Mais, il faut cultiver notre jardin

casablanca
Dec 21, 2024 8:11 PM
I hate work. But I love that through work we are able to find ourselves. We were put in this earth to work. Such is Pangloss right when he says
car quand l'homme fut mis dans le jardin d'Éden, il y fut mis ut operaretur eum, pour qu'il travaillât : ce qui prouve que l'homme n'est pas né pour le repos.
Pangloss, the philosopher, correctly deduced that God put man on earth to labor. So says the Bible
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Candide spends his entire life struggling, going from travail to travail, trying to find happiness. In the end he loses all his wealth and the thing which mattered the most to him, the love of his life Cunegonde, has lost all her beauty. (Which reveals Candide, like everyone else he despised, is also a materialist.) Candide issues his erudite judgement at the end. « Il fait cultiver notre jardin. » What this means is that only through work can we find ourselves. You feel sad? Just work more, that is the cure. Recently I read this book, *Thinking: Fast and Slow*, in which the author talks about studies done on depressed individuals; they found the most effective cure for depression was forcing yourself to dance. This is what Candide discovered.
1 Comments


icarusrising9
4 months ago
Huh, this review made me want to read *Thinking: Fast and Slow*.