If we judge of men by what they have done, then Voltaire is incontestably the greatest writer of modern Europe.  No one has caused, through the powerful influence of his genius alone, and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in the minds of men; his pen aroused a world, and has shaken a far mightier empire than that of Charlemagne, the European empire of a theocracy.  His genius was not force but light.  Heaven had destined him not to destroy but to illuminate, and wherever he trod light followed him, for reason (which is light) had destined him to be first her poet, then her apostle, and lastly her idol.

VI.

Voltaire was born a plebeian in an obscure street of old Paris.[5] Whilst Louis XIV. and Bossuet reigned in all the pomp of absolute power and Catholicism at Versailles, the child of the people, the Moses of incredulity, grew up amidst them:  the secrets of destiny seem thus to sport with men, and are alone suspected when they have exploded.  The throne and the altar had attained their culminating point in France.  The Duc d’Orleans, as regent, governed during an interregnum,—­one vice in the room of another, weakness instead of pride.  This life was easy and agreeable, and corruption avenged itself for the monacal austerity of the last years of Madame de Maintenon and Letellier.  Voltaire, alike precocious by audacity as by talent, began already to sport with those weapons of the mind of which he was destined, after years, to make so terrible a use.  The regent, all unsuspicious of danger, suffered him to continue, and repressed, for form’s sake alone, some of the most audacious of his outbreaks, at which he laughed even whilst he punished them.  The incredulity of the age took its rise in debauchery and not in examination, and the independence of thought was rather a libertinage of manners, than a conclusion arising from reflection.  There was vice in irreligion, and of this Voltaire always savoured.  His mission began by a contempt and derision of holy things, which, even though doomed to destruction, should be touched with respect.  From thence arose that mockery, that irony, that cynicism too often on the lips, and in the heart, of the apostle of reason; his visit to England gave assurance and gravity to his incredulity, for in France he had only known libertines, in London he knew philosophers; he became passionately attached to eternal reason, as we are all eager after what is new, and he felt the enthusiasm of the discovery.  In so active a nature as the French, this enthusiasm and this hatred could not remain in mere speculation as in the mind of a native of the north.  Scarcely was he himself persuaded, than he wished in his turn to persuade others; his whole life became a multiplied action, tending to one end, the abolition of theocracy, and the establishment of religious toleration and liberty.  He toiled at this with all the powers with which God had gifted him; he even employed falsehood (ruse), aspersion, cynicism, and immorality:  he used even those arms that respect for God and man denies to the wise; he employed his virtue, his honour, his renown, to aid in this overthrow; and his apostleship of reason had too often the appearance of a profanation of piety; he ravaged the temple instead of protecting it.