barriers between the different classes of society are gradually becoming
lower: this is one of the clearest of the ways of Providence in our
time. Do you believe that the people will long consent to hear it said
that they only live on errors, but that those errors are necessary for
them? Do you not see that they are about to rise, and answer, in the
sentiment of their own dignity, that they will no longer be deceived,
and that they intend to deliver themselves also from superstition? Then,
all restraining barriers removed, passions will have free course; and
believe me, the rising floods will not respect those quiet haunts of
study in which they will have had one of their springs. The proof of
this has been seen before. Some men of the last century wished to
destroy religion amongst decent folk, but not for the rabble: they are
Voltaire's words, who had too much good sense to be an atheist, but
whose pale deism is sometimes scarcely distinguishable from the negation
of God. "Your Majesty," thus he wrote to his friend the King of Prussia,
in January, 1757, "will render an eternal service to the human race, by
destroying that infamous superstition, I do not say amongst the rabble,
which is not worthy to be enlightened, and to which all yokes are
suitable, but amongst honest people." A religion was necessary for the
people; but Voltaire and the King of Prussia, the German barons, the
French marquises, and the ladies who received their homage, could do
without it.

Voltaire died before eating of the fruit of his works; and Alfred de
Musset could only address to him his vengeful apostrophe at his tomb:


Sleep'st thou content, and does thy hideous smile
Still flit, Voltaire, above thy fleshless bones?[37]