Thinking of Voltaire

It was long ago I read Voltaire alone in the college library. Nixon was in the White House; students ran across campus “streaking” and everywhere I looked, people who were perfectly respectable were smoking as much marijuana as they could get their hands on. I understood at 18 there was something overtly deleterious in the air, a disatisfaction with fortune. Voltaire was just the balm. As to authority Voltaire got me laughing with: 

“Wretched human beings, whether you wear green robes, turbans, black robes or surplices, cloaks and neckbands, never seek to use authority where there is question only of reason, or consent to be scoffed at throughout the centuries as the most impertinent of all men, and to suffer public hatred as the most unjust.

A hundred times has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred and first, and I hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever; I desire that there be graved on the door of your Holy Office:

“Here seven cardinals, assisted by minor brethren, had the master of thought in Italy thrown into prison at the age of seventy; made him fast on bread and water because he instructed the human race, and because they were ignorant.”

And so around this time I began to ask questions. “Why to you think that?” “What is your proof?” “Show me?” 

In graduate school I got into trouble as people would make aesthetic judgments and I would argue any position against inoculation. It is best to learn early that you’re a contrarian. Voltaire assured me: 

“If you want to be an author, if you want to write a book; reflect that it must be useful and new, or at least infinitely agreeable.

If an ignoramus, a pamphleteer, presumes to criticize without discrimination, you can confound him; but make rare mention of him, for fear of sullying your writings.

If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your work alone to make answer.

Someone says you are ill, be content that you are well, without wanting to prove to the public that you are in perfect health. And above all remember that the public cares precious little whether you are well or ill.”