PART II. CHAPTER I. How Candide quitted his Companions, and what happened to him. WE soon become tired of everything in life: riches fatigue the possessor; ambition, when satisfied, leaves only remorse behind it; the joys of love are but transient joys; and Candide, made to experience all the vicissitudes of fortune, was soon disgusted with cultivating his garden. "Mr. Pangloss," said he, "if we are in the best of possible worlds, you will own, to me at least, that this is not enjoying that portion of possible happiness; but living obscure in a little corner of the Propontis, having no other resource than that of my own manual labour, which may one day fail me; no other pleasures than what Mrs. Cunegund gives me, who is very ugly, and, which is worse, is my wife; no other company than yours, which is sometimes irksome to me; or that of Martin, which makes me melancholy; or that of Giroflee, who is but very lately become an honest man; or that of Pacquette, the danger of whose correspondence you have so fully experienced; or that of the hag who has but one hip, and is constantly repeating old wives' tales." To this Pangloss made the following reply: "Philosophy teaches us that monads, divisible in infinitum, arrange themselves with wonderful sagacity in order to compose the different bodies which we observe in nature. The heavenly bodies are what they ought to be; they are placed where they should be; they describe the circles which they ought to do; man follows the bent he ought to follow; he is what he ought to be; he does what he ought to do. You bemoan yourself, O Candide! because the monad of your soul is disgusted; but disgust is a modification of the soul; and this does not hinder that everything is for the best, both for you and others. |
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