A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 01 — Voltaire — John Shaqi
A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 01
Voltaire · en
Since framers of systems are continually conjecturing on the manner in
which America can have been peopled, we will be equally consistent in
saying that He who caused flies to exist in those regions caused men to
exist there also. However pleasant it may be to dispute, it cannot be
denied that the Supreme Being, who lives in all nature, has created,
about the forty-eighth degree, two-legged animals without feathers, the
color of whose skin is a mixture of white and carnation, with long
beards approaching to red; about the line, in Africa and its islands,
negroes without beards; and in the same latitude, other negroes with
beards, some of them having wool, and some hair, on their heads; and
among them other animals quite white, having neither hair nor wool, but
a kind of white silk. It does not very clearly appear what should have
prevented God from placing on another continent animals of the same
species, of a copper color, in the same latitude in which, in Africa and
Asia, they are found black; or even from making them without beards in
the very same latitude in which others possess them.
To what lengths are we carried by the rage for systems joined with the
tyranny of prejudice! We see these animals; it is agreed that God has
had the power to place them where they are; yet it is not agreed that he
_has_ so placed them. The same persons who readily admit that the
_beavers_ of Canada are of Canadian origin, assert that the _men_ must
have come there in boats, and that Mexico must have been peopled by some
of the descendants of _Magog_. As well might be said that if there be
men in the moon they must have been taken thither by Astolpho on his
hippogriff, when he went to fetch Roland's senses, which were corked up
in a bottle. If America had been discovered in his time, and there had
then been men in Europe _systematic_ enough to have advanced, with the
Jesuit Lafitau, that the Caribbees descended from the inhabitants of
Caria, and the Hurons from the Jews, he would have done well to have
brought back the bottle containing the wits of these reasoners, which he
would doubtless have found in the moon, along with those of Angelica's
lover.
The first thing done when an inhabited island is discovered in the
Indian Ocean, or in the South Seas, is to inquire whence came these
people? But as for the trees and the tortoises, _they_ are, without any
hesitation, pronounced to be indigenous; as if it was more difficult for
Nature to make men than to make tortoises. One thing, however, which
tends to countenance this system is that there is scarcely an island in
the Eastern or in the Western Ocean which does not contain jugglers,
quacks, knaves and fools. This, it is probable, gave rise to the opinion
that these animals are of the same race with ourselves.
AMPLIFICATION.