A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
VOLUME II
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 VI
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.
THE BASTILLE—Frontispiece
A TYPE OF BEAUTY
AN ASTROLOGER
ALEXANDER'S TRIUMPH
"For four hundred years the symbol ofoppression. Within its walls the noblest had perished. It was aperpetual threat, it was the last and often the first argument of kingand priest."VOLTAIRE
A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.
IN TEN VOLUMES
VOL. II
APPEARANCE—CALENDS
APPEARANCE.
Are all appearances deceitful? Have our senses been given us only tokeep us in continual delusion? Is everything error? Do we live in adream, surrounded by shadowy chimeras? We see the sun setting when he isalready below the horizon; before he has yet risen we see him appear. Asquare tower seems to be round. A straight stick, thrust into the water,seems to be bent.
You see your face in a mirror and the image appears to be behind theglass: it is, however, neither behind nor before it. This glass, whichto the sight and the touch is so smooth and even, is no other than anunequal congregation of projections and cavities. The finest and fairestskin is a kind of bristled network, the openings of which areincomparably larger than the threads, and enclose an infinite number ofminute hairs. Under this network there are liquors incessantly passing,and from it there issue continual exhalations which cover the wholesurface. What we call large is to an elephant very small, and what wecall small is to insects a world. The same motion which would be rapidto a snail would be very slow in the eye of an eagle. This rock, whichis impenetrable by steel, is a sieve consisting of more pores thanmatter, and containing a thousand avenues of prodigious width leading toits centre, in which are lodged multitudes of animals, which may, foraught we know, think themselves the ma