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The Nature Doctrine of Voltaire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

George R. Havens
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Extract

The importance of the appeal to Nature in the eighteenth century is well known, but the subject as a whole is so vast that it still awaits its historian. The present article aims to present in brief space the results of a study of this particular topic in the works of Voltaire. It is evident at once that in Voltaire the nature doctrine has less importance than it does in Diderot or in Rousseau or in a host of lesser writers, but this is not to say that it is negligible. On the contrary, it is much more influential in his thinking than one might at first be inclined to suspect, and it leads him to express ideas which one does not ordinarily associate with his name. Yet it is not at all surprising, on second thought, that Voltaire in this respect, as in others, should share the mental attitude of predecessors and contemporaries. Rabelais and Montaigne had appealed to nature. Fénelon had drawn for the readers of Télémaque an idyllic picture of Bétique and its inhabitants. Montesquieu's Troglodytes in the Lettres persanes make one think, not only of Rousseau, but of El Dorado in Voltaire's Candide. Then there was the Epicurean school of the Temple, with which Voltaire was in close contact when he was a youth of eighteen or twenty. In that group were men like Chaulieu and La Fare,1 who were imbued with a natural religion, which appears in Voltaire as early as 1716 and never disappears from his thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , December 1925 , pp. 852 - 862
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 Cf. especially Poésies inédites du Marquis de la Fare, pub. par Gustave L. Van Roosbroeck, Paris, 1924, pp. 7, 9, 10, 11, 18, 19, 36-37.

2 Voltaire, Œuvres (Moland éd.), X, 232.

3 Ibid., VIII, 172.

4Ibid., VIII, 191-92.

5 Ibid., VIII, 428.

6 Ibid., VIII, 438. Cf. second variant on the same page. Cf. also the Avant-Propos sur la Henriade par le Roi de Prusse (1739) (pub. 1756), VIII, 27: “La nature ne nous forma point assurément,” etc.

7 Ibid., IX, 379. Cf. again Frederick's preface to the Henriade, VIII, 27, and also Corr. XXXVII, 145, the verse, “Et tout est égal en ce monde.”

8 Voltaire may have in mind, not only contemporary pre-Rousseauistic statements, but also such passages as are to be found in Lucretius regarding the gradual wearing-out of nature and of life in general.

9 Voltaire, Œuvres, VIII, 459. Cf. ibid., XIX, 330-31.

10 The text as it stands is certainly not later than 1748; it first appeared in 1738.

11 Voltaire, Œuvres, XXII, 419, 420-21. For this absoluteness of morality, cf. Renan's dictum, “le bien, c'est le bien; le mal, c'est le mal” (Essais de morale et de critique, Lévy, 7e éd., p. ii).

12 Voltaire, op. cit., DC, 440.

13 Ibid., IX, 444-45. Cf. J.-J. Rousseau, “Conscience! conscience! instinct divin, immortelle et céleste voix,” etc. (Emile, Hachette, II, 262).

14 Voltaire, Œuvres, XXXVIII, 447.

15 Ibid., XXI, 171, 172.

16 Ibid., XXI, 174. On the sources of Voltaire's details on El Dorado, see the authoritative critical edition of Candide by André Morize (Hachette, 1913).

17 Ibid., XXI, 174-75.

18 Ibid., XXI, 175.

19 Ibid., X, 84.

20 Ibid., XI, 19-20.

21 Ibid., XI, 21.

22 Ibid., XIX, 378-79.

23 Cf. J.-J. Rousseau, Confessions (Hachette), VIII, 327.

24 Voltaire, Œuvres, XI, 22

25 J.-J. Rousseau, Œuvres (Hachette), I, 98. Cf. Emile, Œuvres, II, 193.

26 Voltaire, Œuvres, XXVII, 338.

27 Cf. J.-J. Rousseau, who puts ambition at the climactic point in man's downward course. Discours sur l'inégalité, Œuvres, I,113.

28 Voltaire, Œuvres, XX, 53-56. Cf. the equally vigorous and clear attack under the article Homme, XIX, 381.

29 Cf. George R. Havens, “The Theory of ‘Natural Goodness’ in Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse,” Mod. Lang. Notes, Nov. 1921 (Vol. XXXVI), pp. 385-94, and “The Theory of ‘Natural Goodness’ in Rousseau's Confessions,” ibid., May 1923 (Vol. XXXVIII), pp. 257-66. See also three studies of this theory in Rousseau's whole work, in the Revue d'Histoire litt. de la France (1924-1925).

30 See various attacks on the “péché originel” in Voltaire, Œuvres, IX, 359-360; XVII, 585; XX, 151-156; XXV, 379; XXVI, 341-42; XXVII, 460.

31 Ibid., XXI, 284. Cf. p. 278. Cf. Georges Pellissier, Voltaire philosophe (Paris, 1908), 194.

32Ibid., XIX, 383-84.

33 Ibid., XXVIII, 462.

34 Ibid., XX, 115-16. Cf. XXI, 55 4-55, 578-79.

35 Apart from divine revelation.

36 Voltaire, Œuvres, L, 75 (Correspondance, 1776).

37 Ibid., XIX, 605-06 (1771).

38 Cf. the passage in the Philosophe ignorant in which Voltaire on this point disagrees with his favorite philosopher, John Locke. Œuvres, XXVI, 85.

39 As it has naturally been impossible to cite all passages bearing upon this subject, reference is here made to those omitted. They are confirmatory of what has previously been said, but in the main of minor importance. Of special interest is the passage in which Voltaire, perhaps not altogether seriously, expresses admiration for irregular gardens, “à l'anglaise,” X, 307-08.

Œuvres, VI, 310; VIII, 464-65, 544, 545, 559; XI, 307; XII, 370; XV, 430; XIX, 397 (repeated in XXVIII, 92); XX, 554; XXVII, 351, 570; XXVIII, 98, 100; XXIX, 456; XXX, 472; XLV, 345.