>
> The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake,
> took place on November 1, 1755, at 9:40 in the morning. It was one of
> the most destructive and deadly earthquakes in history, killing
> between 60,000 and 100,000 people. The earthquake was followed by a
> tsunami and fire, resulting in the near-total destruction of Lisbon.
> The earthquake accentuated political tensions in Portugal and
> profoundly disrupted the country's eighteenth-century colonial
> ambitions.
>
> The event was widely discussed by European Enlightenment philosophers,
> and inspired major developments in theodicy and in the philosophy of
> the sublime.
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
>
> Voltaire used that Earthquake as a prop in his major contribution to
> philosophy and asked about what is the best possible world;
>
> One of the most difficult issues confronting believers is the problem
> of evil in the world. How can a person possibly believe in a good,
> wise and powerful God in the face of human suffering. An answer
> sometimes given is that of all possible worlds, this one, a world
> where humans have free will, is the best possible world.
>
> The French philosopher Voltaire revolted against this approach. In
> 1755 an earthquake struck the city of Lisbon. It was All Saints Day
> when it struck, meaning that the churches were full. In just six
> minutes 15,000 people were killed and another 15,000 severely wounded.
> Voltaire could not accept that this was somehow the outworking of the
> plans of a good God. In Poem on the Disaster of Lisbon he asks why it
> is if God is free, just and good we suffer under his rule.
>
> Later he wrote a satirical novel titled Candide. It tells the story of
> a young man Candide, and his teacher, Dr Pangloss. Whatever disaster
> befalls them Dr Pangloss glibly asserts that "this is the best of all
> possible worlds." They are shipwrecked near Lisbon just as the
> earthquake strikes. Candide is almost killed and Pangloss ends up
> hanged by the Inquisition. This forces Candide to question. "Candide"
> writes Voltaire, "terrified, speechless, bleeding, palpitating, said
> to himself: 'If this is the best of all possible worlds, what can the
> rest be?'"
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=vpql40t6sjqbd3%%40corp.supernews.com
>
> --------------------------------------
>
> ...Persecution and disillusionment had worn down his faith in life;
> and his experiences at Berlin and Frankfort had taken the edge from
> his hope. But both faith and hope suffered most when, in November,
> 1755, came the news of the awful earthquake at Lisbon, in which 30,000
> people had been killed. The quake had come on All Saints' Day; the
> churches had been crowded with worshippers; and death, finding its
> enemies in close formation, had reaped a rich harvest. Voltaire was
> shocked into seriousness and raged when he heard that the French
> clergy were explaining the disaster as a punishment for the sins of
> the people of Lisbon. He broke forth in a passionate poem in which he
> gave vigorous expression to the old dilemma: Either God can prevent
> evil and he will not; or he wishes to prevent it and he cannot. He was
> not satisfied with Spinoza's answer that good and evil are human
> terms, inapplicable to the universe, and that our tragedies are
> trivial things in the perspective of eternity.
>
> I am a puny part of the great whole.
> Yes; but all animals condemned to live,
> All sentient things, born by the same stern law,
> Suffer like me, and like me also die.
> The vulture fastens on his timid prey,
> And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs:
> All's well, it seems, for it. But in a while
> An eagle tears the vulture into shreds;
> The eagle is transfixed by shafts of man;
> The man, prone in the dust of battlefields,
> Mingling his blood with dying fellow men,
> Becomes in turn the food of ravenous birds.
> Thus the whole world in every member groans,
> All born for torment and for mutual death.
> And o'er this ghastly chaos you would say
> The ills of each make up the good of all!
> What blessedness! And as, with quaking voice,
> Mortal and pitiful ye cry, "All's well,"
> The universe belies you, and your heart
> Refutes a hundred times your mind's conceit. . . .
> What is the verdict of the vastest mind?
> Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.
> Man is a stranger to his own research;
> He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes.
> Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,
> Devoured by death, a mockery of fate;
> But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes,
> Guided by thoughts, have measured the faint stars.
> Our being mingles with the infinite;
> Ourselves we never see, or come to know.
> This world, this theatre of pride and wrong,
> Swarms with sick fools who talk of happiness. . . .
>
> Once did I sing, in less lugubrious tone,
> The sunny ways of pleasure's general rule;
> The times have changed, and, taught by growing aget
> And sharing of the frailty of mankind,
> Seeking a light amid the deepening gloom,
> I can but suffer, and will not repine.
>
> A few months later the Seven Years' War broke out; Voltaire looked
> upon it as madness and suicide, the devastation of Europe to settle
> whether England or France should win "a few acres of snow" in Canada.
> On the top of this came a public reply, by Jean Jacques Rousseau, to
> the poem on Lisbon. Man himself was to be blamed for the disaster,
> said Rousseau; if we lived out in the fields, and not in the towns, we
> should not be killed on so large a scale; if we lived under the sky,
> and not in houses, houses would not fall upon us. Voltaire was amazed
> at the popularity won by this profound theodicy; and angry that his
> name should be dragged into the dust by such a Quixote, he turned upon
> Rousseau "that most terrible of all the intellectual weapons ever
> wielded by man, the mockery of Voltaire." In three days, in 1751, he
> wrote Candide.
>
> Never was pessimism so gaily argued; never was man made to laugh so
> heartily while learning that this is a world of woe. And seldom has a
> story been told with such simple and hidden art; it is pure narrative
> and dialogue; no descriptions pad it out; and the action is riotously
> rapid. "In Voltaire's fingers," said Anatole France, "the pen runs and
> laughs." It is perhaps the finest short story in all literature.
>
> Candide, as his name indicates, is a simple and honest lad, son of the
> great Baron of Thunder-Ten-Trockh of Westphalia, and pupil of the
> learned Pangloss.
>
> Pangloss was professor of metaphysicotheologicocosmonigology. . . .
> "It is demonstrable," said he, "that all is necessarily for the best
> end. Observe that the nose has been formed to bear spectacles . . .
> legs were visibly designed for stockings . . . stones were designed to
> construct casdes . . . pigs were made so that we might have pork all
> the year round. Consequently, they who assert that all is well have
> said a foolish thing; they should have said all is for the best."
>
> While Pangloss is discoursing, the castle is attacked by the Bulgarian
> army, and Candide is captured and turned into a soldier.
>
> He was made to wheel about to the right and to the left, to draw his
> rammer; to return his rammer, to present, to fire, to march. . . . He
> resolved,, one fine day in spring, to go for a walk, marching straight
> before him, bejleving that it was a privilege of the human as well as
> the animal species to make use of their legs as they pleased. He had
> advanced two leagues when he was overtaken by four heroes six feet
> tall, who bound him and carried him to a dungeon. He was asked which
> he would like the best, to be whipped six and diirty times through all
> the regiment, or to receive at once two balls of lead in his brain. He
> vainly said that human will is free, and that he chose neither the one
> nor the other. He was forced to make a choice; he determined, in
> virtue of that gift of God called liberty, to run the gauntlet six-and-
> thirty times. He bore this twice.
>
> Candide escapes, takes passage to Lisbon, and on board ship meets
> Professor Pangloss, who tells how the Baron and Baroness were murdered
> and the castle destroyed. "All this," he concludes, "was
> indispensable; for private misfortune makes the general good, so that
> the more private misfortunes there are, the greater is the general
> good." They arrive in Lisbon just in time to be caught in the
> earthquake. After it is over they tell each other their adventures and
> sufferings; whereupon an old servant assures them that their
> misfortunes are as nothing compared with her own. "A hundred times I
> was on the point of killing myself, but I loved life. This ridiculous
> foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics; for is there
> anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which
> one can always throw down?" Or, as another character expresses it,
> "All things considered, the life of a gondolier is preferable to that
> of a doge; but I believe the difference is so trifling that it is not
> worth the trouble of examining."
>
> Candide, fleeing from the Inquisition, goes to Paraguay; "there the
> Jesuit Fathers possess all, and the people nothing; it is a
> masterpiece of reason and justice." In a Dutch colony he comes upon a
> negro with one hand, one leg, and a rag for clothing. "When we work at
> the sugar canes," the slave explains, "and the mill snatches hold of a
> finger, they cut off a hand; and when we try to run away, they cut off
> a leg. . . . This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe."
> Candide finds much loose gold in the unexplored interior; he returns
> to the coast and hires a vessel to take him to France; but the skipper
> sails off with the gold and leaves Candide philosophizing on the
> wharf. With what little remains to him, Candide purchases a passage on
> a ship bound for Bordeaux; and on board strikes up a conversation with
> an old sage, ...
>
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