escaped to Ferney. A few years later, two youths of seventeen were
convicted at Abbeville for making some profane jokes. Both were
condemned to have their tongues torn out and to be decapitated; one
managed to escape, the other was executed. That such things could happen
in eighteenth-century France seems incredible; but happen they did, and
who knows how many more of a like atrocity? The fact that these three
came to light at all was owing to Voltaire himself. But for his
penetration, his courage, and his skill, the terrible murder of Calas
would to this day have remained unknown, and the dreadful affair of
Abbeville would have been forgotten in a month. Different men respond
most readily to different stimuli: the spectacle of cruelty and
injustice bit like a lash into the nerves of Voltaire, and plunged him
into an agony of horror. He resolved never to rest until he had not only
obtained reparation for these particular acts of injustice, but had
rooted out for ever from men's minds the superstitious bigotry which
made them possible. It was to attain this end that he attacked with such
persistence and such violence all religion and all priestcraft in
general, and, in particular, the orthodox dogmas of the Roman Catholic
Church. It became the great object of his life to convince public
opinion that those dogmas were both ridiculous and contemptible in
themselves, and abominable in their results. In this we may think him
right or we may think him wrong; our judgement will depend upon the
nature of our own opinions. But, whatever our opinions, we cannot think
him wicked; for we cannot doubt that the one dominating motive in all
that he wrote upon the subject of religion was a passionate desire for
the welfare of mankind.

Voltaire's philosophical views were curious. While he entirely discarded
the miraculous from his system, he nevertheless believed in a Deity--a
supreme First Cause of all the phenomena of the universe. Yet, when he