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Often appears with: theft and avarice · statues and public taste · sparta and athens · philosophical perspective · natural law and higher law · natural law · nakedness and modesty · miracles and nature · justice as a virtue · justice and injustice · fable and allegory · custom and the manners of a people
Usually: dialogue (1) · detachment (1) · skepticism (1)
“Where the vulgar laugh, the philosopher admires; and he laughs where the vulgar open their big, stupid eyes in astonishment.” Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary · observation
In a dialogue format, Voltaire defines natural law as an instinct for justice, challenges the idea of theft across places by comparing laws in Sparta and Athens, and contrasts moral essentials with shifting customs.
*MOUNTAIN* It is a very old, very universal fable that tells of the mountain which, having frightened all the countryside by its outcry that it was in labour, was hissed by all present when it brought into the world a mere mouse. The people in the pit were not philosophers. Those who hissed should have admired. It was as fine for the mountain to give birth to a mouse, as for the mouse to give birth to a mountain. A …