looked round upon the world as it was, the evil and the misery in it
were what seized his attention and appalled his mind. The optimism of so
many of his contemporaries appeared to him a shallow crude doctrine
unrelated to the facts of existence, and it was to give expression to
this view that he composed the most famous of all his works--_Candide_.
This book, outwardly a romance of the most flippant kind, contains in
reality the essence of Voltaire's maturest reflections upon human life.
It is a singular fact that a book which must often have been read simply
for the sake of its wit and its impropriety should nevertheless be one
of the bitterest and most melancholy that was ever written. But it is a
safe rule to make, that Voltaire's meaning is deep in proportion to the
lightness of his writing--that it is when he is most in earnest that he
grins most. And, in _Candide_, the brilliance and the seriousness alike
reach their climax. The book is a catalogue of all the woes, all the
misfortunes, all the degradations, and all the horrors that can afflict
humanity; and throughout it Voltaire's grin is never for a moment
relaxed. As catastrophe follows catastrophe, and disaster succeeds
disaster, not only does he laugh himself consumedly, but he makes his
reader laugh no less; and it is only when the book is finished that the
true meaning of it is borne in upon the mind. Then it is that the
scintillating pages begin to exercise their grim unforgettable effect;
and the pettiness and misery of man seem to borrow a new intensity from
the relentless laughter of Voltaire.

But perhaps the most wonderful thing about _Candide_ is that it
contains, after all, something more than mere pessimism--it contains a
positive doctrine as well. Voltaire's common sense withers the Ideal;
but it remains common sense. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin' is his
final word--one of the very few pieces of practical wisdom ever uttered
by a philosopher.