Candide

Quite as interesting as the poem itself is the preface that Voltaire provided. In the words of Ira O. Wade, "He seems here to have bundled together the ideas of Plato, Pope, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, and Leibnitz and to have labelled the package Tout est bien." He emphatically renounced Alexander Pope and endorsed the skeptical views of Pierre Bayle. He argued that the English poet's belief in optimism set up a fatalistic system which demolished a whole category of widely accepted ideas such as that relating to free will. If indeed this is the best of all possible worlds, Voltaire continued, there was no such thing as Original Sin; human nature could not be corrupt and it follows that humanity has no need for a Redeemer. Recall that this is the point made at the end of Chapter 5 in Candide, wherein Pangloss engaged in a colloquy with "a familiar of the Inquisition." Voltaire also declared that if all misfortunes contribute to the general good, humanity has no need for future happiness and should not seek to find out the causes of moral and physical evil. Moreover, if such is the case, man is as unimportant in the eyes of God as are the very animals that seek to devour him. And this, of course, is the complete negation of the dignity of man. To Voltaire, man was not part of a chain, assigned a place in the hierarchical scheme of things: at least he had hope in the future. Voltaire also opposed the idea of a logical chain of events; the earthquake provided sufficient evidence for him to reject the concept of universal order which was an uninterrupted succession and a necessity. Neither Pangloss nor his pupil could subscribe to their creator's point of view. Voltaire concluded that optimism, so far from being a source of comfort, was a creed of despair.