Bossuet’s Discourse is moreover constructed wholly on the theory that a special revelation was delivered to the Jews, and in tracing their course we have fast hold of the chain by which it has pleased heaven to communicate to earth all the truths we possess as to the highest things. Such a conception stifles a modern reader. The first pages of the Essay on Manners, sometimes placed separately as the Philosophy of History, prove that we have escaped from the cave. The chosen people fell into rank with other peoples, that equally supposed themselves to be chosen by their own peculiar gods. They lose the towering pre-eminence in virtue and light and divine favour with which their own records and Bossuet’s interpretation had so splendidly invested them. We find that their pretensions were not unique, but universal among nations in such a stage; that their virtues were not singular, though some of their vices seem so. In a word, if some of Voltaire’s details are crude and rudimentary, at least he has the merit of showing to his unaccustomed readers what vast epochs of time, what uncounted multitudes of men, what varied movements of the human spirit, surround the little speck of Judaism.
The bulk of the Essay was composed in 1740, but it is probable that this preliminary examination of other oriental nations, their practices, institutions, and religious ideas, was suggested by Montesquieu’s memorable book, which appeared in 1748, some years before the publication of the Essay on Manners. It is in point of execution much less satisfactory than what follows, for Voltaire’s knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was inadequate, and he fell into various errors which his adversaries happily possessed scholarship enough to expose. In the modern provinces of the book, which constitute the important part of it, he was much more entirely at home in his subject. Here his familiarity with detail, considering the vast quantity of his other employments, is extremely surprising, and perhaps in no other book of equal generality have there been discovered so few serious inaccuracies, though none have encountered more hostile critics.
Prejudice, alas, spares truth and light no more when it narrows the vision of a free-thinker, than when it distorts the faculty of the devout. Being a reaction against Bossuet’s unreasonable exaltation of the Jews and their history, Voltaire’s conception of the place due to them partook of the inevitable fault of all reactions, and left out of sight considerations which it is eminently unscientific not to remember. ‘You never find,’ he says, ‘a generous action in the annals of the Hebrews; they knew neither hospitality nor liberality nor clemency. Their sovereign bliss is to practise usury with foreigners, and this spirit of usury is so rooted in their hearts, that it is the continual object of the figures they employ in the eloquence which is peculiar to them. Their glory is to deliver to fire and slaughter the small villages of which they may be able to take possession. They assassinate their masters when they are slaves, and they never know how to pardon when they are victorious; they are the enemies of the human race.’[254] This is as great an exaggeration on one side, as Bossuet’s exaltation of them and their deeds was on the other side. We ought to admit what abominable traits the character and history of this race unfortunately present, without forgetting how much is owing to them for preserving in its sublimest shape, and investing with the most deeply impressive images and associations, that idea of monotheism which, if destined to be superseded by other ideas more commensurate with the limits of human intelligence, must still be counted the germ of much that is purest and loftiest and most inspiring among the ideals of western civilisation.