On November 1, 1755, a terrifying earthquake occurred in Portugal and Spain. It occasioned the greatest of suffering in at least twenty towns and cities; hardest hit was Lisbon. An estimated number of 30,000 to 40,000 people were killed in the catastrophe, 15,000 of them in the city of Lisbon, where the destruction to property was appalling. Inevitably this event posed a most serious problem for the theologians and those who subscribed to the philosophy of optimism. The former, depending upon the concept of Original Sin and present-day wickedness, attributed the earthquake to God's wrath visited upon sinful people. The Protestant clergy in Northern Europe argued that the quake had occurred because most of the people of Lisbon were Roman Catholics. Among the Catholics, the anti-Jesuit and pro-Jansenists especially were vocal. And in Portugal's capital city, the clergy believed that the shock was the result of divine anger at the presence of Protestants. Alleged heretics were forcibly baptized, and an auto-da-fé was instituted with the aim of preventing more earthquakes. Voltaire was pre-eminent among the philosophes who sought another answer.
We have seen that Voltaire's pessimism had become more pronounced as the years advanced. Long before the earthquake, he had rejected general optimism. Among other things, his attitude, no doubt, had been influenced by his age and continued illness, the death of Mme. du Châtelet, the Berlin-Frankfort experience, and his rejection by Louis XV and the court that had led to his exile in Switzerland. There was also the outbreak of the Seven Years War. But for Voltaire, the great earthquake provided incontrovertible proof that the tout est bien doctrine was nonsense. All thinking people, he was convinced, would no longer look for a safe life in this world under the guidance of a benign and concerned deity who would reward the virtuous. Voltaire was more than ever sure that accident played a major part in life, that people were basically weak, helpless, ignorant of their destiny. They might well hope for a happier state, but that was the logical limit of their optimism.
