HOME First Aid on Voltaire's Letters
Concerning the English Nation
Voltaire (1694-1778) rivaled Franklin as the best-selling international author of the Enlightenment. Voltaire's vigorous interest in scientific progress, however, remained that of a celebrant rather than an experimenter. Committed though he was to a meliorist ideology, Voltaire remained skeptical of mankind's ability to bring it to successful fruition. Nonetheless, he subjected Europe's Ancien Regime and its allies to a series of critiques, both sardonic and withering, in a veritable avalanche of writings. Voltaire did not live to see the French Revolution or the ascendancy of Napoleon, 1789-1815, which would surely have rattled his commitment to human progress. In England's Glorious Revolution (1688-9), however, Voltaire perceived events which, if replicated across the Channel, would confer benefits of political freedom and religious toleration in France and other European countries. Voltaire was, in short, a passionate Anglophile. "Why can't the world be more like England?" Voltaire demanded in 1756. Franklin was also an Anglophile, but, unlike Voltaire, he found local problems in America that made him recant his enthusiasm for the nascent British Empire.
Voltaire's "Anglophilia"--a passion for all things English--can be surveyed in Anglomania: A European Love Affair (New York: Random House, 1996) in which Ian Buruma devotes a lively chapter to the French thinker. "By G-- I do love the Ingles," Voltaire once exclaimed, "G--d dammee, if I don't love them better than the French, by G--." In 1726 Voltaire first traveled to England from France. He was escaping from a quarrel over an actress during which he had been beaten by a French nobleman (the word voltairiser, meaning to thrash, was born during the contretemps) and had subsequently been imprisoned in the Bastille.
Until 1728 Voltaire lived in London 1728 where he mixed with famous writers, politicians, and clergymen. He improved his command of the language with frequent visits to the theatre. His Letters (L) appeared first in English (1733), then in French (1734). Voltaire's "Remarks . . . on the Manners and Customs of the British Nation" (p. 5) may seem idiosyncratic but they cut to the quick of the country's social, political, and intellectual life.
Voltaire begins with religion, because religion was so important a topic at the time and because V wished to question the place of established religion (Roman Catholicism) in France. L opens with four letters "On the Quakers," before Voltaire turns his attention to the established church (which occupies a single letter, five: "On the Church of England") and to other sects--Presbyterians and Socinians--to which he devotes letters six and seven.
V's decision to begin L with a discussion of The Religious Society of Friends or "Quakers" was bold and may seem quirky today. Would an author begin a book on contemporary America with the Mormons? The Quakers were very different from the Mormons but their movement too had begun tumultuously. Quakerism started during the Puritan Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century; George Fox, its most prominent early leader, started preaching in the late 1640s. Charles I was executed on January 20, 1649. During the 1650s, the movement spread rapidly, despite persecution by England's Puritan government. Persecution intensified after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, although the Toleration Act of 1689 (passed during the Glorious Revolution which ousted Charles's Catholic and pro-Quaker brother James II) guaranteed Friends freedom of worship. Charles II had also been well-disposed to the Quakers and had paid off a gambling debt to William Penn's father with the land that became Pennsylvania. Not unlike the Mormons in America, the Quakers quickly became rich on both sides of the Atlantic because they were honest and industrious. Their religious principles complicated their involvement in government, as Franklin has occasion to complain.
In his decision to devote his four opening letters to the Quakers, V registers the unique place of the Religious Society in religious history. "Holy rollers" had become respectable and wealthy, but they retained many of their idiosyncratic manners which had first provoked persecution. V discerns that religious toleration--not yet freedom of religion--made economic sense and led to a welcome cultural diversity.
In L1, V notes the continuing plainness of Quaker dress, speech, manners, and households. Wealth had temptations but most of the Friends withstood them (although Penn's sons in Philadelphia and some of their contemporaries returned to the Church of England). The Friends had no sacraments, refused to take oaths, and espoused pacificism. They hated church bells.
In L2, V attends a "silent meeting," although he drolly notes outburst of "babbling" in the congregation. He seems gratified that the Quakers have no priests or ministers. He notes their dependence upon the "immediate revelation" of the "light within."
In L3, V gives a sketch of Quaker history from the time of George Fox. He recounts the "sufferings" Quakers endured for their shibboleths. V was a deist who did not believe in revealed religion, so his reference to Quaker "grimaces" and the similarity of the Friends' inspiration to that of pagan priestesses (Swift has similar passages) reflects his skepticism about all revelation.
In L4, V discusses William Penn and the establishment of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia He notes Penn's attempts to deal honorably with Native Americans. He praises the religious toleration Friends extended to Catholics in Pennsylvania (by contrast with contemporary England; Roman Catholics had not enjoyed the benefits of the Toleration Act of 1689). He comments that Quakerism "dwindles away daily in England" (p. 25) and imagines a more secure future in America. The Religious Society has dwindled in numbers, but it continues to offer a potent (but pacifist) moral, social, and cultural "testimony."
V confines England's official church to a single letter. L5 proves far more sketchy than L1-4, and V seems chiefly to emphasize that the Wars of Religion have ended in England. His comments on the clergy and the Church of England seem designed as sideswipes at religion as established in France.
The Presbyterians of L5 had been a radical sect during the Puritan Revolution and V mentions their Calvinism (still ferociously espoused in Northern Ireland). L5 seems mainly designed to introduce V's celebration of the Royal Exchange (p. 30) as a place where people of every religious persuasion, including Jews and Muslims, could conduct business which benefitted the country economically.
The Unitarians of L6 most closely resemble V in belief. V emphasizes that Newton among other leading intellectuals (he does not mention Milton or Locke) had been Unitarians who were skeptical of religious revelation as recorded by the Bible. V does not dwell upon the religious persecution experienced by Unitarians even after 1689. The Quakers were repeatedly accused of being crypto-Unitarians (or crypto-Catholics).
V begins his political commentary in L7 with a discussion of Parliament which offers more liberty to Englishmen than most political institutions in mainland Europe. In L8 and 9 V praises England's mixed government (Kings, Lords, Commons) and discusses the evolution of liberty since Magna Carta. England is better than France (where tyranny and wooden shoes prevail [41]). In L10 V praises England for encouraging trade (unlike the snooty French).
In L11 V devotes more space to progress in medicine (namely inoculation) than he had devoted to the Church of England. Small-pox was a disfiguring and often deadly disease when V wrote; today it exists only in scientific laboratories. He describes "pre-scientific" attempts to cope with the disease, spearheaded by a woman, which preceded Edward Jenner's establishment of a vaccine from cows (vacca is Latin for cow) at the end of the century. Trading nations can be relied upon to be at the forefront of developing knowledge.
In L12 V celebrates England's tradition of scientific exploration and progress which, like many others, he dates from the work of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. Scientists like Bacon and Newton are greater heroes than are politicians or generals. Bacon is "the Father of Experimental Philosophy" and helped disclose "a new World" comparable to those discovered by Columbus (p. 51). V praises "the mechanical Instinct" whose greatest avatar was (as yet unbeknownst to V) Franklin of Philadelphia (p. 51). Technology is more important than natural philosophy or pure science. Bacon opposed superstition.
V praises Locke in L 13. Locke was methodical and judicious, a greater philosopher than the Ancients or medieval schoolmen. Descartes merely wrote "the Romance of the Soul" (56) whereas Locke demolished innate ideas and superstitions. V defends Locke from the accusation of intending "to destroy Religion" (57). V surveys contemporary debates about souls and bodies, clocks and mechanisms (58). V drolly ponders Descartes's theory of the beast-machine (59). V concludes the chapter by contrasting demonstrations, logical and scientific, with superstitions. His final words concern the Franciscans.
In L14-17 V compares Descartes and Newton, to the detriment of the former. These letters should be read carefully; although V was French, he exposes the philosophical limitations of his fellow country-man, and he provides a contemporary commentary which should be read in conjunction with Introducing Descartes and Introducing Newton. Descartes was a dreamer whose works are now unread in England; his geometry was pathbreaking but led him into romantic and implausible hypotheses (64-5) Newton is a Sage who offered genuine reasons and palpable evidence for his cosmology. Descartes's vortices are unreal whereas Newton's scheme of gravitational attractions is demonstrable (69-70). On p. 73, however, V's enthusiasm for Newton leads him to subsume gravity into mere mechanics.
"The Philosophers of the last Age found out a new Universe," declares V (p. 76). V shows why Newton's optical experiments were greater than those of Descartes in L16. In L17 V surveys the history of cosmological observations and offers ordinary readers an account of Newton's forays into "the Geometry of Infinites" (p. 81). V's desire to communicate with contemporary English and French readers sometimes outruns his ability to register scientific nuance, but his account offers an important rhetorical introduction to the debates of the time.
The remaining letters concern English literature and will be less compelling to students in this class. As a neoclassicist who praised Pope, V did not appreciate Shakespeare; elsewhere he described Hamlet as the work of a drunkard (un ivrogne). But note his comments on Swift (pp. 108-109). V completes his work with L24 which discusses the Royal Society. V does not see the Society (as do many historians today) as instrumental in spreading the ideology of the Scientific Revolution. Indeed he dwells upon the potential contribution of Swift (who loathed the Royal Society) to an institution comparable to the Academie Francaise that would protect the purity of the English language (pp. 117-118).