weakness promise themselves so many consolations. No one ever spent so
much wit in trying to make us stupid; when we read your book we feel
like going on all fours. Nevertheless, as it is more than sixty years
since I lost the habit, I am conscious that it is impossible for me to
take it up again, and I leave this natural attitude to those who are
more worthy of it than you and I. Nor can I take ship to go out and join
the savages in Canada; first, because the diseases which bear me down
oblige me to stay near the greatest physician in Europe, and because I
should not find the same relief among the Missouris; secondly, because
there is war in those regions, and the example of our nations has made
the savages almost as cruel as we are." Voltaire then goes on to
complain of his own sufferings as an author, but to vaunt the influence
of letters. It is not Petrarch and Boccaccio, he says, that made the
wars of Italy; the pleasantries of Marot did not cause the massacre of
Saint Bartholomew's Day; nor the tragedy of the Cid produce the riots of
the Fronde. Great crimes have generally been committed by ignorant great
men. It is the insatiable cupidity, the indomitable pride of mankind,
which have made this world a vale of tears; from Thamas Kouli-Kan, who
could not read, to the custom-house clerk, who only knows how to cipher.
[Footnote: August 30, 1755. Voltaire, lvi. 714.]

This letter is neither very complimentary nor very conclusive in its
treatment of Rousseau's position, but it may be said to mark his
official reception into the guild of literary men. He was presently
engaged in new work. He wrote an article on Political Economy for the
great "Encyclopaedia," in which, reversing the teaching of the Second
Discourse, he maintains that "it is certain that the right of property
is the most sacred of all the rights of citizens, and more important in
some respects than liberty itself; either because it more closely
concerns the preservation of life, or because, property being easier to