A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
VOLUME IV
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 VIII
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.
VOLTAIRE'S ARREST AT FRANKFORT Frontispiece
OLIVER CROMWELL
TIME MAKES TRUTH TRIUMPHANT
FRANCIS I. AND HIS SISTER
VOLTAIRE
A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
IN TEN VOLUMES
VOL. IV.
COUNTRY—FALSITY
COUNTRY.
SECTION I.
According to our custom, we confine ourselves on this subject to thestatement of a few queries which we cannot resolve. Has a Jew a country?If he is born at Coimbra, it is in the midst of a crowd of ignorant andabsurd persons, who will dispute with him, and to whom he makes foolishanswers, if he dare reply at all. He is surrounded by inquisitors, whowould burn him if they knew that he declined to eat bacon, and all hiswealth would belong to them. Is Coimbra his country? Can he exclaim,like the Horatii in Corneille:
Mourir pour la patrie est un si digne sort
Qu'on briguerait en foule, une si belle mort.
So high his meed who for his country dies,
Men should contend to gain the glorious prize.
He might as well exclaim, "fiddlestick!" Again! is Jerusalem hiscountry? He has probably heard of his ancestors of old; that they hadformerly inhabited a sterile and stony country, which is bordered by ahorrible desert, of which little country the Turks are at presentmasters, but derive little or nothing from it. Jerusalem is, therefore,not his country. In short, he has no country: there is not a squarefoot of land on the globe which belongs to him.
The Gueber, more ancient, and a hundred times more respectable than theJew, a