Voltaire's Crusade to Enlighten His Fellow Man

  Towards his later life, Voltaire became society's leading champion against
religious cruelty and injustice.  He hired lawyers and waged long court
battles on behalf of victims of religious persecution.

  Voltaire's first celebrated case involved the family of a young man who had
committed suicide in France on October 13, 1761. In Catholic France, suicide 
was considered an unpardonable crime.  Current laws dictated that the body of 
anyone who committed suicide, should be dragged naked through the streets 
where crowds were to stone and otherwise defile it. Last, the body was to be 
hanged on a public scaffold, and all the dead man's possessions confiscated 
by the authorities.

  The dead man's father, Jean Calas, had begged everyone in his household
on the night of his son's suicide, not to reveal the ignomious manner of
his death. When the authorities learned of it anyway, they charged Jean
Calas with murdering his son.  Their reasoning for arresting him was as
follows: Because the family was not Catholic, but instead belonged to
the minority sect of the French Huguenots (followers of John Calvin), it
was determined that the father had killed his son to prevent him from
converting from Protestantism to Catholicism.  Even though there was no
evidence to indicate a murder, it was known that his son had become depressed 
upon learning that he would have to convert to Catholicism in order to become 
a lawyer in France. Thus it seemed reasonable (although there were no direct 
witnesses to this) that his son would have considered converting. And since 
everyone "knew" that all followers of Calvin would rather murder their sons 
than have them convert to the true religion of Catholicism, Calis' guilt was 
established by the court.

  Although Jean Calas protested his innocence, he was convicted and condemned 
to be given "ordinary and extraordinary torture" followed by execution on the 
wheel.  A contemporary historian, Georg Brandes described the procedure:

  "The ordinary and extraordinary torture consisted partly of forced
  drinking of water, at the ordinary torture eight cans of water, at the
  extraordinary torture sixteen cans, and partly of the Spanish shoe, which
  meant that the leg of the tortured victim was put between two boards which
  were screwed together as firmly as possible, after which wedges were
  driven between them with heavy blows of the hammer.  As a rule the bones
  were crushed during the process.  Here, too, were two degrees:  These were
  four or eight wedges driven in.  Jean Calas underwent the ordinary as well
  as the extraordinary torture.  In the sixteenth and eighteenth century the
  feet and hands were twisted out of their sockets.  This torture was
  practiced in France outside of Paris until 1788."  Edward L. Ericson, THE
  FREE MIND THROUGH THE AGES, Frederick Ungar, 1985, p. 77)

  The sentence of both torture and execution was carried out the very
next day.  His wife (who had been indicted for trying to breath air back
into her dead son) was also indicted--but had been spared for the moment
because her husband had refused to render the expected confession that
would have implicated her. However all the family's possessions had been
confiscated by the authorities.

  The case, along with thousands of others like it, would have gone barely
noticed, if Voltaire had not personally intervened in the case--According 
to one biographer, Georg Brandes, only one other French intellectual --La 
Bruyere had objected to the barbarous tortures called for in the criminal 
law, and that was in the century preceding Voltaire.

   With this as his first case, Voltaire stood up against the medieval
mindset on law and order, in his defense of human rights and religious
tolerance--a dangerous undertaking for someone even of his daring and sense 
of adventure.  For this was a powerful challenge to BOTH the religious and 
political establishment--who believed that efforts to abolish torture were 
an affront to God's laws. That is, since all sinners were believed to be 
damned eternally in hell anyway, it followed that God Himself must desire 
terrible tortures and punishment to anyone who breaks "His" laws.  Divine 
justice would thus dictate that all heretics and blasphemers would likewise 
be tortured to the severest degree. Anything less would subvert the authority 
of Christianity within society.

    Indeed, many in the Catholic orthodoxy considered Voltaire to be the
"Antichrist".  Even in the early nineteenth century, Joseph de Maistre
would argue that the evil forces in Hell had placed "Its entire power
into the hands of Voltaire."

  Voltaire wrote brilliantly and indignantly on such a travesty of justice--
combining it with his wit and his love of the farce. He spent three years
gathering evidence exposing the judicial atrocity-- showing that Calas'
torture and execution was not an exception, but one of many such cases
whereby torture and murder were performed by the authorities in the name
of religious superstition.

  Voltaire, wrote articles on this gross injustice, and enlisted the help of 
influential friends.  In 1765, a new trial was ordered, at which time Carlas 
was unanimously declared innocent.  The family received back their property, 
and the widow received compensation from the king. Other cases taken up by 
Voltaire included:

  *Jean Pierre Espinas was arrested for giving lodging to a Protestant
minister for one night (a crime in Catholic France).  Voltaire finally
obtained his release after he had already spent twenty-three years in
forced labor as an oarsman on a penal galley ship.

 *Claude Chaumont was also sentenced to a penal galley ship for the crime of 
attending a Protestant worship service.  Voltaire obtained his release.

 * Another family was accused of the same crime as the Calas--although
in this case from a daughter who was mentally retarded and appeared to have
fallen by herself into a well.  When the family immediately fled to
Switzerland to escape from a trial, the French courts proclaimed that their
flight to Switzerland proved" their guilt. To which Voltaire replied,
"You wretch! Did you perhaps imagine they would remain and let you work
your insane fury upon them?"  After seven years of court battles, Voltaire
and his associates were able to establish the family's innocence and have
them acquitted.

 * Two youths were arrested after being caught singing irreligious songs and 
mutilating a crucifix that stood on a bridge during a church procession.  One 
of the two youths escaped before his trial, but the other was captured.

  Voltaire sought leniency for the captured youth. Through his efforts, the 
case was appealed to the parliament in Paris.  The Church clergy however 
demanded the death penalty. The parliament agreed, although they substituted 
the more merciful form of capital punishment by decapitation.  The sentence 
was carried out in 1766--but only after a session of torture, (including 
cutting his tongue and right hand off) from which the authorities had hoped 
to extract a further confession. After the beheading, the corpse was burnt, 
together with a copy of Voltaire's PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY, which belonged 
to the youth.

  Although powerless to save the first youth, Voltaire did secure a position
for the other youth in the Prussian army.  Greatly disturbed by his failure
to help the first youth, Voltaire later wrote how tears came to his eyes and 
anger surged in his heart every time he thought of the horrors of this case, 
which he described as "a hundred times more hellish than the assassination of 
Calas."

  Voltaire's public exposure of such abuses gave them an international
notoriety. Under this publicity, France slowly began to abandon torture
and mutilation.  But even more, Voltaire's championship of human rights
caught on, and inspired others to take the torch up after him.

  "Crush the infamy" became Voltaire's famous battle cry against the abuses
of religious persecution and superstition.  Voltaire wrote to Frederick the
Great of Prussia (who was a great admirer and patron of Voltaire's) that:

  "As long as there are fools and knaves there will be religion.  Ours
  is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most bloody that has
  ever infected the world.  Your Majesty will do the human race an eternal
  service in extirpating this infamous superstition.  I do not say among
  the rabble, who are not worthy of being enlightened and who are apt
  for every yoke; I say among the well bred, among those who think,
  among those who wish to think.  Their number is not very great."

  To understand Voltaire's moral outrage, one has to understand somewhat of
the social-political system of the time in France.  Thousands of peasants
worked on church lands in an effective state of slavery.  If a freeman
married a serf, he in turn would be forced into the feudal system, and his
children would be held in bondage to the land.  Some historians have
estimated that the number of victims in France that were burned at the
stake, broken on the wheel, or were torn limb from limb roped between
tugging horses, to be in the hundreds of thousands. The contrast in great
wealth between the aristocracy and religious classes, eventually exploded
into all out violence and revolt--unchecked by reason and moderation (unlike
with the American Revolution against English rule.)

Voltaire, Champion of Individual Liberty

     Voltaire read and was influenced by the works of the ancient Roman 
Cicero. Despite his privileged lifestyle, Voltaire passionately argued 
against the institution of slavery--stating at one point that "All men were 
born equal."--And, the color of one's skin should never give one the right
to steal from another!  When Pufendorf tried to explain that slavery
was in part, founded upon contract, Voltaire replied:

   "Show me the contract, and if it is signed by the party to be the
    slave, I may believe you."

Voltaire's writings on individual freedom greatly influenced some of his
younger contemporaries in America--including  Benjamin Franklin, Thomas 
Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. 

  Still, Voltaire's energies were so absorbed in fighting religious
tyrannies, that he felt compelled to drop back in the fight against
political oppression. He wrote "Truth has not the name of a party" and
again, "Politics is not in my line: I have always confined myself to doing
my little best to make men less foolish and more honorable".

  Theoretically, he preferred a republic as the best form of government--
although he recognized its dangers in engendering factions that could
serve to destroy national unity.  It was best suited for small states and
tribal societies such as that of the America Indians and Africans.  However,
Voltaire also believed that development and progress naturally led to
economic classes within society, and this tension between these groups
could tear down egalitarian governments.

  Contemplating the question, which is better, "a monarchy or a republic?",
Voltaire answered "For four thousand years this question has been tossed
about. Ask the rich for an answer--they all want aristocracy.  Ask the
people--they want democracy.  Only the monarchs want monarchy.  How then
has it come about that almost the entire earth is governed by monarchs?
Ask the rats who proposed to hang a bell about the neck of the cat."
(DICTIONARY, "Fatherland")

  Voltaire hated the nationalism that engendered wars.  To Voltaire,
patriotism meant to hate every country except one's own. As for war, "War 
is the greatest of all crimes." Since "It is forbidden to kill; therefore 
all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the 
sound of trumpets."

  To Voltaire, therefore revolution is not an answer to the ills of mankind.
First of all, Voltaire did not believe the common people could properly
reason: "When the people undertake to reason, all is lost" (Correspondence,
April 1, 1766).  Secondly, the majority of people were generally too
engrossed in their daily affairs to perceive what was true. Once any
error became too obvious, they simply replaced one superstition with another.
"When an old error is established, politics uses it as a morsel which the
people have put into their own mouths, until another superstition comes
along to destroy this one, and politics profits from the second error as it
did from the first."

  To Voltaire, the division of property among the people was the solution
to society's ills: "The spirit of property doubles a man's strength. It is
certain that the possessor of an estate will cultivate his own inheritance
better than that of another." (DICTIONARY, "Property"). To Voltaire, equality of 
mankind is most natural when it "is limited to rights, unnatural when it 
attempts to level goods and powers." (DICTIONARY, "Equality"). What made the 
English so great was their belief: "To be free is to be subject to nothing but 
the laws." (DICTIONARY, "Government")

Voltaire vs Rousseau

  Opposed to Voltaire and the Encyclopedists who believed that reason was
the answer to mankind's ills--were individuals such as Jean Jacques Rousseau
(1712-78). Handsome, but poor and of low birth, Rousseau largely supported 
himself in his early career through his liaisons with wealthy women.  (Later 
Rousseau took a plain servant girl for his mistress and housekeeper, only to 
abandon all five children he had with her to an orphan's home).  Rousseau's 
big break came when, in his late thirties, he won an essay competition whose 
theme was over whether the modern arts and sciences had improved society.  
Rousseau passionately argued that modern civilization and the well-mannered 
facade it demanded, was instead of a GIFT--the RUIN of mankind.  Basing his 
arguments on popular, and rather fanciful accounts of American Indians, 
Rousseau claimed that humans were noble savages by nature--strong, but gentle 
and happy.  It was after the appearance of civilization that mankind's natural
gentle nature become corrupted--making him competitive, vengeful, and 
alienated.  Rousseau's essay made him very famous, and his books became best 
sellers throughout Europe.

   Rousseau and later followers argued that it was NOT reason, but instead
one's FEELINGS that were important--NOT what was in one's head, but rather
what was in one's heart that really counted. (The religious and famous
mathematician Pascal argued this view for religion when he claimed that
the heart had its own reasons for doing things which the head could never
understand.)

  According to Rousseau: "I venture to declare that a state of reflection
is contrary to nature; and that a thinking man [ie an intellectual] is
a depraved animal." In his novel LA NOUVELE HELOISE, a character says,
"Whatever I feel to be right is right.  Whatever I feel to be wrong is
wrong...Reason deceives us only too often and we have acquired the right
to reject it only too well, but conscience never deceives." Intellectual
arguments in support of religion were a waste of time, as the sheer intensity
of religious experience (such as a viewing a spectacular sunset) should be 
enough to convince one of God's existence. Even education is worthless, per 
Rousseau, as it does not serve to make a man good, but instead teaches him 
how to be clever and devious. 

  Between Voltaire and Rousseau can be seen the classic clash between intellect 
and emotion. Voltaire believed in the power of reason which through education 
could slowly and peacefully improve society : "we can, by speech and pen, make 
men more enlightened and better." (Selected Words, 62) Rousseau disagreed, 
arguing passionately that mankind was naturally a "noble" creature before 
civilization and learning had corrupted his natural tendencies. One of 
Rousseau's most famous lines was "Everywhere man is born free. Everywhere man 
is born in chains." And in his work EMILE, "All is well when it leaves the 
hands of the Creator of things;  all degenerates in the hands of man." Rousseau 
and his followers believed that it was necessary to revolt against the old 
institutions, tearing them down and replacing them with new ones--which were 
dedicated to mankind's natural rights of liberty, equality and fraternity.

  In his DISCOURSE ON THE ORIGIN OF INEQUALITY, Rousseau argued against
civilization and for a return to the natural state of early man. Voltaire
wrote to Rousseau that upon reading this book "Against the Human Species"
how "No one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into
brutes; to read your book makes one long to go on all fours.  As however,
it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is
unfortunately impossible for me to resume it." (Correspondence, Aug 30, 1755).

  To Voltaire, Rousseau was not a true philosopher, but a "dog of Diogenes
gone mad."  Rousseau "resembles a philosopher as a monkey resembles a man."
Still when Rousseau's books were burned by the Swiss authorities, Voltaire
was appalled--believing it the right of every individual to express their
own opinion.  Another writer later summarized Voltaire's spirited defense of
Rousseau as follows:  "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will 
defend to the death your right to say it."

  According to Voltaire, Rousseau's denunciations of civilization were
completely wrong. Instead of viewing civilization as the source of the
problem, Voltaire believed civilization was the redeemer of man's predicament:
To Voltaire, man is by nature a savage animal--and society was thus a means
of taming the beast. Both culture and education could thus help develop and
cultivate a sense of intellect and joy.  Voltaire agreed that things were bad
in France. "A government in which it is permitted a certain class of men
to say, 'Let those pay taxes who work; we should not pay, because we do not
work,' is no better than a government of Hottentots." However, it does no
good to try to change institutions without trying first to change the
very nature of men--for otherwise, identical institutions will be set
up in place of the old ones.

The Death of Voltaire.

 The story is told how when Voltaire was eighty three, he was very ill and
longed to see Paris one last time before he died.  Upon his arrival, he was
greeted more warmly than the king himself, and was mobbed with requests to 
visit him.  One of his many callers was Benjamin Franklin who was then the US 
ambassador to France , and in Paris at the time with his grandson. Voltaire 
told Franklin that he felt "like a statue with feet of clay". Franklin 
responded, "Yes, but with a heart of gold." When Franklin asked Voltaire to 
give his grandson a blessing, the old man obliged, putting his hands on his 
head and bidding him to dedicate himself to both "God and liberty".

   When Voltaire lay deathly ill, a priest was called in to shrive him. (Any 
person who died outside the Church was not allowed to be buried in consecrated 
burial ground.) Voltaire asked the priest from whom he came from. The priest 
answered, "From God Himself".  Voltaire responded, "Well, well, sir--your 
credentials?" The priest left empty-handed. Later, another priest was called 
in to hear his confession, but he too was sent away because the priest had 
demanded a profession of full faith in Catholic doctrine.  Instead, Voltaire 
drew up his own statement which said "I die adoring God, loving my friends, 
not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition."

   Voltaire lived another few months, finally dying on May 30, 1778. Clerical 
opposition made it impossible for him to receive burial permission in Paris 
or Ferney--but his friends procured a burial place for him at a church in 
Champagne. (The abbey prior of the church was later removed from his office 
for allowing Voltaire to be buried there).

  In 1791, the French National Assembly forced King Louis XVI to recall
Voltaire's body back to Paris. It was said that Voltaire's dead ashes were 
dug up and escorted into Paris by 100,000 men and women, with as many as 
600,000 onlookers.  On the funeral wagon that carried him back to Paris were 
written the words "He gave the human mind a great impetus; he prepared us 
for freedom." He was buried in the Pantheon where today his remains are 
marked by the simple headstone: "HERE LIES VOLTAIRE"

Salem Witchcraft Trials in America

  Voltaire's version of the Age of Reason, found fertile ground in the new 
revolutionary democracy taking form in America. The American forefathers were 
men of the Enlightenment, fully aware of the atrocities that had gone on in 
the immediate centuries before them.

  In addition to the religious wars, the Founding Fathers were aware of the 
paranoia from the Salem witchcraft trials that had been at their height in 
Massachusetts during the late 1600's and early 1700's (ie, during much of 
Voltaire's childhood in France).  The Salem trials commenced in 1692.  Before 
it was over, hundreds of people were arrested, and nineteen hanged--eight in 
one day.  Interestingly, a dog in Andover numbered among the victims, after 
the creature was declared to be "bewitching" several people.  It was put to 
death for its "crime". (During the parallel witch hysteria in Europe, one 
rooster was condemned and burned at the stake in 1474 in Basle for the 
unnatural act of laying an egg.)

  Although more people were imprisoned than executed--the tortures to
produce confessions were memorably grotesque and inhumane. For example,
the accused witch, Giles Corey, was crushed to death for refusing to
cooperate with his accusers.  John Proctor described how his son William
was tied "Neck and Heels till the Blood gushed out at his Nose, and [they]
would have been kept him so 24 hours, if one more merciful than the rest,
had not taken pity on him."  (Proctor's other two sons both "confessed"
during their torture sessions.)

  After the hysteria was over in Salem (one of the "bewitched" girls later
publicly apologized for her role in the trial years.)-- Others, would
defend and then justify the executions of the Salem "witches".  Cotton
Mather in his book, WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD, 1692, for example,
argued that the witches had been real, not imagined.

  Still most people became skeptical-- and the shame and ignominy of the trials
helped break the power not only of Cotton Mather, but to end theocracy (rule
of the Church) in the American colonies, as well. (Interestingly the
Massachusetts legislature did not legally rescind the sentences of the
accused "witches" from the Salem witch trials until 1954).

The Enlightenment in America

  Within less than a hundred years of the Salem witch trials, the Enlightenment
had arrived on the shores of America. It has been argued that the greatest
contribution given by American Founding Fathers in drafting the new American 
constitution was from the new, "enlightened" freedom it gave in the area of 
religious preference and for individual rights.  These freedoms would later 
be taken for granted by later generations--without knowing the historical 
background against which they were won.  In the Bill of Rights, Article #5 
effectively outlaws the use of TORTURE:

  "No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness
  against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
  due process of law".

  (I remember reading these lines as a young student--naively wondering why
a person would need to be protected from bearing witness against him/herself.)

As Edward L. Ericson, a Unitarian minister and active ethicist wrote on
this subject:

  "Later generations of Christians, reared in a more humane civilization,
  were to discover in disbelief that the struggle to abolish what the
  American Constitution calls 'cruel and unusual punishment' was begun by
  avowed infidels and freethinkers over the protests of Christian moralists
  and theologians who insisted on punishments more heinous than the
  Roman crucifixion." (Ericson, op cit, p 79)