supposed direct descendant of the great dramatist, and set about teaching her and preparing her a dot that she might make a "good" marriage. To this end, he wrote and published for her benefit his Commentaires sur Corneille (1764), whose tendency toward severity showed at least that in dramatic criticism Voltaire did not limit his opposition to the foreigner Shakespeare. At this same time he was leaving no stone unturned in the interest of the unfortunate Calas family. Next came the Sirven case, more difficult because of less striking injustice-Sirven had prudently fled from the jurisdiction of Toulouse. La Barre, the seventeen-year-old lad who had failed in reverence toward a passing procession of the Blessed Sacrament, accused also of having sung ribald songs and of possessing works by Voltaire, was beheaded (1766), after torture. The sentence decreeing that his tongue should be cut out was commuted. Again Voltaire's indignation flamed, this time without avail. The pitiable condition of the serfs of Mont Jura engaged his attention; likewise, as we shall see, the case of General Lally, who was finally put to death on an exaggerated charge of treason. Voltaire never lost, what by most people is so easily lost with increasing age: namely, the capacity to wax hotly indignant over abuses and to demand with effective insistence their reform. Hence he welcomed the appearance in 1764 of the Italian Beccaria's important Treatise on Crimes and Punishments, which did so much to correct the excessively cruel and antiquated judicial procedure of the time," and himself wrote a commentary on it two years later." 78

VOLTAIRE AND RELIGION

His warfare against the "infâme" continued, if anything, more hotly than ever. The Examen important de milord Bolingbroke and the Questions de Zapata came in 1767, the former filled with more

77 With its practical assumption of the guilt of the accused, its use of partial or "fractional" bits of circumstantial "proof" added together to make a whole proof, its denial of the right of advice of counsel, and its use of torture even before conviction in order to get evidence and force confessions.

78 An edition of the Traité des délits et des peines in the Bibliothèque Nationale has on its title page "Philadelphie, 1766," and is accompanied by a "Commentaire. par un Avocat de Province (Voltaire)." If the indicated place of publication is authentic, this edition is an evidence of the early influence in America both of Beccaria and Voltaire.

than usual hostility toward Jesus, as well as toward the Old Testament and the "christicoles," the latter work raising embarrassing questions against a literal interpretation of many scriptural passages, as well as hitting in passing at the infallibility of the Pope. The Défense de mon oncle and the Dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers of the same year are not dissimilar in spirit. La Bible enfin expliquée of 1776 utilized the daily Bible readings begun-with not too pious intent-nearly thirty years before with Mme du Châtelet at Cirey and amplified by the plunge into theological literature at the monastery of Senones 79 with his friend Dom Calmet, himself a learned, though naïve, commentator of the Bible. Needless to say, the spirit of Voltaire is as far as possible from that of the pious priest. In the works above mentioned, Voltaire discusses the authorship of the so-called Mosaic Pentateuch, pounces with delight upon contradictions or improbabilities in the Biblical books, rejects the miraculous and the supernatural, opposes the idea of revelation and attacks everything in the Old Testament which in the light of higher modern standards must be judged primitive and unethical.

Voltaire's learning was broad, but superficial; whatever appreciation of the relativity of moral standards he had was here inoperative because not yet accepted by the church which he was combatting; irreverance, an often repulsive mockery, a seeming lack of some of the finer subtleties are here to the fore. This is the Voltaire who has gone down to history as the bête noire of reverent spirits in church or out. Yet his work had to be done. His very violence was necessary in order to get him a hearing. Who would have listened then to a calm, reverent, balanced treatment of these questions, free from the spice of wit and mockery with which Voltaire compelled an audience, even while he roused the most violent antagonisms? The inadequacies of his Biblical criticism are the outcome of the naïve literalness and irrationalism of his opponents. To them, he gave, as Renan said, a "réponse mauvaise en soi, mais accommodée à ce qu'il s'agit de combattre; réponse arriérée à une science arriérée." 80 The destructive part of Voltaire's criticism

79 Voltaire's Biblical criticism was fortified and made more serious by contact with the scholarship of the Protestant pastors of Geneva. 80 Cited in Moland, I, p. lviii.

has either been accepted or else proved false by all well trained and impartial students of the Bible and of comparative religion. There is now among most leaders of modern thought less fear of the rational than there was in Voltaire's time; the supernatural and the miraculous no longer appear as necessary evidences of the divine; revelation itself, working through human channels, becomes psychologically intelligible, when interpreted in broader and less literal terms; ethical criteria alone appear the convincing proof of Christ's divinity. The advance guard of liberal theological thought no longer needs Voltaire's work, but, as M. Lanson has said, "sans Voltaire, Renan était impossible. Il a fallu nier avec colère avant de pouvoir nier avec sympathie." 81 Religion too, the modern student has learned, may be studied rationally, provided it be approached, as all subjects must be for sound results, with intelligent sympathy.

But the work of Voltaire in one sense is not yet complete. The great public at large is in general divided between two extremes; on the one hand a well-meaning but uncritical religious belief, on the other an equally unintelligent and perhaps more barren hostility. The latter have followed only the narrower side of Voltaire without seeing that there are also in his work many passages which show a broader, more appreciative viewpoint; the former are quite unconscious of the fact that many questions now so vehemently discussed were settled by Voltaire a hundred and fifty years ago. The struggle of Voltaire and the Church was the struggle to discover whether the Christian faith could not only survive, but be invigorated by the untrammeled examination of that faith and its great historic documents, a struggle which, seemingly finished at least in its main outlines during the closing years of the nineteenth century, is only beginning to reach down in its effects to the public at large. To understand Voltaire and to do him justice, religion must not be identified solely with any church; it should be thought of rather as an ideal, toward which our human and imperfect churches, along also with many other social movements outside of the churches, only slowly strive.82

81 G. Lanson, Hist. de la litt. fr. (1912), p. 772.

82 With a similar thought, Diderot wrote: "Quand il y aurait un