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This is an English translation of Voltaire's
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Mélanges philosophiques, littéraires, historiques, etc.), pp. 277-282. [W68]
Translated from
This is an English translation of Voltaire's
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It must have been the prayers of St Francis Xavier St Francis Xavier (7 April
1506 - 3 December 1552) was a Roman Catholic missionary from Javier,
Spain. One of the co-founders of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), he
is mostly remembered today for his mission to India and other parts
of Asia. The reference
is to Genesis, 5, where an account is provided of the life of
Adam and his descendants (the 'Patriarches'), who are all said to
have died very old. Adam, in particular, is reported to have died at
the venerable age of 930; he is surpassed only by Methuselah, who
'lived a total of 969 years'.
My teacher Fonfouka lived to be three hundred; it is the way our life usually goes. I have a great deal of respect for Francis Xavier, but his prayers could never have disturbed the order of the universe, and if he had had so much as the gift of making a fly live one second longer than the chain of destinies would have it, the whole globe would have been quite different from what it is today.
You have a strange opinion of future contingents. As stated in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, future contingents
are 'contingent statements about the future', i.e. statements about
the future that are neither impossible nor inevitable (e.g.
'tomorrow I shall bake a cake'). See also the article 'Futur contingent' in the
Unlike the Jansenists, who believed in predestination, the Jesuits are famously strong advocates of free will.
I have no doubts about the knowledge and power of the Reverend Fathers the
Jesuits; they are a most respectable part of this world, but I do not think
that they are its sovereigns. Every man, every being, a Jesuit just like a
Brahmin, is a cog in the universe. He obeys destiny and cannot command it.
On what did Genghis Khan’s conquest of Asia depend? Genghis Khan (c.1162 - 18
August 1227) was the first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. He
famously conquered an extremely vast empire, stretching from China
to as far West as Poland and Hungary. Voltaire mentions this prophecy also in the
Henri IV was crowned king of France in 1594 after abjuring Calvinism and converting to Roman Catholicism. He is mostly remembered today as the promulgator of the Edict of Nantes, which guaranteed freedom of religion to Protestants and put an end to the Wars of Religion. He was assassinated on 14 May 1610 by a fanatical Catholic, François Ravaillac. Voltaire's
Your Reverence must be joking! You, the cause of Henri IV’s assassination?
Alas, I am. It was the year 983,000 of Saturn’s revolutions, which would be
the year [1]550 of your era. Since the brahmin is supposed to be 180 at the
time when the conversation took place, and since king Henry IV was
assassinated in 1610, the date 550 is certainly erroneous and should
be amended to 1550. As
reported by William Barber and Robert Walters in the Œuvres
Complètes de Voltaire (vol.32A, p.113), 'Voltaire had already used
"avancer le pied gauche ou le pied droit" as an example of
apparently motiveless choice in a substantial addition, in a variant of 1748, to his discussion of the problem of free
will in part I, ch. 4 of the
How can that be, I beg you? We, the Jesuits, were accused of having been mixed up in every way possible in that business, but we had nothing to do with it!
Here’s how destiny arranged things. When I put my left foot forward, as I
have had the honour of telling you I did, I unfortunately made my friend
Eriban, a Persian merchant, fall into the water, where he drowned. He had a
very pretty wife who got remarried to an Armenian merchant; she had a
daughter, who married a Greek; the daughter of that Greek moved to France
and married Ravaillac’s father. As previously mentioned, François Ravaillac assassinated King Henry IV of France
on 14 May 1610. He was executed shortly thereafter on 27 May
1610. See Voltaire's article 'Chaîne, ou génération des événements' in the
I want to put this argument before one of our theological fathers, and I shall bring you the result.
In the meantime, I shall tell you that the maidservant of the grandfather of
the founder of the Congregation of the Feuillants (for I have read your
histories) was also one of the necessary causes of the death of Henri IV and
of all the mishaps that his death brought with it. The Congregation of the
Feuillants, a Catholic ascetic order that originated within the Order of
Cistercians, was founded in the sixteenth century by Jean de la Barrière (1544 - 1600) and was suppressed in
1791.
That maidservant was quite a powerful woman!
Not at all. She was a halfwit whose master got her pregnant. It made Mme de
la Barrière die of grief. The wife who came after her was, as your
chronicles recount, the grandmother of the Blessed Jean de la Barrière, who
founded the Order of the Feuillants. Ravaillac was a monk of that
order. Although François Ravaillac did apply for admission to the
Congregation of the Feuillants, he never actually became a member of
this order.
Notwithstanding your left foot and the servant of the grandfather of the founder of the Feuillants, I shall still always believe that the horrible act committed by Ravaillac was a future contingent that could very well not have happened. For, after all, man has free will.
I do not know what you mean by free will. I have no concept to match those
words. Being free is doing what one wants, and not wanting what one wants.
All that I know is that Ravaillac committed voluntarily the crime that he
was destined to commit according to immutable laws. That crime was a link in
the great chain of destinies. See Voltaire's article 'Chaîne des événements' in the
Say what you like, but things in this world are not as interconnected as you think. What difference, for example, does the useless conversation we’re having together here on the Indian coast make to the rest of the machine?
What you and I say is doubtless insignificant, but if you were not here, the whole machine of the world would be different.
Your Brahmin Reverence has just put forward quite a paradox.
Your Ignatian Fatherhood This epithet refers to St
Ignatius of Loyola, who, along with St Francis Xavier, was
one of the founding members of the Society
of Jesus. St Ignatius of Loyola, one
of the founding members of the Society of Jesus, was severely
injured by a cannonball at the Battle of Pamplona. It is said that it was precisely
following this event that he decided to abandon his military career
and to embrace devotional life. Voltaire refers to this episode also
in the
In 1488, the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias (1450 - 1500) became the first European to sail around the Cape of Good Hope. His expedition was funded by King John II of Portugal (1455 - 1495).
Voltaire
discusses the importance of the invention of the compass also in the
But what will happen to future contingents, then?
What must happen to them will happen; the order established by an eternal and omnipotent hand must endure forever.
But, to listen to you, one would think one should not pray to God.
One must worship him. But what do you mean by pray?
What everyone means by it: to pray for Him to grant our desires and to satisfy our needs.
I understand. You want a gardener to get sun at a time when God for all eternity has destined there to be rain, and a captain to have an east wind when the west wind must cool the earth and the seas. Father, to pray is to submit. I wish you a good evening. Destiny now calls me to be with my wife.
And my free will urges me to go give a young schoolboy his lesson.