Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/207

Rh down and seemed to feel remorse. His father surveyed him with compassion and resumed.

.—Yes, dear friends. If there have always been crimes, there have always been virtues, too. Athens had such men as Socrates, as well as such as Anitus. Rome had Catos as well as Sullas. Nero frightened the world by his atrocities, but Titus, Trajan, and the Antonines consoled it by their benevolence. My friend will explain to Parouba who these great men were. Fortunately, I have Epictetus in my pocket. Epictetus was a slave, but the equal of Marcus Aurelius in mind. Listen, and may all who pretend to teach men hear what Epictetus says to himself: "God made me; I feel this; and shall I dare to dishonor Him by infamous thoughts, criminal actions, and base desires?" His mind agreed with his conversation. Marcus Aurelius, on the throne of Europe and two parts of our hemisphere, did not think otherwise than the slave Epictetus. The one was never humiliated by meanness, nor the other dazzled by greatness; and when they wrote their thoughts it was for the use of their disciples, and not to be extolled in the papers. Pray, in your opinion, were not Locke, Newton, Tillotson, Penn, Clarke, the good man called "The Man of Ross," and many others, in and beyond your island, models of virtue?

You have alluded to the cruel and unjust wars of which so many nations have been guilty. You have described the abominations of Christians in Mexico