ian notion that work is the punishment for having been thrown out of Eden. He is arguing û- in a line that Marx and Engels would have both recognized and appreciated -û that while religion is an opiate to blind the masses to the true nature of their lives, work will bind us in humanistic solidarity and so set us free (Zimmer, 1998, p. 672).
Candide, while it is perhaps the most often read of VoltaireÆs works now, was not particularly revolutionary in the scheme of the writerÆs work, much of which focussed on what Voltaire felt to be the evils of religion û both the intolerance fostered by the Catholic Church of his own time and the preceding centuries and the forced fatalism that he also saw as an important element of Catholicism. Pangloss is of course in many ways simply an emblem of this hearty fatalism in Candide û- as much as he is a stand in for Leibnitz. Pangloss accepts and tries to make the best of things that Candide seeks to change and so stands in both as an effigy for Leibnitz and for all the thousands of people who have been duped by such empty philosophies.
A number of VoltaireÆs works, including the 1756 Essai sur l'histoire gTnTrale et sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations (Essay on General History and on the Customs and the Character of Nations), decry supernaturalism and denounce religion and the power of the clergy û- although in this work especially Voltaire made evident his own belief in the existence of God. VoltaireÆs complaints with religion, so very much in evidence in Candide in the descriptions of the behavior and beliefs of the Jesuits and the evil and stupidity of the Inquisition, were in fact complaints with the way he saw Catholicism being practiced. He was not angry with God, and Voltaire was quite convinced that it was possible to worship God (he was openly envious of the way the Quakers conducted themselves both morally and in terms of how they worshipped God) and believe in an omnipoten...