This recommendation is addressed to those who govern, we are told, and builds into a veritable mantra. André Magnan pointed out that the opening anecdote is also found in the letters of Mademoiselle Aîssé, a harem slave brought back to Paris by Charles de Ferriol, French ambassador to Constantinople, to be raised with his nephews, the Count of d'Argental and the Count de Pont de Veyle, Voltaire's lifelong friends.1

The late Monsieur de Montampui, my good friend, Rector of the University of Paris, wanted to go to a performance of Zaïre² one day, a very saintly play in which the only rendezvous the heroine gives is to have herself baptized.

The Rector had only to get in a fiacre to go from his college to the theater, dressed in his usual clothes, as all people of breeding do in Paris. But he believed, like Father Castel, that the universe had its eyes upon him, and believed it all the more because, being Rector of the University, he had, following the very meaning of the word, to inspect the universe, which, consequently, watched him continually. He felt that the universe would be surprised to learn that a certain Montampui had been to the theater, and that all future ages would be scandalized.

Montampui, not wishing to cause the universe this pain, nor to deprive himself of seeing the play, decided to disguise himself as a woman. He had in an old armoire some clothes that had belonged to his grandmother, who had died in the days of the Fronde.³ So here he is, dressing up in a red woolen skirt and russet coat. He covers his aged Rector's head with a triple-tiered wig, topped with a big knot of dusty rose ribbons.

A pair of lacy cuffs, red and torn, disclose his brawny, hairy arms to their full advantage. Our rector, thus turned out, leaves by a secret door in the college and runs to the door of the theater.

This strange figure drew a crowd. Madame was shown little respect. She was tugged at, pegged as a dirty old man, and led to prison where she remained until she confessed that she was the Rector of the University of Paris. If Monsieur de Montampui had had this fine axiom in mind—Adapt to the times—he would not have given the universe this spectacle.

There is no need to teach this maxim to courtiers. They have always observed it faithfully with men in power: serviebant tempori (time served), as Tacitus said. Ladies and dandies have always revered fashion, and even outdone it. It is not to those who keep up with the times, it is to those that fate has placed at the head of governments that this little discourse is addressed.

Kings of England, you no longer pretend to cure scrofula now that your people have realized you are not doctors. The Royal Society of London has seen clearly that there is no physical nor metaphysical relation between the crown of England and phlegmatic humors. You have ceased this ceremony. You have adapted to the times.

I am certain that there were marvelous laws in Athens concerning the harvest of acorns before Triptolemus taught the Greeks how to sow grain. But when the Athenians began to eat bread and found this food better than the other, all the laws regarding acorns abolished themselves, and the archons were obliged to encourage agriculture.

Archbishops of Naples, the time will come when the blood of Monsieur St. Januarius, or Gennaro, will no longer boil when it is approached by his head.4 The Neapolitan gentlemen and bourgeois will know enough in a few more centuries to conclude that this little conjuring trick isn't worth a ducat, that it is absolutely useless to the prosperity of the kingdom and to the well-being of its citizens, that God does not perform miracles on appointed days, and that he does not change the laws he imposed on nature. When these notions have descended from the nobles to the townsmen, and from these to that portion of the people who are able to reason, then we will see in Naples what was once seen in the little town of Egnatia where, in the days of Horace, incense lit itself without being approached by fire. Horace ridiculed the miracle, and it ceased to exist. This is how the holy navel of Jesus disappeared from the town of Châlons. This is how miracles have disappeared from half of Europe, along with relics. As soon as reason appears, miracles cease.

Ancient tribunals or new ones that lorded it over large towns erratically composed of palaces and thatched huts, disgusting and magnificent, inhabited in turn by savages, half-savages, Welches, Romans, Franks, and finally by the French, it's been a long time since you paraded the alleged carcass of the shepherd of Nanterre in the streets, and since Marcel and St. Geneviève met on the bridge of Notre-Dame to give us rain or sunshine.5 You knew that the good bourgeois of Paris were beginning to suspect that it wasn't a little village girl who disposed of the seasons, but that God alone, who formed the elements and matter, was the sole master of the air and earth. And soon, Geneviève, humbly honored in her new church,⁶ no longer shared the supreme domain of nature with God.

You will no longer pass decrees in favor of Aristotle, nor against vomiting. You will no longer be presented with indictments that prevent inoculation from saving the life of our princes and our citizens. You will adapt to the times.

The time approaches in which one will tire of sending money three hundred leagues away in order to possess in security a few meadows and vineyards in one's own country, accorded by the sovereign.

It will be seen that it is no more up to an Italian to meddle in what a Frenchman thinks than it is up to this Frenchman to prescribe to this Italian what he should think. People will sense how enormously ridiculous and dangerous it is to have a large body of citizens dependent on a foreign master in their state.⁷ This body of citizens will itself understand that it will become more honored and more dear to its nation if, by reclaiming its natural independence, it ceases to enslave itself through a system of simony at its own expense. It will fortify itself in this wise and noble thought through the example of a neighboring island. You will then use your power and influence to break the chains that outrage the nation. You will adapt to the times.

It is finer yet, no doubt, to prepare them than to adapt, for there is little merit in feeding oneself from the fruits last year brought to bear. But it is greater to prepare the soil through wise cultivation, to bring to bear produce that one would not have enjoyed till late in life.

Opinion governs the world; but it is wise men who direct opinion in the long run.

When these wise men have enlightened men at last, they must not be treated as they were in the days of Pierre Lombard, Scotus, and of Gilbert de La Porée.8

An unsociable society, a stranger in its own country, composed of people of merit, fools, fanatics, and scoundrels, carried the banner of a man who pretended to rule the universe by divine rights from one end of the universe to the other. It manufactured in its patch of land, in the name of this man, a hundred arrows with which it devoutly pierced its enemies. It wished to persuade everyone that these arrows were made of gold, and that they had fallen from heaven.⁹

To support this tale, it used a sort of magic. The unbelievers who wished to prove that these arrows were only made of lead suddenly found themselves, without knowing how, some three to five hundred miles from their homes, or in a neighboring castle, dark and poorly furnished, from which they could not leave unless they signed papers swearing that the hundred and one arrows were of pure gold.

You have finally purged the country of these magicians.¹⁰ You have finally seen the time approaching in which public execration would have exterminated them. You have not only adapted to the times, you have anticipated the times.

Do not spoil this charitable work by crushing fanaticism on the one hand, while prosecuting reason on the other.

When you see reason making such prodigious progress, consider it an ally that can come to your aid, and not as an enemy to be attacked. Believe that in the long run it will prove more powerful than you. Dare to cherish it, and not to fear it. Adapt to the times.