Right through the satire, Voltaire criticized the German philosopher Leibniz’s theory that humans are in the “best of all possible worlds.” Pangloss, Voltaire’s tool to emphasize idiocy, was Candide’s overly optimistic philosopher, who contended for the Leibniz theory with relentless illogical banter. He reasoned that, “since everything was made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose” (Voltaire, 16). When it came to pass that Candide was whipped, his inamorato Cunegonde raped and gutted, his tutor plagued with syphilis, after severe earthquakes, shipwrecks, being enslaved, being exiled, and losing an abysmal heap in riches, Candide began to soberly reconsider Pangloss’s great theory.
