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A hundred years ago today a man died. He died immortal. He departed laden with years, laden with works, laden with the most illustrious and the most fearful or responsibilities, the responsibility of the human conscience informed and rectifies. He went cursed and blessed, cursed by the past, blessed by the future; and these are two super forms of glory. On the deathbed he had, on the one hand, the acclaim of contemporaries and of posterity; on the other, that triumph of hooting and of hating which the implacable past bestows on those who have combated it. He was more than a man was; he was an age. He had exercised functions and fulfilled a mission. He had been evidently chosen for the work, which he had done by the Supreme Will, which manifests itself as visibly in the laws of destiny as in the laws of nature.

The eighty-four years, which this man lived, span the interval between the monarchy at its apogee and the Revolution at its dawn. Whence was born, Luis XIV still reigned; when he died, Louis of XVI already wore crown; so that his cradle saw the last rays of the great throne, and his coffin the first gleams from the great abyss.

In the presence of this society, frivolous and dismal, Voltaire alone, having before his eyes those united forces, the court, the nobility, capital; that unconscious power, the blind multitude ...

一百年前的今天,一個人去世了。但他是永生的。他離開人世間時已是古稀之年,但其著作豐富。他肩負著的責任既是世界上最感光榮的,也是最令人畏懼的。他讓人們懂得良知並教化他們。對于他的去世,有人詛咒,也有人祝福。舊時代的人們詛咒他,而隻有新時代的人才祝福他。無論詛咒也罷,祝福也罷,這兩者對于他都是光榮和至高無上的。他臨終時,受到了當代人和他們後代的贊美,但另一方面,像許多同舊時代戰鬥過的人一樣,他也受到了對他恨之入骨的舊時代的高聲大罵。他不僅是他一個人,而且是一個時代。他曾盡責盡職,完成了一項使命。顯然是天意助他完成這一項大事的。命運法則和自然法則都清楚地顯示了上天的這個旨意CB法則和住這位偉人所生活的八十四年,從專製統治的鼎盛時期一直延續到革命的萌芽階段。他誕生之際,路易十四仍大權在握;他去世時,路易十六已戴上皇冠。因此,王朝鼎盛時期的餘輝照耀過他的搖籃,從那深淵裏透出最初的光芒映照著他的靈柩。

伏爾泰一個人,在這個無聊慘淡的時代,隻身面對著宮廷、貴族和資本家的聯合力量,面對著那群毫無覺醒意識的暴力、盲目的民眾......

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