His pessimism, like Pangloss" optimism, prevents him from taking steps to improve the world around him. I think that Martin hurt Candide more that his philosophies helped him. Martin finally concludes there is "some pleasure in having no pleasure" and becomes content, as does the old woman, to till the soil. The author seems to say that blind pessimism is as much of a burden and self-defeating as blind optimism.
The most developed theme in the book was that of religious hypocrisy. A series of corrupt, hypocritical religious leaders appear throughout the book. A Protestant orator cares more about converting his fellow men to his religious views than about saving them from the prevalent social evils. An officer of the Inquisition accuses Pangloss of heresy because an optimist cannot possibly believe in original sin. A Franciscan friar steals Cunegonde's jewels, despite the vow of poverty taken by that order. The old woman was the daughter of a Pope, the most prominent member of the Catholic Church. In recounting one of her miseries, the old woman referred to a "pious and sympathetic" religious leader who persuaded the Russians to merely cut off one buttock from each woman for food. There was also a Jesuit colonel with marked homosexual tendencies. Conversely, the author depicts a kind Anabaptist, Jacques, as a most generous and humane character. He takes Candide into his home and hires him in his factory and finds a doctor who cures Pangloss of syphilis. Jacques, unlike Pangloss, studies both human nature and acts to influence it. He saves a sailor from drowning but falls overboard himself; the sailor does nothing to help him. Sadly, when Candide tried to help, Pangloss stopped him "by proving that the bay of Lisbon had been formed expressly for this Anabaptist to drown in". There was also a Catholic priest who took a mistress when he should have been free of sexual tendencies.
