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A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

VOLUME IV

By

VOLTAIRE




EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION

THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE

A CONTEMPORARY VERSION


  With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized
     New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an
           Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh


A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY

BY

THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY

FORTY-THREE VOLUMES


  One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions
      of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,
                  and curious fac-similes


VOLUME VIII

E.R. DuMONT

PARIS--LONDON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO

1901



_The WORKS of VOLTAIRE_

     _"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred
     years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it
     with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.
     Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the
     sweetness of the present civilization."_

                                                    _VICTOR HUGO._




LIST OF PLATES--VOL. IV


VOLTAIRE'S ARREST AT FRANKFORT _Frontispiece_

OLIVER CROMWELL

TIME MAKES TRUTH TRIUMPHANT

FRANCIS I. AND HIS SISTER



[Illustration: Voltaire's arrest at Frankfort.]


       *       *       *       *       *

VOLTAIRE

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

IN TEN VOLUMES

VOL. IV.

COUNTRY--FALSITY


       *       *       *       *       *


COUNTRY.


SECTION I

According to our custom, we confine ourselves on this subject to the
statement of a few queries which we cannot resolve. Has a Jew a country?
If he is born at Coimbra, it is in the midst of a crowd of ignorant and
absurd persons, who will dispute with him, and to whom he makes foolish
answers, if he dare reply at all. He is surrounded by inquisitors, who
would burn him if they knew that he declined to eat bacon, and all his
wealth would belong to them. Is Coimbra _his_ country? Can he exclaim,
like the Horatii in Corneille:

     _Mourir pour la patrie est un si digne sort_
     _Qu'on briguerait en foule, une si belle mort._

     So high his meed who for his country dies,
     Men should contend to gain the glorious prize.

He might as well exclaim, "fiddlestick!" Again! is Jerusalem his
country? He has probably heard of his ancestors of old; that they had
formerly inhabited a sterile and stony country, which is bordered by a
horrible desert, of which little country the Turks are at present
masters, but derive little or nothing from it. Jerusalem is, therefore,
not his country. In short, he has no country: there is not a square
foot of land on the globe which belongs to him.

The Gueber, more ancient, and a hundred times more respectable than the
Jew, a slave of the Turks, the Persians, or the Great Mogul, can he
regard as his country the fire-altars which he raises in secret among
the mountains? The Banian, the Armenian, who pass their lives in
wandering through all the east, in the capacity of money-brokers, can
they exclaim, "My dear country, my dear country"--who have no other
country than their purses and their account-books?

Among the nations of Europe, all those cut-throats who let out their
services to hire, and sell their blood to the first king who will
purchase it--have they a country? Not so much so as a bird of prey, who
returns every evening to the hollow of the rock where its mother built
its nest! The monks--will they venture to say that they have a country?
It is in heaven, they say. All in good time; but in this world I know
nothing about one.

This expression, "my country," how sounds it from the mouth of a Greek,
who, altogether ignorant of the previous existence of a Miltiades, an
Agesilaus, only knows that he is the slave of a janissary, who is the
slave of an aga, who is the slave of a pasha, who is the slave of a
vizier, who is the slave of an individual whom we call, in Paris, the
Grand Turk?

What, then, is country?--Is it not, probably, a good piece of ground,
in the midst of which the owner, residing in a well-built and commodious
house, may say: "This field which I cultivate, this house which I have
built, is my own; I live under the protection of laws which no tyrant
can infringe. When those who, like me, possess fields and houses
assemble for their common interests, I have a voice in such assembly. I
am a part of the whole, one of the community, a portion of the
sovereignty: behold my country!" What cannot be included in this
description too often amounts to little beyond studs of horses under the
command of a groom, who employs the whip at his pleasure. People may
have a country under a good king, but never under a bad one.


SECTION II.

A young pastry-cook who had been to college, and who had mustered some
phrases from Cicero, gave himself airs one day about loving his country.
"What dost thou mean by country?" said a neighbor to him. "Is it thy
oven? Is it the village where thou wast born, which thou hast never
seen, and to which thou wilt never return? Is it the street in which thy
father and mother reside? Is it the town hall, where thou wilt never
become so much as a clerk or an alderman? Is it the church of Notre
Dame, in which thou hast not been able to obtain a place among the boys
of the choir, although a very silly person, who is archbishop and duke,
obtains from it an annual income of twenty-four thousand louis d'or?"

The young pastry-cook knew not how to reply; and a person of reflection,
who overheard the conversation, was led to infer that a country of
moderate extent may contain many millions of men who have no country at
all. And thou, voluptuous Parisian, who hast never made a longer voyage
than to Dieppe, to feed upon fresh sea-fish--who art acquainted only
with thy splendid town-house, thy pretty villa in the country, thy box
at that opera which all the world makes it a point to feel tiresome but
thyself--who speakest thy own language agreeably enough, because thou
art ignorant of every other; thou lovest all this, no doubt, as well as
thy brilliant champagne from Rheims, and thy rents, payable every six
months; and loving these, thou dwellest upon thy love for thy country.

Speaking conscientiously, can a financier cordially love his country?
Where was the country of the duke of Guise, surnamed Balafre--at Nancy,
at Paris, at Madrid, or at Rome? What country had your cardinals Balue,
Duprat, Lorraine, and Mazarin? Where was the country of Attila situated,
or that of a hundred other heroes of the same kind, who, although
eternally travelling, make themselves always at home? I should be much
obliged to any one who would acquaint me with the country of Abraham.

The first who observed that every land is our country in which we "do
well," was, I believe, Euripides, in his "_Phaedo_":

     [Greek: "Os pantakoos ge patris boskousa gei."]

The first man, however, who left the place of his birth to seek a
greater share of welfare in another, said it before him.


SECTION III.

A country is a composition of many families; and as a family is commonly
supported on the principle of self-love, when, by an opposing interest,
the same self-love extends to our town, our province, or our nation, it
is called love of country. The greater a country becomes, the less we
love it; for love is weakened by diffusion. It is impossible to love a
family so numerous that all the members can scarcely be known.

He who is burning with ambition to be edile, tribune, praetor, consul, or
dictator, exclaims that he loves his country, while he loves only
himself. Every man wishes to possess the power of sleeping quietly at
home, and of preventing any other man from possessing the power of
sending him to sleep elsewhere. Every one would be certain of his
property and his life. Thus, all forming the same wishes, the particular
becomes the general interest. The welfare of the republic is spoken of,
while all that is signified is love of self.

It is impossible that a state was ever formed on earth, which was not
governed in the first instance as a republic: it is the natural march
of human nature. On the discovery of America, all the people were found
divided into republics; there were but two kingdoms in all that part of
the world. Of a thousand nations, but two were found subjugated.

It was the same in the ancient world; all was republican in Europe
before the little kinglings of Etruria and of Rome. There are yet
republics in Africa: the Hottentots, towards the south, still live as
people are said to have lived in the first ages of the world--free,
equal, without