THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

i 7 8 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself whaUt is that produces
thought. I am oven ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty
like that of -A a! kins or digesting, or if I think with my head in the same
manner as I take hold or a thing? with my hands. ... I talk a great deal,
and when I have done speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what
I have said/' . .
The sarr.c day I had a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor.
I asked her if sh'e had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul
was made? She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for the
with which
briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects
the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed in the bottom of
her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu, and provided she could get some
of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she
thought herself the happiest of women. Struck with the happiness
pcor~creature ? I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed :
of this
**Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from
you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contented?"
"You are richt," he replied. "I have said to myself a thousand times that
I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet
it is a happiness which I do not desire."
TliiN reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me than anything
6 -'
that had p-wed.
Even if Phi!o?.ophy should end in the total doubt of Montaigne's fC
Que
3 **
scis-jc?* it is man's greatest adventure, and his noblest. Let us learn
to be content \vith modest advances in knowledge, rather than be forever
weaving new systems out of our mendacious imagination.
We must not say, Let us begin by inventing principles whereby we may be
able to explain even-thing; rather we must say, Let us make an exact analysis
of the matter, and then we shall try to see, with much diffidence, if it fits
in with any principle. 04 . * . The Chancellor Bacon had shown the road
which science might follow. . , . But then Descartes appeared and did just
the contrary of what he should have done: instead of studying nature, he
wished to divine her. . . This best of mathematicians made only romances
65
in philosophy. ... It is given us to calculate, to weigh, to measure, to
observe; this Is natural philosophy; almost all the rest is chimera. 66
VIII. ECRASEZ L'INFAME
Under ordinary circumstances it is probable that Voltaire would never
have passed out of the philosophic calm of this courteous scepticism to
the arduous controversies of his later years. The aristocratic circles hi
which he moved agreed so readily with his point of view that there was
no incentive to polemics; even the priests smiled with him over the dif-
^Romances, 450 f. w "What do I know?" **In Pellissier, 28, note.
"Voltaire's Prose ^ ed. Gohn and Woodward; Boston, 1918; p. 54.
^In Peilissier, 29-30.