important fact was found that the Holy Ghost "proceeded" not only from
the Father, but also from the Son at the same time.

So Voltaire has been called a mocker! What did he mock? He mocked
kings that were unjust; kings who cared nothing for the sufferings of
their subjects. He mocked the titled fools of his day. He mocked the
corruption of courts; the meanness, the tyranny, and the brutality of
judges. He mocked the absurd and cruel laws, the barbarous customs.
He mocked popes and cardinals, bishops and priests, and all the
hypocrites on the earth. He mocked historians who filled their books
with lies, and philosophers who defended superstition. He mocked the
haters of liberty, the persecutors of their fellow-men. He mocked the
arrogance, the cruelty, the impudence and the unspeakable baseness of
his time.

He has been blamed because he used the weapon of ridicule. Hypocrisy
has always hated laughter, and always will. Absurdity detests humor
and stupidity despises wit. Voltaire was the master of ridicule. He
ridiculed the absurd, the impossible. He ridiculed the mythologies and
the miracles, the stupid lives and lies of the saints. He found
pretense and mendacity crowned by credulity. He found the ignorant
many controlled by the cunning and cruel few. He found the historian,
saturated with superstition, filling his volumes with the details of
the impossible, and he found the scientists satisfied with "they say."
Voltaire had the instinct of the probable. He knew the law of average;
the sea level; he had the idea of proportion; and so he ridiculed the
mental monstrosities and deformities--the non sequiturs--of his day.
Aristotle said women had more teeth than men. This was repeated again
and again by the Catholic scientists of the eighteenth century.
Voltaire counted the teeth. The rest were satisfied with "they say."

We may, however, get an idea of the condition of France from the fact
that Voltaire regarded England as the land of liberty. While he was in
England he saw the body of Sir Isaac Newton deposited in Westminster
Abbey. He read the works of this great man and afterward gave to
France the philosophy of the great Englishman. Voltaire was the
apostle of common sense. He knew that there could have been no
primitive or first language from which all other languages had been
formed. He knew that every language had been influenced by the
surroundings of the people. He knew that the languag