.

Visitors of a literary turn of mind at Geneva began to come his way. He established an inn, and later built a theater out of the ruins of an old church that he had bought and dismantled. "This is what I am going to do with all the churches in France," he explained with a smile.

His pen was never idle. He wrote plays that were presented at his own little theater, and on such occasions he would send word to his Geneva friends not to come, as they could not be accommodated. Of course they came.

He wrote a history of Peter the Great, and this brought him into communication with Queen Catherine of Russia, with whom he carried on quite an animated correspondence. This worthy widow invited him to Saint Petersburg, and he slyly wrote to Frederick for advice as to whether he should go or not. It is said that Frederick advised him to go, pay court to the Queen, marry her, seize the throne, and get his head cut off for his pains, thus achieving immortality and benefiting the world at one stroke.

Voltaire had no intention of going to Saint Petersburg; he had created a little Court of Letters, of which he himself was the Czar, and for the first time in his life he was experiencing a degree of genuine content. His flowers, bees, manuscripts and theater filled every moment of the day from six in the morning until ten at night. He had arrived in Switzerland broken in health, with mind dazed, his frail body undone. There at the little farm at Delices, overlooking the lake, health came back and youth seemed to return to this man of three-score.

Some of the nobility in Paris, to whom he had loaned money, took advantage of his exile to withhold payments, but Voltaire secured an agent to look after his affairs, so his losses were not great.

He bought the tumbledown chateau of Tournay, near at hand, which carried with it the right to call himself Count Tournay. Frederick, with mock respect, so addressed his letters.

His next financial venture, begun when he was sixty-eight, might well have tested the strength of a much younger man. A few miles from Geneva, at Ferney, just over the border from Switzerland, Voltaire had bought a large tract of waste land, intending to use it for pasturage. Here he built a cottage and lived a part of the time when visitors were too persistent at Delices. Ferney was on French soil, Delices in Switzerland. Voltaire had criticized the Protestants of Geneva, and given it as his opinion that a Calvinistic tyranny was in no wise preferable to one built on Catholicism. Some then said, "This man is really what he professes--a Catholic." There had also been a demonstration to drive him out of Switzerland, since it was pretty well known that Voltaire's crowds of visitors were neither Catholic nor Protestant. "Delices is infidelic," was the cry, and this doubtless had something to do with Voltaire's establishing himself at Ferney. If Protestant Switzerland drove this Catholic over to France, why, Catholic France would not molest him.

Every country, no matter how tyrannical its government, prides itself on being the home of the exile, just as every man thinks of himself as being sincere and without prejudice.

It is now believed that Voltaire had much to do with inciting the civil riots in Geneva against the Catholics. He had circulated pamphlets purporting to be written by a Catholic, upholding the Pope, and ridiculing most unmercifully the pretenses of Protestantism, declaring it a compromise with the devil, made up of the scum of the Catholic Church. This pamphlet declared Calvin a monster, and arraigned him for burning Servetus, and hinted that all Calvinists would soon be paid back in their own coin. No one else could have penned this vitriolic pamphlet but Voltaire--he knew both sides. But since Geneva regarded Voltaire as an infidel, it never occurred to the authorities that he would take up the cudgel of the Catholic Church that had burned his books. The real fact was, the pamphlet wasn't a defense of Catholicism--it was only a drubbing of Calvinism, and the wit was too subtle for the Presbyterians to digest.

Very soon another pamphlet appeared, answering the first. It arraigned the Catholics in scathing phrase, suggested that they were getting ready to burn the city--hinted at a repetition of Saint Bartholomew, and declared the order had gone forth from Rome to scourge and kill. It was as choice an A.P.A. document as was ever issued by a relentless joker. The result was that the workers in the watch-factory and silk-mills who were Catholics found themselves ostracized by the Protestant workmen. I do not find that the authorities drove the Catholics out of Geneva, it was simply a species of labor trouble--Protestants would not work with Catholics.

At this juncture Voltaire comes in, and invites all persecuted Catholic watch-workers and silk-weavers to move to Ferney. Here Voltaire laid out a town--erected houses, factories, churches and schools. In two years he had built up a town of twelve hundred people, and had a watch-factory and silk-mill in full and paying operation.

The problem of every manufacturer is to sell his wares--Voltaire knew how to release purse-strings of friends and enemies alike. He sent watches to all of his enemies in Paris, bishops, priests and potentates, explaining that he had quit literature forever, and was now engaged in helping struggling, exiled Catholics to get an honest living--he was doing penance as foreman of a watch-factory--would the Most Reverend not help in this worthy work? Money flowed in on Ferney--Frederick ordered a consignment of watches, Queen Catherine did the same, and the Bishop of Paris sent his blessing and an order for enough silk to keep Voltaire's factory going for six months.

Voltaire really got the pick of the workmen of Geneva--the goods made were of the best, and while at first Catholics only were employed, yet in five years Ferney was quite as much Protestant as Catholic. Voltaire respected the religious beliefs of his workmen, and there was liberty for all. He paid better wages and treated his workers better than they had ever been treated in Geneva. Voltaire built houses for his people and allowed them to pay him in monthly instalments. And not only did he himself make much money out of his Ferney investment, but he established the town upon such a safe financial basis that its prosperity endures even unto this day.

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It was at Ferney, in his old age, that Voltaire first made open war upon "revealed religion." All religions that professed a miraculous origin were to him baneful in the extreme, the foes of light and progress, the enemies of mankind. He did not perceive, as modern psychology does, that the period of supernaturalism is the childhood of the mind. Myths and fairy-tales are not of themselves base--the injury lies with the men who seek to profit by these things, and build up a tyranny founded on innocence and ignorance--seeking to perpetuate these things, issuing threats against growth, and offers of reward to all who stand still.

Voltaire called superstition "The Infamy," and he summoned the thinkers of the world to crush it beneath a heel of scorn. Letters, pamphlets, plays, essays, were sent out in various languages, by his own printing-presses. The wit of the man--his scathing mockery--were weapons no one could wield in reply. The priests and preachers did not answer him--they could not--they only grew purple with wrath and hissed.

Says Victor Hugo, "Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled." To which Bernard Shaw has recently rejoined, "Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled; William Morris worked."

From the prosperity, peace and security of Ferney, Voltaire pointed a bony finger at every hypocrite in Christendom, and laughed his mocking smile. The man expressed himself, and happiness lies in that and nothing else. Misery comes from lack of full, free self-expression, and from nothing else. The man who fights for freedom fights for the right of self-expression for himself and others--and immortality lies in nothing else.

There is no fight worth making--no struggle worth the while--save the struggle for freedom.

No name is honored among men--no name lives--save the name of the man who worked for liberty and light--who has fought freedom's fight.

Run the list in your mind of the names that are immortal, and you will recall only those of men who have widened the horizon for other men, and that select number who are remembered in infamy because they linked their names with greatness by doubting, denying, betraying and persecuting it--deathless through disgrace.

Voltaire sided with the weak, the defenseless, the fallen. He demanded that men should not be hounded for their belief, that they should not be arrested without cause and without knowing why, and without letting their friends know why. We realize his faults, we know his imperfections and limitations, yet, through his influence, life throughout the world became safer, liberty dearer, freedom a more sacred thing. His words were a battery that eventually razed the walls of the Bastile, and best of all, freed countless millions from theological superstition, that Bastile of the brain.

HERBERT SPENCER

What knowledge is of most worth? The uniform reply is: Science. This is the verdict on all counts. For direct self-preservation, or the maintenance of life and health, the all-important knowledge is--science. For that indirect self-preservation which we call gaining a livelihood, the knowledge of greatest value is--science. For the discharge of parental functions, the proper guidance is to be found only in science. For the interpretation of national life, past and present, without which the citizen can not rightly regulate his conduct, the indispensable key is--science. Alike for the most perfect production and present enjoyment of art in all its forms, the needful preparation is still--science. And for purposes of discipline--intellectual, moral, religious--the most efficient study is, once more--science.

--Essay on Education