A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
VOLUME V
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 IX
E.R. DuMONT
PARIS—LONDON—NEW YORK—CHICAGO
1901
The WORKS of VOLTAIRE
"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundredyears apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say itwith a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed thesweetness of the present civilization."
VICTOR HUGO.
SANS SOUCI Frontispiece
A LAND STORM
THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM
DESCARTES
A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.
IN TEN VOLUMES
Vol. V
FANATICISM—GREGORY VII
FANATICISM.
SECTION I.
Fanaticism is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religionsubservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of thepassions.
It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views,or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within whichalone they were intended to operate. Their laws are made merely for aselect society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferredby ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institutionshould take place, some accommodation to persons, places, andcircumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds,constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock,have received a system with equal ardor, and become its apostles, andeven its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands.Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to theirprejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the newyoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings andmitigations: hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by whichall are urged on to vehemence and madness—the one party for servitudeand the other for freedom.
Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altarsplaced under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a dev