IV.

There is a reference to Voltaire’s internationalism and view of life in the closing chapter of Brandes’ work on the great Frenchman which sums up his personality in a most conspicuous manner, as follows:

“There exists a curious little planet, the highly gifted population of which is distinguished among other things by its equally thoughtless tendency to praise and condemn. It poisons its wise men, it crucifies its saviors, its heroes and thinkers it burns at the stake, its deliverer it puts into prison, then releases them, utilizes them, applauds them after they have died, and then usually puts them into a hole as one would filth or treasure.

“The giant from Sirius discovered this little planet in the universe and found that it was populated by what to him seem funny little creatures, mostly concerned with making existence unpleasant for each other, to destroy and eliminate each other. He did not underestimate their many no doubt valuable and lovable qualities. Now and then he saw them aid each other.

“But he wondered at their marked predilections to misunderstand, ill use and praise their leading personalities. Those who would drag these little beings out of that mudbed of stupidity into which they not unseldom had strayed they liked best of all to drown in this mire. Afterwards they would raise statues in honor of these same individuals, in earliest times made of wood or stone, later of gold and ivory, more recently of marble and bronze. When this was done they took pleasure in throwing all kinds of filthiness on these statues, cleanse them again, then once more defile them, and after a long period let them appear finally in their true shape and color.”

Here we have the story of Francois de Voltaire in a nutshell.

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

A Table of Contents has been added.