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A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

VOLUME VII

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 XI


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. VII

  OLD ROUEN--frontispiece
  MONTESQUIEU
  THE DREAM OF HUMAN LIFE
  ANCIENT ROME


[Illustration: Old Rouen.]


       *       *       *       *       *


VOLTAIRE

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.

IN TEN VOLUMES

VOL. VII

JOSEPH-MISSION


       *       *       *       *       *


JOSEPH.


The history of Joseph, considering it merely as an object of curiosity
and literature, is one of the most precious monuments of antiquity which
has reached us. It appears to be the model of all the Oriental writers;
it is more affecting than the "Odyssey"; for a hero who pardons is more
touching than one who avenges.

We regard the Arabs as the first authors of these ingenious fictions,
which have passed into all languages; but I see among them no adventures
comparable to those of Joseph. Almost all in it is wonderful, and the
termination exacts tears of tenderness. He was a young man of sixteen
years of age, of whom his brothers were jealous; he is sold by them to a
caravan of Ishmaelite merchants, conducted into Egypt, and bought by a
eunuch of the king. This eunuch had a wife, which is not at all
extraordinary; the kislar aga, a perfect eunuch, has a seraglio at this
day at Constantinople; they left him some of his senses, and nature in
consequence is not altogether extinguished. No matter; the wife of
Potiphar falls in love with the young Joseph, who, faithful to his
master and benefactor, rejects the advances of this woman. She is
irritated at it, and accuses Joseph of attempting to seduce her. Such is
the history of Hippolytus and Phaedra, of Bellerophon and Zenobia, of
Hebrus and Damasippa, of Myrtilus and Hippodamia, etc.

It is difficult to know which is the original of all these histories;
but among the ancient Arabian authors there is a tract relating to the
adventure of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, which is very ingenious. The
author supposes that Potiphar, uncertain between the assertions of his
wife and Joseph, regarded not Joseph's tunic, which his wife had torn as
a proof of the young man's outrage. There was a child in a cradle in his
wife's chamber; and Joseph said that she seized and tore his tunic in
the presence of this infant. Potiphar consulted the child, whose mind
was very advanced for its age. The child said to Potiphar: "See if the
tunic is torn behind or before; if before, it is a proof that Joseph
would embrace your wife by force, and that she defended herself; if
behind, it is a proof that your wife detained Joseph." Potiphar, thanks
to the genius of the child, recognized the innocence of his slave. It is
thus that this adventure is related in the Koran, after the Arabian
author. It informs us not to whom the infant belonged, who judged with
so much wit. If it was not a son of Potiphar, Joseph was not the first
whom this woman had seduced.

However that may be, according to Genesis, Joseph is put in prison,
where he finds himself in company with the butler and baker of the king
of Egypt. These two prisoners of state both dreamed one night. Joseph
explains their dreams; he predicted that in three days the butler would
be received again into favor, and that the baker would be hanged; which
failed not to happen.

Two years afterwards the king of Egypt also dreams, and his butler tells
him that there is a young Jew in prison who is the first man in the
world for the interpretation of dreams. The king causes the young man to
be brought to him, who foretells seven years of abundance and seven of
sterility.

Let us here interrupt the thread of the history to remark, of what
prodigious antiquity is the interpretation of dreams. Jacob saw in a
dream the mysterious ladder at the top of which was God Himself. In a
dream he learned a method of multiplying his flocks, a method which
never succeeded with any but himself. Joseph himself had learned by a
dream that he should one day govern his brethren. Abimelech, a long time
before, had been warned in a dream, that Sarah was the wife of Abraham.

To return to Joseph: after explaining the dream of Pharaoh, he was made
first minister on the spot. We doubt if at present a king could be
found, even in Asia, who would bestow such an office in return for an
interpreted dream. Pharaoh espoused Joseph to a daughter of Potiphar. It
is said that this Potiphar was high-priest of Heliopolis; he was not
therefore the eunuch, his first master; or if it was the latter, he had
another title besides that of high-priest; and his wife had been a
mother more than once.

However, the famine happened, as Joseph had foretold; and Joseph, to
merit the good graces of his king, forced all the people to sell their
land to Pharaoh, and all the nation became slaves to procure corn. This
is apparently the origin of despotic power. It must be confessed, that
never king made a better bargain; but the people also should no less
bless the prime minister.

Finally, the father and brothers of Joseph had also need of corn, for
"the famine was sore in all lands." It is scarcely necessary to relate
here how Joseph received his brethren; how he pardoned and enriched
them. In this history is found all that constitutes an interesting epic
poem--exposition, plot, recognition, adventures, and the marvellous;
nothing is more strongly marked with the stamp of Oriental genius.

What the good man Jacob, the father of Joseph, answered to Pharaoh,
ought to strike all those who know how to read. "How old art thou?" said
the king to him. "The days of the years of my pilgrimage," said the old
man, "are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the
years of my life been."




JUDAEA.


I never was in Judaea, thank God! and I never will go there. I have met
with men of all nations who have returned from it, and they have all of
them told me that the situation of Jerusalem is horrible; that all the
land round it is stony; that the mountains are bare; that the famous
river Jordan is not more than forty feet wide; that the only good spot
in the country is Jericho; in short, they all spoke of it as St. Jerome
did, who resided a long time in Bethlehem, and describes the country as
the refuse and rubbish of nature. He says that in summer the inhabitants
cannot get even water to drink. This country, however, must have
appeared to the Jews luxuriant and delightful, in comparison with the
deserts in which they originated. Were the wretched inhabitants of the
Landes to quit them for some of the mountains of Lampourdan, how would
they exult and delight in the change; and how would they hope eventually
to penetrate into the fine and fruitful districts of Languedoc, which
would be to them the land of promise!

Such is precisely the history of the Jews. Jericho and Jerusalem are
Toulouse and Montpellier, and the desert of Sinai is the country between
Bordeaux and Bayonne.

But if the God who conducted the Israelites wished to bestow upon them a
pleasant and fruitful land; if these wretched people had in fact dwelt
in Egypt, why did he not permit them to remain in Egypt? To this we are
answered only in the usual language of theology.

Judaea, it is said, was the promised land. God said to Abraham: "I will
give thee all the country between the river of Egypt and the Euphrates."

Alas! my friends, you never have had possession of those fertile banks
of the Euphrates and the Nile. You have only been duped and made fools
of. You have almost always been slaves. To promise and to perform, my
poor unfortunate fellows, are different things. There was an old rabbi
once among you, who, when reading your shrewd and sagacious prophecies,
announcing for you a land of milk and honey, remarked that you had been
promised more butter than bread. Be assured that were the great Turk
this very day to offer me the lordship (seigneurie) of Jerusalem, I
would positively decline it.

Frederick III., when he saw this detestable country, said, loudly enough
to be distinctly heard, that Moses must have been very ill-advised to
conduct his tribe of lepers to such a place as that. "Why," says
Frederick, did he not go to Naples? Adieu, my dear Jews; I am extremely
sorry that the promised land is the lost land.

                           By the Baron de Broukans.




JULIAN.


SECTION I.

Justice is often done at last. Two or three authors, either venal or
fanatical, eulogize the cruel and effeminate Constantine as if he had
been a god, and treat as an absolute miscreant the just, the wise, and
the great Julian. All other authors, copying from these, repeat both the
flattery and the calumny. They become almost an article of faith. At
length the age of sound criticism arrives; and at the end of fourteen
hundred years, enlightened men revise the cause which had been decided
by ignorance. In Constantine we see a man of successful ambition,
internally scoffing at things divine as well as human. He has the
insolence to pretend that God sent him a standard in the air to assure
him of victory. He imbrues himself in the blood of all his relations,
and is lulled to sleep in all the effeminacy of luxury; but he is a
Christian--he is canonized.

Julian is sober, chaste, disinterested, brave, and clement; but he is
not a Christian--he has long been considered a monster.

At the present day--after having compared facts, memorials and records,
the writings of Julian and those of his enemies--we are compelled to
acknowledge that, if he was not partial to Christianity, he was somewhat
excusable in hating a sect stained with the blood of all his family; and
that although he had been persecuted, imprisoned, exiled, and threatened
with death by the Galileans, under the reign of the cruel and sanguinary
Constantius, he never persecuted them, but on the contrary even pardoned
ten Christian soldiers who had conspired against his life. His letters
are read and admired: "The Galileans," says he, "under my predecessor,
suffered exile and imprisonment; and those who, according to the change
of circumstances, were called heretics, were reciprocally massacred in
their turn. I have called home their exiles, I have liberated their
prisoners, I have restored their property to those who were proscribed,
and have compelled them to live in peace; but such is the restless rage
of these Galileans that they deplore their inability any longer to
devour one another." What a letter! What a sentence, dictated by
philosophy, against persecuting fanaticism. Ten Christians conspiring
against his life, he detects and he pardons them. How extraordinary a
man! What dastardly fanatics must those be who attempt to throw disgrace
on his memory!

In short, on investigating facts with impartiality, we are obliged to
admit that Julian possessed all the qualities of Trajan, with the
exception of that depraved taste too long pardoned to the Greeks and
Rom