Candide

Of primary interest in these chapters is the old philosopher, Martin. In important ways, he stood for the attitude of Pierre Bayle, just as Pangloss did for Leibnitz. A word about Bayle is therefore in order. Voltaire had discovered him early, and particularly after the Lisbon earthquake his letters were filled with eulogies of him as the leading opponent of optimistic philosophy. Bayle (1647-1706), lexicographer, philosopher, critic, had been a Protestant who became a Catholic and then reverted to protestantism. At last, in faith he became a Pyrrhonian (an adherent to the system of gnosiology, which treats of the sources, limits, and validity of knowledge, and which inculcates skepticism). In a word, he was an absolute skeptic. Voltaire was especially attracted to him because he was a champion of tolerance in opinion. His attack on superstitions, his view of morality as being independent of religion, were set forth at sufficient length, especially in his Penséees sur la comòte (1682) and his greatest work, the Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697), which was enlarged in 1702 and supplemented in 1704-06 by Réponses aux questiones d'un provincial, wherein he paid close attention to philosophical and theological subjects that called for free investigation. These works recommended themselves to the philosophes, among whom Voltaire was numbered, in the author's espousal of the sovereignty of reason and his effort to remove all obstacles to its supremacy. Voltaire made Martin a Manichean who believed in two nearly equal forces of good and evil: God punished the vicious Dutch captain, but the Devil was responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people. Thus Voltaire was not arguing that evil prevailed everywhere. After all, there were men of good will like the youthful Candide, and others like the Anabaptist and the old woman and the faithful Cacambo who were humane individuals. But to ignore the extent of evil manifested at both private and public levels and to tell one's self that ultimately good emerged from it was to blind one's self to reality.