Candide v. "Cultivate Our Garden"

Voltaire' s "Candide" (also titled as " Optimism") portrayed a well-bred young man's painful growth from being very bookish and naive to pragmatic and realistic. He was kicked out of a castle for his prohibitted love to the daughter of the landlord, who was remarkable beautiful and attractive at that moment. Out of the castle, the young man was washed by disasters--war, earthquake and even imminent threat to be killed. Although all the realities he faced so largely differed from what he was in mind-- abstract philosophy about life taught by his mentor, a "great" philosopher, he was very optimistic and faithful in "all is well". Gradually he started to question his previous philosophic mind because "all is by no means well" and what came to his eyes were cruelty, violence and ridicules. He still tried to remain to be optimistic for he hoped that he could meet his beautiful love again. That was his light in darkness and drove him to go through all these disasters.
But, on the day when he really encountered his lover, he recoiled three paces--she lost all her beauty and became unbelievably ugly after being labored for many years as a slave as a result of a war where her father was defeated. Now he was really puzzled of what the life was. From a conversation with a farmer, he finally knew that life was not to be capable of engaging in endlessly philosophical debates, or pursuit of ranks and titles, but " must cultivate our garden" and "work can keep us from three great evils: boredom, vice and necessity." What he need to do is to exercise his talent and make him useful to production for living.
The farmer's understanding of life is much simpler than any philosopher, but that is exactly the only way to make life bearable in the view of Voltaire.