We are condemned to be free.

In mid of the adventure, Candide hires Martin, a downtrodden scholar, to accompany him on his journey from Buenos Aires to France. Martin embodies the polar opposite philosophical standpoint of Pangloss and Candide’s, as believes that the world is inherently evil and all semblance of good is fleeting. He presents himself against the public as a Manichaeist; a pessimist human being, who believes that God has abandoned the world and now evil existent force since it has merely shadowed society. 

As the men draw closer to the shore of France, Martin pans France as a country where the "ruling passion is love, the next is slander, and the last is to talk nonsense." The scholar describes Paris as "confused multitude, where everyone seeks for pleasure without being able to find it." The men's discussion takes a philosophical turn when Candide asks for what exact reason the world was formed. "To make us mad" is the response. Was mankind always so brutal to one another, guilty of "lies, fraud, treachery, ingratitude, inconstancy, envy, ambition, and cruelty? If animals have not evolved in their nature, why should humans be expected to do so? The difference between animals and men is free will."

Is there a freedom of will within man from sin and its dominion, and to what extent does it go? This is what I ask myself. Primitive innocence, as the bible depicts it, is the way God brings man into the world. That of subsequent corruption, into which he fell through dethrones men of that primitive innocence. In the case of Adam and Eve, who tasted of the tree of knowledge, they became corrupt, which means that innocence for all humanity had perished, it had been taken. 

So no, I beg to differ with Martin. In my opinion man does not have free will, because yes, though he or she chooses to wander out into the open and feed themselves with knowledge or "outer evil," they have since the beginning been condemned to sin. Therefore I think that man and animal do share equal predestination. We are as we have wired ourselves to be. Therefore the value of choice does not exist.