by Voltaire
LUCIAN: So you used to pursue, in a barbarous land, the same profession which I pursued in the most civilized country the world has seen; did you too make a mock of everything?
ERASMUS: Alas! I should have dearly liked to; it would have been a great consolation for a poor theologian such as I was; but I could not take the same liberties as you.
LUCIAN: This astonishes me: generally men quite like to be shown their follies, provided one does not refer to a particular individual. Each applies his own absurdities to his neighbour, and all men laugh at each other’s expense. Was it not the same with your contemporaries?
ERASMUS: There was a vast difference between the ridiculous men of your time and those of mine: you only had to deal with gods who were played in the theatres, and philosophers who had even less prestige than gods; I on the other hand was surrounded by fanatics, and I needed to be highly circumspect not to be burned alive by some or murdered by others.
LUCIAN: How were you able to laugh, with these for alternatives?
ERASMUS: The answer is that I laughed very little; even so, I was taken for more of a joker than was the case. I was thought to be very lighthearted and very clever, because everyone else at the time was so miserable. People were deeply embroiled in barren disputes which made them bad-tempered. Those who thought that a body can be in two places at one time were ready to cut the throats of those who explained the same idea after a different fashion. Worse still, a man of my profession who took no sides between such factions would have been considered a monster.
LUCIAN: What strange creatures, these barbarians among whom you lived! In my time even the Getes and the Massagetes tribes3 were more amenable and sensible; and what was your profession in the horrible country where you lived?
ERASMUS: I was a Dutch monk.
LUCIAN: A monk! And what kind of profession is that?
ERASMUS: That of having no profession, and of taking an inviolable oath to be useless to the human race, to be ridiculous and a slave, and to live off others.
LUCIAN: Now there’s a villainous profession! And how was a man of your wit able to embrace a state which dishonours human nature? Let’s overlook the business of living off others, but to take a vow to forfeit common sense and lose one’s liberty!
ERASMUS: The fact is that I was very young, and having neither parents nor friends I let myself be seduced by rogues who wanted to swell their numbers.
LUCIAN: What! There were many men of this persuasion?
ERASMUS: There were, throughout Europe, about six or seven thousand.
LUCIAN: Good heavens! The world has indeed become totally foolish and barbarous since I left it! Horace spoke truly that everything goes from bad to worse! Progeniem vitiosiorem (Bk. III, Ode VI).
ERASMUS: What consoles me is that everyone in my century had reached the lowest rung of folly; they had no choice but to get off the ladder, and for some of their number finally to recover a little human reason.
LUCIAN: As to that, I have strong doubts. Tell me, what were the principal follies of your time?
ERASMUS: Here, I keep a list which I always carry about with me; read
LUCIAN: It’s long enough. [Lucian reads, and bursts out laughing; Rabelais4 arrives on the scene.]
RABELAIS: Gentlemen, wherever there is laughter I am welcome; what are you discussing?
LUCIAN AND ERASMUS: Eccentricities.
RABELAIS: Then I am your man.
LUCIAN [to Erasmus]: Who is this character?
ERASMUS: A gentleman who was bolder than I and more amusing; but he was only a priest, so he was able to take more liberties than I, a monk.
LUCIAN [to Rabelais]: Did you also take a vow to live off others?
RABELAIS: Doubly so, for I was both a priest and a doctor. I was born with native good sense, and I became as learned as Erasmus; and, observing that knowledge and wisdom commonly led only to the hospital or the gallows, and moreover that even this half-time joker Erasmus was sometimes persecuted, I decided to be even madder than all my compatriots put together. So I wrote a fat volume of cock and bull stories, awash with filth, in which I turned to ridicule all superstitions, all ceremony, all that was revered in my country and all stations of life, from that of the king and high pontiff down to the doctor of theology, which is the lowest of all. I dedicated my book to a cardinal, and I made even those who despised me laugh out loud.
LUCIAN: What is a cardinal, Erasmus?
ERASMUS: It means a priest dressed in red, who receives eight thousand écus a year for doing absolutely nothing.
LUCIAN: That at least was clever of these cardinals, you must admit. Not all your compatriots can have been as mad as you say.
ERASMUS: If Rabelais will allow me to put in a few words. Cardinals possessed a different kind of madness, that of power; and as it is easier to subjugate fools than men of sense, they attempted to knock senseless Reason itself, which at the time was beginning to raise its head. Monsieur Rabelais, whom you see before you, imitated the first Brutus,5 who pretended to be mad so as to escape the suspicions and tyranny of the Tarquins.
LUCIAN: All that you say confirms me in the opinion that it was better to live in my century than in yours. These cardinals of whom you speak were therefore masters of the entire world, because they had control over the lunatics?
RABELAIS: No; there was one old fool higher than them.
LUCIAN: What was he called?
RABELAIS: A Popeye. The madness of this man consisted in declaring himself to be infallible, and believing himself to be the ruler of kings; and he talked so much, and repeated it so much, and had himself cried up so much by the monks, that in the end the whole of Europe was convinced.
LUCIAN: Ah! how much more advanced you were in the lunacy stakes! Our fables about Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto, of which I made such mockery, were perfectly respectable by comparison with the idiocies with which your world became infatuated. I cannot comprehend how you were able to turn to ridicule, with any degree of safety, individuals who must have feared ridicule even more than a conspiracy. For in the end one does not mock one’s masters lightly, and I was prudent enough not to say a single word about the Roman emperors. What! Your natives worshipped a Popeye! You heaped on this Popeye all the ridicule imaginable, and they all endured it! They must have been very patient.
RABELAIS: I should explain to you about my native land. It was a compound of ignorance, superstition, folly, cruelty and absurdity. For a start they would hang and roast alive anyone who spoke out loud against Popeyes and cardinals. The French barbarians,6 my compatriots, habitually swam in blood; but as soon as the executions were over everyone would dance, sing and make love, drink and laugh. I captured my fellow-countrymen through their weaknesses. I spoke to them of drink, I spoke of filth and by this secret means I was allowed to say anything. Men of intelligence saw through it and were grateful to me; the rabble saw only filth, and lapped it up; far from persecuting me, everyone loved me.
LUCIAN: You have filled me with a longing to read your book. Would you by any chance have a copy in your pocket? And you, Erasmus, would you also lend me your facetious pieces to read? [Here Erasmus and Rabelais give their works to Lucian, who reads some passages, and while he is reading, these two philosophers converse with each other.]
RABELAIS [to Erasmus]: I have read your writings, but you have not read mine, because I came a little after your time. You were perhaps a little too reserved in your mockeries, and I perhaps too crude in mine; but here and now we both think alike. For my part, I laugh when I see a Doctor of the Church arrive on these shores.
ERASMUS: For my part, I pity him; I say: ‘Here is an unfortunate who has exhausted his life in deceiving himself, and who gains nothing here in leaving the path of error.’
RABELAIS: What! Does being undeceived count for nothing?
ERASMUS: It counts for little when you can no longer undeceive others. The greatest pleasure is to show the right path to friends who stray, and the dead ask their way from nobody.
Erasmus and Rabelais discussed the matter for quite some time. Lucian returned after having read Rabelais’s chapter about the Arse-Wipers,7 and a few pages of The Praise of Folly. Then, after encountering Doctor Swift, the four gentlemen went off to dinner together.
NOTES
Cuckoldage
1. Cythera: An Aegean island, where there was a temple to Venus.
2. horns: The traditional symbol of cuckolded husbands.
3. Hymen: The deity who presided over weddings.
4. Iris: The goddess of the rainbow.
The One-eyed Porter
1. Tithonus: Trojan prince who loved and married Aurora, goddess of the dawn.
Cosi-Sancta
1. described in ‘The City of God’: Incorrect. The source is another work by St Augustine, De Sermone Domini in monte (Bk. 1, ch. 16).
2. Hippo: North African city of which St Augustine was bishop (AD 396–430).
3. Jansenists: Catholic sect founded in the seventeenth century, and noted for its rigorous moral code and hostility to the Jesuits. The anachronism is intended to demonstrate that St Augustine was considered to be its forebear.
4. Venetian: It has been suggested that Voltaire may have had Shakespeare’s Othello in mind here.
Micromégas
1. little Earth: Voltaire mocks those who wish to make precise calculations – as well he might, for these and later figures are not correct, arithmetically!
2. metaphysician: Pascal, a Jansenist philosopher and scientist (1623–62), was frequently the target of Voltaire’s satire.
3. Mufti: A Mohammedan priest. The disguised person is probably the Archbishop of Paris, who had condemned Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques (1734).
4. mud-heap: A metaphor frequently used by Voltaire to emphasize the contrast between man’s earthbound wretchedness and the majesty of the heavens.
5. repulsion: Micromégas is evidently well acquainted with Newton’s astronomical discoveries (Principia: 1686). Voltaire had already devoted to Newton four of his Lettres philosophiques, and the Éléments de Newton (1738).
6. Derham: William Derham (1657–1735) wrote a number of scientific works to prove God’s existence through the wonders of nature, including Aristotheology (1715), referred to here.
7. Lully’s compositions: Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87), born in Florence, spent most of his life in France, and was considered by Voltaire to be the father of French music.
8. Secretary of the Academy of Saturn: Reference to Fontenelle (1657–1757), Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and particularly to his Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686).
9. instructed: Satirical allusions to Fontenelle’s Entretiens, which Voltaire thought a frivolous discussion of a serious astronomical topic.
10. five moons: Only five satellites of Saturn were known until Herschel discovered two more in 1789.
11. longing: Voltaire has in mind Locke’s concept of desire as the motive of action in the Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690).
12. seven colours: Discovered by Newton and reported in his Optics (1704).
13. little globe: Huyghens (1629–95), a Dutch astronomer who elucidated the nature of Saturn’s rings.
14. Castel: Jesuit priest (1688–1757) who had attacked Voltaire’s Éléments de Newton, defending Descartes’s physics against Newton.
15. new style: The Gregorian calendar, adopted by France in 1582, but only much later by non-Catholic countries (1752 in Britain).
16. Arctic Circle: Maupertuis had undertaken an expedition to Scandinavia in 1737 in order to measure a meridian within the Arctic Circle.
17. nothing more: Voltaire has in mind here the Lilliputians in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which he had read admiringly on the novel’s appearance in 1726.
18. infinitesimally small: A rather sarcastic allusion to the Grenadiers of Frederick II of Prussia.
19. Leeuwenhoek and Hartsoeker: Both Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) and Hartsoeker (1656–1725) made significant discoveries about spermatozoa through their work with the microscope.
20. bees: Virgil, Georgics, Bk. IV.
21. Swammerdam… Réaumur: Swammerdam was a Dutch naturalist (1637–80), known mainly for his investigations into the structure of insects; Réaumur was a French naturalist (1683–1757), whose Mémoires on insects (1734–42) were a landmark in entomological studies.
22. as I speak… turbans: Reference to the Russo-Turkish War (1736–9).
23. mud-heaps: See above, n. 4.
24. entelechy: An immaterial substance which carries its own purpose within itself. Peripatetics were disciples of Aristotle.
25. will never know again: Voltaire’s commonly expressed objection, following Locke, to Descartes’s doctrine of innate ideas.
26. Malebranche: (1638–1715), disciple of Descartes.
27. is clear: The doctrine of pre-established harmony which Leibniz (1646–1716) elaborated, according to which body and soul are held together systematically by the principle of sufficient reason, as God had foreseen.
28. ‘I do not know… we think’: Voltaire’s admiration of Locke’s empirical philosophy is evident in the whole of this paragraph.
29. for Man: St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74), whose Summa Theologiae represented the essence of scholastic orthodoxy. Voltaire concentrates here on one aspect: Aquinas’s anthropocentrism.
The World As It Is
1. entrance: Voltaire is referring to the Faubourg Saint-Marceau, the old southern approach to Paris. Its foulness will be criticized again in ‘Candide’, ch. XXII.
2. chantings: Satire on Gregorian plainchant.
3. deposited a corpse… stone above it: The eighteenth century saw a gradual change from this practice with the establishment of Parisian cemeteries outside the built-up area.
4. adore: The statue to Louis XV here called for was not erected until 1763.
5. armies: The Hôtel des Invalides.
6. mage: An abbé.
7. iniquity: Voltaire regularly objected to the venality of judicial offices; the defence of venality later in the story is an exceptional case.
8. profits: The tax-farmers paid a fixed sum to the King but then raised whatever they thought appropriate from the people.
9. machine: A pulpit.
10. could be seen: The juxtaposition of this theatre with the preceding church underlines Voltaire’s view that this is the house of true religion, with the actors as ‘appointed preachers’.
11. Any merchant… Empire: This speech accords with the praise for commerce which Voltaire consistently displays in his writings.
12. archimandrite: The monastery’s abbot.
13. Great Lama: The Pope; the anti-papist attitude indicates that the speaker is a Jansenist; his reference to the ‘little girls’ is an allusion to the notorious frenzies of the Jansenist convulsionaries at the time.
Memnon
1. they are today: The ‘affliction’ is syphilis, thought to have been brought back to Europe by the early colonists of America.
2. poets and philosophers: Pope and Leibniz in particular, both upholders of the doctrine of Optimism, which Voltaire demolishes in ‘Candide’.
Letter from a Turk
1. Gymnosophists: Ancient Indian devotees, who lived a life of total austerity in the desert.
2. Veda: Ancient Sanskrit text (c. 500 BC).
3. Zend-Avesta: Sacred text of the ancient Persians.
Plato’s Dream
1. human nature… female: The source is Plato’s Symposium, 189d.
2. there can only exist… mathematics: Plato’s Timeus, 55d.
3. sleeping comes from waking… pond: Plato’s Phaedo, 99d.
4. Phidias and Zeuxis: Phidias was arguably the greatest sculptor of ancient Greece (d. c. 431 BC), and Zeuxis one of the outstanding painters of that period (464–398 BC).
5. the Earth: See above, ‘Micromégas’, n. 4.
6. rings: An error; Mars has no rings.
7. a few h
undred million years: In his Éléments de Newton, Voltaire states that the English scientist had argued that with the passage of time the planetary motions and irregularities would diminish and the universe eventually disappear or be reordered (Complete Works, vol. 15, ed. W. H. Barber (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1992), p. 218).
The History of the Travels of Scarmentado
1. Candia: Capital of Crete.
2. Iro: Anagram of Roi, the name of a poet with whom Voltaire had quarrelled.
3. her lover: Minos, King of Crete, was married to Pasiphaë, who committed adultery with a bull and gave birth to the monster Minotaur.
4. Olympia: Pope Innocent X’s sister-in-law, who is about 20 years old when Scarmentado arrives in Rome in 1615. Her family connection enables her to organize an immense traffic in dispensations and benefits.
5. Fatelo: Italian for ‘Do it’.
6. Aconiti: Aconite is a poison.
7. Louis the Just: Louis XIII (1601–43).
8. the maréchal d’ Ancre… wanted it: The Maréchald’Ancre was assassinated in 1617.
9. Massacres: This massacre of French Huguenots occurred in Paris in August 1572.
10. heretics: The Gunpowder Plot (1605).
11. Queen Mary: Reigned 1553–8.
12. St Patrick’s well: Commonly supposed to be the entrance to hell.
13. Cardinal Nephew: Nephew of the reigning Pope.
