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Voltaire, 1694-1778

"Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary"



FOOTNOTES:
[12] Chedorlaomer was king of the Elamites, and contemporary with
Abraham. See Genesis ch. xiv.
Mentzel was a famous chief of Austrian partisans in the war of 1741. At
the head of five thousand men, he made Munich capitulate on February
13th, 1742.


_LIBERTY_

Either I am very much mistaken, or Locke the definer has very well
defined liberty as "power." I am mistaken again, or Collins, celebrated
London magistrate, is the only philosopher who has really sifted this
idea, and Clark's answer to him was merely that of a theologian. But of
all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little
dialogue seems to me the most clear.
A: There is a battery of guns firing in your ears, have you the liberty
to hear them or not to hear them?
B: Without doubt, I cannot stop myself hearing them.
A: Do you want this gun to carry off your head and the heads of your
wife and daughter, who are walking with you?
B: What are you talking about? as long as I am of sound mind, I cannot
want such a thing; it is impossible.
A: Good; you hear this gun necessarily, and you wish necessarily that
neither you nor your family shall die from a cannon shot while you are
out for a walk; you have not the power either of not hearing or of
wishing to remain here?
B: Clearly.
A: You have consequently taken some thirty steps in order to be
sheltered from the gun, you have had the power to walk these few steps
with me?
B: Again very clearly.


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