A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 02 · Voltaire
SECTION II.
Assassination being, next to poisoning, the crime most cowardly and most deserving of punishment, it is not astonishing that it has found an apologist in a man whose singular reasoning is, in some things, at variance with the reason of the rest of mankind. In a romance entitled "Emilius," he imagines that he is the guardian of a young man, to whom he is very careful to give an education such as is received in the military school--teaching him languages, geometry, tactics, fortification, and the history of his country. He does not seek to inspire him with love for his king and his country, but contents himself with making him a joiner. He would have this gentleman-joiner, when he has received a blow or a challenge, instead of returning it and fighting, "prudently assassinate the man." Molière does, it is true, say jestingly, in _"L'Amour Peintre,"_ "assassination is the safest"; but the author of this romance asserts that it is the most just and reasonable. He says this very seriously, and, in the immensity of his paradoxes, this is one of the three or four things which he first says. The same spirit of wisdom and decency which makes him declare that a preceptor should often accompany his pupil to a place of prostitution, makes him decide that this disciple should be an assassin. So that the education which Jean Jacques would give to a young man consists in teaching him how to handle the plane, and in fitting him for salivation and the rope.
We doubt whether fathers of families will be eager to give such preceptors to their children. It seems to us that the romance of Emilius departs rather too much from the maxims of Mentor in "Telemachus"; but it must also be acknowledged that our age has in all things very much varied from the great age of Louis XIV. Happily, none of these horrible infatuations are to be found in the "Encyclopædia." It often displays a philosophy seemingly bold, but never that atrocious and extravagant babbling which two or three fools have called philosophy, and two or three ladies, eloquence.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.