For twenty years, from 1758 until his death, Voltaire lived at Ferney like a little king of the intellect, “The Innkeeper of Europe,” as he was called, receiving guests and admirers, sometimes fifty at a time, expounding his opinions and arguing against intolerance and for the rights of man. In one famous interchange he summed up his life’s work. Exasperated by a long argument with a visitor, “Monsieur,” he said, “I find your opinions indefensible and myself totally unable to agree with them—but,” he added, “I will defend to the death your right to express them.”
The other great event of the year 1758, besides the purchase of Ferney, was the writing of Candide. Voltaire produced scores of volumes of plays, poems, and histories, but only his superb letters and, especially, his contes, or short novels and tales, are still read. The best-known of these tales, Candide is in part a response to the “optimistic” position in philosophy (the view that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds,” a proposition ascribed by Voltaire, somewhat unfairly, to the German philosopher Leibnitz), and partly a response to the disasters that were overtaking Voltaire at this period in his life. There are ironies here. All his life Voltaire wrote plays, but none of them is played today; he wrote Candide in four weeks, and its fame will never die. Its hero, moreover, the simpleton Candide, is about as different from its author as can be. These comments would have amused Voltaire.
Candide is born in the best of all castles to the best of all parents and soon falls into the clutches of the best of all tutors, the philosopher/ lecher Dr. Pangloss, who persuades his pupil that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds. Whereupon the disasters begin. The castle is besieged and captured, Candide’s family is butchered, he escapes with Pangloss and his beloved Cunégonde, not caring or even noticing that this damsel has been repeatedly raped—since such things do not happen in the best of all possible worlds—and they proceed to travel everywhere and are everywhere tricked, cheated, beaten, and robbed. Although it may not sound like it, all of this is hilarious, mainly because of Candide’s incurable optimism, which no misfortune can abate. At last, however, having lost everything, he is reduced to living on the shores of the Prepontis, far from the turmoil that surrounded Voltaire himself, there to “cultivate his garden.”
The earthy philosophy of life, which denies both idealism and fuzzy metaphysics, had a great attraction for Voltaire’s contemporaries—as for many today. The world is confusing, and often our best efforts to improve it only make it worse, or at least more confusing. As to reformers, we wonder why they do not spend more time tending their own gardens. Nevertheless, this philosophy is lazy and cowardly; if everyone of good faith were merely to cultivate his garden, the world would be left to be run by those of bad faith. (Maybe it is anyway.) And of course during his last twenty years at Ferney Voltaire did not merely cultivate his own garden but everyone else’s business as well.
Candide is one of the swiftest of stories. It proceeds at breakneck pace from start to finish and never flags or runs out of steam. You can read it in an hour, and the hour will be an unalloyed delight. But the story will also make you think. This is a premium that only the best entertainments provide.
chapter eight
…and Revolution
Careful readers will notice the ellipses at the beginning of the title above. And when they do they will recall the ellipses at the end of the title of Chapter 7. And in that case they will put two and two together and recognize that I wish to emphasize the connection between the books that preceded in Chapter 7, and those in Chapter 8. Putting the two abbreviated titles together we arrive at “Reason and Revolution.”
As I noted at the beginning of Chapter 7, those books were productions of an age that could be called Augustan because of the influence of the Roman poets of the Silver Age. The writers in Chapter 8 have not entirely forgotten Horace and his fellow satirists, but they are no longer controlled by the dead hand of the past. In various ways they are rebelling against the influence of the Latin classics and striking out on their own.
This is true both of the literature and the politics of what is now the eighteenth century. John Locke died in 1704, but his influence was felt throughout the hundred years that followed. Bishop Berkeley was fifteen years old in 1700, and all the other authors were born after that date. Several died in the nineteenth century. One, indeed, was born early in that century.
In many ways Locke was the most important figure of the time. First, as an apologist for the Glorious Revolution of 1688; second, as the author of a document that would profoundly influence Thomas Jefferson seventy years later; and third, as the first of the new school of philosophers known as British Empiricists. Rousseau’s influence was nearly as great, and Dr. Johnson ruled the literary world for three decades in the middle of the century. Where Dryden had been the first serious critic of Shakespeare a hundred years before, Johnson reigned supreme as critic and expositor of Shakespeare well into the nineteenth century, although he had died in 1784.
The four poets—Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge—represented here had little in common but their commonality was important. They were all rebels against the style of Pope, as it may be called. They wrote not in rhyme but in blank or free verse and chose subjects that were often entirely new. This was especially true of William Blake, who was a genuine revolutionary in poetry and a great seer in all the senses of that word. As you will see in what follows.
JOHN LOCKE
1632–1704
The Second Essay on Civil
Government
A Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke was born near Bristol in 1632, the son of an attorney who treated the boy with intelligence and great kindness; Locke’s education thus began well, a fact that he confirmed some fifty years later in his fine small book, Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Locke attended the Westminster School and Oxford, but, although he remained a fellow there for much of his life, he did not approve of the Scholastic philosophy still taught in Oxford colleges. He decided to study medicine under Robert Boyle and other natural philosophers of the new mode of thinking.
His life was circumscribed, his character mild, and his prospects modest when, in 1666, the great Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the Earl of Shaftesbury) visited Oxford. This was a turning point in Locke’s career. Shaftesbury required minor medical attention, and Locke was introduced by a mutual friend. The two men found they had much in common. Locke spent the next fifteen years in Shaftesbury’s employ, as doctor, secretary, friend, and general counselor. During these years Shaftesbury’s career was meteoric, rising to the position of the king’s First Minister and descending to charges of treason. Locke shared the pleasures and emoluments of his patron’s rise, but managed to avoid the pains of his fall.