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The problem of every manufacturer is to sell his wares–Voltaire knew how to release purse-strings of friends and enemies alike. He sent watches to all of his enemies in Paris, bishops, priests and potentates, explaining that he had quit literature forever, and was now engaged in helping struggling, exiled Catholics to get an honest living–he was doing penance as foreman of a watch-factory–would the Most Reverend not help in this worthy work? Money flowed in on Ferney–Frederick ordered a consignment of watches, Queen Catherine did the same, and the Bishop of Paris sent his blessing and an order for enough silk to keep Voltaire’s factory going for six months.

Voltaire really got the pick of the workmen of Geneva–the goods made were of the best, and while at first Catholics only were employed, yet in five years Ferney was quite as much Protestant as Catholic. Voltaire respected the religious beliefs of his workmen, and there was liberty for all. He paid better wages and treated his workers better than they had ever been treated in Geneva. Voltaire built houses for his people and allowed them to pay him in monthly instalments. And not only did he himself make much money out of his Ferney investment, but he established the town upon such a safe financial basis that its prosperity endures even unto this day.

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It was at Ferney, in his old age, that Voltaire first made open war upon “revealed religion.” All religions that professed a miraculous origin were to him baneful in the extreme, the foes of light and progress, the enemies of mankind. He did not perceive, as modern psychology does, that the period of supernaturalism is the childhood of the mind. Myths and fairy-tales are not of themselves base–the injury lies with the men who seek to profit by these things, and build up a tyranny founded on innocence and ignorance–seeking to perpetuate these things, issuing threats against growth, and offers of reward to all who stand still.

Voltaire called superstition “The Infamy,” and he summoned the thinkers of the world to crush it beneath a heel of scorn. Letters, pamphlets, plays, essays, were sent out in various languages, by his own printing-presses. The wit of the man–his scathing mockery–were weapons no one could wield in reply. The priests and preachers did not answer him–they could not–they only grew purple with wrath and hissed.

Says Victor Hugo, “Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled.” To which Bernard Shaw has recently rejoined, “Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled; William Morris worked.”

From the prosperity, peace and security of Ferney, Voltaire pointed a bony finger at every hypocrite in Christendom, and laughed his mocking smile. The man expressed himself, and happiness lies in that and nothing else. Misery comes from lack of full, free self-expression, and from nothing else. The man who fights for freedom fights for the right of self-expression for himself and others–and immortality lies in nothing else.

There is no fight worth making–no struggle worth the while–save the struggle for freedom.

No name is honored among men–no name lives–save the name of the man who worked for liberty and light–who has fought freedom’s fight.

Run the list in your mind of the names that are immortal, and you will recall only those of men who have widened the horizon for other men, and that select number who are remembered in infamy because they linked their names with greatness by doubting, denying, betraying and persecuting it–deathless through disgrace.

Voltaire sided with the weak, the defenseless, the fallen. He demanded that men should not be hounded for their belief, that they should not be arrested without cause and without knowing why, and without letting their friends know why. We realize his faults, we know his imperfections and limitations, yet, through his influence, life throughout the world became safer, liberty dearer, freedom a more sacred thing. His words were a battery that eventually razed the walls of the Bastile, and best of all, freed countless millions from theological superstition, that Bastile of the brain.