Admittedly the structure is simple, even obvious, enough, but it exactly served Voltaire's purpose. Candide's experiences, and those of others that were recorded at any length, provide the reductio ad absurdum to the facile conclusions of Leibnitz, Wolff, and Alexander Pope. For Voltaire, so far from this being the best of all possible worlds, it too often is a vale of tears; evil abounds. Nor can evil be explained away by saying that, in accordance with the Divine plan, evil contributes to ultimate goodness. Candide's repeated loss of even a modicum of happiness almost as soon as he acquires it points to the fact that Voltaire, structurally, employed the cumulative method as the formula of presentation in his narrative.
It was most appropriate that Voltaire, at the end of his career should have received the accolade as the most brilliant member of the French Academy. It must be conceded that he attained this honor as a philosophe. But originally the Academy was dedicated to the perfection of the French language, and remained so dedicated well into the eighteenth century. Le mot juste — the right word — could have been its motto; and Voltaire deservedly has been hailed early and late as one who complied. Moreover, no one had a finer sense of sentence rhythm. If precision, clarity, and rapidity are the first elements of his style which deserve notice, quite as important are the satirical, the ironical elements.
