The entry "War" from Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, first published in 1764
All animals are perpetually at war; every species is born to
devour another. There are none, even to sheep and doves, who do not
swallow a prodigious number of imperceptible animals. Males of the
same species make war for the females, like Menelaus and Paris.
Air, earth, and the waters, are fields of destruction.
It seems that God having given reason to men, this reason should
teach them not to debase themselves by imitating animals,
particularly when nature has given them neither arms to kill their
fellow-creatures, nor instinct which leads them to suck their
blood.
Yet murderous war is so much the dreadful lot of man, that
except two or three nations, there are none but what their ancient
histories represent as armed against one another. Towards Canada,
man and warrior are synonymous; and we have seen, in our
hemisphere, that thief and soldier were the same thing. Manichæans!
behold your excuse.
The most determined of flatterers will easily agree, that war
always brings pestilence and famine in its train, from the little
that he may have seen in the hospitals of the armies of Germany, or
the few villages he may have passed through in which some great
exploit of war has been performed.
That is doubtless a very fine art which desolates countries,
destroys habitations, and in a common year causes the death of from
forty to a hundred thousand men. This invention was first
cultivated by nations assembled for their common good; for
instance, the diet of the Greeks declared to the diet of Phrygia
and neighboring nations, that they intended to depart on a thousand
fishers’ barks, to exterminate them if they could.
The assembled Roman people judged that it was to their interest
to go and fight, before harvest, against the people of Veii or the
Volscians. And some years after, all the Romans, being exasperated
against all the Carthaginians, fought them a long time on sea and
land. It is not exactly the same at present.
A genealogist proves to a prince that he descends in a right
line from a count, whose parents made a family compact, three or
four hundred years ago, with a house the recollection of which does
not even exist. This house had distant pretensions to a province,
of which the last possessor died of apoplexy. The prince and his
council see his right at once. This province, which is some hundred
leagues distant from him, in vain protests that it knows him not;
that it has no desire to be governed by him; that to give laws to
its people, he must at least have their consent; these discourses
only reach as far as the ears of the prince, whose right is
incontestable. He immediately assembles a great number of men who
have nothing to lose, dresses them in coarse blue cloth, borders
their hats with broad white binding, makes them turn to the right
and left, and marches to glory.
Other princes who hear of this equipment, take part in it, each
according to his power, and cover a small extent of country with
more mercenary murderers than Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Bajazet
employed in their train. Distant people hear that they are going to
fight, and that they may gain five or six sous a day, if they will
be of the party; they divide themselves into two bands, like
reapers, and offer their services to whoever will employ them.
These multitudes fall upon one another, not only without having
any interest in the affair, but without knowing the reason of it.
We see at once five or six belligerent powers, sometimes three
against three, sometimes two against four, and sometimes one
against five; all equally detesting one another, uniting with and
attacking by turns; all agree in a single point, that of doing all
the harm possible.
The most wonderful part of this infernal enterprise is that each
chief of the murderers causes his colors to be blessed, and
solemnly invokes God before he goes to exterminate his neighbors.
If a chief has only the fortune to kill two or three thousand men,
he does not thank God for it; but when he has exterminated about
ten thousand by fire and sword, and, to complete the work, some
town has been levelled with the ground, they then sing a long song
in four parts, composed in a language unknown to all who have
fought, and moreover replete with barbarism. The same song serves
for marriages and births, as well as for murders; which is
unpardonable, particularly in a nation the most famous for new
songs.
Natural religion has a thousand times prevented citizens from
committing crimes. A well-trained mind has not the inclination for
it; a tender one is alarmed at it, representing to itself a just
and avenging God; but artificial religion encourages all cruelties
which are exercised by troops—conspiracies, seditions,
pillages, ambuscades, surprises of towns, robberies, and murder.
Each marches gaily to crime, under the banner of his saint.
A certain number of orators are everywhere paid to celebrate
these murderous days; some are dressed in a long black close coat,
with a short cloak; others have a shirt above a gown; some wear two
variegated stuff streamers over their shirts. All of them speak for
a long time, and quote that which was done of old in Palestine, as
applicable to a combat in Veteravia.
The rest of the year these people declaim against vices. They
prove, in three points and by antitheses, that ladies who lay a
little carmine upon their cheeks, will be the eternal objects of
the eternal vengeances of the Eternal; that Polyeuctus and Athalia
are works of the demon; that a man who, for two hundred crowns a
day, causes his table to be furnished with fresh sea-fish during
Lent, infallibly works his salvation; and that a poor man who eats
two sous and a half worth of mutton, will go forever to all the
devils.
Of five or six thousand declamations of this kind, there are
three or four at most, composed by a Gaul named Massillon, which an
honest man may read without disgust; but in all these discourses,
you will scarcely find two in which the orator dares to say a word
against the scourge and crime of war, which contains all other
scourges and crimes. The unfortunate orators speak incessantly
against love, which is the only consolation of mankind, and the
only mode of making amends for it; they say nothing of the
abominable efforts which we make to destroy it.
You have made a very bad sermon on impurity—oh,
Bourdaloue!—but none on these murders, varied in so many
ways; on these rapines and robberies; on this universal rage which
devours the world. All the united vices of all ages and places will
never equal the evils produced by a single campaign.
Miserable physicians of souls! you exclaim, for five quarters of
an hour, on some pricks of a pin, and say nothing on the malady
which tears us into a thousand pieces! Philosophers! moralists!
burn all your books. While the caprice of a few men makes that part
of mankind consecrated to heroism, to murder loyally millions of
our brethren, can there be anything more horrible throughout
nature?
What becomes of, and what signifies to me, humanity,
beneficence, modesty, temperance, mildness, wisdom, and piety,
while half a pound of lead, sent from the distance of a hundred
steps, pierces my body, and I die at twenty years of age, in
inexpressible torments, in the midst of five or six thousand dying
men, while my eyes which open for the last time, see the town in
which I was born destroyed by fire and sword, and the last sounds
which reach my ears are the cries of women and children expiring
under the ruins, all for the pretended interests of a man whom I
know not?
What is worse, war is an inevitable scourge. If we take notice,
all men have worshipped Mars. Sabaoth, among the Jews, signifies
the god of arms; but Minerva, in Homer, calls Mars a furious, mad,
and infernal god.
The celebrated Montesquieu, who was called humane, has said,
however, that it is just to bear fire and sword against our
neighbors, when we fear that they are doing too well. If this is
the spirit of laws, it is also that of Borgia and of Machiavelli.
If unfortunately he says true, we must write against this truth,
though it may be proved by facts.
This is what Montesquieu says: “Between societies, the
right of natural defence sometimes induces the necessity of
attacking, when one people sees that a longer peace puts another in
a situation to destroy it, and that attack at the given moment is
the only way of preventing this destruction.”
How can attack in peace be the only means of preventing this
destruction? You must be sure that this neighbor will destroy you,
if he become powerful. To be sure of it, he must already have made
preparations for your overthrow. In this case, it is he who
commences the war; it is not you: your supposition is false and
contradictory.
If ever war is evidently unjust, it is that which you propose:
it is going to kill your neighbor, who does not attack you, lest he
should ever be in a state to do so. To hazard the ruin of your
country, in the hope of ruining without reason that of another, is
assuredly neither honest nor useful; for we are never sure of
success, as you well know.
If your neighbor becomes too powerful during peace, what
prevents you from rendering yourself equally powerful? If he has
made alliances, make them on your side. If, having fewer monks, he
has more soldiers and manufacturers, imitate him in this wise
economy. If he employs his sailors better, employ yours in the same
manner: all that is very just. But to expose your people to the
most horrible misery, in the so often false idea of overturning
your dear brother, the most serene neighboring prince!—it was
not for the honorary president of a pacific society to give you
such advice.
[Hat tip to Lapham's Quarterly, where I first read this piece.]
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