Will Durant - The Story of Civilization Volume IX: The Age of Voltaire

TO OUR BELOVED

GRANDSON

JIM

B LAME for the length of this volume must rest with authors fascinated to exuberant prolixity by the central themethat pervasive and continuing conflict between religion and science-plus-philosophy which became a living drama in the eighteenth century, and which has resulted in the secret secularism of our times. How did it come about that a major part of the educated classes in Europe and America has lost faith in the theology that for fifteen centuries gave supernatural sanctions and supports to the precarious and uncongenial moral code upon which Western civilization has been based? What will be the effectsin morals, literature, and politicsof this silent but fundamental transformation?

The scale of treatment in each volume has grown with the increasing number of past events and personalities still alive in their influence and interest today. This and the multiplicity of topicsall aspects of civilization in Western Europe from 1715 to 1756may offer some excuse for the proliferation of the tale. So The Age of Voltaire has burst its seams, and spills over into a contemplated Part X, Rousseau and Revolution, which will carry the story to 1789. This will look at the transformation of the world map by the Seven Years War; the later years of Louis XV, 175674; the epoch of Johnson and Reynolds in England; the development of the Industrial Revolution; the flowering of German literature from Lessing to Goethe, of German philosophy from Herder to Kant, of German music from Gluck to Mozart; the collapse of feudalism in the France of Louis XVI; and the history of those peripheral nationsSweden, Denmark, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Italy, Portugal, Spainwhich have been deferred from this volume partly to save space, and as not directly involved (except through the papacy) in the great debate between reason and faith. This final volume will consider the later phases of that debate in the revolt of Rousseau against rationalism, and the heroic effort of Immanuel Kant to save the Christian theology through the Christian ethic. The perspective of the age of Voltaire will be completed in that Part X of The Story of Civilization. The epilogue to the present volume reviews the case for religion; the epilogue to Rousseau and Revolution, surveying all ten volumes, will face the culminating question: What are the lessons of history?

We have tried to reflect reality by combining history and biography. The experiment will legitimately invite criticism, but it carries out the aim of integral history. Events and personalities go hand in hand through time, regardless of which were causes and which were effects; history speaks in Let us follow that living flame through his century.

The manuscript has had the advantage of being read by Dr. Theodore Bester-man, Director of the Institut et Muse Voltaire in Geneva; we thank him for his patience, and for opening to us his great collection of Voltaireana. He found one serious error in our text, but otherwise voted us a very high degree of accuracy. Doubtless some errors still remain. We shall welcome all corrections that are tempered with mercy.

Our warm appreciation to Sarah and Harry Kaufman for their help in classifying the material, and to our grandson, James Easton, for revising the chapter on the history of science. Our daughter Ethel not only typed the manuscript but improved it by her suggestions. And we have had again the benefit of expert and scholarly editing of the text, the notes, and the index by Mrs. Vera Schneider.

NOTES ON THE USE OF THIS BOOK

1. Dates of birth and death will be found in the Index.

2. Voltaire reckoned a 50 per cent depreciation of French currency between 1640 and 1750. The general reader may use the following rough equivalents, as between 1750 and 1965, in terms of the currency of the United States of America:

crown, $6.25

ducat, $6.25

cu, $3.75

florin, $6.25

franc, $1.25

guilder, $5.25

guinea, $26.25

gulden, $5.25

livre, $1.25

louis dor, $25.00

mark, $16.67

penny, $.10

pound, $25.00

shilling, $1.25

sou, $.0625

thaler, $4.00

3. The location of works of art, when not indicated in the text, will usually be found in the Notes. In allocating such works, the name of the city will imply its leading gallery, as follows:

AmsterdamRijksmuseum

BerlinStaatsmuseum

BolognaAccademia di Belle Arti

BudapestMuseum of Fine Arts

ChicagoArt Institute

CincinnatiArt Institute

ClevelandMuseum of Art

DetroitInstitute of Art

DresdenGemlde-Galerie

DulwichCollege Gallery

EdinburghNational Gallery

FrankfurtStdelsches Kunstinstitut

GenevaMuse dArt et dHistoire

The HagueMauritshuis

Kansas CityNelson Gallery

LeningradHermitage

LondonNational Gallery

MadridPrado

MilanBrera

NaplesMuseo Nazionale

New YorkMetropolitan Museum of Art

ParisLouvre

San Marino, Calif.Henry E. Huntington Art Gallery

ViennaKunsthistorisches Museum

WashingtonNational Gallery

4. Passages in reduced type are especially dull and recondite, and are not essential to the general picture of the age.

T HE page numbers in the captions refer to a discussion in the text of the subject or the artist, and sometimes both.

Part I. This section follows

Part II. This section follows page

Part III. This section follows page

Part IV. This section follows page

PROLOGUE

H E was not yet Voltaire; till his release from the Bastille in 1718 he was Franois Marie Arouet. He was born in Paris on November 21, 1694, and became its distilled essence till 1778. His presumptive father, Franois Arouet, was an affluent attorney, acquainted with the poet Boileau and the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos, whose wills he wrote, and with the dramatist Pierre Corneille, whom he described as the most boring mortal he had ever met. The mother, Marie Marguerite Daumard, was of slightly noble lineage, daughter of an official of the Parlement, and sister of the comptroller general of the royal guard; through them she had access to the court of Louis XIV. Her vivacity and sprightly wit made her home a minor salon. Voltaire thought she possessed all the intellect in his parentage, as his father had all the financial skill; the son absorbed both of these gifts into his heritage. She died at the age of forty, when he was seven. Of her five children the eldest was Armand, who adhered zealously to the Jansenist theology and the patrimonial property. Franois Marie, the youngest child, was so sickly in his first year that no one believed he could survive. He continued till his eighty-fourth year to expect and announce his early death.

Among the friends of the family were several abbs. This title, meaning father, was given to any secular ecclesiastic, whether or not he was an ordained priest. Many abbs, while continuing to wear ecclesiastical dress, became men of the world and shone in society; several were prominently at home in irreverent circles; some lived up to their title literally but clandestinely. The Abb de Chteauneuf was the last lover of Ninon de Lenclos and the first teacher of Voltaire. He was a man of wide culture and broad views; he passed on to his pupil the paganism of Ninon and the skepticism of Montaigne. According to an old but questioned story, he introduced to the boy a mock epic, La Mosade, which was circulating in secret manuscripts; its theme was that religion, aside from belief in a Supreme Being, was a device used by rulers to keep the ruled in order and awe.