consistency of Voltaire. In another place he says, "Virtue and vice,
moral good and evil, are in all countries that which is useful or
injurious to society; and in all times and in all places he who
sacrifices the most to the public is the man who will be called the
most virtuous. Whence it appears that good actions are nothing else
than actions from which we derive an advantage, and crimes are but
actions that are against us. Virtue is the habit of doing the things
which please mankind, and vice the habit of doing things which
displease it. Liberty, he says elsewhere, is nothing but the power to
do that which our wills necessarily require of us."[Footnote: Voltaire,
xx. 439 (_Siecle de Louis XIV._, ch. xxxvii.), xxi. 369 (_Louis XV._),
xv. 34, 40, 123, 316 (_Essai sur les moeurs_), xliii. 74 (_Examen
important de Lord Bolingbroke_), xxxi. 13 (_Dict. philos. Liberte_)
xxxvii. 336 (Traite de metaphysique_). For general attacks on the
Bible and the Jews, see (_Oeuvres_, xv. 123-127, xliii. 39-205, xxxix.
454-464. Morley's _Diderot_, ii. 178). Notice how many of the
arguments that are still repeated nowadays concerning the Mosaic
account of the creation, etc. etc., come from Voltaire. Notice also
that Voltaire, while too incredulous of ancient writers, was too
credulous of modern travelers.]

The Church of France was both angered and alarmed by the writings of
Voltaire and his friends, and did her feeble best to reply to them. But
while strong in her organization and her legal powers, her internal
condition was far from vigorous. Incredulity had become fashionable even
before the attacks of Voltaire were dangerous. An earlier satirist has
put into the mouth of a priest an account of the difficulties which
beset the clergy in those days. "Men of the world," he says, "are
astonishing. They can bear neither our approval nor our censure. If we
wish to correct them, they think us ridiculous. If we approve of them,