ential, a grain of gold or of copper as a specimen of the
rest, presenting this to us in its most convenient and most manageable
form, in a simile, in a metaphor, in an epigram that becomes a proverb.
In this no ancient or modern writer approaches him; in simplification
and in popularization he has not his equal in the world. Without
departing from the usual conversational tone, and as if in sport,
he puts into little portable phrases the greatest discoveries and
hypotheses of the human mind, the theories of Descartes, Malebranche,
Leibnitz, Locke and Newton, the diverse religions of antiquity and
of modern times, every known system of physics, physiology, geology,
morality, natural law, and political economy,[4121] in short, all the
generalized conceptions in every order of knowledge to which humanity
had attained in the eighteenth century.--Voltaire's inclination is
so strong that it carries him too far; he belittles great things by
rendering them accessible. Religion, legend, ancient popular poesy, the
spontaneous creations of instinct, the vague visions of primitive tunes
are not thus to be converted into small current coin; they are not
subjects of amusing and lively conversation. A piquant witticism is not
an expression of all this, but simply a travesty. But how charming to
Frenchmen, and to people of the world! And what reader can abstain from
a book containing all human knowledge summed up in piquant witticisms?
For it is really a summary of human knowledge, no important idea, as
far as I can see, being wanting to a man whose breviary consisted of the
"Dialogues," the "Dictionary," and the "Novels." Read them over and over
five or six times, and we then form some idea of their vast contents.
Not only do views of the world and of man abound in them, but again
they swarm with positive and even technical details, thousands of little
facts scattered throughout, multiplied and precise details on astronomy,
physics, geography, physiology, statistics, and on the history of all
nations, the innumerable and personal experiences of a man who has
himself read the texts, handled the instruments, visited the countries,
taken part in the industries, and associated with the persons, and
who, in the precision of his marvelous memory, in the liveliness of
his ever-blazing imagination, revives or sees, as with the eye itself,
everything that he states and as he states it. It is a unique talent,
the rarest in a classic era, the mos