Voltaire's Romances Part 67

Following his advice, I applied myself closely to the study of nature, to console myself for the loss of the rectory and of my enchanting Miss Fidler.

II.

THE STUDY OF NATURE.

After making many profound observations upon nature, (having employed in the research, my five senses, my spectacles, and a very large telescope,) I said one day to Mr. Sidrac, unless I am much deceived, philosophy laughs at us. I cannot discover any trace of what the world calls nature; on the contrary, everything seems to me to be the result of art. By art the planets are made to revolve around the sun, while the sun revolves on its own axis. I am convinced that some genius has arranged things in such a manner, that the square of the revolutions of the planets is always in proportion to the cubic root from their distance to their centre, and one had need be a magician to find out how this is accomplished. The tides of the sea are the result of art no less profound and no less difficult to explain.

All animals, vegetables and minerals are arranged with due regard to weight and measure, number and motion. All is performed by springs, levers, pullies, hydraulic machines, and chemical combinations, from the insignificant flea to the being called man, from the gra.s.s of the field to the far spreading oak, from a grain of sand to a cloud in the firmament of heaven. a.s.suredly, everything is governed by art, and the word _nature_ is but a chimera.

What you say, answered Mr. Sidrac, has been said many years ago, and so much the better, for the probability is greater that your remark is true. I am always astonished when I reflect, that a grain of wheat cast into the earth will produce in a short time above a handful of the same corn. Stop, said I, foolishly, you forget that wheat must die before it can spring up again, at least so they say at college. My friend Sidrac, laughing heartily at this interruption, replied. That a.s.sertion went down very well a few years ago, when it was first published by an apostle called Paul; but in our more enlightened age, the meanest laborer knows that the thing is altogether too ridiculous even for argument.

My dear friend, said I, excuse the absurdity of my remark, I have hitherto been a theologian, and one cannot divest one's self in a moment of every silly opinion.

III.

GOOD ADVICE.

Some time after this conversation between the disconsolate person, whom we shall call Goodman, and the clever anatomist, Mr. Sidrac, the latter, one fine morning, observed his friend in St. James's Park, standing in an att.i.tude of deep thought. What is the matter? said the surgeon. Is there anything amiss? No, replied Goodman, but I am left without a patron in the world since the death of my friend, who had the misfortune to be so deaf. Now supposing there be only ten thousand clergymen in England, and granting these ten thousand have each two patrons, the odds against my obtaining a bishopric are twenty thousand to one; a reflection quite sufficient to give any man the blue-devils. I remember, it was once proposed to me, to go out as cabin-boy to the East Indies. I was told that I should make my fortune. But as I did not think I should make a good admiral, whenever I should arrive at the distinction, I declined; and so, after turning my attention to every profession under the sun, I am fixed for life as a poor clergyman, good for nothing.

Then be a clergyman no longer! cried Sidrac, and turn philosopher: what is your income? Only thirty guineas a year, replied Goodman; although at the death of my mother, it will be increased to fifty. Well, my dear Goodman, continued Sidrac, that sum is quite sufficient to support you in comfort. Thirty guineas are six hundred and thirty s.h.i.+llings, almost two s.h.i.+llings a day. With this fixed income, a man need do nothing to increase it, but is at perfect liberty to say all he thinks of the East India Company, the House of Commons, the king and all the royal family, of man generally and individually, and lastly, of G.o.d and his attributes; and the liberty we enjoy of expressing our thoughts upon these most interesting topics, is certainly very agreeable and amusing.

Come and dine at my table every day. That will save you some little money. We will afterwards amuse ourselves with conversation, and your thinking faculty will have the pleasure of communicating with mine by means of speech, which is certainly a very wonderful thing, though its advantages are not duly appreciated by the greater part of mankind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The poor clergyman.--"I remember, it was once proposed to me, to go out as cabin-boy to the East Indies. I was told that I should make my fortune. But as I did not think I should make a good admiral, whenever I should arrive at the distinction, I declined; and so, after turning my attention to every profession under the sun, I am fixed for life as a poor clergyman, good for nothing."]

IV.

DIALOGUE UPON THE SOUL AND OTHER TOPICS.

GOODMAN.--But my dear Sidrac, why do you always say _my thinking faculty_ and not _my soul_? If you used the latter term I should understand you much better.

SIDRAC.--And for my part, I freely confess, I should not understand myself. I _feel_, I _know_, that G.o.d has endowed me with the faculties of thinking and speaking, but I can neither _feel_ nor _know_ that G.o.d has given me a thing called a soul.

GOODMAN.--Truly upon reflection, I perceive that I know as little about the matter as you do, though I own that I have, all my life, been bold enough to believe that I knew. I have often remarked that the eastern nations apply to the soul the same word they use to express life. After their example, the Latins understood the word _anima_ to signify the life of the animal. The Greeks called the breath the soul. The Romans translated the word breath by _spiritus_, and thence it is that the word spirit or soul is found in every modern nation. As it happens that no one has ever seen this spirit or breath, our imagination has converted it into a being, which it is impossible to see or touch. The learned tell us, that the soul inhabits the body without having any place in it, that it has the power of setting our different organs in motion without being able to reach and touch them, indeed, what has not been said upon the subject? The great Locke knew into what a chaos these absurdities had plunged the human understanding. In writing the only reasonable book upon metaphysics that has yet appeared in the world, he did not compose a single chapter on the soul; and if by chance he now and then makes use of the word, he only introduces it to stand for intellect or mind.

In fact, every human being, in spite of Bishop Berkeley, is sensible that he has a mind, and that this mind or intellect is capable of receiving ideas; but no one can feel that there is another being--a soul,--within him, which gives him motion, feeling and thought. It is, in fact, ridiculous to use words we do not understand, and to admit the existence of beings of whom we cannot have the slightest knowledge.

SIDRAC.--We are then agreed upon a subject which, for so many centuries, has been a matter of dispute.

GOODMAN.--And I must observe that I am surprised we should have agreed upon it so soon.

SIDRAC. Oh! that is not so astonis.h.i.+ng. We really wish to know what is truth. If we were among the Academies, we should argue like the characters in Rabelais. If we had lived in those ages of darkness, the clouds of which so long enveloped Great Britain, one of us would very likely have burned the other. We are so fortunate as to be born in an age comparatively reasonable; we easily discover what appears to us to be truth, and we are not afraid to proclaim it.

GOODMAN.--You are right, but I fear, that, after all, the truth we have discovered is not worth much. In mathematics, indeed, we have done wonders; from the most simple causes we have produced effects that would have astonished Apollonius or Archimedes: but what have we proved in metaphysics? Absolutely nothing but our own ignorance.

SIDRAC.--And do you call that nothing? You grant the supreme Being has given you the faculties of feeling and thinking, he has in the same manner given your feet the faculty of walking, your hands their wonderful dexterity, your stomach the capability of digesting food, and your heart the power of throwing arterial blood into all parts of your body. Everything we enjoy is derived from G.o.d, and yet we are totally ignorant of the means by which he governs and conducts the universe. For my own part, as Shakespeare says, I thank him for having taught me that, of the principles of things, I know absolutely nothing. It has always been a question, in what manner the soul acted upon the body. Before attempting to answer this question, I must be convinced that I have a soul. Either G.o.d has given us this wonderful spark of intellect, or he has gifted us with some principle that answers equally well. In either case, we are still the creatures of his divine will and goodness, and that is all I know about the matter.

GOODMAN.--But if you do not know, tell me at least, what you are inclined to think upon the subject. You have opened skulls, and dissected the human ftus. Have you ever, in these, dissections, discovered any appearance of a soul?

SIDRAC.--Not the least, and I have not been able to understand how an immortal and spiritual essence, could dwell for months together in a membrane. It appears to me difficult to conceive that this pretended soul existed before the foundation of the body; for in what could it have been employed during the many ages previous to its mysterious union with flesh? Again! how can we imagine a spiritual principle waiting patiently in idleness during a whole eternity, in order to animate a ma.s.s of matter for a s.p.a.ce of time, which, compared with eternity, is less than a moment?

It is worse still, when I am told that G.o.d forms immortal souls out of nothing, and then cruelly dooms them to an eternity of flames and torments. What? burn a spirit, in which there can be nothing capable of burning; how can he burn the sound of a voice, or the wind that blows?

though both the sound and wind were material during the short time of their existence; but a pure spirit--a thought--a doubt--I am lost in the labyrinth; on whichever side I turn, I find nothing but obscurity and absurdity, impossibility and contradiction. But I am quite at ease when I say to myself G.o.d is master of all. He who can cause each star to hold its particular course through the broad expanse of the firmament, can easily give to us sentiments and ideas, without the aid of this atom, called the soul. It is certain that G.o.d has endowed all animals, in a greater or lesser degree, with thought, memory, and judgment; he has given them life; it is demonstrated that they have feeling, since they possess all the organs of feeling; if then they have all this without a soul, why is it improbable that we have none? and why do mankind flatter themselves that they alone are gifted with a spiritual and immortal principle?

GOODMAN.--Perhaps this idea arises from their inordinate vanity. I am persuaded that if the peac.o.c.k could speak, he would boast of his soul, and would affirm that it inhabited his magnificent tail. I am very much inclined to believe with you, that G.o.d has created us thinking creatures, with the faculties of eating, drinking, feeling, &c., without telling us one word about the matter. We are as ignorant as the peac.o.c.k I just mentioned, and he who said that we live and die without knowing how, why, or wherefore, spoke nothing but the truth.

SIDRAC.--A celebrated author, whose name I forget, calls us nothing more than the puppets of Providence, and this seems to me to be a very good definition. An infinity of movements are necessary to our existence, but we did not ourselves invent and produce motion. There is a Being who has created light, caused it to move from the sun to our eyes in about seven minutes. It is only by means of motion that my five senses are put in action, and it is only by means of my senses that I have ideas, hence it follows that my ideas are derived from the great author of motion, and when he informs me how he communicates these ideas to me, I will most sincerely thank him.

GOODMAN.--And so will I. As it is I constantly thank him for having permitted me, as Epictetus says, to contemplate for a period of some years this beautiful and glorious world. It is true that he could have made me happier by putting me in possession of Miss Fidler and a good rectory; but still, such as I am, I consider myself as under a great obligation to G.o.d's parental kindness and care.

SIDRAC.--You say that it is in the power of G.o.d to give you a good living, and to make you still happier than you are at present. There are many persons who would not scruple flatly to contradict this proposition of yours. Do you forget that you yourself sometimes complain of fatality? A man, and particularly a priest, ought never to contradict one day an a.s.sertion he has perhaps made the day before. All is but a succession of links, and G.o.d is wiser than to break the eternal chain of events, even for the sake of my dear friend Goodman.

GOODMAN.--I did not foresee this argument when I was speaking of fatality; but to come at once to the point, if it be so, G.o.d is as much a slave as myself.

SIDRAC.--He is the slave of his will, of his wisdom, and of the laws which he has himself inst.i.tuted; and it is impossible that he can infringe upon any of them; because it is impossible that he can become either weak or inconsistent.

GOODMAN.--But, my friend, what you say would tend to make us irreligious, for, if G.o.d cannot change any of the affairs of the world, what is the use of teasing him with prayers, or of singing hymns to his praise?

SIDRAC.--Well! who bids you wors.h.i.+p or pray to G.o.d? We praise a man because we think him vain; we entreat of him when we think him weak and likely to change his purpose on account of our pet.i.tions. Let us do our duty to G.o.d, by being just and true to each other. In that consists our real prayers, and our most heartfelt praises.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Kwan-yin, the G.o.ddess of mercy.--Burmese Buddha.--Chinese figure in ivory.][1]

A CONVERSATION WITH A CHINESE.

In the year 1723, there was a Chinese in Holland, who was both a learned man and a merchant, two things that ought by no means to be incompatible; but which, thanks to the profound respect that is shown to money, and the little regard that the human species pay to merit, have become so among us.

This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, happened to be in a bookseller's shop at the same time that some literati were a.s.sembled there. He asked for a book; they offered him Bossuet's _Universal History_, badly translated. At the t.i.tle _Universal History_--

"How pleased am I," cried the Oriental, "to have met with this book. I shall now see what is said of our great empire; of a nation that has subsisted for upwards of fifty thousand years; of that long dynasty of emperors who have governed us for such a number of ages. I shall see what these Europeans think of the religion of our literati, and of that pure and simple wors.h.i.+p we pay to the Supreme Being. What a pleasure will it be for me to find how they speak of our arts, many of which are of a more ancient date with us than the eras of all the kingdoms of Europe! I fancy the author will be greatly mistaken in relation to the war we had about twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years ago, with the martial people of Tonquin and j.a.pan, as well as the solemn emba.s.sy that the powerful emperor of Mogulitian sent to request a body of laws from us in the year of the world 500000000000079123450000."

"Lord bless you," said one of the literati, "there is hardly any mention made of that nation in this world, the only nation considered is that marvelous people, the Jews."

"The Jews!" said the Chinese, "those people then must certainly be masters of three parts of the globe at least."