Voltaire: A Sketch of His Life and Works — Voltaire — John Shaqi
Voltaire: A Sketch of His Life and Works
Voltaire · en
The murdered man’s son, known in the Revolution as
Lally Tollendal, was joined by Voltaire in the honorable work of
procuring revision of the proceedings, and one of the last crowning
triumphs of Voltaire’s days was the news brought to him on his dying bed
that his long effort had availed.
“Ecrasez L’infàme.”
These are samples of what was occuring when Voltaire was exhorting his
friends to _crush the infamous_—a phrase which gave rise to much
misunderstanding, and which priests have even alleged was applied to
Jesus, their idol. A sufficient disproof, if any were needed, is that
Voltaire treats “l’infàme” as feminine. _Si vous pouvez écraser
l’infâme, ecrasez-la, et aimez-moi.” That oft-repeated phrase was
directed at no person. Nor was it, as some Protestants have alleged,
directed only at Roman Catholicism. As Voltaire saw and said, “fanatic
Papists and fanatic Calvanism are tarred with one brush.” “L’infàme” was
Christian superstition claiming supernatural authority and enforcing its
claim, as it has ever sought to do, by pains and penalties. He meant by
it the whole spirit of exclusiveness, intolerance, and bigotry,
persecuting and privileged orthodoxy, which he saw-as the outcome of the
divine faith. Practically, as D. F. Strauss justly remarked, “when
Voltaire writes to D’Alembert that he wishes to see the ‘Infâme’ reduced
in France to the same condition in which she finds herself in England,
and when Frederick writes to Voltaire that philosophers flourished
amongst the Greeks and Romans, because their religion had no
dogmas—‘*mais les dogmes de notre infàme gâtent tout_’—it is clear we
must understand by the ‘Infâme,’ whose destruction was the watchword of
the Voltairian circle, the Christian Church, without distinction of
communions, Catholic or Protestant.”
The Catholic Joseph de Maistre shrieks: “With a fury without example,
this insolent blasphemer declared himself the personal enemy of the
Savior of men, dared from the depths of his nothingness to give him a
name of ridicule, and that adorable law which the Man-God brought to
earth he called ‘l’infame.’” This is a judgment worthy of a bigot, who
dares not look into the reason why his creed is detested. Let us try and
understand this insolent blasphemer to-day.