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the year 1755 occurred the great earthquake of Lisbon, which destroyed that capital and a vast number of its inhabitants. Such a visitation could not but produce a profound impression throughout Europe; but no one so strongly evinced his feelings on the occasion as Voltaire. He had always been revolted by the form of philosophy called Optimism, which regards everything that takes place in the universe as inevitably right, because forming part of a general divine plan. Many years before, it had been expounded, after a not too intelligible fashion, by the philosopher Leibnitz. Shaftesbury, followed by Bolingbroke, had maintained it in England; and Pope, following both, had versified it in his "Essay on Man," condensing it in the well-known couplet—

This doctrine appeared to Voltaire not only illogical as making evil an element of good, not only irreverent as making crime and suffering part of the intention of Providence, but of injurious effect on humanity as tending to