OF ORACLES
BY VOLTAIRE
It is evident we cannot be acquainted with futurity,
because we cannot be acquainted with what does not
exist; but it is also clear that conjectures may
be formed of an event.
You see a numerous and well disciplined army,
conducted by a skillful chief, advancing in an
advantageous place, against an imprudent captain,
followed by only a few troops, badly armed, badly
posted, and half of whom you know to be traitors.
You foretell that this captain will be defeated.
You have observed that a young man and a young woman
are desperately fond of each other; you saw them
meet at an appointed rendezvous; you announce that
in a short time they will be married. You cannot be
much mistaken. All predictions are reduced to the
calculation of probabilities: there is therefore
no nation in which some predictions have not been
made that have come to pass. The most celebrated
and best attested, is that which the traitor Flavian
Josephus made to Vespasian and Titus his son, the
conquerors of the Jews. He saw Vespasian and Titus
adored by the Roman armies in the East, and Nero
detested by the whole empire. He had the audacity,
in order to obtain the good graces of Vespasian,
to predict to him, in the name of the God of the
Jews, that he and his son would become emperors.
They, in effect, were so; but it is evident that
Josephus ran no risk. If the day of Vespasian's
overthrow had come, he would not have been in a
situation to punish Josephus: if he obtained the
imperial throne, he must recompense his prophet;
and till such time as he reigned, he was in hopes
of doing it. Vespasian informed this Josephus, that
if he were a prophet, he should have foretold him
the loss of Jotapat, which he had ineffectually
defended against the Roman army: Josephus replied,
that he had in fact foretold it, which was not
very surprising. What commander, who sustains a
siege in a small place against a numerous army,
does not foretell that the place will be taken?
It was not very difficult to discover that respect
and money might be drawn from the multitude by
playing the prophet, and the credulity of the
people must be a revenue for any who knew how to
cheat them. There were in all places soothsayers;
but it was not sufficient to foretell in their
own name, it was necessary to speak in the name
of the divinity; and from the time of the prophets
of Egypt, who called themselves seers, till the
time of Ulpius, who was prophet to the favorite
of the empire, Adrian, who became a god, there
was a prodigious number of sacred quacks, who
made the gods speak, to make a jest of man. It
is well known how they might succeed; sometimes
by an ambiguous reply, which they afterwards
explained as they pleased; at other times, by
corrupting servants, and thereby penetrating the
secrets of those devotees, who came to consult
them. An idiot was greatly astonished that a
cheat should tell him of what he had done in
the most hidden manner.
These prophets were supposed to know the past,
the present, and the future: this is the eulogium
which Homer makes upon Calchas. I shall add nothing
in this place to what the learned Vandale and the
judicious Fontenelle his reviser, have said of
oracles; they have sagaciously convicted the ages
of imposture; and the Jesuit Balthus displayed
very little sense, or much malignity, when he
supported, in opposition to them, the truth of
the Pagan oracles, upon the principles of the
Christian religion. It was really doing God an
injury, to suppose this God of goodness and truth
had left loose the devils from hell, to come upon
earth, and there perform what he does not exercise
himself, in order to produce oracles.
Either these devils uttered truths, and in that
case it was impossible not to believe them, and
God himself supporting every kind of false religion
by daily miracles, gave the world up to his enemy's
will; or else they spoke false; and in this case,
God must have unfettered the devils to deceive all
mankind. There never was, perhaps, a more absurd
opinion.
The most famous oracle was that of Delphos. They
at first chose innocent young girls, as more proper
than any other to be inspired; that is to say, to
utter with faith, all the nonsense the priests
dictated to them. The young Pythia mounted a tripod,
fixed in the opening of a cavity, from whence her
prophetic utterances issued; but a young Pythia
having been run away with by a devotee, an old
woman supplied the young one's place to carry on
the trade; and, I believe, that upon this account
the oracle of Delphos began to lose much of its
credit.
Divinations and auguries were a kind of oracles,
and are, I believe, of higher antiquity; for many
ceremonies were necessary, much time was required,
to draw custom to a divine oracle, that could not
do without a temple and priests; and nothing was
easier than to tell fortunes in the cross-ways. This
art was subdivided into a thousand shapes; predictions
were extracted from the flight of birds, sheep's
livers, the lines of the palm of the hand, circles
drawn upon the ground, water, fire, small flints,
wands, and, in a word, from every thing that could
be devised, and frequently from enthusiasm alone,
which supplied the place of all rules. But who
invented this art? The first rogue that met with a
fool.
The greatest part of the predictions were like those
of the Liege Almanac; "A great man will depart this
life." Storms will "arise." Does a village magistrate
die within a twelve-month? this was the great man,
with respect to that village, whose death was foretold.
Is a fishing boat stranded? these are the violent
storms predicted. The author of the Liege Almanac
is a sorcerer, whether his predications are or are
not accomplished; for if any event favors them, his
magic is demonstrated; if the events are opposite,
the prediction is applied to a quite different thing,
and he saves himself allegorically.
The Liege Almanac has told us that there would come
a people from the North, who would destroy every thing;
this people did not come, but a north wind froze up
some vines, this was what was predicted by Matthew
Lansberg. Does any one dare to doubt of his knowledge?
the hawkers would as soon arraign him for a bad citizen,
or the astrologers treat him as a man of shallow parts
and little reason.
The Mahometan Sunnites have greatly availed themselves
of this method, in their explanation of Mahomet's
Koran. Aldebaran's star was in great veneration
amongst the Arabians, it signifies the ox's eye;
this meant that Mahomet's eye would enlighten the
Arabians, and that, like an ox, he would strike
his enemies with his horns.
The acacian tree was in esteem in Arabia; great
hedges were made of it, to preserve the crops
from the heat of the sun; Mahomet is the acacia,
who is to cover the earth with his salutary form.
The sensible Turks laugh at these subtle stupidities;
the young women do not think about them; the old
female devotees firmly believe them; and he who
should say to a dervish, that he teaches nonsense,
would run the risk of being impaled. There have
been learned men who have traced the history of
their own times in the Iliad and Odyssey; but
these learned men did not acquire the same fortune
as the commentators of the Koran.
The most brilliant function of the oracles was to
insure victory in war. Each army, each nation, had
its own peculiar oracles, that promised triumphs.
The oraculous intelligence of one of the parties
was infallibly true. The vanquished, who had been
deceived, attributed their defeat to some fault
committed towards the gods, after the oracle had
been consulted, and they hoped the oracle's prediction
would eventually be accomplished. Thus is almost the
whole earth fed with illusions. There were scarce any
people who did not preserve in their archives, or who
had not, by oral tradition, some prediction which
insured them the conquest of the world, that is to
say, of the neighboring nations. No conqueror ever
gained a victory, without its being predicted in form,
as soon as the battle was over. Even the Jews, who
were shut up in a corner of the earth, almost unknown,
between Anti-libanus and Arabia Deserta and Petraea,
hoped, like the other people, to be the masters of
the universe, upon the foundation of a thousand oracles,
which we explain in a mystical sense, but which they
understood quite literally.
|
