In these last three chapters, Voltaire managed to bring together the leading characters in Candide and to provide a good resolution of the eventful story. Almost to the very end, the emphasis remained on humanity's irrationality, intolerance, cruelty, avarice. Much of this was illustrated by the narratives of the Jesuit baron and of Pangloss, whose account of his experiences with the "Portuguese barber" and his wife, however gruesome the details, provided the most hilarious bit of low comedy to be found in the tale.
Leading up to the final injunction that one must learn to cultivate his garden, Voltaire especially stressed the evils visited upon those in public life: the plight of the six kings, whom Candide cannot forget, as well as the strangulation and impaling of the viziers and the indications that their successors would fare no better. The good old man presumed "that in general those who meddle with public affairs sometimes perish miserably, and that they deserve it." Voltaire, one remembers, had had his difficulties in court and aristocratic circles; he had experienced imprisonment and exile. Finally he retired to his estates near Geneva and at Ferney, where he indeed "cultivated his garden," working diligently to the very end of his long life.
A deist, Voltaire believed in a god; the arrangements of the universe presupposed a designer. But to suppose that God intervenes in the affairs of the world was to him superstition. The key passage in which he made clear his point of view is the following:
Pangloss was the spokesman and said to him, "Master, we have come to ask you to tell us why such a strange animal as man was ever created."
"Why are you meddling in?" said the dervish. "Is that your business?"
"But Reverend Father," said Candide, "there is a horrible amount of evil on earth."
"What does it matter," said the dervish, "whether there is evil or good? When His Highness sends a ship to Egypt, is he bothered about whether the mice in the ship are comfortable or not?"
"Then what should we do?" said Pangloss.
"Hold your tongue," said the dervish.
And when Pangloss expressed the hope that he and the dervish might discuss effects and causes, the nature of evil, and pre-established harmony—in short Leibnitzian philosophy—the dervish shut the door in his face. Voltaire had lost faith in systematic philosophy.
In the first two of these three chapters, as in the earlier ones, Candide's attitude vacillated, but he had never entirely abandoned the optimistic faith taught to him by Pangloss. However, in the final chapter, after the conversation with the old man who owned the twenty acres of cultivated land, he finally became convinced that man cannot understand the evil in the world. Therefore man should not make it worse by vain perplexities. He should attend to the counsels of moderation and good sense and let the narrow bounds of his knowledge at least teach him restraint. Above all, let him find support in work, even if he does not see to what it tends. In a word, let him cultivate his garden. Only then will life become meaningful and a modicum of happiness be realized. Fundamentally, the aim in life is not the pursuit of happiness, as the romanticist believed.
This is the main point Voltaire made in the final chapter and indeed in the entire tale. But there are many other facets of interest in these last chapters. To the very end, Voltaire continued his anti-clerical satire. Friar Giroflée, still the profligate, did become a Turk, and the Jesuit baron was punished for his arrogant pride by being sent back to the galleys and then to Rome. There was no place for him in the garden the others planned to cultivate. Voltaire wrote of their "pleasure in trapping a Jesuit." Pangloss remarks about the Holy Inquisition's Executor of High Operations, who, although expert at burning people, proved to be most inept at hanging them was part of the satire directed against the Church.
It is to be noted also that, as regards the baron, Voltaire returned to personal satire directed against Frederick the Great. Not only did the baron continue to be ridiculously proud of his lineage and to refuse under any conditions to see his now ugly and destitute sister marry a commoner who was willing to look after her, but the episode involving the young page pointed to Frederick's alleged sexuality. Personal also was the statement that Candide had been victimized by Jews: Voltaire himself had suffered financial losses from the bankruptcies of Jewish bankers.
