Toleration and other essays

Voltaire · en
Immediately preceding this poem I have given a translation of
Voltaire’s philosophical essay, _Il faut choisir_. This was written
by him in 1772, six years before his death, and is the most succinct
expression of his mature religious views. It is really directed
against his atheistic friends at Paris, such as d’Holbach. Condorcet
said of it that it contained the most powerful argumentation for the
existence of God that had yet been advanced. Its remarkable lucidity
and terseness enable us to identify his views at once. He did not
believe in the spirituality or immortality of the soul, but he had an
unshakable conviction of the existence of God. It is sometimes said
that the Lisbon earthquake shook his theism. This is inaccurate, as
a careful comparison of the two works will show. He never believed
that the supreme intelligence was infinite in power, and the haunting
problem of evil always made him hesitate to ascribe more than
limited moral attributes to his deity. His one unwavering dogma--it
does not waver for an instant in the poem--is that the world was
designed by a supreme intelligence and is moved by a supreme power.
Had he lived one hundred years later, when evolution began to throw
its magical illumination upon the order of the universe and the
wonderful adaptation of its parts, his position would clearly have
been modified. As it was, he, with constant sincerity, avowed that he
could not understand the world without a great architect and a prime
mover of all moving things. In all his works the uglier features of
the world, which, unlike many theists, he steadfastly confronted,
forbid him to add any other and warmer attributes to this bleak
intelligence and mysterious power.

                                                                J. M.

  October, 1911.




                              CONTENTS


                                                                   PAGE

  INTRODUCTION                                                     iii

  IN CONNECTION WITH THE DEATH OF JEAN CALAS                         1

  ON SUPERSTITION                                                   88

  ON THE INTERPRETATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT                       102

  ON THE INTERPRETATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT                       118

  EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS                                            126

  THE SERMON OF THE FIFTY                                          160

  THE QUESTIONS OF ZAPATA                                          183

  WE MUST TAKE SIDES; OR, THE PRINCIPAL OF ACTION                  206

  POEM ON THE LISBON DISASTER                                      255




                            On Toleration

                   In Connection with the Death of
                             Jean Calas


              SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF JEAN CALAS