I

Candide’s Summary

A "fairly intelligent" boy "of sweet disposition", Candide lives in the castle of the baron von Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia. He is the illegitimate son of the baron's sister. Dr Pangloss "the greatest philosopher in the whole world" teaches "metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigological" and instills in the young boy a theory of optimism, that all is for the best in this "best of all possible worlds". Candide listens with naivety and faith the pretentious tutor Pangloss. By a sequence of causes and effects, the baron discovers Candide and his daughter Cunégonde kiss behind a screen, the baron banishes the boy, and exiles him from the castle "with vigorous kicks from behind".

‘He drove Candide out of the castle.’

"Expelled from his earthly paradise", the hero undergoes a series of misfortune: two men force him to join and serve the Bulgarian army. One morning, when he decides to walk alone outside the camp, he is accused of desertion, and only saved by the king who discovers that Candide is "simply an unworldly young metaphysician". Refugee in Holland, Candide is repelled by a pastor, but Jacques "a kindly Anabaptist" takes care of him. While walking in a street, Candide meets a beggar in miserable condition. The beggar is Pangloss. The latter informs Candide about the death of his

former masters, massacred by the Bulgarian soldiers. Pangloss explains that his physical illness is due to Paquette, the maid he was courting. Jacques cures Pangloss who loses "only one eye and one ear", and then hires him as his bookkeeper.

While they sail to Lisbon -on a business trip- Pangloss still insists on his doctrine of optimism and continues to think and to believe that everything is for the best. "A terrible storm" overtakes the ship. Jacques tries to save a sailor, but falls overboard himself. On a plank, Candide and Pangloss reach the shore and walk toward Lisbon, which has just experienced a terrible and dreadful earthquake, "thirty thousand inhabitants were crushed beneath the ruin". The one eyed philosopher consoles and comforts the citizens that the earthquake is for the best. An agent of the Inquisition accuses them of heresy. The authorities hang Pangloss for his opinion and publicly flog Candide for "having listened with an air of approval" and burn other heretics. Candide plunges into despair, sorrow, and melancholy, and begins doubting his inner beliefs.

An old woman appears, treats Candide's wounds, feeds him and gives him clothes and leads him to Cunégonde. She starts telling her sad story: after a cruel rape at the castle, a Bulgarian captain sells her to a Jewish merchant called Don Issachar. The Grand Inquisitor observes her, and wants to buy her from the Jew, the latter refuses, but under the Inquisitor's threat and warning, he accepts to share Cunégonde.

‘'Take off her veil', the old woman said, and Candide shyly did so.’

The Jewish merchant finds Candide and Cunégonde alone on the sofa. After a dispute, Candide kills Don Issachar. The Grand Inquisitor walks in and he is surprised to find Cunégonde with another man. Candide slays him too. The old woman suggests to flee by horseback to Cadiz, on their way they stop at a tavern, unfortunately a Franciscan priest steals Cunégonde's jewels. The old woman unveils her hardships. "Daughter of Pope Urban X and the princess of Palestrina", she grew up in the midst of incredible and magnificent wealth in a luxurious castle and "was betrothed to a ruling prince of Massa Carrara". Unfortunately he was killed by an "old marquesa". On their way to an estate in Gaeta, the ship was boarded by pirates; they raped the women and sailed to Morocco to sell them as slaves. The country "was being deluged with blood", the princess collapsed after seeing frightful and horrible war scenes, and she fell unconscious, only to be awoken by an Italian man attempting to rape her, he carried her to Algiers, where he sold her to the Dey. The plague swept the African nations, killing everybody except her, after being sold to a string of merchants from Tripoli to Constantinople. Desperate for food, the Russians who overtook the city of Azov, planned to kill the women, but "a very devout imam" persuaded them to "only cut off one of the buttocks of each of these ladies and you will find an excellent meal". The old woman came close to commit suicide many times in her life, but her "love of life" persisted.

Upon arriving by ship to Buenos Aires, the Governor Don Fernando d'Ibarro y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza begs Cunégonde to marry him, she accepts thanks to the old woman's advice. The agents of the Inquisition arrive at Buenos Aires to look for Candide, the old woman advises him to flee away. The young man escapes with his valet Cacambo to Paraguay where they meet Cunégonde's brother. When Candide reveals his intention that he plans to marry Cunégonde, the colonel refuses since Candide is not noble. In an access of rage, Candide draws a sword and plunges it into the baron. After that, he enters a strange country of the Oreillons with his valet, where he kills two monkeys to save two young women, unfortunately Cacambo informs him: "you have killed these two ladies' lovers".

‘The cries, they now perceived, came from two young women, who were running nimbly along the edge of meadow, pursued by two monkeys, which were biting their buttocks.’

Cacambo and Candide head toward a long river leads to a country "cut off from the rest of the world", where they find children playing with "lumps of gold, ruby and emerald". The people speak Cacambo's native language. Cacambo asks an old man about the religion of El Dorado, he responds "the same religion as the rest of the world", and a God whom they thank and praise everyday for giving them all they want. After a month, Candide decides to leave and to depart from the land of luxury and leisure, carrying with them "the pebbles of El Dorado", in order to get Cunégonde back.

On the road to Surinam they meet a Negro slave who is missing a leg and a hand, and he is treated cruelly at the hands of his master Mynheer Vanderdendur. Hearing the slave's story, Candide loses his faith in his old tutor's doctrine of optimism which he defines it as "the madness of asserting that everything is good, when it is evil". He then contracts with the Dutch trader to take him to Venice, where he will reunite with Cunégonde as Candide plans. Unfortunately the trader sails away with Candide's treasure, leaving him penniless. He then books passage on a ship sailing for France.

‘This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe.’

An old scholar, Martin, argues with Candide about "the subject of moral and physical evil", Martin confesses to be a Manichæan, and maintains that God "has handed it (the world) to some malignant being". On their way to Bordeaux, they watch a battle between two ships, the Dutch pirate's ship sinks to the bottom of the sea. Candide reinforces his optimistic outlook of the world, and hopes to find Cunégonde. When the coast is in sight, Martin criticizes France as a country when "the chief occupation is making love, the second is slander, and the third is talking nonsense", and describes Paris as "a chaos, a throng, where everybody seeks pleasure". The ship arrives, they decide to visit Paris where he falls ill and meets the Abbé de Périgord who takes them "to the comédie" and introduces Candide to Mlle Clairon, "she has a deceiving resemblance to Cunégonde". The Abbé takes Candide and Martin to visit Mme de Parolignac, after a discussion with a "man of taste" about the "opinion that everything is for the best both in the physical and in the moral world", Mme de Parolignac seduces Candide and steals his rings. The next morning, Candide receives a letter signed "Cunégonde", the naive man wishes to visit her in Paris and gives diamonds and gold to the woman he believes to be Cunégonde. An officer enters the room followed by the Abbé and a squad of men to arrest the "suspected foreigners". Candide bribes the officer and they both escape to Portsmouth by a ferryboat. The unfortunate men witness an execution of an admiral near the shore; he decides to not set foot in England, and directly sails to Venice where he looks in vain for Cacambo. He meets

Paquette, who recounts her tale of mistreatment. They next visit Senator Pococurante. A wealthy man of a marvelous collection of art and books, but he is unable to enjoy any of it.

At the Carnival, Candide lays his eyes upon Cacambo, "where is Cunégonde?" he asks, "She is in Constantinople" the former valet replies. Six strangers recount the stories of their political fall from power. On their way to Constantinople, Cacambo informs Candide and Martin that he bought Cunégonde and the old woman, but a pirate stripped them and sold them as slaves. What is worse is that Cunégonde has lost her beauty and she has grown very ugly. Candide purchases Cacambo's freedom. He examines a row of slaves and recognizes the baron and Pangloss among the slaves, he then buys their freedom. While the group travels to save Cunégonde, the galley slaves tell their stories. When Candide finds his beloved, he buys her freedom along with the old woman's. The baron again declares his refusal to the marriage, Cacambo suggests that they return the baron to the galleys, and that's the course they do. Nobody is happy in this new situation, everyone is cursing his/her fate, except Martin who thinks that "one is equally badly off wherever one is" and he keeps bearing everything with patience. They all discuss philosophical matters, and reflect on the nature of evil in the world. A very famous dervish lives in the neighborhood and he is considered to be "the best philosopher in Turkey". The group asks him about the purpose of the creation of humans, and "the origin of evil, the nature of the soul…”. The dervish rebukes them and shuts the door in their faces.

Finally, Candide suggests "that we must dig in our garden", Martin replies "let us work then and not argue. It is the only way to render life supportable". While Pangloss still believes that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds".

‘'That it excellently observed', said Candide. 'But let us dig in our garden'.’

II

Voltaire and the problem of evil

"The problem of Evil was after Lisbon one of the main issues where the ideas of the Enlightenment attacked the old theological dogma."(1)

I

The concept of philosophy, in the age of Enlightenment, is very wide and broad. Philosophy includes a variety of ideas in the fields of metaphysics, science, art, society, morality, politics...Based on a return to the Greek spirit, especially Socrates' critical inquiry: the blind faith in rational thought, the power of human reason and logic to solve the basic problems of human existence, and the extreme doubt in religious, social, and moral superstitions and dogmas. In England, the works of I. Newton re-evaluate the medieval cosmology, J. Locke refutes universal and innate ideas that God had implanted in our minds, defended by Cartesianism. In France, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu...preach principles of individual freedom, ideological and religious tolerance, and social reform based on human laws in contrast to the Divine Laws. Where as in Germany, the Copernican revolution by I. Kant (critiques of pure reason, practical reason, and the faculty of judgement) changes the whole way of thinking. The philosophers "of the Enlightenment were deists, skeptics, atheists, or inventors of a religion within the bound of reason, they were absolutists, relativists or liberal in politics, they were libertines, hedonists or conscience-ridden bourgeois in ethics"(2).

In his well-known answer to the question "was ist Aufklärung?", I. Kant defines Enlightenment as "man's release from his self-incurred tutelage"(3), the main purpose is intellectual freedom, people must be given the right and the freedom to use their own intellect, and they need to be liberated from the institutions of society, hence the authority of the church and the state paternalism; "The past has no claim on the future"(4). I. Kant's motto "sapere aude" translated as "dare to know" reflects his idea that the lack of courage to use one's own mind and intellect without any guidance is the reason behind people's immaturity. In brief, Enlightenment is the process of undertaking to think for oneself, to employ and rely on one's own intellectual capacities in determining what to believe and how to act. "But of all the literature and art associated with the Enlightenment, none has had quite the success of Candide."(5)

(1) Ari Hirvonen, the problem of evil revisited. Retrieved from: www.helsinki.fi/nofo/NoFo4Hirvonen.pdf

(2) Peter Gay, the living Enlightenment. Retrieved from: www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/ Gay 98.pdf

(3) Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question, What Is Enlightenment? Penguin Books (November 2009).

(4) Kieron O’Hara, the Enlightenment: a beginner's guide. Oneworld; 1 edition (March 16, 2010).

(5) Johnson Kent Wright, Candide, Voltaire and the Enlightenment. Retrieved from: yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/excerpts/ voltaire _ candide .pdf

Voltaire, the greatest writer of all time, as Goethe called him once(6), belongs to those intellectuals who proceed to a re-examination of the question of evil and providence, and make an effort with the re-definition of an individual and collective good by "tearing down old structures, rebuilding human society, institution, and knowledge, and providing them with firm foundations"(7). The title shows already that the true subject of Voltaire's tale is philosophical. A tale that examines and criticizes a thesis à la mode, which is optimism, and proposes another way and another solution to the problem of evil. Candide is a philosophical tale, i.e., an account which comprises a conclusive dimension, and which treats philosophical questions, among them the problem of evil, of course. But the tale comprises another significant dimension: it indicates a manner of making which does not consist in imposing to the reader a very ready truth but suggesting no orientation in the way of thinking, no sorts of dogmas or formulas, since critical thinking is one of the shapes of good, hence the reader is requested to be attentive and intelligent, if he/she wants to think the evil with Voltaire, an author who militated for the freedom of examination and the critical spirit does not claim to think in the place of the reader. On the one hand, Voltaire proposes to forsake the metaphysical questioning which seems to him sterile. On the other hand, he is interested, from an anthropological point of view, in understanding the mechanisms by which humans are led to make evil.

The existence of physical evil that results from the operation of natural processes, in which case no human being can be held morally accountable for the resultant evil. Classic examples of natural evil are natural disasters such as cyclones and earthquakes that result in enormous suffering and loss of life, or moral evil that results from the misuse of free will on the part of some moral agent in such a way that the agent thereby becomes morally blameworthy for the resultant evil. Moral evil therefore includes specific acts of intentional wrongdoing such as lying and murdering, as well as defects in character such as dishonesty and greed, is a puzzle and enigma that has attracted all sorts of responses, including optimism. So the question of evil is partly that of optimism. The first answer comes from the Christian theologians trying to reconcile the existence of evil with that of a Good and Perfect God. For them, the cause of the evil is the original sin: man chooses freely to do wrong, and God is innocent of all the misfortunes that strike us. But how to explain that a righteous man suffers from an earthquake that shakes and destroys a whole city inhabited by both good and bad persons? A Catholic writer, Bossuet, answers this question: God is leading the world toward a happy ending, and evils are a necessary component to this development and evolution. The divine goodness is beyond human understanding, that’s why humans must have a blind faith in the intentions of God(8). One finds an echo of these ideas in the letter sent by Jean Jacques Rousseau to Voltaire, on August 18, 1756, after the disaster of Lisbon.

(6) Richard Custick, Voltaire and the Enlightenment. Retrieved from: philclubcle.org/papers/Cusick,R20080226.pdf

(7) Ibid.(8) Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Discours sur l'histoire universelle. Nabu Press (November 23,

2011).

Another Christian theologian, Saint Augustine who suggests that God is the Supreme Good, hence, evil does not exist at all, if one claims that evil exists therefore God is responsible for evil, that's why the existence of a metaphysical reality of evil has no place in the hierarchy of beings. G.W. von Leibniz, a rationalist philosopher, claims that God is good, because God has created the best possible world. Indeed, the act of creation can not be perfect (only God is perfect). But if the created universe is generally perfect, some of its parts and its evolution are imperfectly, that is to say, affected by a necessary evil for the triumph of Good:

Tous vos maux sont un bien dans les lois générales.(Your ills are but a link in general law)(9)

This explains the famous phrase "All is well". Leibniz tries hard to prove this theory by the argument of final causes: all action, all evil is part of a rigorous chain of events that lead to Good. These arguments appear in Pangloss’ speeches, and often reproduced by Candide.

The weakness of the human spirit prohibits the understanding of the divine plan, God's ways are too mysterious for us to comprehend the intentions of the providence, i.e., to perceive the totality of reality and of history, totality within which what seems an evil contributes in fact to a total good. The world can not be any better than it is because God will surely not make an imperfect world. In the beginning, God had before him an infinite number of possible worlds. "For Leibniz, an imperfection in a part may be required for a greater perfect in the whole. Therefore, God permitted evil in order to bring a greater good, the good of the universe"(10). In his Theodicy, which is a response to the question of l'existence du mal to Pierre Bayle, who denies the perfect kingdom on earth, and the goodness and omnipotence of God. History, for Bayle, is nothing but a collection of the crimes and catastrophes of mankind. Voltaire mentioned P. Bayle in his poem:

J’abandonne Platon, je rejette Épicure.Bayle en sait plus qu’eux tous ; je vais le consulter :La balance à la main, Bayle enseigne à douter,Assez sage, assez grand pour être sans système,Il les a tous détruits, et se combat lui-même.(Plato and Epicurus I reject.And turn more hopefully to learned Bayle.With even poised scale Bayle bids me doubt.He, wise and great enough to need no creed,Has slain all systems—combats even himself). (11)

(9) Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne/Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. Retrieved from : http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Toleration_and_other_essays/Poem_on_the_Lisbon_Disasterhttp://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me_sur_le_d%C3%A9sastre_de_Lisbonne

(10)Ari Hirvonen, The problem of evil revisited. Op. cit.(11)Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne/Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. Op. cit.

G.W. von Leibniz describes "a harmonious universe in which all events are linked to a chain of cause and effect, in which apparent evil is compensated by some greater good which may not be evident in the short run because of the limited human mind"(12). In addition to Leibniz, A. Pope's works speak of God's infinite wisdom and knowledge with man's existing in a world that is for the best, with genuine goodness existing in the whole rather isolation. And he suggests that the evil that human beings may do, as well as nature's aberrations, disasters and traumas, do not disprove the idea of a reasonable God, even if some cry(13), "if Man's unhappy, God's unjust"(14). A. Pope's Essay on Man, is considered to be the most concise formulation of the philosophy of optimism:

All nature is but Art unknown to thee,All Chance, Direction which thou canst not see,All Discord, Harmony not understood,All partial Evil, universal GoodAnd, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,One truth is clear, Whatever IS, is RIGHT.(15)

These three doctrines are, almost, sharing the same idea that evil, in the end, will turn out to be good. We can find the same perspective in Hegelianism as well as Marxism. According to dialectical philosophy, evil may come out of good, i.e., negative means lead to positive ends, and vice versa.

But for atheists, such as D. Diderot, there is no God and there is no good or bad organization of the world, everything is explained scientifically by mechanisms that have no connection with morality. Reason is the anti-thesis of religion, "reason, as D. Diderot claims, is to the philosopher what grace is to the Christian. Grace moves the Christian to act, reason moves the philosopher"(16). Natural phenomena have nothing to do with a divine punishment. Moral evil is the result of free actions (good or bad) of everyone. So the quarrel between pessimism and optimism does not exist at all. The expression of their ideas is very discreet, for Christianity seeks to stifle their voices through repression or censorship.

Throughout his life, Voltaire, like many of his contemporaries questioned the central issue of evil. In his youth, Voltaire's temperament led him to optimism. He exalts, for example, in his poem Le Mondain (Le paradis terrestre est où je suis/Paradise on earth is where I am), and defends his optimistic beliefs repeatedly against the pessimism of Blaise Pascal. But at the time of Candide, a long series of collective and personal misfortunes questioned his convictions.

(12)Richard Custick, Voltaire and the Enlightenment. Op. cit.(13)Ari Hirvonen, The problem of evil revisited. Op. cit.(14)Alexander Pope, Essay on Man. Retrieved from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2428/2428-

h/2428-h.htm(15)Ibid.(16)Gertrude Himmelfarb, The roads to modernity: the British, French and American

enlightenment. Knopf (August 24, 2004).

In the 1750s, the debate on optimism is at its peak. But the earthquake of Lisbon (1755), then the Seven Years' War between Prussia and other European countries (1756-1763) caused an intellectual crisis in Europe. Voltaire exchanges many letters on this subject. And according to T. Adorno, the earthquake sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz(17). A violent earthquake struck Lisbon on Sunday morning, November 1, 1755, which was All Saints Day. Associated tremors hit southern Portugal and continued down through the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Fifty thousand people were killed; many while attending Sunday Mass(18). Voltaire wrote a major poem on the event, poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (poem on the Lisbon Disaster, or an examination of the axiom "All is well"), after being shocked and saddened by the tragedy. This horrible event "shook not merely the ground of Lisbon but also the ground of European mind and European thinking"(19). In the poem, Voltaire attacks les philosophes trompés, qui criez: "Tout est bien"(come, ye philosophers, who cry: "All is well")(20), he invites them to think and contemplate the destruction and the ruin of the world:

Accourez, contemplez ces ruines affreuses,Ces débris, ces lambeaux, ces cendres malheureuses,Ces femmes, ces enfants l’un sur l’autre entassés,Sous ces marbres rompus ces membres dispersés ;Cent mille infortunés que la terre dévore,Qui, sanglants, déchirés, et palpitants encore,Enterrés sous leurs toits, terminent sans secoursDans l’horreur des tourments leurs lamentables jours !(And contemplate this ruin of a world.Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,This child and mother heaped in common wreck,These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts—A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,In racking torment end their stricken lives)(21)

In addition to that Voltaire asks them about the divine law behind the disaster, which is a hint to the Catholic and Protestant disputes at that time.

...et tandis qu’on raisonne,Des foudres souterraines engloutissent Lisbonne (And, while they prate,The hidden thunders, belched from underground)(22)

(17)Theodor Adorno, Negative dialectics. Continuum (January 1, 1981)(18)Richard Custick, Voltaire and the Enlightenment. Op. cit.(19)Ari Hirvonen, The problem of evil revisited. Op. cit.(20)Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne/Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. Op. cit.(21)Ibid.(22)Ibid.

An important Jesuit, Gabriel Malagrida, argued that the cause of the destruction was not any natural phenomena, but the abominable sins of the Lisboners: ‘Holy people had prophesied the earthquake was coming, yet the city continued in its sinful ways without a care for future.’ Hence, it was now ‘necessary to devote all our strength and purpose to the task of repentance’(23):

Direz-vous : « C’est l’effet des éternelles loisQui d’un Dieu libre et bon nécessitent le choix ? »Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes :« Dieu s’est vengé, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes ? »(Will ye reply: "You do but illustrateThe iron laws that chain the will of God"?Say ye, o'er that yet quivering mass of flesh:"God is avenged: the wage of sin is death"?)(24) For Voltaire, there is no eternal law or divine retribution that would justify the disaster:

Quel crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfantsSur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglants ?Lisbonne, qui n’est plus, eut-elle plus de vicesQue Londres, que Paris, plongés dans les délices :Lisbonne est abîmée, et l’on danse a Paris. (What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceivedThat lie, bleeding and torn, on mother's breast?Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of viceThan London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss).….Si c’est l’orgueil qui crie : « O ciel, secourez-moi !O ciel, ayez pitié de l’humaine misère ! »« Tout est bien, dites-vous, et tout est nécessaire. »Quoi ! l’univers entier, sans ce gouffre infernal,Sans engloutir Lisbonne, eût-il été plus mal ?(Whether 't is pride that calls on heaven for helpAnd pity for the sufferings of men."All's well," ye say, "and all is necessary,"Think ye this universe had been the worseWithout this hellish gulf in Portugal?)(25)

(23)Robert K. Reeves, The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: Confrontation between the Church and the Enlightenment in Eighteenth Century.

(24)Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne/Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. Op. cit.(25)Ibid.

Up to that point, Voltaire is satisfied with rational explications of the problem of evil, supposed to become good thanks to the divine will. But now he can not stand the suffering and misery of Lisbon's inhabitants: the so called rational arguments do not console him, evil is an unjustifiable outrage. Almost physically sensitive to the suffering of others, Voltaire was shocked by both the manifestations of evil and optimism. Therefore the Voltairian satire of optimism will be as violent as his rebellion against evil. Candide's purpose is to satirize and to mock optimism by showing the contradiction between the horrible reality and Pangloss’ theoretical discourses. Voltaire caricatures his opponents by distorting their thinking. Pangloss argues for example that "private ills make up the general good. It therefore follows that, the more numerous the private ills, the greater the general good"(26). The tutor is here beyond the optimists' beliefs who were simply trying to explain evil, not to praise it at this point. He is a selfish insensitive, as well, preventing Candide to save their benefactor Jacques the Anabaptist, "who cogently argued that Lisbon roads had been specially contrived so that the Anabaptist might drown in them"(27).

The critique of optimism in Candide is not accompanied by a defense of another doctrine. Voltaire refuses to believe that evil rules the world.But Candide is probably the story where Voltaire comes closest to pessimism. There is even the temptation of suicide: "Cunégonde is certainly dead, and I have nothing to do but to follow her"(28). Martin, the pessimist Manichaean who sees things in dualistic terms, an outlook based on Mani's teachings, that there exist no perfect good or powerful god, but two mutually hostile principles, the Good called Ahura Mazda, Lord of Light and Wisdom, and the Bad called Ahriman, Lord of Darkness, destructive spirit, evil mind who "interferes so much in the world's affairs"(29). The universe is ruled by these two contradicted yet equal powers, "in the world, each human being is also a battleground for these powers, the incorruptible soul being on the side of Light, the body on the side of Darkness"(30), however, the end of this dualistic system, this binary opposition between two metaphysical notions, is with the triumph of Good over Evil. Martin is certainly less ridiculous than Pangloss. But his extremism does not take sufficient account on the Good that nevertheless exists on earth, even if Candide shares sometimes Martin's idea when he says for example, "You are in the right, my dear Martin: all is misery and deceit in this wicked world"(31), and that "optimism is the madness of asserting that everything is good, when it is evil"(32). But Martin contradicts the reality when he hears Candide saying "yet there is some good in the world", the Manichaean responds "may be so, but it has never come to my notice"(33), that Cacambo is not faithful to his master, or that Candide will never

(26)Voltaire, Candide. Penguin Popular Classic 2001(27)Ibid.(28)Ibid.(29)Ari Hirvonen, The problem of evil revisited. Op. cit.(30)Ibid.(31)Voltaire, Candide. Op. cit.(32)Ibid.(33)Ibid.

find Cunégonde.

Voltaire's re-thinking about the problem of evil is, at the same time, sophisticated and complex. Since to dispute the existence of the providence -even if he does not deny it-( Je ne m’élève point contre la Providence/ I do not fling myself 'gainst Providence.)(34) the existence of a divine and transcendental intention, which by definition could not aim at evil, is to blame Catholicism, hence Christianity. In the poem on the disaster of Lisbon, Voltaire recalls the obviousness recognized by every human being that

Éléments, animaux, humains, tout est en guerre.Il le faut avouer, le mal est sur la terre :(All dead and living things are locked in strife.Confess it freely—evil stalks the land)(35)

"this is why "all is well...is only an insult...", and he attacks the optimistic discourse which consist in saying to the inhabitants of Lisbon that "all is for the best...it is impossible that things should be elsewhere than where they are, for everything is good" and that "the fall of man and the curse upon him, entered as a necessary part into the best of all possible world"(36):

Des malheurs de chaque être un bonheur général! (The ills of each make up the good of all!)(37)

What one needs is to resign and to accept the existence of evil, because its origin is an enigma to humans, and it is necessary to believe in the kindness of providence, in the incapacity of the natural light, reason, to solve and to understand the mystery of evil. Voltaire draws also a polemic which makes rage among metaphysicians of the time, based on the old teachings of Epicurus (is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?(38), and consists in posing that: if God is good and that evil exists, hence God is not Almighty. If God is Almighty and allows evil to remain on earth, hence God is not good.

Dieu tient en main la chaîne, et n'ont point enchaîné,Par son choix bienfaisant tout est déterminé:Il est libre, il est juste, il n'est point implacable.Pourquoi donc souffrons-nous sous un maître équitable?

(34)Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne/Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. Op. cit.(35)Ibid.(36)Voltaire, Candide. Op. cit.(37)Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne/Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. Op. cit.(38)Lactantius, Treatise on the Anger of God. Retrieved from:

http://www.aren.org/prison/documents/religion/Church%20Fathers/A%20Treatise%20on%20the%20Anger%20of%20God.pdf

(God holds the chain: is not himself enchained;By his indulgent choice is all arranged;Implacable he's not, but free and just.Why suffer we, then, under one so just?)(39)

In other words, Voltaire wonders where the Creator, the Supreme Being, the Great Architect of the World is when the event is taking place. God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and benevolent, and wishes to prevent evil and evil doers, why does God not do that? Why does God allow the existence of evil? Voltaire, being a deist, basing his beliefs on the natural light, and not on revelation, he suggests that "God was the watchmaker who had created the world but then left it alone and remained indifferent to it, exerting no influence over life or natural phenomena"(40).

In the end, the patriarch of the French Enlightenment, clarifies his own idea of Evil, and reveal the illusion of the optimist outlook by saying: Un jour tout sera bien, voilà notre espérance ;Tout est bien aujourd’hui, voilà l’illusion.All will be well one day—so runs our hope.All now is well, is but an idle dream.(41)

(39)Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne/Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. Op. cit.(40)Richard Custick, Voltaire and the Enlightenment. Op. cit.(41)Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne/Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. Op. cit.

II

“Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l'infâme, et aimez qui vous aime/Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you”(letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28-11-1762), was Voltaire's motto to incite revolt against the abuses of religion. Candide, a voltairian satire, hits the vices and the appetite for power of the clergy, and intolerance. But the philosophical tale also offers a model of religion.

Religion is the spiritual realm and should not, if one follows the teachings and precepts of Christ, interfere in the temporal power, i.e. the political and economic power.

In Paraguay, the Jesuits in their prosperous plantations treat the natives harshly, considering them as inferior beings, “Los Padres own everything, the tribes nothing”. The Jesuits “make war against the kings of Spain and Portugal, and over in Europe they receive these same kings in their confessionals. Here they kill Spaniards, and over there they speed them on their way to Heaven: 'tis exquisite!” says Cacambo about Los Padres. It is clear that religion encourages war. Another example is the singing of Te Deum, prayers thanking God for His help in war and combat, in the Abarian and Bulgarian camps, “on the orders of the two kings”.

In Morocco, Muslims are killing each other, “Morocco was being deluged with blood... The whole empire was a field of continual slaughter” without missing their five prayers, “yet there was never any failure to observe the five daily prayers enjoined by Mahomet”, confesses the old woman after her cruel journey in Africa.

Religion has its echo in slavery. One example is the Negro of Surinam wearing “only a pair of blue linen breeches, and his left leg and right hand had been cut off”. The slave observes that, on the one hand, “the Dutch Fetishes who converted me tell us every Sunday that all men, black and white, are the children of Adam... We are all first cousins”, on the other hand, white masters treat Africans worse than animals, “dogs, monkeys and parrots are a thousand times less wretched than the like of us”, says the slave.

For Voltaire, the most serious problem is intolerance, and the main target, in Candide, is the Inquisition. This procedure of justice of the Church was directed against the so-called heretics. Founded in Italy in the 12th century, it took root in France, then in Spain in the 15th century, where cruelty culminated.

The clergy of the Church had the right to control, investigate, prosecute, torture, and kill. The main victims of the Inquisition were the Jews, and Muslims, but also Protestants and all Catholics suspected of academic misconduct, or a lack of respect for religious rules.

In chapter six, an auto-da-fé for “a Buscayan convicted of marrying his godmother, and two Portuguese who, whilst eating a chicken, had put the bacon that went with it on the edges of their plates. After dinner Dr. Pangloss and his disciple Candide were

put in handcuffs: the former for what he had said and the latter for having listened with an air of approval”.

The Inquisition was used for private interests and benefits. The story of Cunégonde highlights this aspect, “one day, while at Mass, I was observed by the Grand Inquisitor. He ogled me throughout the service, and afterwards sent me a message that he wished to speak with me on private business. I was led to his place, where I told him my origin. He represented to me how much beneath my rank it was to belong to an Israelite, and sent an intermediary to Don Issachar with the proposal that he should yield me to his lordship.Don Issachar, who is a court banker and a man of standing, refused to do anything of the sort, and the Inquisitor threatened him with an auto-da-fé. The upshot was that my Jew came to a composition, whereby this house and myself should belong to the two of them jointly. The Jew was to be the owner on Tuesday, Thursday and the Jewish Sabbath, the Inquisitor on the other days of the week”.

The Inquisition’s monstrous and cruel punishments and crimes have nothing to do with the true values advocated by Christianity: love and respect for others, and the longing for a spiritual encounter with God. The Inquisition does not even respect the dead: Don Issachar’s body was thrown into the street, while that of the Inquisitor was buried with great pomp.

Intolerance is not unique to the Inquisition. Protestants responded with the same intolerance: a pastor preaches at length about the charity but then refuses to help Candide because the orator asked him: “hark ye, friend, do you hold the Pope to be anti-Christ?” Candide replied: “I have never heard anyone say so. But whether he be or not, I am hungry”.

Absurd and unreasonable superstitions reigned, crimes were committed in the name of religion: the auto-da-fé was considered as an appeasement to the wrath of God: “after the earthquake, which destroyed three-quarters of Lisbon, the country’s leading thinkers decided that the best way of avoiding total destruction of the city was to give the people an auto-da-fé. The University of Coimbra was of the opinion that the infallible receipt for the prevention of earthquakes is the sight of some individuals being burnt over a slow fire”.

Faced with these problems, Voltaire gives an example of individuals and society in which religion is only spiritual, peaceful and charitable. Jacques the Anabaptist belongs to a religious tendency that does not respect the usual Catholic rules, but he helps and serves others without questioning their beliefs. Martin, though a member of a heretical movement: Manichaeism, he respects other people’s ideas, especially the optimism of Pangloss and his disciple Candide.

El Dorado and the farm are two examples of societies practicing a free form of religion. In El Dorado, there are no monks, no clergy to teach, govern, dispute, and burn people who disagree with their dogmas. The ceremonies are reduced to the prayers of thanks and praise to God for His goodness: “we do not pray at all. We have

nothing to ask of God. He has given us all we want, and we unceasingly give Him thanks… we are all priests”. Religion is very simple so acceptable to all, it is limited to the worship of God, and encourages generous love between humans, instead of dividing them by the formulas of theology. For Voltaire, the simplicity and the lack of priests and dogmatism explain the happiness of El Dorado.

War is one of the main themes, probably because it is one of the most absurd, the cruelest, and unfortunately, the most common. The reason behind conflicts is ridiculous taking into consideration the suffering and devastation.

The war between the Abarian and the Bulgarian army has no known reason or origin, but it devastates the two territories, therefore does not benefit any of the camps, as Voltaire relates: “passing over heaps of dead and dying, he came to a neighbouring village. It was in ashes, having been an Abarian village and therefore burnt, in accordance with the laws of war, by the Bulgarians. Old men mangled by bayonets watched their wives dying with gashes in their throats, clasping their children to their blood-stained breasts. Amongst the dying were girls who had been used to satisfy a number of heroes’ natural needs, and had afterwards been disembowelled. Other women, half burnt alive, begged to be put out of their pain. The ground was covered with brains, arms, and legs.

As fast as he could, Candide made off to another village. This one was Bulgarian, and the Abarian heroes had treated it in the same way”.

Voltaire thinks of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), triggered by Prussia to conquer Silesia, but the effect ruined the abuser. Martin explains candidly, in chapter 23, that England and France “are at war for the sake of a few acres of snow up towards Canada, and are spending on this fine war of theirs more than all Canada is worth”.

It remains that wars and conflicts come from the ambition of monarchs that are more eager to sit their glory on the conquest of other nations than on the well-being of their people. The soldiers are mercenaries in the service of a monarch, or victims recruited by force and suffering the bullying of officers before killing each other, and the kings, of course, are primary responsible for the “heroic butchery”. The Baron believes that the number of quarters of nobility overrides the human qualities: he prevents the father of Candide, a “neighbouring landowner...an agreeable and worthy man” to marry the woman he loves. The illusory prestige of the nobility is used by the false Marquise to attract Candide in order to steal his money.

The predominant role of money in human relations: theft, pain, or death of the victims of the earthquake did not prevent the sailor from thinking of benefit that can be drawn from the situation by looting the ruins, “risking death, the sailor dashed into the ruins in search of plunder. He found what he sought, got drunk, slept it off and then purchased the favors of the first obliging young woman he met- all this in the midst of ruined buildings and dying people”. 

Voltaire joins the social criticism which will lead to the French Revolution of 1789; he denounces the prevailing inequalities between social groups and classes. Revolting, for Voltaire, is the right and pretence of justice installed to defend the weak ones. Justice and law are not of any help to the slaves. This is the very official Black Code(1), established in 1685 by the French in their colonies, which saw blacks as personal property, called to give them two coats per year, and set the scale of punishments, including mutilation.

In addition to intolerance, war, and social inequalities, Voltaire examines the illusions of love. Love, as depicted in Pangloss' speech, is “the comfort of the human race, preserver of the universe, the soul of all feeling creatures”. Love is only an illusion. Society and individuals use beautiful appearances to hide sordid interests and benefits. Candide expresses this aspect saying: “I too have known this love, sovereign of hearts, soul of our souls. All it brought me was one kiss and a score of kicks on the backside”. The hero will realize at the end of the story that he loves Cunégonde's beauty and youth, and not her person. He loves the ‘what’ not the ‘who’. He loves her qualities: beauty...not her absolute singularity. The male desires only female's body, as Pangloss puts it, talking about his sexual intercourse with Paquette which caused him an infection: “In her arms I tasted those pleasures of paradise that produced the hellish torments with which you see me devoured”, and of course, “it was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds”.

The garden is a universal symbol of happiness, derived from Genesis. The different gardens, that are present in the philosophical tale, are just attempts in the pursuit of happiness. 

Familiar with the Old Testament by his Catholic education, a good connoisseur of oriental civilizations by intellectual curiosity, Voltaire knows the evocative power of the garden. In most cultures, in fact, it symbolizes human happiness. Jews, Christians, and Muslims share this vision. In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God, having created the universe and the earth, “had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.”(2)

(1) The Code noir initially took shape in Louis XIV’s edict of 1685. Although subsequent decrees modified a few of the code’s provisions, this first document established the main lines for the policing of slavery right up to 1789. The very first article expels all Jews from the colonies; Jews played a significant but hardly dominant role in the Dutch colonies of the Caribbean region but were not allowed to own property or slaves in the French colonies. The edict also insisted that all slaves be instructed as Catholics and not as Protestants. For the most part, the code concentrated on defining the condition of slavery (passing the condition through the mother not the father) and establishing harsh controls over the conduct of those enslaved. Slaves had virtually no rights, though the code did enjoin masters to take care of the sick and old.

(2) Genesis 2-8

It is also written: “then the LORD God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it”(3). In chapter 30, Pangloss recalls that “for when man

was put into the Garden of Eden he was put there ut operaretur eum- that he might till it, that he might work: which proves that man was not born to be idle”.

Biblical paradise was often painted in literature or art, with fertile and lush vegetation, which feeds people effortlessly. It is this “Garden of Delights” that God expelled Adam and Eve after the first sin. In the Koran, paradise offers flavored fountains of camphor or ginger, streams of living water, milk, wine, and honey. Voltaire mentions that the Eldorado "appeared to be cultivated as much for beauty as for the production of crops”. Voltaire then points out to the garden of the “worthy old man" who is much happier that the six kings with whom he supped before. The orchard is a summary of the world, an image of happiness.

Voltaire prefers parks created by man. He draws on this symbolism for transcribing complex but strong ideas about happiness. The first chapter offers, near the castle, “a little copse which was known as the park”, where the hero lives a childlike joy, which he believes to be perfect. The allusion to the Garden of Eden is discrete, but the parallel with Adam becomes clearer when Candide finds himself “expelled from his earthly paradise” after being caught in the arms of a modern Eve, Cunégonde. The earthly paradise is a strongly hierarchical feudal society: the Baron reigns over a peasant village, with his noble birth and various signs of his power: the castle, the park, the servants, and the pack that allows him to hunt. When Candide, by recklessness, disregard the laws that govern this little world, by courting the daughter of the master, he will be banished immediately. Another paradise lost.

The Eldorado, a real paradise, offers the perfection which Candide is seeking, certainly, there is a prince and merchants, carriers, villagers and officers of the crown. But all have a healthy occupation that feeds and access to the comfort Eldorado. The opposition between city and countryside disappears: Eldorado is the area of moral purity, peace, life, health, as opposed to other cities which denotes wars, crimes; immorality...Eldorado “cut off from all the rest of the world” allows the Incas to protect themselves from the cruelty of the Spanish invaders. In Chapter 30, the “worthy old man" knows nothing of bloody battles for power taking place in Constantinople: "I have never in my life known the name of any Mufti or Vizier...I take the view that, in general, those who meddle in politics tend to come to miserable ends, and deserve to do so. But I never inquire what is doing at Constantinople”.

Wild and beautiful nature also allows a privileged encounter with the Creator, by the mystical feelings it arouses. Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Romantics developed this outlook.

(3) Genesis 2-15Unfortunately Eldorado is only a utopia, and Candide continues his way in the hope of finding happiness in real life.

“What in fact happened was this: Candide was so badly cheated by the Jews that in the end he had nothing but his little farm. His wife, who grew uglier every day, became sour-tempered and insupportable. The old woman was ailing, and became even worse-humoured than Cunégonde. Cacambo, who worked in the garden and carried its produce to market in Constantinople, became worn out with toil and felt utterly miserable. Pangloss was gloomy at not being a shining light in some German university. As for Martin, he was convinced that one is equally badly off wherever one is, so he bore everything with patience”.

At the end of the tale, “all the members of the little society” are busy workings, “set themselves to exercise their various talents. Their small farm yielded good crops. Cunégonde continued to be very ugly, but she became an excellent pastry cook. Paquette embroidered. The old woman laundered. Even Friar Giroflée turned out useful: he proved to be a very good carpenter and even quite a decent fellow”. And each one contributes his/her labor to the common welfare since the small company does not know the exploitation of man by man. Social hierarchies have disappeared. This abolition is reflected in the expulsion of the Baron, which would disturb the wise order of heaven.

“Let us work, then, and not argue, said Martin. It is the only way to render life supportable” because “labour holds off three great evils: tedium, vice, and poverty”.This moderate wisdom, after a long journey of the hero, has become a proverbial expression: "cultiver son jardin", and “it does not endorse a selfish isolated existence, but implies the need for cultivation, action and work. Voltaire was a meliorist and reformist, not a fatalist or utopian”(4). This final wisdom is based on one of Jean de la Fontaine's Fables, le laboureur et ses enfants: le travail est un trésor.(5)

(4) Voltaire, Écrasez l'Infâme, by Jim Herrick, excerpted from his 1985 book Against the Faith. Retrieved from: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/volthrrck.htm

(5) Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, Librairie Générale Française, 2002.