Voltaire’s Good Brahmin Today
Voltaire (1694–1778) was a French enlightenment writer and philosopher. The following excerpt is from the Wikisource translation of Voltaire’s “The Good Brahmin” article.
Beginning of the excerpt —
In my travels I once happened to meet with an aged Brahmin. This man had a great share of understanding and prudence, and was very learned. He was also very rich, and his riches added greatly to his popularity, for, wanting nothing that wealth could procure, he had no desire to defraud any one. …
Not far from his house, which was handsome, well furnished, and embellished with delightful gardens, dwelt an old Indian woman who was a great bigot, ignorant, and withal very poor.
“I wish,” said the Brahmin to me one day, “I had never been born.”
“Why so?” said I.
“Because,” said he, “I have been studying these forty years, and I find it has been so much time lost. While I teach others I know nothing myself. The sense of my condition is so humiliating, it makes all things so distasteful to me, that life has become a burden. I have been born, and I exist in time, without knowing what time is. I am placed, as our wise men say, in the confines between two eternities, and yet I have no idea of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I even am ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty I possess, like that of walking and digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands. I am not only thus in the dark with relation to the principles of thought, but the principles of my motions are entirely unknown to me. I do not know why I exist, and yet I am applied to every day for a solution of the enigma. I must return an answer, but can say nothing satisfactory on the subject. I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said.
“I am in still greater perplexity when I am asked if Brahma was produced by Vishnu, or if they have both existed from eternity. God is my judge that I know nothing of the matter, as plainly appears by my answers. ‘Reverend father,’ says one, ‘be pleased to inform me how evil is spread over the face of the earth.’ I am as much at a loss as those who ask the question. Sometimes I tell them that everything is for the best; but those who have the gout or the stone — those who have lost their fortunes or their limbs in the wars — believe as little of this assertion as I do myself. I retire to my own house full of curiosity, and endeavor to enlighten my ignorance by consulting the writings of our ancient sages, but they only serve to bewilder me the more. When I talk with my brethren upon this subject, some tell me we ought to make the most of life and laugh at the world. Others think they know something, and lose themselves in vain and chimerical hypotheses. Every effort I make to solve the mystery adds to the load I feel. Sometimes I am ready to fall into despair when I reflect that, after all my researches, I neither know from whence I came, what I am, whither I shall go, or what is to become of me.”
The condition in which I saw this good man gave me real concern. No one could be more rational, no one more open and honest. It appeared to me that the force of his understanding and the sensibility of his heart were the causes of his misery.
The same day I had a conversation with the old woman, his neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made? She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed from the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of her god, Vishnu, and, provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of women.
Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed:
“Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contented?”
“You are right,” he replied. “I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor, and yet it is a happiness I do not desire.”
— — End of the excerpt
Voltaire wrote “The Good Brahmin” in the later half of the eighteenth century, almost two hundred and fifty years ago. I therefore ask the following hypothetical but rhetorical question.
If Voltaire were still alive and traveling to India, would he experience a similar episode? Would he find a modern Brahmin who confides with his deepest anguish and the Brahmin’s poor old automaton neighbor be befuddled by his question? When approached again and asked about his miserable state, would the Brahmin respond the same? In other words, has the Indian society or its perception in the wider world changed in the last two hundred and fifty years? Finally, further broadening the question, is the setting of the story any different for other parts of the world, the liberal democracies or the nationalistic dictatorships?
Perhaps there should be an essay competition to answer this question. A similar essay competition was held by the Academy of Dijon during the enlightenment period on the question “Has the restoration of the sciences and the arts contributed to the purification of the morals?” Another enlightenment period philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau emerged as the winner. We may find a modern Indian Rousseau as the winner!