Voltaire's Candide

NOTES ON VOLTAIRE'S CANDIDE

(Norton World Lit, 3^rd ed.)

What are the basic premises of the European Enlightenment and of philosophes such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, d'Alembert, Diderot, and Montesquieu?

1.  Universe is intelligible and orderly, governed by natural forces we can comprehend by the use of reason and applied science.  Deism is a religious corollary, and so is an insistence on observing tolerance and following moral standards that we have drawn mainly from within ourselves.

2.  Individuals and indeed human history can be understood on rational terms.  Knowledge implies responsibility for exercising control over ourselves individually and our affairs collectively.

3.  Humanity and human institutions are improvable, maybe even perfectible. Locke's tabula rasa notion of childhood stresses education since environment is critical.  We can make progress in science, government, and society.

4.  Notions of perfectibility, knowability, and control lead to a democratic impulse in Enlightenment thought, even if many intellectuals favored "enlightened autocrats" like Frederick the Great of Prussia.  If we made our own institutions over time, we can change them when they no longer suit us.

The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sums up the European Enlightenment well.  Kant said that the essence of the Enlightenment could be captured in the phrase sapere aude, “Dare to Know.” Humans possess the power of reason, and they are responsible for knowing the sources, operational principles, and limits of that power. That is what the three famous Critiques are for: Critique of Pure Reason (how we can perceive and know); Critique of Practical Reason (Ethics); Critique of Judgment (Aesthetics). We are free rational and moral agents living in a world that we ourselves largely render intelligible by means of our powerful mental faculties.  We are not determined by nature or bound to natural necessity; we give laws to Nature, and our standards derive not from an external source (God) but rather from our own capacity to act morally.

Voltaire and the French philosophes were publicizers, popularizers, and practical reformers, not ivory-tower thinkers.

Voltaire was exiled for a while to England for insulting a French nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan.  He favored a dash of English government and British empiricism -- healthy alternatives for French Cartesian rationalists and political absolutists.  He opposed Europe's addiction to war, issuing the remarkable comment, "murder is strictly punished unless you do it in great numbers and to the sound of trumpets."  He also favored civil liberty and opposed the Catholic Church in his famous cry, "écrasez l'infâme," by which he meant superstition and bigotry, in particular the Catholic Church's long history of persecution against free-thinkers and intellectuals.  This sentiment is optimistic because Voltaire assumes that removing obstacles systematically will open the way to improvement of the human condition.

In Candide Voltaire is considering the problems of personal autonomy, determinism, and the possibility of social and political justice.  It's all well and good to cook up theories and "oughts," but how have people always treated one another?  There's plenty of evidence for a strong search into that question, so let's have a look.  Well, let's have an outrageously satirical, over-the-top look, anyway.  Yet, how far beyond realism are the events of Candide?  Is human history devoid of brutal sadism and torture, mass rape, horrible pestilence, total war, and so forth?  No!  It's an awful thought, but what you get in Candide -- silly stuff about El Dorado and all the ridiculous recognition scenes aside -- is concentrated realism.  A modern equivalent might be something like Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, though that film is considerably more pessimistic in its outcome than Voltaire's text.

In a sense, Candide is atypical of Voltaire as a philosophe thinker, or at least it isn't to be taken on its own, in isolation from his larger body of work.  Rather we should probably read it as an antidote to the mistaken assumption that Voltaire might run to extremes in his bold advocacy of humanity's prospects in the face of a long, terrible history amounting to much evidence to the contrary.  Candide deflates the scientific pretentions, the cocksure absurdity of the -ism associated with the late C17 rationalist philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in particular: optimism.  Voltaire doesn't reject optimism in a general, non-philosophical sense. Rather he tries to prevent it from rigidifying into a system of the sort that Dr. Pangloss advocates.  Whenever that happens to a philosophy, it loses much of its insight and value.  He's a philosophe, not a dogmatist.  To be hopeful and positive-spirited is not to be an oblivious fool.  Vigilance is the watchword, and the upshot of Candide, the moral lesson, is simply that we must cultivate our own gardens.  In other words, let's keep it real and do something tangible that benefits us and those around us.  It's not unlike the notion you sometimes hear today, "think globally, act locally."  Do not fail to see what's really going on, and don't build intellectual and desire-based sand castles in the air.  But don't give up, either -- that just runs against human nature and it makes life impossible, stagnant, intolerable.

Main Points about Candide

The text confronts you with raw experience, shocking stuff.  This representation dumps a vat of acid on C18 optimist and rationalist pretentions, corroding the frameworks commonly used to control and understand people and things.  The point is to reveal the underlying reality of events and circumstances.  Voltaire is, therefore, a good Baconian empiricist and an honest historian, and optimistic views don't correspond to real life.  We might be able to see that fact if we just stopped blurting out formulae and precepts and instead opened our eyes.  As they say, "denial isn't just a river in Egypt," and a huge amount of human energy seems to go towards the denial of everything from our own mortality to the atrocities we are capable of committing.  And truth, as Nietzsche will later inform us to our discomfiture, very often looks suspiciously like a species of error that makes us feel good about ourselves.  In the best sense, this philosophe Voltaire is anti-systemic in his insistence on vigilance, his opposition to religious and philosophical dogma.  Let's run through the text's highlights.

NOTES ON CANDIDE

Chapter 1 (355-56)

Voltaire's method is evident from the outset -- set up something as perfect and powerful and immediately knock it down to nothing.  That is what happens to the Baron who may be Candide's uncle.  His estate is ruined by Bulgars, but even before that, Cunégonde's witnessing of Dr. Pangloss with a servant he has taken as a lover leads to the undoing of Candide when he is caught by the Baron messing around with Cunégonde.  Everything is purposive, according to the Doctor, but the so-called lesson he teaches is nothing but rationalist pretension covering the primal sex drive.  The narrator treats the episode deadpan and allows the absurdity to play itself out.

Chapter 2 (357-58)

Once he is turned away, Candide is almost immediately drafted into the wars, which indirectly satirize the Seven Years War that stretched from 1756-63.  During that global conflict between Great Britain and France and Spain as well as Prussia's Hohenzollern rulers against the Austrian Habsburg dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, something like one million lives were lost in the barbaric fighting and pillaging.

Voltaire's narrator Dr. Ralph describes the Army's traditions as crazy: they live in their own world, and the order they support produces nothing but chaos.  Of course, Voltaire would have been aware that such armies were the tools of so-called enlightened despots such as Frederick the great of Prussia.  In any case, Candide is treated very badly, though in the end the King of the Bulgars grants a pardon and the young man is cured of his injuries due to flogging.

Chapter 3 (358-59)

The war between the Bulgars and the Abares is remarkable for its barbarity, with the death toll being said to rise to 30,000 men.  The deadpan descriptions of the suffering are noteworthy, and Candide takes the opportunity to escape from his captive stay with the Bulgar Army.  The upshot of the battle amounts to nothing more than the law of revenge (358-59).  Jacques the Anabaptist rescues Candide and treats him charitably.  As if by some miracle, during this episode Candide meets his old master Dr. Pangloss, now in a terrible physical condition (359).

Chapter 4 (360-61)

Pangloss provides a harrowing description of what he believes to be the death of Cunégonde and her brother, both of whom were savagely assaulted by Bulgar soldiers.  As for the reason underlying his own frightful condition, Pangloss explains that the cause of it seems to have been the maidservant Paquette, who gave him syphilis.  She herself had contracted it from a Franciscan Friar who got it from a Countess, and so forth.  The narrator offers us a genealogy of this dread disease, mocking the pride in aristocratic lineage as a principle of continuity and dignity.  Anyway, Jacques the Anabaptist manages to cure Dr. Pangloss at the cost of one of his eyes and one of his ears.  The Anabaptist does not agree with Dr. Pangloss that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Chapter 5 (361-63)

Jacques the Anabaptist drowns during a shipwreck while on his way with his new friends to Lisbon on business.  His death stems from an attempt to save a self-centered sailor, who makes no attempt to help him when the rescue goes awry.  The narrator has used the improbable as a way to get rid of Jacques the Anabaptist, who has served his purpose and is now superfluous to the narrative.  As the Norton editors point out in their introduction, Voltaire is in part mocking the conventions of romance narrative, making fun of the propensity of fiction writers to provide order and intelligibility to affairs that anybody should know simply are not to be found in everyday life. 

No sooner does this happen than the great earthquake of Lisbon strikes.  This actually happened in 1755, and it killed about 30,000 people.  The magnitude of that earthquake has been estimated at around 8.5-9.0, which is catastrophic.  Such a disaster poses a challenge to the idea of a benevolent deity.  The wicked sailor is the only one who seems to thrive during this great event, making his way directly toward the ruins and living it up without restraint.  I suppose this indestructible sailor represents something like the principle of anarchy; he is humanity reduced to the lowest common denominator.

Dr. Pangloss of course thinks it all makes perfect sense since he is able to identify a cause-and-effect pattern for the earthquake, but the officers of the Catholic Holy Inquisition are not impressed with his logic and promptly arrest him over a quarrel regarding free will (363).  The Inquisition had been a fact of life in Western Europe even before 1233, when Pope Gregory the ninth established the medieval papal Inquisition.  Prior to that time, the Dominican order had already been tasked with ferreting out heretics and prosecuting them.  The ferocity of the Inquisition only deepened with the advent of Martin Luther's Reformation in 1517.

Chapter 6 (363-64)

Religious ritual comes into play as a response to the earthquake: an auto-da-fé or act of faith is scheduled, and in the course of this auto-da-fé, Pangloss is hanged and Candide is flogged.  When he sees Dr. Pangloss hanged, Candide for once questions the remarkable philosopher's optimism.  Just then, an old woman shows up to rescue Candide from this terrible scene.

Chapter 7 (364-65)

The woman who rescues Candide happens to be the servant of Cunégonde, to whom our hero is reintroduced in a ridiculous, sentimental reunion scene.

Chapter 8 (365-67)

Cunégonde explains that while a Bulgar Captain was assaulting her, another captain from that Army showed up and killed the man, only to sell Cunégonde to a Jewish traitor named Don Issachar.  Then the Grand Inquisitor catches sight of her at mass, and works out an arrangement with the Jewish traitor to share Cunégonde's favors.  Cunégonde apparently saw Dr. Pangloss executed, and at present she also believes her own brother is dead.  She questions the optimist philosophy of Dr. Pangloss.  Just as Cunégonde is explaining all this to Candide, Don Issachar shows up.

Chapter 9 (367-68)

Candide kills Don Issachar and the Grand Inquisitor as well when he shows up.  Voltaire has some fun with the illogical quality of the action on 367, making the narrator describe the killings as due to a "clear chain of reasoning."  How is it, asks Cunégonde, that such a gentle individual could have killed a Catholic officer and a Jewish traitor within a few minutes?  And Candide replies, "when a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself" (368).  Now they are off to Cadiz on the advisement of Cunégonde's old servant woman.

Chapter 10 (368-69)

Cunégonde has been robbed of her gold and diamonds by a Franciscan friar.  Candide is chosen a captain in Cadiz by Spaniards and Portuguese set to quell a rebellion by Paraguayan Jesuit priests, and sails to Paraguay with Cunégonde, the old woman, a couple of valets and some horses.  Will the New World offer something better than corrupt old Europe?  They all discuss Dr. Pangloss's philosophy at length, and Candide is optimistic about the virtues of the new world, while Cunégonde isn't.  The Old Woman is not impressed with their stories of hardship, and in the next chapter she will tell her own story.

Chapter 11 (369-71)

The Old Woman is the daughter of fictional Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina.  She grew up in luxury, in what Dr. Pangloss would no doubt call the best of all possible worlds, if he weren't so addicted to the alleged charms of Westphalia.  She was engaged to a prince who was poisoned by one of his mistresses, and when the then-young Woman and her mother tried to get away from the scene for a time, they were swept away by a pirate ship.  They ended up sold into slavery in Morocco, where the Woman was raped.  She declares that all of this hardship amounts to "such common matters that they are not worth describing" (370).  Her mother is butchered along with many other women over whom a bunch of brutes are fighting, and the kingdom of Morocco is in chaos.  She awakens to the sight of a white eunuch.

Chapter 12 (371-73)

The eunuch from the previous chapter sold the Old Woman to an Algerian, and she quickly contracted the plague.  The sickness killed nearly everyone around her, but this then 15-year-old girl survived and was brought to Tunis by a merchant.  She ended up belonging to an Aga defending Azov against the Russians who were at the time besieging the place against the Ottoman Empire.  When starvation threatens the man, one of their moral leaders advises them to cut off one buttock from each of the ladies for meat, and that's how the now-elderly servant came to have only one buttock.

She was cured by French doctors when the Russians wiped out the Janissaries, and a Russian boyar set her to work in his garden.  She eventually escaped and, as she puts it, "grew old in misery and shame" (373).  She makes an interesting comment at this point: "I wanted to kill myself, but always I loved life more.  This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts…" (373).  She clings to life in spite of everything, in spite of being reduced to utter commonness, to the lowest common denominator of humankind.  She also says everyone has a story to tell, and by saying this she partially undercuts the power of her own narrative since it is, after all, typical rather than unique.

Chapter 13 (373-75)

Cunégonde, Candide and the Old Woman go visit Governor Don Fernando in Buenos Aires.  This man is immediately taken with Cunégonde, and the old woman thinks that's a pretty good deal.  But just then comes the news that Candide is being hunted for killing the Inquisitor, so the old woman advises Candide to skip town, which he does.

Chapter 14 (375-77)

At this point, we are introduced to Candide's servant that he picked up in Cadiz, one Cacambo.  This savvy man advises Candide to make war for the Jesuits in Paraguay rather than against them.  He is very impressed with the Jesuit fathers, who have their own order and a great deal of power to go with it.  In Paraguay, one of the commanders turns out to be none other than the supposedly dead brother of Cunégonde: so another ludicrous recognition scene propels the plot.

Chapter 15 (377-78)

Cunégonde's brother explains how he survived the massacre in Westphalia and was rescued by a perverted Catholic priest and subsequently wound up a Jesuit in the service of the rulers of Paraguay.  This brother, an aristocrat through and through, becomes outraged with Candide when the latter expresses a desire to marry Cunégonde, and of course Candide ends up killing the man, or so it seems.  As usual, the plot drives Candide, overwhelming his innocent character and any sense of Aristotelian rationality in literature.

Chapter 16 (378-80)

While traveling in Paraguay, Candide and his valet come upon a pair of girls, naked, pursued by monkeys.  The girls begin to mourn over the monkeys after Candide shoots the monkeys.  After this episode, he and his valet are captured by savages called Biglugs, who apparently subsist on a diet of boiled Jesuit.  Candide complains about the harshness of his fate in being captured this way and losing Cunégonde.  The valet tries to reason with them, and succeeds only when he points out that they are not in fact Jesuits.  In this chapter, Voltaire is having some fun at the expense of the Jesuits, but he's also hashing out the popular conception of the noble savage in European literature: "it seems that uncorrupted nature is good, since these folk, instead of eating me, showed me a thousand kindnesses as soon as they knew I was not a Jesuit" (380).

Chapter 17 (380-82)

The valet trusts in providence as their guide, and they wind up in El Dorado.  In this place, we are told, "everywhere the useful was joined to the agreeable" (381).  The precious stones are free, and children play with them; the inhabitants seem to be Peruvian natives.  Why do we build utopias?  Consider Sir Francis Bacon, author of The New Atlantis: the point is to examine human nature and institutions such as law, marriage, statecraft and so forth.  Utopian fiction is an exercise in comparative culture.

Chapter 18 (382-85)

What was the origin of this utopian place?  An elderly man tells Candide and his valet that a few hundred years ago the Inca were destroyed by the Spaniards and that the lesson learned by the old man's ancestors was never to leave the valley within which they dwelt.  They know perfectly well that the European adventurers who come to the New World would kill them all for the "pebbles and mud" (548), namely the precious jewels and gold, that litter the territory.  As for religion, says the old man, "we worship God from morning to evening" (549).  There were no priests, a point much to the amazement of their European guest Candide.  Neither are there any prisons or any lawsuits.  Candide's idea is that if they stay in this place, they will be just like every other citizen, but if they take back some of the wealth they find, they will be "richer than all the kings put together" (384): they will have no further problems with inquisitors and will find Cunégonde once again.  The King of El Dorado advises against this plan, but Candide and his servant will not listen, and they plan to go first to Cayenne and then to the governor of Buenos Aires to ransom Cunégonde.

 

Chapter 19 (385-88)

Once they arrive in Cayenne, French Guiana, we find that they have only a couple of sheep left -- the sheep that were carrying provisions and great wealth.  Candide philosophizes to his valet as follows: "you see how the riches of this world are fleeting; the only solid things are virtue and the joy of seeing Ms. Cunégonde again" (385).  They come upon a black man who is waiting for the famous merchant Mr. Vanderdendur.  The old man's story is one of colonial oppression since he tells them about the harsh treatment meted out at the sugar mill where he has worked.  When he hears these things, Candide professes to give up Pangloss's optimism altogether, and describes it as "a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell" (386).  He tells his valet to go ransom Cunégonde in Buenos Aires, while he himself will be waiting in the free Republic of Venice.  But Candide is quickly cheated by the Dutch merchant Vanderdendur, and the law proves no help in his attempt to get the money back.  Candide advertises for a companion who "must be the most disgusted with his own condition and the most unhappy man in the province" (388).  This is how he meets Martin the scholar, who used to work for certain booksellers in Amsterdam.

Chapter 20 (388-90)

Candide and Martin set sail for Bordeaux, France.  So it's back to the old world after a visit to the New World.  Candide inclines again towards the philosophy of Dr. Pangloss, but Martin declares himself a Manichee who seems to believe the worst about everyone.  And what is Martin's vision based on?  It seems to be based upon experience, what we call the school of hard knocks.  Martin says, "I have seen so much and suffered so much, that I am a Manichee" (389).  At this point, there is a sea fight and after it Candide has the good fortune to see one of his sheep struggling in the water, and is able to get the load of diamonds it still bears.  The losing vessel was that of the Dutch merchant who had robbed Candide.  There is something of a parody of the biblical parable about the prodigal son here.

Chapter 21 (390-91)

Martin insists that humanity's three main occupations are sex, slander, and stupid babble (390).  He says this while they're on their way to France.  Martin further points out that as far as he is concerned, the purpose of the world's formation is simply "To drive us mad" (390 bottom) and that by now, the extraordinary seems ordinary to him.  The sum of his philosophy is that human beings have never changed and never will.  That kind of talk goes very much against Enlightenment principle since, of course, the great thinkers of the Enlightenment believed humanity to be perfectible, or at least greatly improvable by rational means.

Chapter 22 (391-97)

Once he enters Paris, Candide becomes somewhat ill and the doctors only make it worse.  Here he meets the priest Perigord, who turns out to be a con man.  Candide becomes enamored of an actress he sees at a play thanks to this fellow, who introduces her to him subsequently.  She titles herself the Marquise of Parolignac, which as the Norton editors point out implies that her title is based upon card sharp ancestors.  Candide thinks Perigord is practically another Pangloss, but Martin is not particularly impressed.  His own view is simply that "nobody knows his place in society or his duty…" (395).  Well, the Marquise succeeds in getting Candide to hand over a couple of diamond rings, and he has been tricked by the priest apparently into believing on the basis of a bogus letter that Cunégonde is in Paris, ill.  When he goes to the hotel to visit her, he is arrested as a suspicious foreigner and only gets out of the trap with a bribe.  Intending now to go to Venice, Candide and Martin nonetheless end up on a ship headed to Portsmouth, England.

Chapter 23 (398-98)

On the ship he had just boarded in the previous chapter, Candide and his companion witness the execution of Admiral Byng.  The explanation for this actual historical event is that the Admiral simply failed to kill enough people and that "it is useful from time to time to kill one Admiral in order to encourage the others" (398).  At last they make their way to Venice.

Chapter 24 (399-401)

Martin has no faith in Candide's plan to make his valet recover Cunégonde; he assumes the man will simply abscond with the "five or six millions in his pockets" (399) rather than carry out his task.  Candide seizes upon a young monk walking along with his girlfriend in St. Mark's Square, Venice.  He is quite certain, he tells Martin, that those two people must be deliriously happy.  But the young woman turns out to be none other than Paquette, the ruined maid.  She tells her sad story about being seduced by a Franciscan confessor and turned out of the Baron's estate in Westphalia.  She then became a mistress to a certain Doctor with a jealous wife and was imprisoned when the man poisoned his wife.  She was rescued by a lecherous judge who then abandoned her, whereupon she came to Venice to work as a prostitute (400).  The name of her priest boyfriend at present is Brother Giroflee.  This man, it turns out can't stand the order to which he belongs, the Theatines.  The point is that neither person is at all happy.

Hope now turns to an Italian dignitary named Pococurante, who is said to be "a man who has never known a moment's grief" (401).

Chapter 25 (401-04)

Pococurante demonstrates his utter boredom with everything -- women, art, literary works, all things in general.  He has collected just about everything of value, but cares nothing for it, and even the comfort of the ordinary bourgeois is denied him -- you know, the people Oscar Wilde said knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.  I suppose the senator is Voltaire's figure for the tired-out Italian Renaissance that had once given the world so much intellectual and emotional stimulation.  Pococurante sees some merit in the English as opposed to the Italians, inheritors of a great civilization who dare not let a thought entered their heads without the approval of the Dominican order (403 bottom).  But when talk turns to the work of John Milton, Pococurante declares him a barbarian who did nothing more than write difficult verse on the first chapter of Genesis.  Candide tries to spin this encounter with the king of boredom into a portrait of a man who must be happy because "he is superior to everything he possesses" (404 middle).  Martin simply points out the absurdity of that formulation -- it is no better than taking pleasure in not taking any pleasure in anything.

Chapter 26 (404-06)

Cacambo meets Candide and tells him that Cunégonde is in fact at Constantinople.  Cacambo is currently serving as a slave here in Venice, and has to keep quiet.  Candide, Martin and six strangers here for the Carnival season in Venice sit down to eat dinner.  On pages 405-06, we find out who these sick strangers are -- princes and kings all, exiles now.  Candide cares little for this illustration of the principle governing the medieval Wheel of Fortune image, for his heart is set upon recovering Cunégonde in Constantinople.

Chapter 27 (406-08)

In comparison with the exiled kings and princes he has just met, Candide considers himself fortunate man since he has only lost one hundred sheep laden with wealth and provisions.  Pangloss is right after all, he declares (407 top).  Filled with renewed optimism that seems almost to be a fundamental human drive in this text (Martin aside), Candide sets sail for Constantinople and for Cunégonde, who, says Cacambo, lives as a slave of the former king of Transylvania.  Unfortunately, she is no longer the beautiful young woman she was when at Westphalia.

Candide starts by purchasing the freedom of Cacambo for quite a lot of money and then goes to find Cunégonde.  On the way, who do they run into but the wretched Pangloss and Cunégonde's long-lost brother, who is not in fact dead as everyone thought he was?  These two men are in chains working with a convict gang charged with rowing the galley.  So Candide has to rescue them with a few more diamonds and off they go to rescue Cunégonde.

Chapter 28 (409-10)

Cunégonde's brother explains that he was taken prisoner for the galleys when he was caught in a Muslim country in a tryst with a young man.  Pangloss volunteers that his own hanging went off badly because the rope was wet.  Rescued by a Portuguese Barber-surgeon, he became the servant of a Knight of Malta on the way to Venice, and then latched on to a Venetian merchant, which person he followed to Constantinople.  Entering a mosque, Pangloss noticed a beautiful young woman.  He showed her too much attention and the imam had him arrested, whereupon he ended up in the galleys.  Even so, Pangloss remains an optimist: he cannot recant his philosophy since "Leibniz could not possibly be wrong" (410).

Chapter 29 (410-11)

Candide ransoms Cunégonde and the old woman, but even here class snobbery injects itself into the general felicity: Cunégonde's brother still objects to the match with Candide.

Chapter 30 (411-13)

Candide no longer has much enthusiasm for marrying the now-ugly Cunégonde, but her brother's snobbery drives him into it, and he deals with this man as a bigot -- they secretly send him right back to the galleys to serve his time.  All together on the farm that Candide has bought, the various characters abide in wretchedness.  It seems that Martin is best prepared for this fate since he never really expected anything better.  Add to this company Paquette and Brother Giroflée, both of whom are even more wretched than when we last met them.  So they go to ask the advice of a famous dervish: "tell us why such a strange animal as man was created" (412 middle) is the question Dr. Pangloss puts to this dervish.  The dervish is not interested in Pangloss's fancy questions about evil, the soul, or the best of all possible worlds.  Essentially, this wise man tells them to mind their own business and not preoccupy themselves with grand affairs or metaphysical questions.  Hearing that several leaders amongst the Ottomans have been strangled or impaled at Constantinople, Dr. Pangloss, Candide and Martin meet a virtuous old man on their way back to the farm.  The old man knows nothing about the horrid events in the capital, and says he doesn't much meddle in other people's affairs -- the only thing he wants from Constantinople is to sell his garden produce there.  He explains that all he does is work his twenty-acre plot of land with his children.  This work, he says, "keeps us from three great evils, boredom vice, and poverty" (413).

Candide seems impressed with what the old fellow has said, and everyone settles down to do some useful work on the farm.  They all resist Dr. Pangloss's continuing interest in speculation.  The most immediate object is to work and forget grand narratives -- that is, any attempts to contain, represent or arrange the world and rather high-handedly determine our place in it.  The point seems to be that we should work rather than speculate, that we should just begin with what is at hand right now and not worry about anything beyond that.  The garden metaphor usually evokes images of pleasure and paradise, but here it seems that Voltaire has reimagined and repurposed it, putting it to a bold and powerful new use in the service of simple amelioration.  In the end, Candide serves up a strong warning to anyone who indulges naively in fantasies about perfecting human individuals and the societies within which they life.  That doesn't mean Voltaire himself is incapable of optimism about humanity's prospects, it just means he doesn't get carried away with abstractions and grand speculations -- a healthy dose of reality and humility is required medicine for those who would try to map out the future of mankind.