Voltaire: Treatise on Tolerance. Вольтер

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      Chapter VII.

       If Non-Tol­er­a­tion Was Known A­mong The Greeks.

       Table of Contents

      The several nations with which history has made us in part acquainted, all considered their different religions as ties by which they were united; it was the association of human kind. There was a kind of law of hospitality among the gods, the same as among men. If a stranger arrived in any town, the first thing he did was to pay his adoration to the gods of the country, even though they were the gods of his enemies. The Trojans offered up prayers even to those gods who fought for the Greeks.

      Alexander made a journey into the deserts of Libya, purposely to consult the god Ammon, to whom the Greeks gave the name of Zeus and the Latins that of Jupiter, though both countries had their Jupiter and their Zeus among themselves. When they sat down before any town or city, they offered up sacrifices and prayers to the gods of that city or town, to render them propitious to their undertaking. Thus, even in the midst of war, religion united mankind; and though it might sometimes prompt them to exercise the most inhuman cruelties, at other times it frequently softened their fury.

      I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that not one of all the civilized nations of antiquity ever laid a restraint upon liberty of thinking. They all had a particular religion; but they seem to have acted in this respect toward men in the same manner as they did toward their gods; they all acknowledged one Supreme Being, though they associated him with an infinite number of inferior deities; in like manner, though they had but one faith, yet they admitted a multitude of particular systems.

      The Greeks, for example, though a very religious people, were not offended with the Epicureans, who denied Providence and the existence of the soul, not to mention divers other sects, whose tenets were all of them repugnant to the pure ideas we ought to entertain of a Creator, and yet were all of them tolerated.

      Socrates, who came the nearest to the knowledge of the true God, is said to have suffered on that account, and died a martyr to the Deity; he was the only one whom the Greeks ever put to death on account of opinion. If this was really the cause of his being condemned, it does very little honor to persecution, since he was put to death for being the only one who gave true glory to God, whilst those who taught notions the most unworthy of the Deity were held in high honor; therefore, I think, the enemies of toleration should be cautious how they lay a stress upon the infamous example of his judges.

      Moreover, it is evident from history that he fell a victim to the revenge of an enraged party. He had made himself many inveterate enemies among the sophists, orators, and poets, who taught in the public schools, and even among the preceptors who had the care of the children of distinction. He himself acknowledges in his discourse handed down to us by Plato, that he went from house to house to convince these preceptors that they were a set of ignorant fellows, a conduct certainly unworthy of one who had been declared by an oracle the wisest of mankind. A priest and one of the members of the Areopagus were let loose upon him, who accused him I cannot precisely say of what, as his apology to me seems very vague; from which, however, we learn in general that he was charged with inspiring the youth of the nation with notions contrary to the religion and government of the country, an accusation which the slanderers of all times and places have constantly made use of; but a court of justice requires positive facts, and that the charge should be circumstantial and well supported, none of which are to be found in the proceedings against Socrates. All we know is that he had at first two hundred and twenty voices for him; therefore there must have been two hundred and twenty out of the five hundred judges who were philosophers, a great many more, I believe, than are to be found anywhere else. At length, however, the majority were for the hemlock potion. But here let us not forget, that when the Athenians came to their reason, they held both his accusers and judges in detestation; made Melitus, who had been the principal author of the sentence pronounced against him, pay for that act of injustice with his life; banished all the others concerned in it, and erected a temple to Socrates. Never was philosophy so nobly avenged, so highly honored. This affair of Socrates then is, in fact, the most powerful argument that can be alleged against persecution. The Athenians had an altar dedicated to the strange gods, gods they could never know. What stronger proof then can there be, not only of their extreme indulgence towards all nations, but even of their respect for the religion of those nations?

      A very worthy person, who is neither an enemy to reason, learning, or probity, nor to his country, in undertaking to justify the affair of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, quotes the war of the Phocians, by them called the sacred war, as if that war had been entered into on the score of religion, or a particular point in divinity, whereas it is well known that it was caused by a dispute about a particular spot of ground, the constant cause of all wars. A few corn-grounds can certainly never be a symbol of belief; it is as certain that none of the Greek cities ever made war on one another for the sake of opinion. After all, what would this modest and humane writer drive at? Would he have us undertake a sacred war!