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Updated: May 8, 2025
"I was in hopes," said Pangloss, "that I should reason with you a little about causes and effects, about the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and the pre-established harmony." At these words, the Dervish shut the door in their faces.
Pangloss, nevertheless, remains abstractly a humorous personage; and when he is embodied by an actor like Jefferson, who can elucidate his buoyant animal spirits, his gay audacity, his inveterate good-nature, his nimble craft, his jocular sportiveness, his shrewd knowledge of character and of society, and his scholar-like quaintness, he becomes a delightful presence; for his mendacity disappears in the sunshine of his humour; his faults seem venial; and we entertain him much as we do the infinitely greater and more disreputable character of Falstaff, knowing him to be a vagabond, but finding him a charming companion, for all that.
"What can be the sufficient reason of this phenomenon?" said Pangloss. "This is the Last Day!" cried Candide. The sailor ran among the ruins, facing death to find money; finding it, he took it, got drunk, and having slept himself sober, purchased the favours of the first good-natured wench whom he met on the ruins of the destroyed houses, and in the midst of the dying and the dead.
Pangloss pulled him by the sleeve. "My friend," said he, "this is not right. You sin against the universal reason; you choose your time badly." "S'blood and fury!" answered the other; "I am a sailor and born at Batavia. Four times have I trampled upon the crucifix in four voyages to Japan ; a fig for thy universal reason." Some falling stones had wounded Candide.
Wise men shrink from summing them up in single propositions. That the French Revolution led to an immense augmentation of happiness, both for the French and for mankind, can only be denied by the Pope. That it secured its beneficent results untempered by any mixture of evil, can only be maintained by men as mad as Doctor Pangloss.
I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I had left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he had ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities for putrefaction and vermin; of peas becoming hardened in liquor; of hammocks drinking themselves off the face of the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, cooking accommodation, water supply, and beer, all taking to drinking together and going to ruin?
After this they joined with others in relieving those inhabitants who had escaped death. Some, whom they had succoured, gave them as good a dinner as they could in such disastrous circumstances; true, the repast was mournful, and the company moistened their bread with tears; but Pangloss consoled them, assuring them that things could not be otherwise. "For," said he, "all that is is for the best.
"But you, my dear Pangloss," said Candide, "how can it be that I behold you again?" "It is true," said Pangloss, "that you saw me hanged. I should have been burnt, but you may remember it rained exceedingly hard when they were going to roast me; the storm was so violent that they despaired of lighting the fire, so I was hanged because they could do no better.
All I can tell you is, that they brought him up to headquarters this evening with a sergeant's guard, and they say he's to be tried by court-martial; and Picton is in a blessed humor about it." "What could it possibly have been? Some plundering affair, depend on it." "Faith, you may swear it wasn't for his little charities, as Dr. Pangloss calls them, they've pulled him up," cried Power.
Perhaps there are many other princes yet more unfortunate. For my part, I have only lost a hundred sheep; and now I am flying into Cunegonde's arms. My dear Martin, yet once more Pangloss was right: all is for the best." "I wish it," answered Martin. "But," said Candide, "it was a very strange adventure we met with at Venice.
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