Thursday, January 22, 2009

Panglossia

From Voltaire's Candide:

“Oh, Pangloss!” cried Candide, “what a strange genealogy Is not the Devil the original stock of it [syphilis]?”

“Not at all,” replied this great man, “it was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not in an island of America caught this disease, which contaminates the source of life, frequently even hinders generation, and which is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have neither chocolate nor cochineal.”

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