Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 01.djvu/73

 moderation is the very breath of the philosopher. The effort of the wise man ought to be to condense into a sort of serene certainty all the approximations of which philosophy is composed. But at certain moments, the passion for the true rises powerful and violent, and it is within its right in so doing, like the stormy winds which purify. Never, I insist upon it, will any wise man shake those two august supports of social labor, justice and hope; and all will respect the judge if he is embodied justice, and all will venerate the priest if he represents hope. But if the magistracy calls itself torture, if the Church calls itself Inquisition, then Humanity looks them in the face and says to the judge: "I will none of thy law!" and says to the priest: "I will none of thy dogma! I will none of thy fire on the earth and thy hell in the future!" Then philosophy rises in wrath, and arraigns the judge before justice, and the priest before God!

This is what Voltaire did. It was grand.

What Voltaire was, I have said; what his age was, I am about to say.

Gentlemen, great men rarely come alone; large trees seem larger when they dominate a forest; there they are at home. There was a forest of minds around Voltaire; that forest was the eighteenth century. Among those minds there were summits: Montesquieu, Buffon, Beaumarchais, and among others, two, the highest after Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot. Those thinkers taught men to reason; rea-