object of his life to convince public opinion that those dogmas were both ridiculous and contemptible in themselves, and abominable in their results.  In this we may think him right or we may think him wrong; our judgement will depend upon the nature of our own opinions.  But, whatever our opinions, we cannot think him wicked; for we cannot doubt that the one dominating motive in all that he wrote upon the subject of religion was a passionate desire for the welfare of mankind.

Voltaire’s philosophical views were curious.  While he entirely discarded the miraculous from his system, he nevertheless believed in a Deity—­a supreme First Cause of all the phenomena of the universe.  Yet, when he 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.