



Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously
made available by the Internet Archive.)





A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

VOLUME X

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 XIV

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. X

VOLTAIRE'S REMAINS ON THE BASTILLE--_Frontispiece_

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES

THE VISION

PIERRE CORNEILLE



[Illustration: Throned Upon The Ruins Of The Bastille. "For one night,
upon the ruins of the Bastille, rested the body of Voltaire, on fallen
wall and broken aroh, above the dungeons where light had faded from the
lives of men, and hope had died in breaking hearts. The conqueror,
resting upon the conquered; throned upon the Bastille, the fallen
fortress of night."--INGERSOLL.]




VOLTAIRE

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

IN TEN VOLUMES

VOL. X

STYLE--ZOROASTER

AND DECLARATION OF THE AMATEURS, INQUIRERS, AND DOUBTERS




STYLE.


It is very strange that since the French people became literary they
have had no book written in a good style, until the year 1654, when the
"Provincial Letters" appeared; and why had no one written history in a
suitable tone, previous to that of the "Conspiracy of Venice" of the
Abbe St. Real? How is it that Pellisson was the first who adopted the
true Ciceronian style, in his memoir for the superintendent Fouquet?

Nothing is more difficult and more rare than a style altogether suitable
to the subject in hand.

The style of the letters of Balzac would not be amiss for funeral
orations; and we have some physical treatises in the style of the epic
poem or the ode. It is proper that all things occupy their own places.

Affect not strange terms of expression, or new words, in a treatise on
religion, like the Abbe Houteville; neither declaim in a physical
treatise. Avoid pleasantry in the mathematics, and flourish and
extravagant figures in a pleading. If a poor intoxicated woman dies of
an apoplexy, you say that she is in the regions of death; they bury her,
and you exclaim that her mortal remains are confided to the earth. If
the bell tolls at her burial, it is her funeral knell ascending to the
skies. In all this you think you imitate Cicero, and you only copy
Master Littlejohn....

Without style, it is impossible that there can be a good work in any
kind of eloquence or poetry. A profusion of words is the great vice of
all our modern philosophers and anti-philosophers. The "_Systeme de la
Nature_" is a great proof of this truth. It is very difficult to give
just ideas of God and nature, and perhaps equally so to form a good
style.

As the kind of execution to be employed by every artist depends upon the
subject of which he treats--as the line of Poussin is not that of
Teniers, nor the architecture of a temple that of a common house, nor
music of a serious opera that of a comic one--so has each kind of
writing its proper style, both in prose and verse. It is obvious that
the style of history is not that of a funeral oration, and that the
despatch of an ambassador ought not to be written like a sermon; that
comedy is not to borrow the boldness of the ode, the pathetic expression
of the tragedy, nor the metaphors and similes of the epic.

Every species has its different shades, which may, however, be reduced
to two, the simple and the elevated. These two kinds, which embrace so
many others, possess essential beaut