Actually I think I prefer Swift.
Chief target is the philosophy of status quo optimism advocated in the 18th century by, among others, Leibnitz. He is personified as Doctor Pangloss in the novel, one whose "metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology" allows him to smile stupidly on an endless, intercontinental catalogue of horrors -- rape and slaughter, crime and punishment, earthquake and shipwreck. In Chapter 1, as the good Doctor tutors the young Candide and his love, Cunegonde, "that there is no effect without a cause" and that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds,"
Mademoiselle Cunegonde had a great inclination for science and watched breathlessly the reiterated experiments she witnessed; she observed clearly the Doctor's sufficient reason, the effects and the causes, and returned home very much excited, pensive, filled with the desire of learning, reflecting that she might be the sufficient reason of young Candide and that he might be hers.
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