Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/322

290 for producing pain. An executioner comes to interpose in the functions of the magistracy, and terminates by violence a judicial interrogation.

"Gentle philosophy! thou who never seekest truth but with attention and patience, couldst thou expect, in an age that takes thy name, that such instruments would be employed to discover that truth?

"Can it be really true that our laws approve this inconceivable method, and that custom consecrates it?

"Their laws imitate their prejudices, their public punishments are as cruel as their private vengeance, and the acts of their reason are scarce less unmerciful than those of their passions. What can be the cause of this strange contrariety? It is because our prejudices are ancient, and our morality new; it is because we are as penetrated with our opinions as we are inattentive to our ideas; it is because our passion for pleasures hinders us from reflecting on our wants, and that we are more eager to live than to direct ourselves right; it is, in a word, because our morals are gentle without being good; it is because we are polite, and are not so much as humane."

These fragments, which eloquence had dictated to humanity, filled the heart of my friend with a sweet consolation. He admired with tenderness.

"What!" said he, "are such masterpieces as these produced in a province? I had been told that Paris was all the world, or the only place in it."

"It is" said I, "the only place for producing comic operas; but there are at this time, in the provinces,