Editing Voltaire (section)

=== Prose ===
[[File:Candide1759.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Title page of Voltaire's ''[[Candide]]'', 1759]]

Many of Voltaire's [[prose]] works and romances, usually composed as pamphlets, were written as [[polemics]]. ''[[Candide]]'' attacks the passivity inspired by Leibniz's philosophy of [[optimism]] through the character Pangloss's frequent refrain that, because God created it, this is of necessity the "[[best of all possible worlds]]". ''L'Homme aux quarante ecus'' (''The Man of Forty Pieces of Silver'') addresses social and political ways of the time; ''[[Zadig]]'' and others, the received forms of moral and metaphysical orthodoxy; and some were written to deride the Bible. In these works, Voltaire's ironic style, free of exaggeration, is apparent, particularly the restraint and simplicity of the verbal treatment.{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|p=204i}} ''Candide'' in particular is the best example of his style. Voltaire also has—in common with [[Jonathan Swift]]—the distinction of paving the way for science fiction's philosophical irony, particularly in his ''[[Micromégas]]'' and the vignette "[[Plato's Dream]]" (1756).

[[File:Voltaire-Baquoy.gif|thumb|Voltaire at [[Frederick the Great]]'s ''[[Sanssouci]]'', by [[Pierre Charles Baquoy]]]]

In general, his criticism and miscellaneous writing show a similar style to Voltaire's other works. Almost all of his more substantive works, whether in verse or prose, are preceded by prefaces of one sort or another, which are models of his caustic yet conversational tone. In a vast variety of nondescript pamphlets and writings, he displays his skills at journalism. In pure literary criticism his principal work is the ''[[Commentaires sur Corneille|Commentaire sur Corneille]]'', although he wrote many more similar works—sometimes (as in his ''Life and Notices of Molière'') independently and sometimes as part of his ''Siècles''.{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|p=205}}

Voltaire's works, especially his private letters, frequently urge the reader: "{{lang|fr|écrasez l'infâme}}", or "crush the infamous".<ref>McCabe, Joseph, ''A Treatise on Toleration and Other Essays'' (Amherst: Prometheus Books 1994) {{ISBN|0-87975-881-3}} p. viii.</ref> The phrase refers to contemporaneous abuses of power by royal and religious authorities, and the superstition and intolerance fomented by the clergy.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Palmer |first1=R.R. |title=A History of the Modern World |last2=Colton, Joel |publisher=McGraw-Hill, Inc. |year=1950 |isbn=0-07-040826-2}}</ref> He had seen and felt these effects in his own exiles, the burnings of his books and those of many others, and in the atrocious persecution of [[Jean Calas]] and [[François-Jean de la Barre]].{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|p=204}} He stated in one of his most famous quotes that "Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them" ({{lang|fr|La superstition met le monde entier en flammes; la philosophie les éteint}}).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Geoffrey Parrinder |url=https://archive.org/details/routledgediction00parr_498 |title=The Routledge Dictionary of Religious and Spiritual Quotations |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |page=[https://archive.org/details/routledgediction00parr_498/page/n39 24] |isbn=978-0415233934 |url-access=limited}}</ref>

The most oft-cited Voltaire quotation is apocryphal. He is incorrectly credited with writing, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." These were not his words, but rather those of [[Evelyn Beatrice Hall]], written under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre in her 1906 biographical book ''[[The Friends of Voltaire]]''. Hall intended to summarize in her own words Voltaire's attitude towards [[Claude Adrien Helvétius]] and his controversial book ''De l'esprit'', but her first-person expression was mistaken for an actual quotation from Voltaire. Her interpretation does capture the spirit of Voltaire's attitude towards Helvétius; it had been said Hall's summary was inspired by a quotation found in a 1770 Voltaire letter to an Abbot le Riche, in which he was reported to have said, "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write."<ref>{{Cite book | last1=Boller | first1=Paul F. Jr. |url=https://archive.org/details/theyneversaiditb00boll |title=They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions |last2=George, John |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1989 |isbn=0-19-505541-1 |location=New York}}</ref> Nevertheless, scholars believe there must have again been misinterpretation, as the letter does not seem to contain any such quote.{{efn|Charles Wirz, archivist at the Voltaire Institute and Museum in Geneva, recalled in 1994, that Hall 'wrongly' placed this quotation between speech marks in two of her works about Voltaire, recognising expressly the quotation in question was not one, in a letter of 9 May 1939, which was published in 1943 in volume LVIII under the title "Voltaire never said it" (pp. 534–35) of the review ''Modern language notes'', Johns Hopkins Press, 1943, Baltimore. An extract from the letter: 'The phrase "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" which you have found in my book ''Voltaire in His Letters'' is my own expression and should not have been put in inverted commas. Please accept my apologies for having, quite unintentionally, misled you into thinking I was quoting a sentence used by Voltaire (or anyone else but myself).' The words "my own" were underlined personally by Hall in her letter. To believe certain commentators – Norbert Guterman, ''A Book of French Quotations'', 1963 – Hall was referencing back to a Voltaire letter of 6 February 1770 to an abbot le Riche where Voltaire supposedly said, "Reverend, I hate what you write, but I will give my life so that you can continue to write." The problem is that, if you consult the letter itself, the sentence there does not appear, nor even the idea: "A M Le Riche a Amiens. 6 February. You left, Sir, des Welches for des Welches. You will find everywhere barbarians obstinate. The number of wise will always be small. It is true ... it has increased; but it is nothing in comparison with the stupid ones; and, by misfortune, one says that God is always for the big battalions. It is necessary that the decent people stick together and stay under cover. There are no means that their small troop could tackle the party of the fanatics in open country. I was very sick, I was near death every winter; this is the reason, Sir, why I have answered you so late. I am not less touched by it than your memory. Continue to me your friendship; it comforts me my evils and stupidities of the human genre. Receive my assurances, etc." Voltaire, however, did not hesitate to wish censure against slander and personal libels. Here is what he writes in his "Atheism" article in the ''Dictionnaire philosophique'': "Aristophanes (this man that the commentators admire because he was Greek, not thinking that Socrates was Greek also), Aristophanes was the first who accustomed the Athenians to consider Socrates an atheist. ... The tanners, the shoemakers and the dressmakers of Athens applauded a joke in which one represented Socrates raised in the air in a basket, announcing there was God, and praising himself to have stolen a coat by teaching philosophy. A whole people, whose bad government authorized such infamous licences, deserved well what it got, to become the slave of the Romans, and today of the Turks."}}

Voltaire's first major philosophical work in his battle against "{{lang|fr|l'infâme}}" was the ''Traité sur la tolérance'' (''[[Treatise on Tolerance]]''), exposing the Calas affair, along with the tolerance exercised by other faiths and in other eras (for example, by the Jews, the Romans, the Greeks and the Chinese). Then, in his ''[[Dictionnaire philosophique]]'', containing such articles as "Abraham", "Genesis", "Church Council", he wrote about what he perceived as the human origins of dogmas and beliefs, as well as inhuman behavior of religious and political institutions in shedding blood over the quarrels of competing sects. Amongst other targets, Voltaire criticized France's colonial policy in North America, dismissing the vast territory of [[New France]] as "[[a few acres of snow]]" ("{{lang|fr|quelques arpents de neige}}").