October 1737
[ Tallentyre's Commentary: Three things are always conspicuous in Voltaire when he treats of grave subjects-ัthe extreme neatness and clearness of his ideas, their rapid sequence, and the tincture of levity that inevitably creeps in somewhere. Joubert said that Voltaire was never serious. It would be truer to say he was never reverent.The paper "On Liberty " was enclosed. ]
Cirey, October, 1737.. . . You bid me, sir, give you an account of my metaphysical doubts. I therefore take the liberty of sending you an extract from a paper On Liberty. Your Royal Highness will find it honest, even if ignorant: would to God all the ignorant were as truthful!
Perhaps the idea I am always pursuing, that there is neither vice nor virtue: that neither pun-ishment nor reward is necessary: that society would be (especialIy among philosophers) an inter-change of wickedness and hypocrisy if man had not full and absolute liberty--perhaps, I say, this opinion has led me too far in this work. But if you find errors in my judgment, forgive them for the sake of the principle which gave them birth.
I always reduce, so far as I can, my metaphysics to morality. I have honestly sought, with all the attention of which I am capable, to gain some definite idea of the human soul, and I own that the result of all my researches is ignorance. I find a principle--thinking, free, active--almost like God Himself: my reason tells me that God exists: but it also tells me that I cannot know what He is.
Is it indeed likely that we should know what our soul is, when we can form no idea of light if we have had the misfortune to be born blind? I see then, with regret, that all that has been written about the soul teaches us nothing at all.
After my vain groping to discover its nature, my chief aim has been to try at least to regulate it: it is the mainspring of our clock. All Descartes' fine ideas on its elasticity tell me nothing of the nature of the spring: I am ignorant even of the cause of that flexibility: however, I wind up my timepiece, and it goes passably well.
I examine man. We must see if, of whatsoever materials he is composed, there is vice and virtue in them. That is the important point with regard to him--I do not say merely with regard to a certain society living under certain laws: but for the whole human race; for you, sir, who will one day sit on a throne, for the wood-cutter in your forest, for the Chinese doctor, and for the savage of America . Locke, the wisest metaphysician I know, while he very rightly attacks the theory of innate ideas, seems to think that there is no universel moral principle. I venture to doubt, or rather, to elucidate the great man's theory on this point. I agree with him that there is really no such thing as innate thought: whence it obviously follows that there is no principle of morality innate in our souls: but because we are not born with beards, is it just to say that we are not born (we, the inhabitants of this continent) to have beards at a certain age?
We are not born able to walk: but everyone, born with two feet, will walk one day. Thus, no one is born with the idea he must be just: but God has so made us that, at a certain age, we all agree to this truth.
It seems clear to me that God designed us to live in society--just as He has given the bees the instincts and the powers to make honey: and as our social system could not subsist without the sense of justice and injustice, He has given us the power to acquire that sense. It is true that varying customs make us attach the idea of justice to different things. What is a crime in Europe will be a virtue in Asia, just as German dishes do not please French palates: but God has so made Germans and French that they both like good living. All societies, then, will not have the same laws, but no society will be without laws. Therefore, the good of the greatest number is the immutable law of virtue, as established by all men from Pekin to Ireland: what is useful to society will be good for every country. This idea reconciles the contradictions which appear in morality. Robbery was permitted in Lacedaemonia: why? because all goods were held in common, and the man who stole from the greedy who kept for himself what the law gave to the public, was a social benefactor.
There are savages who eat men, and believe they do well. I say those savages have the same idea of right and wrong as ourselves. As we do, they make war from anger and passion: the same crimes are committed everywhere: to eat your enemies is but an extra ceremonial. The wrong does not consist in roasting, but in killing them: and I dare swear there is no cannibal who believes that he is doing right when he cuts his enemy's throat. I saw four savages from Louisiana who were brought to France in 1723. There was a woman among them of a very gentle disposition. I asked her, through an interpreter, if she had ever eaten the flesh of her enemies and if she liked it; she answered, Yes. I asked her if she would be willing to kill, or to have killed, any one of her fellow-countrymen in order to eat him: she answered, shuddering, visibly horrified by such a crime. I defy the most determined liar among travellers to dare to tell me that there is a community or a family where to break one's word is laudable. I am deeply rooted in the belief that, God having made certain animals to graze in common, others to meet occasionally two and two, rarely, and spiders to spin webs, each species has the tools necessary for the work it has to do.
Put two men on the globe, and they will only call good, right, just, what will be good for them both. Put four, and they will only consider virtuous what suits them all: and if one of the four eats his neighbour's supper, or fights or kills him, he will certainly raise the others against him. And what is true of these four men is true of the universe.