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Updated: May 4, 2025
My voice and my pen were ever consecrated to my fatherland, as they are now subject to your command. I entreat you to look into my literary contest with Maupertius, and to believe that I give it up cheerfully to please you, sire; and because I will in all things submit to your will. I will also be obedient to your majesty in this.
In autumn Voltaire will visit us; and Maupertius, the great scholar, who first discovered the form of the earth, will come, as President of our Academy; and Buncauson, who understands some of the mysteries of God, will also come to Berlin. The celebrated Eulert will soon belong to us."
But so outspoken had St.-Pierre been against corruption in high places, that Maupertius, his Successor at the Academy, was not permitted to pronounce his ELOGE; nor was it until thirty-two years after his death that this honour was done to his memory by D'Alembert. The true and emphatic epitaph of the good, truth-loving, truth-speaking Abbe was this "HE LOVED MUCH!"
Maupertius had just published his "Lettres Philosophiques," in which it must be confessed there were passages which justified Voltaire's assertion that Maupertius was at one time insane, and was confined for some years in a madhouse at Montpellier. Maupertius proposed in these letters that a Latin city should be built, and this majestic and beautiful tongue brought to life again.
If I kept the living 'Akakia' by my side, it would be a poisonous weapon, which I would hurl one day surely at the head of Maupertius. It is therefore better it should live only in my remembrance, and be only an imaginary dagger, with which I will sometimes tickle the haughty lord-president."
He proposed, also, that a hole should be dug to the centre of the earth, in order to discover its condition and quality; also that the brain of Pythagoras should be searched for and opened, in order to ascertain the nature of the soul. These ridiculous and fabulous propositions Voltaire replied to under the name of Dr. Akakia; he asserted that he was only anxious to heal the unhappy Maupertius.
This publication was written in Voltaire's sharpest wit and his most biting, glittering irony, and was calculated to make Maupertius absurd in the eyes of the whole world.
Suddenly a loud and derisive laugh was heard, and a powerful voice cried out: "Look at the spirit of Maupertius, which is dissolving into smoke! Oh, the thick, black smoke! How much wood consumed in vain! The 'Akakia' is immortal you burn him here, but he still lives, and the whole world will know and appreciate him. So said Voltaire, as he dashed the window down, and stepped back in the room.
The most powerful and therefore the most abhorred of the enemies against whom Voltaire now turned in his rage, was the president of the Berlin Academy, Maupertius. Voltaire could never forgive him for daring to shine in his presence; for being the president of an academy of which he, Voltaire, was only a simple member.
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