INTRODUCTION

[Pg 5]

This oration of Victor Hugo brings out in clear contrast a strange contradiction. Our progress is but an evolution from and at the same time it is a revolt against the past.

This apparent contradiction exists because the peoples are not as yet familiar with the law of evolution in social progress. The picture of a child imprisoned within the ribs of a skeleton is the picture of the world that many have for want of this conception of time and growth. They revolt against the order of time, because time is not solid, and is only visible to the eye of the intellect.

Therefore such revolts have been necessary. They are the great revolutions and social volcanoes of which Paris has been the favorite crater in Europe. Hugo’s great soul has seized the lights and shadows of the great catastrophes[Pg 6] of the 18th century, and, their meaning visible to mankind forever in his wonderful oration.

It is a warning, a consecration, and a hope. It tells that progress is the only condition of human safety. It consecrates the noble Voltaire who made its conditions possible. It is a prophecy of hope and peace in evolution under the light of knowledge and love. It is the inspiration of every liberated soul to realize this aspiration for “peace on earth and good will to men,” which rises immeasurably higher than any Christian myth ever dreamed.

The magnificent word painting of this oration and its inspiration is one of the highest points humanity has ever reached. We are at a loss to find anything superior to it. Compare with it the great orations of Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, Chatham, Mirabeau, Henry, Webster, or the consecration of the dead at Gettysburg of Abraham Lincoln, and you will feel that those mighty voices were limited by local and temporary interests and feelings.

Hugo has spoken for all the races of earth and for all time. He has realized to the heart and eye humanity’s heaven of progress sustained by all of the powers of the good in the[Pg 7] human soul. To those who can but catch a glimpse of its mighty meaning it will be a treasure forever. No one can read and understand it and be the same person he was before.

Hugo, the greatest French poet of his century, perhaps the greatest French poet of all time, was a fervent Theist, reverencing the prophet of Nazareth as a man, and holding that “the divine tear” of Jesus and “the human smile” of Voltaire “compose the sweetness of the present civilization.” But he was perfectly free from the trammels of creeds, and he hated priestcraft, like despotism, with a perfect hatred. In one of his striking later poems, Religien et les Religions, he derides and denounces the tenets and pretensions of Christianity. The Devil, he says to the clergy, is only the monkey of superstition; your Hell is an outrage on Humanity and a blasphemy against God; and when you tell me that your deity made you in his own image, I reply that he must be very ugly.

As a man, as well as a writer, there was something magnificently grandiose about him. Subtract him from the nineteenth century, and you rob it of much of its glory. For nineteen years on a lonely channel island, an exile from[Pg 8] the land of his birth and his love, he nursed the conscience of humanity within his mighty heart, brandishing the lightnings and thunders of chastisement over the heads of the political brigands who were stifling a nation, and prophesying their certain doom. When it came, after Sedan, he returned to Paris, and for fifteen years he was idolised by its people. There was great mourning at his death, and “all Paris” attended his funeral. But true to the simplicity of his life he ordered that his body should lie in a common coffin, which contrasted vividly with the splendid procession. France buried him, as she did Gambetta; he was laid to rest in the Church of St. Genevieve, re-secularized as the pantheon for the occasion; and the interment took place without any religious rites.

Hugo’s great oration on Voltaire, in 1878, roused the ire of the Bishop of Orleans, who reprimanded him in a public letter. The free-thinking poet sent a crushing reply:

“France had to pass an ordeal. France was free. A man traitorously seized her in the night, threw her down and garrotted her. If a people could be killed, that man had slain France. He made her dead enough for him to reign over her. He began his reign, since it was a reign, with perjury, lying in wait, and massacre. He continued it by oppression, by tyranny, by despotism,[Pg 9] by an unspeakable parody of religion and justice. He was monstrous and little. The Deum Magnificat, Salvum fac, Gloria tibi, were sung for him. Who sang them? Ask yourself. The law delivered the people up to him. The church delivered God up to him. Under that man sank down right, honor, country; he had beneath his feet oath, equity, probity, the glory of the flag, the dignity of men, the liberty of citizens. That man’s prosperity disconcerted the human conscience. It lasted nineteen years. During that time you were in a palace. I was in exile. I pity you, sir.”

Despite this terrible rebuff to Bishop Dupanloup, another priest, Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris, had the temerity and bad taste to obtrude himself when Victor Hugo lay dying in 1885. Being born on February 25, 1802, the poet was in his eighty-fourth year, and expiring naturally of old age. Had the rites of the Church been performed on him in such circumstances, it would have been an insufferable farce. Yet the Archbishop wrote to Madame Lockroy, offering to bring personally “the succor and consolation so much needed in these cruel ordeals.” Monsieur Lockroy at once replied as follows:

“Madame Lockroy, who cannot leave the bedside of her father-in-law, begs me to thank you for the sentiments which you have expressed with so much eloquence and kindness. As regards[Pg 10] M. Victor Hugo, he has again said within the last few days, that he had no wish during his illness to be attended by a priest of any persuasion. We should be wanting in our duty if we did not respect his resolution.”

VICTOR HUGO’S ORATION ON VOLTAIRE

Delivered at Paris, May 30, 1878, the hundredth anniversary of Voltaire’s death.

A hundred years ago today a man died. He died immortal. He departed laden with years, laden with works, laden with the most illustrious and the most fearful of responsibilities, the responsibility of the human conscience informed and rectified. He went cursed and blessed, cursed by the past, blessed by the future; and these, gentlemen, are the two superb forms of glory. On his death bed he had, on the one hand, the acclaim of contemporaries and of posterity; on the other, that triumph of hooting and of hate which the implacable past bestows upon those who have combatted it. He was more than a man; he was an age. He had exercised a function and fulfilled a mission. He had been evidently chosen for the work which he had done, by the supreme will,[Pg 11] which manifests itself as visibly in the laws of destiny as in the laws of nature.

The eighty-four years which this man lived occupy the interval that separates the monarchy at its apogee from the revolution at its dawn. When he was born Louis XIV still reigned, when he died Louis XVI reigned already; so that his cradle could see the last rays of the great throne, and his coffin the first gleams from the great abyss. [Applause.]

Before going further, let us come to an understanding, gentlemen, upon the word abyss. There are good abysses: such are the abysses in which evil is engulfed. [Bravo!]

Gentlemen, since I have interrupted myself, allow me to complete my thought. No word imprudent or unsound will be pronounced here. We are here to perform an act of civilization. We are here to make affirmation of progress, to pay respect to philosophers for the benefits of philosophy, to bring to the eighteenth century the testimony of the nineteenth, to honor magnanimous combatants and good servants, to felicitate the noble effort of peoples, industry, science, the valiant march in advance, the toil to cement human accord; in one word, to glorify peace, that sublime, universal desire. Peace is the virtue of civilization; war is its[Pg 12] crime. [Applause.] We are here, at this grand moment, in this solemn hour to bow religiously before the moral law, and to say to the world, which hears France, this: There is only one power, conscience in the service of justice; and there is only one glory, genius in the service of truth. [Movement.] That said, I continue.

Before the revolution, gentlemen, the social structure was this:

At the base, the people:

Above the people, religion represented by the clergy;

By the side of religion, justice represented by the magistracy.

And, at that period of human society, what was the people? It was ignorance. What was religion? It was intolerance. And what was justice? It was injustice. Am I going too far in my words? Judge.

I will confine myself to the citation of two facts, but decisive.

At Toulouse, October 13, 1761, there was found in a lower story of a house, a young man hanged. The crowd gathered, the clergy fulminated, the magistracy investigated. It was a suicide; they made of it an assassination. In what interest? In the interest of religion.[Pg 13] And who was accused? The father. He was a Huguenot, and he wished to hinder his son from becoming a Catholic. There was here a moral monstrosity and a material impossibility; no matter! This father had killed his son; this old man had hanged this young man. Justice travailled, and this was the result. On the month of March, 1762, a man with white hair, Jean Calas, was conducted to a public place, stripped naked, stretched upon a wheel, the members bound upon it, the head hanging. Three men are there upon a scaffold, a magistrate, named David, charged to superintend the punishment, a priest to hold the crucifix, and the executioner with a bar of iron in his hand. The patient, stupefied and terrible, regards not the priest, and looks at the executioner. The executioner lifts the

bar of iron, and breaks one of his arms. The victim groans and swoons. The magistrate comes forward; they make the condemned inhale salts; he returns to life. Then another stroke of the bar; another groan. Calas loses consciousness; they revive him, and the executioner begins again; and, as each limb before being broken in two places receives two blows, that makes eight punishments. After the eighth swooning the priest offers him the crucifix to kiss; Calas[Pg 14] turns away his head, and the executioner gives him the coup de grace; that is to say, crushes in his chest with the thick end of the bar of iron. So died Jean Calas.

That lasted two hours. After his death, the evidence of the suicide came to light. But an assassination had been committed. By whom? By the judges. [Great sensation. Applause.]

Another fact. After the old man, the young man. Three years later, in 1765, at Abbeville, the day after a night of storm and high wind, there was found upon the pavement of a bridge an old crucifix of worm-eaten wood, which for three centuries had been fastened to the parapet. Who had thrown down this crucifix? Who had committed this sacrilege? It is not known. Perhaps a passerby. Perhaps the wind. Who is the guilty one? The Bishop of Amiens launches a monitoire. Note what a monitoire was: it was an order to all the faithful, on pain of hell, to declare what they knew or believed they knew of such or such a fact; a murderous injunction, when addressed by fanaticism to ignorance. The monitoire of the Bishop of Amiens does its work; the town gossip assumes the character of the crime charged. Justice discovers, or believes it discovers, that on the night when the crucifix was thrown down,[Pg 15] two men, two officers, one named La Barre, the other d’Etallonde, passed over the bridge of Abbeville, that they were drunk, and that they sang a guard-room song. The tribunal was the

Seneschalcy of Abbeville. The Seneschalcy of Abbeville was equivalent to the court of the Capitouls of Toulouse. It was not less just. Two orders for arrest were issued. d’Etallonde escaped, La Barre was taken. Him they delivered to judicial examination. He denied having crossed the bridge; he confessed to having sung the song. The Seneschalcy of Abbeville condemned him; he appealed to the Parliament of Paris. He was conducted to Paris; the sentence was found good and confirmed. He was conducted back to Abbeville in chains. I abridge. The monstrous hour arrives. They begin by subjecting the Chevalier de La Barre to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, to make him reveal his accomplices. Accomplices in what? In having crossed a bridge and sung a song. During the torture one of his knees was broken; his confessor, on hearing the bones crack, fainted away. The next day, June 5, 1766, La Barre was drawn to the great square of Abbeville, where flamed a penitential fire; the sentence was read to La Barre; then they cut off

one[Pg 16] of his hands; then they tore out his tongue with iron pinchers; then, in mercy, his head was cut off and thrown into the fire. So died the Chevalier de La Barre. He was nineteen years of age. [Long and profound sensation.]

Then, O Voltaire! thou didst utter a cry of horror, and it will be thine eternal glory! [Thunders of applause.]

Then didst thou enter upon the appalling trial of the past; thou didst plead, against tyrants and monsters, the cause of the human race, and thou didst gain it. Great man, blessed be thou forever! [Renewed applause.]

Gentlemen, the frightful things which I have recalled were accomplished in the midst of a polite society; its life was gay and light; people went and came; they looked neither above nor below themselves; their indifference had become carelessness; graceful poets, Saint-Aulaire, Boufflers, Gentil-Bernard, composed pretty verses; the court was all festival; Versailles was brilliant; Paris ignored what was passing; and then it was that, through religious ferocity, the judges made an old man die upon the wheel, and the priests tore out a child’s tongue for a song. [Vivid emotion. Applause.]

In the presence of this society, frivolous and dismal, Voltaire alone, having before his eyes[Pg 17] those united forces, the court, the nobility, capital; that unconscious power, the blind multitude; that terrible magistracy, so severe to subjects, so docile to the master, crushing and flattering, kneeling upon the people before the king [Bravo!] that clergy, vile melange of hypocrisy and fanaticism; Voltaire alone, I repeat it, declared war against that coalition of all the social iniquities, against that enormous and terrible world, and he accepted battle with it. And what was his weapon? That which has the lightness of the wind and the power of the thunderbolt. A pen. [Applause.]

With that weapon he fought; with that weapon he conquered.

Gentlemen, let us salute that memory.

Voltaire conquered; Voltaire waged the splendid kind of warfare, the war of one alone against all; that is to say, the grand warfare. The war of thought against matter, the war of reason against prejudice, the war of the just against the unjust, the war for the oppressed against the oppressor, the war of goodness, the war of kindness. He had the tenderness of a woman and the wrath of a hero. He was a great mind, and an immense heart. [Bravos.]

He conquered the old code and the old dogma. He conquered the feudal lord, the gothic judge,[Pg 18] the Roman priest. He raised the populace to the dignity of people. He taught, pacificated, and civilized. He fought for Sirven and Montbailly, as for Calas and La Barre; he accepted all the menaces, all the outrages, all the persecutions, calumny, and exile. He was indefatigable and immovable. He conquered violence by a smile, despotism by sarcasm, infallibility by irony, obstinacy by perseverance, ignorance by truth.

I have just pronounced the word smile. I pause at it. Smile! It is Voltaire.

Let us say it, gentlemen, pacification (apaise-ment?) is the great side of the philosopher: in Voltaire the equilibrium always reestablishes itself at last. Whatever may be his just wrath, it passes, and the irritated Voltaire always gives place to the Voltaire calmed. Then in that profound eye the SMILE appears.

That smile is wisdom. That smile, I repeat, is Voltaire. That smile sometimes becomes laughter, but the philosophic sadness tempers it. Toward the strong, it is mockery; toward the weak, it is a caress. It disquiets the oppressor, and reassures the oppressed. Against the great, it is raillery; for the little, it is pity. Ah, let us be moved by that smile! It had in it the rays of the dawn. It illuminated the[Pg 19] true, the just, the good, and what there is of worthy in the useful. It lighted up the interior of superstitions. Those ugly things it is salutary to see; he has shown them. Luminous, that smile was fruitful also. The new society, the desire for equality and concession, and that beginning of fraternity which called itself tolerance, reciprocal good-will, the just accord of men and rights, reason recognized as the supreme law, the annihilation of prejudices and fixed opinions, the serenity of souls, the spirit of indulgence and of pardon, harmony, peace—behold what has come from that great smile!

On the day—very near, without any doubt—when the identity of wisdom and clemency will be recognized, the day when the amnesty will be proclaimed, I affirm it, up there, in the stars, Voltaire will smile. [Triple salvo of applause. Cries, Vive l’amnestie!]

Gentlemen, between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred years apart, there is a mysterious relation.

To combat Pharisaism; to unmask imposture; to overthrow tyrannies, usurpations, prejudices, falsehoods, superstitions; to demolish the temple in order to rebuild it, that is to say, to replace the false by the true; to attack a ferocious magistracy; to attack a sanguinary[Pg 20] priesthood; to take a whip and drive the money-changers from the sanctuary; to reclaim the heritage of the disinherited; to protect the weak, the poor, the suffering, the overwhelmed, to struggle for the persecuted and oppressed—that was the war of Jesus Christ. And who waged that war? It was Voltaire.

The completion of the evangelical work is the philosophical work; the spirit of meekness began, the spirit of tolerance continued. Let us say it with a sentiment of profound respect: Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization. [Prolonged applause.]

Did Voltaire always smile? No. He was often indignant. You remarked it in my first words.

Certainly, gentlemen, measure, reserve, proportion are reason’s supreme law. We can say that moderation is the very respiration of the philosopher. The effort of the wise man ought to be to condense into a sort of serene certainty all the approximations of which philosophy is composed. But at certain moments, the passion for the true rises powerful and violent, and it is within its right in so doing, like the stormy winds which purify. Never, I[Pg 21] insist upon it, will any wise man shake those two august supports of social labor, justice and hope; and all will respect the judge if he is embodied justice, and all will venerate the priest if he represents hope. But if the magistracy calls itself torture, if the Church calls itself Inquisition, then Humanity looks them in the face, and says to the judge: I will none of thy law! and says to the priest: I will none of thy dogma! I will none of thy fire upon earth and thy hell in the future! [Wild sensation. Prolonged applause.] Then philosophy rises in wrath, and arraigns the judge

before justice, and the priest before God! [Redoubled applause.]

This is what Voltaire did. It was grand.

What Voltaire was, I have said; what his age was, I am about to say.