A Voltairean, as defined by Ernest Benot, philosophical writer and one-time director of the Ecole normale superior, in his Etudes et pensées (1884) is:
"a man who prefers to see clearly in all matters; in religion and in philosophy, he believes willingly only what he understands, and he admits that there are things he does not know; he values application above speculation, simplifies ethics as well as doctrine, and tries to direct it toward useful virtues; he likes a moderate political system that preserves natural liberty, the liberty of conscience, of speech and of the individual, reduces evil as much as possible, procures the greatest good, and places justice among the highest benefits; in the arts, he admires above all moderation and truth; he has a deadly hatred for hypocrisy, fanaticism and bad taste; he does not limit himself to detesting them, he fights them to death."
The man who inspired these words, often called the Father of the French Revolution, may indeed have had limitations as regards his personal life, but he did emerge as the leading apostle of tolerance and freedom in the eighteenth century, which has been called the "century of Voltaire."
Voltaire is the name he adopted in his maturity; his real one was Francois Marie Arouet. He was born on November 21, 1694, in Paris, the fifth child of his middle-class parents, who were natives of Poitou. Voltaire's father was a rather prosperous lawyer and notary who became treasurer to the Chambres des Comptes. A sickly child, Francois was not expected to live. And it must be admitted that, like Alexander Pope, whom he was to meet and with whom he corresponded, his life could be described as "one long disease." Yet he was to live that life energetically and to survive until May 30, 1778.
