It is said of Herbert Spencer that he “had the philosopher’s disease of seeing so far ahead that all the little pleasant shapes and colors of existence passed under his nose unseen.” Without calling myself a philosopher or claiming to have the gift of foresight, I might describe myself as having this affliction.

Sometimes it is difficult for me to enjoy the present as I think with angst about the future. The keener I imagine the inevitable, the blurrier my purpose for doing whatever it is that I’m doing becomes. I am often in danger of thinking so much about what I ought to do that I don’t do anything at all. I forget that what seems like a futile struggle against time is actually life happening, and that to opine about its futility, or to worry about its end, is to let it pass you by.

There’s a film called "Life in a day”—it’s a National Geographic feature where the makers of the film asked everyone and anyone from all over the world to send in their own video footage from one day, July 24, 2010, which—after much editing I’m sure—served as the final product (the film is only showing in select cities, but you can watch the trailer here). The concept of the film resonates with me in the sense that I regularly think about the incredible variety of life on earth, not to mention just within our own species. The sheer volume of human consciousness is overwhelming. The expressions of personality are innumerable. By the time a person reaches their 20s, I would wager that their thoughts alone could fill countless volumes. And this happens over and over, every second of every day. This is what life has allowed—a remarkable diversity of experience.

When I consider all of this—all the living that goes on while I’m sitting here, writing about it—I realize that it will not wait for me. The world will not cease to revolve while I try to determine why it revolves as it does. Society will not halt its progression for my ponderings about its ills. And my face will not stop aging because I stare at in the mirror to detect any signs of aging. There is simply no amount of anticipation that will change the inevitable facts of life.

When I finally reach death’s door, I don’t want to carry through it the burden of wasted time. I don’t want my last thoughts to be lamentations. I want to go out, like the great Francis Bacon said, “in an earnest pursuit, which is like one wounded in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the hurt.”

In order to do that, I will have to learn acceptance where there was formerly neurosis and fear. I will have to learn patience where there was formerly not enough. And I will have to learn sacrifice where there was formerly no knowledge of such a thing.

I’ve a lot to learn.

Apology

I've been doing some thinking, and I would like to apologize to the world and everyone in it for the following:

(1) For every time I've chosen myself over someone else, for no other reason than out of greed.
(2) For every time I've cursed another driver for something I've done to other drivers.
(3) For complaining about the way things are without trying to change them.
(4) For forgetting something someone told me when I wasn't really listening, although I was pretending I was.
(5) For pretending to listen in the first place.
(6) For mocking annoying people.
(7) For overindulging at a meal without ever thinking, throughout the entire meal, that there are people in famine-stricken countries who will never taste half of what I just ate.
(8) For trying to draw attention to myself.
(9) For losing my temper with the one's I love.
(10) For coveting the possessions of others in belief that my life would be improved if I had what they had.
(11) For being too sarcastic.
(12) For letting the circumstances of my day affect my outward attitude.
(13) For leaving things out on the kitchen counter repeatedly, despite numerous requests from my wife to put them away when I'm done with them, and for all the other small disrespects paid to her wishes.
(14) For judging the character of others just to make lively conversation.
(15) For embellishing stories about my experiences to make them sound more interesting.
(16) For forgetting the relativity of my difficulties and obstacles in life, and that somewhere, some kid is trying to learn to get dressed without his arms.
(17) For not doing everything I can.
(18) For making it look like I'm working harder than I am.
(19) For preaching against mediocrity and then living it.
(20) For not realizing sooner that you can never take it back.

That's all.

Here lies Voltaire

Oy vey. I think even I am growing tired of my tirades. I think it’s time to pause and take a breath between critical introspections for a moment of remembrance. For whom, you ask? The figure of this remembrance sits adorned a chair, cast into eternal form, in an oak paneled room in the National Library in Paris (see picture of statue above). I took that picture after sneaking past a distracted guard (which was really a woman in a booth by the door texting on her cell phone) and discovering the object of my quest, Voltaire himself, with a wry smile that was no doubt a deliberate stroke of the sculptor’s hand intended to portray perhaps the greatest personality of France in his most probable expression.

He was born in 1694 to the name of Francois Marie Arouet, and he died on May 30, 1778 to the name of Voltaire. In the able words of historian and philosopher Will Durant,

“Never has a writer had in his lifetime such influence. Despite exile, imprisonment, and the
suppression of almost every one of his books by the minions of church and state, he forged
fiercely a path for his truth, until at last kings, popes and emperors catered to him, thrones
trembled before him, and half the world listened to catch his every word.”

His works reportedly fill 90 volumes. He wrote plays, novels, essays, a philosophic encyclopedia, letters and much more. And almost all of it was exceptional. His raison d'être? To prove that education and the pursuit of truth could enlighten human kind to a state of reason, where dogmas would find no harbor, where the vices of power would have a weaker grip over the ruled, and where the tragedies of life would diminish in occurrence and effect. He was always at odds with the propagation of falsehoods, especially when they came from the mouths of those in power, whether they were government officials or wearers of ecclesiastical garb. He sought perspective, and he disseminated it. He strived towards unearthing “a unifying principle by which the whole history of civilization in Europe could be woven on one thread”:

“Battles and revolutions are the smallest part of the plan; squadrons and battalions
conquering or being conquered, towns taken and retaken, are common to all history…Take away
the arts and the progress of the mind, and you will find nothing” in any age “remarkable
enough to attract the attention of posterity…I wish to write a history not of wars, but of
society; and to ascertain how men lived in the interior of their families, and what were the
arts which they commonly cultivated….My object is the history of the human mind, and not a
mere detail of petty facts; nor am I concerned with the history of great Lords…; but I want
to know what were the steps by which men passed from barbarism to civilization.”

He made tireless efforts in searching out and consuming information. He poured over long histories, and was precise in his organization of facts. Yet, at the same time, he was the most creative and artistic writer France had ever seen; he was “sheer intelligence transmuting anger into fun, fire into light”; “a creature of air and flame, the most excitable that ever lived, composed of more ethereal and more throbbing atoms that those of other men; there is none whose mental machinery is more delicate, nor whose equilibrium is at the same time more shifting and more exact.” In what are described as “humorous picaresque novelettes,” Voltaire wrote romantic comedies where the “heroes are not persons but ideas, the villains are superstitions, and the events are thoughts.” I excerpt for you Durant’s discussion of his novelette Micromegas:

Micromegas is an imitation of Swift, but perhaps richer than its model in cosmic imagination.
The earth is visited by an inhabitant from Sirius; he is some 500,000 feet tall, as befits
the citizen of so large a star. On his way through space he has picked up a gentleman from
Saturn, who grieves because he is only a few thousand feet in height. As they walk through
the Mediterranean the Sirian wets his heels. He asks his comrade how many senses the
Saturnians have and is told: “We have seventy-two, but we are daily complaining of the
smaller number.” “To what age do you commonly live?” “Alas, a mere trifle;…very few on our
globe survive 15,000 years. So you see that in a manner we begin to die the very moment we
are born: our existence is no more than a point, our duration an instant, and our globe an
atom. Scarce do we begin to learn a little when death intervenes before we can profit by
experience.” As they stand in the sea they take up a ship as one might pick up some
animalcule, and the Sirian poises it on his thumb-nail, causing much commotion among the
human passengers. “The Chaiplains of the ship repeated exorcisms, the sailors swore, and the
philosophers formed a system” to explain this disturbance of the laws of gravity. The Sirian
bends down like a darkening cloud and addresses them:

“O ye intelligent atoms, in whom the Supreme Being hath been pleased to manifest his
omniscience and power, without doubt your joys on this earth must be pure and exquisite;
for being unencumbered with matter, and—to all appearance—little else than soul, you must
spend your lives in the delights of pleasure and reflection, which are the true
enjoyments of a perfect spirit. True happiness I have nowhere found; but certainly here
it dwells.”

“We have matter enough,” answered one of the philosophers, “to do abundance of mischief…
You must know, for example, that at this very moment, while I am speaking, there are
100,000 animals of our own species, covered in hats, slaying an equal number of their
fellow-creatures, who wear turbans; at least they are either slaying or being slain; and
this has usually been the case all over the earth from time immermorial.”

“Miscreants!” cried the indignant Sirian; “I have good mind to take two or three steps,
and trample the whole nest of such ridiculous assassins under my feet.”

“Don’t give yourself the trouble,” replied the philosopher; “they are industrious enough
in securing their own destruction. At the end of ten years the hundredth part of these
wretches will not survive…Besides, the punishment should not be included upon them, but
upon those sedentary and slothful barbarians who, from their palaces, give orders for
murdering a million of men, and then solemnly thank God for their success.”

Voltaire lived for the hope of enlightenment of humankind, but sadly came to believe in his later years that humankind was all too often the victim of forces moving in the opposite direction. After the French clergy declared that the great earthquake of Lisbon in 1755 (with a death toll of 30,000) was a punishment exacted by God on the sinners of Lisbon, and the outbreak of the Seven Years War which followed a few months later, Voltaire wrote Candide, where “never was pessimism so gaily argued; never was man made to laugh so heartily while learning that this is a world of woe.” In the end, despite his wearied condition, Voltaire never abandoned hope in the reforming power of education and the development of the intellect. He knew that “men form institutions, and institutions form men,” and that to break this vicious circle you cannot simply change the nature of the institution, you must change the nature of the man (or woman). Was he hopeful in this respect?

"Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?

"Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found
them?"

"Yes, without doubt," said Candide.

"Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character why should you
imagine that men may have changed theirs?"

"Oh!" said Candide, "there is a vast deal of difference, for free will----

And reasoning thus they arrived at Bordeaux.

On May 30, 1778, Voltaire drew his last breath. He was buried in Scellieres, France, until 1791 when, after the French Revolution, his remains were brought back to Paris and “the dead ashes of the great flame that had been were escorted through Paris by a procession of 100,000 men and women, while 600,000 flanked the streets. On the funeral car were the words: ‘He gave the human mind a great impetus; he prepared us for freedom.” On his tombstone only three words were necessary:

"Here lies Voltaire.”

I wish, as it were, that I had time to type out the entire chapter on Voltaire in Durant’s The Story of Philosophy and share it here. I urge anyone who found the excerpts here as interesting as I did to do just that (read, not type). I guess if I was posed with a demurrer from a reader, I would reply that if there was any mortal figure whose intellect, at least, I could model my own after, it would be his. Literary brilliance, scientific aptitude, and remarkable wit, combined with tireless energy and passion for truth. This describes Voltaire, and I find him inspiring.

The statue pictured above is, in one way, a living monument: the very heart of Voltaire lies inside it. As I walked past the statue after taking the picture I brushed my hand over the stone, with a feeling that I would never come closer to the man himself.