in this scandalous and beautiful book, the lying optimism of
the preachers receives its crushing blow. "Candide" is the final retort
of all sane and generous spirits, full of magnanimity and laughter, to
that morbid and shameful propitiation of the destinies which cries
"peace when there is no peace."

One feels when one reads it as if it were written by some wanton
and gracious youth, in the marble courts of some happy palace
of Utopia, commenting upon the mad delusions and diseased
hypocrisies of the men of the old time when superstition still reigned.
No book in the world has more spontaneous gaiety, more of the
triumphant spirit of human boyishness in its blood. Certainly the
great Voltaire was to the end of his life--and you can see that very
thing in the old-young face of the famous bust--inspired by the
immortal flame of youth. He never grew old. To the last his attitude
toward life was the attitude of that exuberant and unbounded energy
which takes nothing seriously and loves the contest with darkness
and stupidity for the sake of the divine "sport" of the struggle. There
is a certain sun-born sanity of _commonsense_ about such natural
youthfulness, which contradicts all popular fallacies.

It is the Mercutio spirit, striking up the swords of both Montagues
and Capulets and fooling them all on their grey-haired obsessions. It
comes into this solemn custom-ridden world, as if from some
younger and gayer star, and makes wanton sport of its pious
hypocrisies. It opens its astonished laughing eyes upon the meanness
of men and the cruelties of men and the insane superstitions and
illusions of men, and it mocks them all with mischievous delight. It
refuses to bow its head before hoary idols. It refuses to go weeping
and penitent and stricken with a sense of "sin" in the presence of
natural fleshly instincts. It is absolutely irresponsible--what, in a
world like this, should one be responsible for?--and it is shamelessly
frivolous. Why not? Where the highest sanctities are so lamentably
human, and where the phylacteries of the moralists are embroidered
with such earth-spun threads, why go on tip-toe and with forlorn
visage? It is outrageously indecent. Why not? Who made this
portentous "decency" to be the rule of free-born life? Who put
fig-leaves upon the sweet flesh of the immortals? Decency after all is a
mere modern barbarism; the evocation of morbid vulgarity and a
perverted heart.

The great classic civilisa