The Works of Voltaire/Volume 1/On Liberty
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On Liberty.
In transient life, which some few years comprise,
If happiness must be true wisdom's prize,
Who shall to me this sacred treasure send,
Does it upon myself or heaven depend?
Is it like wit, like beauty, and high birth,
A lot which prudence can't acquire on earth?
Say, am I free, or do my limbs and soul
Some other agent's secret springs control?
Is will which ever hurries me away,
Slave to the soul, or bears she sovereign sway?
Plunged in this doubt, and hopeless of relief,
I raised to heaven my eyes obscured with grief.
A spirit then to whom the God is known,
Who holds his place by the Almighty's throne,
Who still attends him, burns with constant flame,
From the high heavens celestial envoy came;
For oft propitiously those sons of light
Illume the soul obscured by error's night.
And fly the doctor's supercilious pride,
Who does in his professor's chair confide;
Who quite elate, and of his system vain,
Mistakes for truth the phantom of his brain.
Listen, said he, in pity to your grief
I'll now reveal what sure will bring relief.
What you desire to learn I shall disclose,
Instruction is his due to doubt who knows.
Know then, oh! man, that you are free as I,
This is the noblest gift of the Most High;
In the free will of each intelligence
That being's life consists, its true essence.
That's free which can conceive, will, act, design;
A glorious attribute, almost divine.
This great prerogative to God we owe,
His offspring we, His images below:
His word all powerful made heaven, earth, and seas,
The body thus the will's command obeys.
Sovereign on earth, a powerful king by thought,
Nature by thee is to thy purpose brought;
The zephyr you command, the roaring main;
You can your will and even desires restrain.
Of liberty, if we the soul divest,
What is it? 'Tis a subtile flame at best.
Were we deprived once of the power to choose,
We should in fact our very being lose;
Machines we should be by the Almighty wrought,
Curious automatons endowed with thought.
We should delusion suffer every hour,
Tools of the Deity's despotic power.
Could man, not free, God's image be esteemed?
Could works like these be profitable deemed?
Can't he then please God, can't he give offence,
Can God not punish us nor recompense?
Justice in heaven and earth must cease to dwell,
Desfontaines is not bad, not good Pucelle.[1]
Fate's impulse actuates each human breast,
And the world's chaos is by vice possessed.
The proud oppressor, miser hard of heart,
Cartouche, Mirivis, skilled in fraudful art;
The slanderer, more criminal than all,
May God the causer of his baseness call.
If I am perjured, 'tis by his command,
He plunders, robs, and murders by my hand:
'Tis thus the God who first ordained all laws,
Is made of horrors and black crimes the cause.
Could those who such a dogma dire maintain,
Speak of the devil himself in blacker strain:
Surprise seized on me, as on one at night
Who wakes surprised to see a sudden light,
Whilst yet a heavy and half-opened eye
With difficulty can the light descry.
I answered: Can it, heavenly spirit, be
That mortal man's so weak whilst he is free,
Why cannot reason's torch direct his way,
He follows it, yet often goes astray?
Why should this paragon so wise and brave,
Be always thus to vice an abject slave?
This answer straight returned the spirit kind,
What groundless grief has thus overwhelmed your mind?
Liberty sometimes is impaired in you,
But was eternal liberty your due?
Should it be equal in each time and state
You'd be a God, to be a man's your fate.
Shall a drop in the vast unbounded sea
Exclaim: Immensity was made for me?
No; all is weak in thee, to change inclined
Thy beauty, strength, the talents of thy mind.
All nature has its limits fixed below,
Shall then man's power be boundless here below?
But when your heart which various passions sway
To their strong impulse overpowered gives way;
When to their force you find your free-will bend,
You had it sure, since you perceive it end.
Whene'er you feel the burning fever's flame
By slow degrees it undermines your frame;
But that attack no sure destruction brings,
Though for a time it wears life's feeble springs.
You oft return from death's half-opened gate
More healthy, temperate, and more sedate,
Your great prerogative more strictly scan,
Liberty is the soul's health in a man.
Sometimes its efficacy may subside
Subdued by rage, ambition, love, or pride.
The thirst for knowledge may its power control,
Many are the diseases of the soul.
But you against them may yourself defend,
Open this book, consult that learned friend;
A friend's the gift of heaven, a blessing rare,
To Sylva,[2] Vernage, Helvetius repair.
May heaven, when men are into vice betrayed,
Send such assistants powerful to their aid.
Is there that idiot among humankind
Who wishes not in danger, aid to find?
Behold the mortal who free-will arraigns,
And blindly a blind destiny maintains,
See how he ponders, weighs, deliberates;
See how he loads with blame the man he hates;
How he seeks vengeance when with passion warm;
How he corrects his son and would reform.
From hence 'tis evident he thought him free,
His system and his actions disagree.
His heart belied his tongue at every word
In striving to explain this dogma so absurd:
He owns the sentiment he seems to brave;
He acts as free, discourses as a slave.
Since free, thank God who freedom did bestow,
To him the bliss that makes you blessed you owe;
Avoid with caution all the vain contest
Of those that tyrannize the human breast;
Firm in thy principles, and just in heart,
Error compassionate, with truth take part.
Do not to zeal's suggestions fierce give way,
He is a brother who is led astray;
To be humane as well as prudent strive;
From others' bliss thy happiness derive.
The angel's words resounding in my ear,
My mind was raised above this mortal sphere;
I had inquired, at length presumptuous grown,
Of things revealed to heavenly minds alone:
Of spirit pure, of matter, light, and space
The elastic spring, eternity, time's race,
Strange questions, which so frequently confound
Mairant the subtle, Gravesende the profound,[3]
And which Descartes in vain strove to explore,
Whose vortices are now believed no more.
But then the spirit vanished from my sight
And sought the regions of eternal light.
He was not sent me from the ethereal sky,
To teach the secrets deep of the Most High:
My eyes by too great light had been oppressed,
He said enough, in saying, man be blessed.
If happiness must be true wisdom's prize,
Who shall to me this sacred treasure send,
Does it upon myself or heaven depend?
Is it like wit, like beauty, and high birth,
A lot which prudence can't acquire on earth?
Say, am I free, or do my limbs and soul
Some other agent's secret springs control?
Is will which ever hurries me away,
Slave to the soul, or bears she sovereign sway?
Plunged in this doubt, and hopeless of relief,
I raised to heaven my eyes obscured with grief.
A spirit then to whom the God is known,
Who holds his place by the Almighty's throne,
Who still attends him, burns with constant flame,
From the high heavens celestial envoy came;
For oft propitiously those sons of light
Illume the soul obscured by error's night.
And fly the doctor's supercilious pride,
Who does in his professor's chair confide;
Who quite elate, and of his system vain,
Mistakes for truth the phantom of his brain.
Listen, said he, in pity to your grief
I'll now reveal what sure will bring relief.
What you desire to learn I shall disclose,
Instruction is his due to doubt who knows.
Know then, oh! man, that you are free as I,
This is the noblest gift of the Most High;
In the free will of each intelligence
That being's life consists, its true essence.
That's free which can conceive, will, act, design;
A glorious attribute, almost divine.
This great prerogative to God we owe,
His offspring we, His images below:
His word all powerful made heaven, earth, and seas,
The body thus the will's command obeys.
Sovereign on earth, a powerful king by thought,
Nature by thee is to thy purpose brought;
The zephyr you command, the roaring main;
You can your will and even desires restrain.
Of liberty, if we the soul divest,
What is it? 'Tis a subtile flame at best.
Were we deprived once of the power to choose,
We should in fact our very being lose;
Machines we should be by the Almighty wrought,
Curious automatons endowed with thought.
We should delusion suffer every hour,
Tools of the Deity's despotic power.
Could man, not free, God's image be esteemed?
Could works like these be profitable deemed?
Can't he then please God, can't he give offence,
Can God not punish us nor recompense?
Justice in heaven and earth must cease to dwell,
Desfontaines is not bad, not good Pucelle.[1]
Fate's impulse actuates each human breast,
And the world's chaos is by vice possessed.
The proud oppressor, miser hard of heart,
Cartouche, Mirivis, skilled in fraudful art;
The slanderer, more criminal than all,
May God the causer of his baseness call.
If I am perjured, 'tis by his command,
He plunders, robs, and murders by my hand:
'Tis thus the God who first ordained all laws,
Is made of horrors and black crimes the cause.
Could those who such a dogma dire maintain,
Speak of the devil himself in blacker strain:
Surprise seized on me, as on one at night
Who wakes surprised to see a sudden light,
Whilst yet a heavy and half-opened eye
With difficulty can the light descry.
I answered: Can it, heavenly spirit, be
That mortal man's so weak whilst he is free,
Why cannot reason's torch direct his way,
He follows it, yet often goes astray?
Why should this paragon so wise and brave,
Be always thus to vice an abject slave?
This answer straight returned the spirit kind,
What groundless grief has thus overwhelmed your mind?
Liberty sometimes is impaired in you,
But was eternal liberty your due?
Should it be equal in each time and state
You'd be a God, to be a man's your fate.
Shall a drop in the vast unbounded sea
Exclaim: Immensity was made for me?
No; all is weak in thee, to change inclined
Thy beauty, strength, the talents of thy mind.
All nature has its limits fixed below,
Shall then man's power be boundless here below?
But when your heart which various passions sway
To their strong impulse overpowered gives way;
When to their force you find your free-will bend,
You had it sure, since you perceive it end.
Whene'er you feel the burning fever's flame
By slow degrees it undermines your frame;
But that attack no sure destruction brings,
Though for a time it wears life's feeble springs.
You oft return from death's half-opened gate
More healthy, temperate, and more sedate,
Your great prerogative more strictly scan,
Liberty is the soul's health in a man.
Sometimes its efficacy may subside
Subdued by rage, ambition, love, or pride.
The thirst for knowledge may its power control,
Many are the diseases of the soul.
But you against them may yourself defend,
Open this book, consult that learned friend;
A friend's the gift of heaven, a blessing rare,
To Sylva,[2] Vernage, Helvetius repair.
May heaven, when men are into vice betrayed,
Send such assistants powerful to their aid.
Is there that idiot among humankind
Who wishes not in danger, aid to find?
Behold the mortal who free-will arraigns,
And blindly a blind destiny maintains,
See how he ponders, weighs, deliberates;
See how he loads with blame the man he hates;
How he seeks vengeance when with passion warm;
How he corrects his son and would reform.
From hence 'tis evident he thought him free,
His system and his actions disagree.
His heart belied his tongue at every word
In striving to explain this dogma so absurd:
He owns the sentiment he seems to brave;
He acts as free, discourses as a slave.
Since free, thank God who freedom did bestow,
To him the bliss that makes you blessed you owe;
Avoid with caution all the vain contest
Of those that tyrannize the human breast;
Firm in thy principles, and just in heart,
Error compassionate, with truth take part.
Do not to zeal's suggestions fierce give way,
He is a brother who is led astray;
To be humane as well as prudent strive;
From others' bliss thy happiness derive.
The angel's words resounding in my ear,
My mind was raised above this mortal sphere;
I had inquired, at length presumptuous grown,
Of things revealed to heavenly minds alone:
Of spirit pure, of matter, light, and space
The elastic spring, eternity, time's race,
Strange questions, which so frequently confound
Mairant the subtle, Gravesende the profound,[3]
And which Descartes in vain strove to explore,
Whose vortices are now believed no more.
But then the spirit vanished from my sight
And sought the regions of eternal light.
He was not sent me from the ethereal sky,
To teach the secrets deep of the Most High:
My eyes by too great light had been oppressed,
He said enough, in saying, man be blessed.
- ↑ The abbé Pucelle, a celebrated counsellor of parliament. The abbé Desfontaines, a man who often incurred the censure of the law. He kept open shop, where he sold panegyric and satire to those who bid highest.
- ↑ A famous physician of Paris.
- ↑ Mr. Gravesende, professor at Leyden; the first who taught Newton's discoveries. Mr. Dortous de Mairant, a gentleman of Béziers, secretary to the Academy of Sciences at Paris.