



Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
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made available by the Internet Archive.)





A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

VOLUME VI

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 X


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. VI

     VOLTAIRE'S HOME IN GENEVA _Frontispiece_
     THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS
     THE DUKE OF SULLY
     THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INQUISITION IN PORTUGAL


[Illustration: GENEVA--VOLTAIRE'S HOME IN THE SUBURBS.]


       *       *       *       *       *


VOLTAIRE

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

IN TEN VOLUMES

VOL. VI

HAPPY--JOB


       *       *       *       *       *


HAPPY--HAPPILY.


What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas
of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man,
in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.
Pleasure is more transient than happiness, and happiness than felicity.
When a person says--I am happy at this moment, he abuses the word, and
only means I am pleased. When pleasure is continuous, he may then call
himself happy. When this happiness lasts a little longer, it is a state
of felicity. We are sometimes very far from being happy in prosperity,
just as a surfeited invalid eats nothing of a great feast prepared for
him.

The ancient adage, "No person should be called happy before his death,"
seems to turn on very false principles, if we mean by this maxim that we
should not give the name of happy to a man who had been so constantly
from his birth to his last hour. This continuity of agreeable moments is
rendered impossible by the constitution of our organs, by that of the
elements on which we depend, and by that of mankind, on whom we depend
still more. Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul;
it is a great deal for us not to be a long time unhappy. A person whom
we might suppose to have always enjoyed a happy life, who perishes
miserably, would certainly merit the appellation of happy until his
death, and we might boldly pronounce that he had been the happiest of
men. Socrates might have been the happiest of the Greeks, although
superstitious, absurd, or iniquitous judges, or all together,
juridically poisoned him at the age of seventy years, on the suspicion
that he believed in only one God.

The philosophical maxim so much agitated, "_Nemo ante obitum felix_,"
therefore, appears absolutely false in every sense; and if it signifies
that a happy man may die an unhappy death, it signifies nothing of
consequence.

The proverb of being "Happy as a king" is still more false. Everybody
knows how the vulgar deceive themselves.

It is asked, if one condition is happier than another; if man in general
is happier than woman. It would be necessary to have tried all
conditions, to have been man and woman like Tiresias and Iphis, to
decide this question; still more would it be necessary to have lived in
all conditions, with a mind equally proper to each; and we must have
passed through all the possible states of man and woman to judge of it.

It is further queried, if of two men one is happier than the other. It
is very clear that he who has the gout and stone, who loses his fortune,
his honor, his wife and children, and who is condemned to be hanged
immediately after having been mangled, is less happy in this world in
everything than a young, vigorous sultan, or La Fontaine's cobbler.

But we wish to know which is the happier of two men equally healthy,
equally rich, and of an equal condition. It is clear that it is their