PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY – VOLTAIRE

Voltaire was the first and most active of those who made known to all various hated practices, which they had not yet hated, and which seemed to be inseparably connected with the administration of justice. It awakens misgivings that did not exist, horrors, not yet conscious, of certain proceedings, whose uselessness, injustice, and horrible rigor were accepted by a long-standing habit of persuasion. He is thus transformed into a kind of legislator, of a different kind, since he defines, establishes a completely new crime. Penal laws until then dealt with offenses and insults against the social order, the state, and the religion of the state. But Voltaire proclaims that there are crimes against humanity, that there are crimes against thought and he considers them reprehensible. It also makes it clear that punishment itself sometimes ends up becoming a crime, because the sight of horrible torture awakens and preserves in others their latent savagery, while for many others a wretched criminal turns into an almost innocent victim. If the public power is inflamed, if it rages against the body of the target, if it embraces wrath, or if it pursues the path of revenge, then the abstract and pure concept of the State which renders justice is corrupted and debased. It is perceived that the State itself is tested by instincts that it should not know, and that it only knows at the expense of its very reason for existence.