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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Theodicy, by G. W. Leibniz
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Theodicy
+       Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
+
+Author: G. W. Leibniz
+
+Commentator: Austin Farrer
+
+Translator: E.M. Huggard
+
+Release Date: November 24, 2005 [EBook #17147]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEODICY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Juliet Sutherland, Keith Edkins
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Theodicy
+
+Essays on
+the Goodness of God
+the Freedom of Man and
+the Origin of Evil
+
+G.W. LEIBNIZ
+
+Edited with an Introduction by Austin Farrer, Fellow of Trinity College,
+Oxford
+
+Translated by E.M. Huggard from C.J. Gerhardt's Edition of the Collected
+Philosophical Works, 1875-90
+
+Open [Logo] Court
+
+La Salle, Illinois 61301
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Logo]
+
+OPEN COURT and the above logo are registered in the U.S. Patent & Trademark
+Office.
+
+  Published 1985 by Open Court Publishing Company, Peru, Illinois 61354.
+  This edition first published 1951 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited,
+      London.
+  Second printing 1988
+  Third printing 1990
+  Fourth printing 1993
+  Fifth printing 1996
+
+Printed and bound in the United States of America.
+
+LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
+
+  Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716.
+    Theodicy: essays on the goodness of God, the
+  freedom of man, and the origin of evil.
+
+    Translation of: Essais de Théodicée.
+    Includes index.
+    1. Theodicy--Early works to 1800. I. Title.
+  B2590.E5 1985 231'.8 85-8833
+  ISBN O-87548-437-9
+
+                                                                        [5]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION                                                page 7
+PREFACE                                                                  49
+PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH                 73
+REASON
+ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE    123, 182, 276
+ORIGIN OF EVIL, IN THREE PARTS
+                                APPENDICES
+SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY, REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS                 377
+EXCURSUS ON THEODICY, § 392                                             389
+REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN                     393
+ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND CHANCE'
+OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL',               405
+PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN LONDON
+CAUSA DEI ASSERTA                                                       443
+INDEX                                                                   445
+
+                                                                        [7]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I
+
+Leibniz was above all things a metaphysician. That does not mean that his
+head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences lacked interest for
+him. Not at all--he felt a lively concern for theological debate, he was a
+mathematician of the first rank, he made original contributions to physics,
+he gave a realistic attention to moral psychology. But he was incapable of
+looking at the objects of any special enquiry without seeing them as
+aspects or parts of one intelligible universe. He strove constantly after
+system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative
+reason. He embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. Nothing could
+be less like the spirit of ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means
+a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A
+professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with the
+duties of his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at
+all, though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by showing
+them up as confused forms of something else. A chair in metaphysical
+philosophy becomes analogous to a chair in tropical diseases: what is
+taught from it is not the propagation but the cure.
+
+Confidence in metaphysical construction has ebbed and flowed through
+philosophical history; periods of speculation have been followed by periods
+of criticism. The tide will flow again, but it has not turned yet, and  [8]
+such metaphysicians as survive scarcely venture further than to argue a
+case for the possibility of their art. It would be an embarrassing task to
+open an approach to Leibnitian metaphysics from the present metaphysical
+position, if there is a present position. If we want an agreed
+starting-point, it will have to be historical.
+
+The historical importance of Leibniz's ideas is anyhow unmistakable. If
+metaphysical thinking is nonsensical, its empire over the human imagination
+must still be confessed; if it is as chimerical a science as alchemy, it is
+no less fertile in by-products of importance. And if we are to consider
+Leibniz historically, we cannot do better than take up his _Theodicy_, for
+two reasons. It was the only one of his main philosophical works to be
+published in his lifetime, so that it was a principal means of his direct
+influence; the Leibniz his own age knew was the Leibniz of the _Theodicy_.
+Then in the second place, the _Theodicy_ itself is peculiarly rich in
+historical material. It reflects the world of men and books which Leibniz
+knew; it expresses the theological setting of metaphysical speculation
+which still predominated in the first years of the eighteenth century.
+
+Leibniz is remembered for his philosophy; he was not a professional
+philosopher. He was offered academic chairs, but he declined them. He was a
+gentleman, a person of means, librarian to a reigning prince, and
+frequently employed in state affairs of trust and importance. The librarian
+might at any moment become the political secretary, and offer his own
+contributions to policy. Leibniz was for the greater part of his active
+life the learned and confidential servant of the House of Brunswick; when
+the Duke had nothing better to do with him, he set him to research into
+ducal history. If Leibniz had a profession in literature, it was history
+rather than philosophy. He was even more closely bound to the interests of
+his prince than John Locke was to those of the Prince of Orange. The Houses
+of Orange and of Brunswick were on the same side in the principal contest
+which divided Europe, the battle between Louis XIV and his enemies. It was
+a turning-point of the struggle when the Prince of Orange supplanted
+Louis's Stuart friends on the English throne. It was a continuation of the
+same movement, when Leibniz's master, George I, succeeded to the same
+throne, and frustrated the restoration of the Stuart heir. Locke returned
+to England in the wake of the Prince of Orange, and became the          [9]
+representative thinker of the régime. Leibniz wished to come to the English
+court of George I, but was unkindly ordered to attend to the duties of his
+librarianship. So he remained in Hanover. He was then an old man, and
+before the tide of favour had turned, he died.
+
+Posterity has reckoned Locke and Leibniz the heads of rival sects, but
+politically they were on the same side. As against Louis's political
+absolutism and enforced religious uniformity, both championed religious
+toleration and the freedom of the mind. Their theological liberalism was
+political prudence; it was not necessarily for that reason the less
+personally sincere. They had too much wisdom to meet bigotry with bigotry,
+or set Protestant intolerance against Catholic absolutism. But they had too
+much sympathy with the spirit of Europe to react into free thinking or to
+make a frontal attack on revealed truth. They took their stand on a
+fundamental Christian theism, the common religion of all good men; they
+repudiated the negative enormities of Hobbes and Spinoza.
+
+The Christian was to hold a position covered by three lines of defences.
+The base line was to be the substance of Christian theism and of Christian
+morals, and it was to be held by the forces of sheer reason, without aid
+from scriptural revelation. The middle line was laid down by the general
+sense of Scripture, and the defence of it was this. 'Scriptural doctrine is
+reconcilable with the findings of sheer reason, but it goes beyond them. We
+believe the Scriptures, because they are authenticated by marks of
+supernatural intervention in the circumstances of their origin. We believe
+them, but reason controls our interpretation of them.' There remained the
+most forward and the most hazardous line: the special positions which a
+Church, a sect, or an individual might found upon the scriptural
+revelation. A prudent man would not hold his advance positions in the same
+force or defend them with the same obstinacy as either of the lines behind
+them. He could argue for them, but he could not require assent to them.
+
+One cannot help feeling, indeed, the readiness of these writers to fall
+back, not only from the front line to the middle line, but from the middle
+line itself to the base line. Leibniz, for example, writes with perfect
+seriousness and decency about the Christian scheme of redemption, but it
+hardly looks like being for him a crucial deliverance from perdition. It is
+not the intervention of Mercy, by which alone He possesses himself of  [10]
+us: it is one of the ways in which supreme Benevolence carries out a cosmic
+policy; and God's benevolence is known by pure reason, and apart from
+Christian revelation.
+
+In one politically important particular the theological attitude of Leibniz
+differed from that of Locke. Both stood for toleration and for the
+minimizing of the differences between the sects. This was a serious enough
+matter in England, but it was an even more serious matter in Germany. For
+Germany was divided between Catholics and Protestants; effective toleration
+must embrace them both. English toleration might indulge a harmless
+Catholic minority, while rejecting the Catholic régime as the embodiment of
+intolerance. But this was not practical politics on the Continent; you must
+tolerate Catholicism on an equal footing, and come to terms with Catholic
+régimes. Leibniz was not going to damn the Pope with true Protestant
+fervour. It was his consistent aim to show that his theological principles
+were as serviceable to Catholic thinkers as to the doctors of his own
+church. On some points, indeed, he found his most solid support from
+Catholics; in other places there are hints of a joint Catholic-Lutheran
+front against Calvinism. But on the whole Leibniz's writings suggest that
+the important decisions cut across all the Churches, and not between them.
+
+Leibniz was impelled to a compromise with 'popery', not only by the
+religious divisions of Germany, but (at one stage) by the political
+weakness of the German Protestant States. At the point of Louis XIV's
+highest success, the Protestant princes had no hope but in Catholic
+Austria, and Austria was distracted by Turkish pressure in the rear.
+Leibniz hoped to relieve the situation by preaching a crusade. Could not
+the Christian princes sink their differences and unite against the infidel?
+And could not the Christian alliance be cemented by theological agreement?
+Hence Leibniz's famous negotiation with Bossuet for a basis of
+Catholic-Lutheran concord. It was plainly destined to fail; and it was
+bound to recoil upon its author. How could he be a true Protestant who
+treated the differences with the Catholics as non-essentials? How could he
+have touched pitch and taken no defilement? Leibniz was generally admired,
+but he was not widely trusted. As a mere politician, he may be judged to
+have over-reached himself.
+
+It has been the object of the preceding paragraphs to show that Leibniz[11]
+the politician and Leibniz the theologian were one and the same person; not
+at all to suggest that his rational theology was just political expediency.
+We may apply to him a parody of his own doctrine, the pre-established
+harmony between nature and grace. Everything happens as though Leibniz were
+a liberal politician, and his theology expressed his politics. Yes, but
+equally, everything happens as though Leibniz were a philosophical
+theologian, and his politics expressed his theology. His appreciation of
+Catholic speculation was natural and sincere; his dogmatic ancestry is to
+be looked for in Thomism and Catholic humanism as much as anywhere. Above
+all, he had himself a liberal and generous mind. It gave him pleasure to
+appreciate good wherever he could see it, and to discover a soul of truth
+in every opinion.
+
+From the moment when Leibniz became aware of himself as an independent
+thinker, he was the man of a doctrine. Sometimes he called it 'my
+principles', sometimes 'the new system', sometimes 'pre-established
+harmony'. It could be quite briefly expressed; he was always ready to
+oblige his friends with a summary statement, either in a letter or an
+enclosed memorandum, and several such have come down to us. The doctrine
+may have been in Leibniz's view simple, but it was applicable to every
+department of human speculation or enquiry. It provided a new alphabet of
+philosophical ideas, and everything in heaven and earth could be expressed
+in it; not only could be, but ought to be, and Leibniz showed tireless
+energy in working out restatements of standing problems.
+
+As a man with an idea, with a philosophical nostrum, Leibniz may be
+compared to Bishop Berkeley. There was never any more doubt that Leibniz
+was a Leibnitian than that Berkeley was a Berkeleian. But there is no
+comparison between the two men in the width of their range. About many
+things Berkeley never took the trouble to Berkeleianize. To take the most
+surprising instance of his neglect--he assured the world that his whole
+doctrine pointed to, and hung upon, theology. But what sort of a theology?
+He scarcely took the first steps in the formulation of it. He preferred to
+keep on defending and explaining his _esse est percipi_. With Leibniz it is
+wholly different; he carries his new torch into every corner, to illuminate
+the dark questions.
+
+The wide applicability of pre-established harmony might come home to its
+inventor as a rich surprise. The reflective historian will find it less[12]
+surprising, for he will suspect that the applications were in view from the
+start. What was Leibniz thinking of when the new principle flashed upon
+him? What was he _not_ thinking of? He had a many-sided mind. If the
+origins of the principle were complex, little wonder that its applications
+were manifold. Every expositor of Leibniz who does not wish to be endlessly
+tedious must concentrate attention on one aspect of Leibniz's principle,
+and one source of its origin. We will here give an account of the matter
+which, we trust, will go most directly to the heart of it, but we will make
+no claims to sufficient interpretation of Leibniz's thought-processes.
+
+Leibniz, then, like all the philosophers of the seventeenth century, was
+reforming scholasticism in the light of a new physical science. The science
+was mathematical in its form, mechanistical in its doctrine, and
+unanswerable in its evidence--it got results. But it was metaphysically
+intractable, and the doctrines of infinite and finite substance which it
+generated furnish a gallery of metaphysical grotesques; unless we are to
+except Leibniz; his system is, if nothing else, a miracle of ingenuity, and
+there are moments when we are in danger of believing it.
+
+It is a natural mistake for the student of seventeenth-century thought to
+underestimate the tenacity of scholastic Aristotelianism. Descartes, we all
+know, was reared in it, but then Descartes overthrew it; and he had done
+his work and died by the time that Leibniz was of an age to philosophize at
+all. We expect to see Leibniz starting on his shoulders and climbing on
+from there. We are disappointed. Leibniz himself tells us that he was
+raised in the scholastic teaching. His acquaintance with Descartes's
+opinions was second-hand, and they were retailed to him only that they
+might be derided. He agreed, like an amiable youth, with his preceptors.
+
+The next phase of his development gave him a direct knowledge of Cartesian
+writings, and of other modern books beside, such as those of the atomist
+Gassendi. He was delighted with what he read, because of its fertility in
+the field of physics and mathematics; and for a short time he was an
+enthusiastic modern. But presently he became dissatisfied. The new systems
+did not go far enough, they were still scientifically inadequate. At the
+same time they went too far, and carried metaphysical paradox beyond the
+limits of human credulity.
+
+                                                                       [13]
+There is no mystery about Leibniz's scientific objections to the new
+philosophers. If he condemned them here, it was on the basis of scientific
+thought and observation. Descartes's formulation of the laws of motion
+could, for example, be refuted by physical experiment; and if his general
+view of physical nature was bound up with it, then so much the worse for
+the Cartesian philosophy. But whence came Leibniz's more strictly
+metaphysical objections? Where had he learned that standard of metaphysical
+adequacy which showed up the inadequacy of the new metaphysicians? His own
+disciples might be satisfied to reply, that he learnt it from Reason
+herself; but the answer will not pass with us. Leibniz reasoned, indeed,
+but he did not reason from nowhere, nor would he have got anywhere if he
+had. His conception of metaphysical reason was what his early scholastic
+training had made it.
+
+There are certain absurd opinions which we are sure we have been taught,
+although, when put to it, we find it hard to name the teacher. Among them
+is something of this sort. 'Leibniz was a scholarly and sympathetic
+thinker. He had more sense of history than his contemporaries, and he was
+instinctively eclectic. He believed he could learn something from each of
+his great predecessors. We see him reaching back to cull a notion from
+Plato or from Aristotle; he even found something of use in the scholastics.
+In particular, he picked out the Aristotelian "entelechy" to stop a gap in
+the philosophy of his own age.' What this form of statement ignores is that
+Leibniz _was_ a scholastic: a scholastic endeavouring, like Descartes
+before him, to revolutionize scholasticism. The word 'entelechy' was,
+indeed, a piece of antiquity which Leibniz revived, but the thing for which
+it stood was the most familiar of current scholastic conceptions.
+'Entelechy' means active principle of wholeness or completion in an
+individual thing. Scholasticism was content to talk about it under the name
+of 'substantial form' or 'formal cause'. But the scholastic interpretation
+of the idea was hopelessly discredited by the new science, and the
+scholastic terms shared the discredit of scholastic doctrine. Leibniz
+wanted a term with a more general sound. 'There is an _X_', he wanted to
+say, 'which scholasticism has defined as substantial form, but I am going
+to give a new definition of it.' Entelechy was a useful name for _X_, the
+more so as it had the authority of Aristotle, the master of scholasticism.
+
+Under the name of entelechy Leibniz was upholding the soul of          [14]
+scholastic doctrine, while retrenching the limbs and outward flourishes.
+The doctrine of substantial form which he learnt in his youth had had
+_something_ in it; he could not settle down in the principles of Descartes
+or of Gassendi, because both ignored this vital _something_. Since the
+requirements of a new science would not allow a return to sheer
+scholasticism, it was necessary to find a fresh philosophy, in which
+entelechy and mechanism might be accommodated side by side.
+
+If one had asked any 'modern' of the seventeenth century to name the
+'ancient' doctrine he most abominated, he would most likely have replied,
+'Substantial form'. Let us recall what was rejected under this name, and
+why.
+
+The medieval account of physical nature had been dominated by what we may
+call common-sense biology. Biology, indeed, is the science of the living,
+and the medievals were no more inclined than we are to endow all physical
+bodies with life. What they did do was to take living bodies as typical,
+and to treat other bodies as imperfectly analogous to them. Such an
+approach was _a priori_ reasonable enough. For we may be expected to know
+best the physical being closest to our own; and we, at any rate, are alive.
+Why not argue from the better known to the less known, from the nearer to
+the more remote, interpreting other things by the formula of our own being,
+and allowing whatever discount is necessary for their degree of unlikeness
+to us?
+
+Common-sense biology reasons as follows. In a living body there is a
+certain pattern of organized parts, a certain rhythm of successive motions,
+and a certain range of characteristic activities. The pattern, the sheer
+anatomy, is basic; but it cannot long continue to exist (outside a
+refrigerator) without accompanying vital rhythms in heart, respiration and
+digestion. Nor do these perform their parts without the intermittent
+support of variable but still characteristic activities: dogs not only
+breathe and digest, they run about, hunt their food, look for mates, bark
+at cats, and so on. The anatomical pattern, the vital rhythm, and the
+characteristic acts together express dogginess; they reveal the specific
+form of the dog. They _reveal_ it; exactly what the specific form
+_consisted in_ was the subject of much medieval speculation. It need not
+concern us here.
+
+Taking the form of the species for granted, common-sense biology proceeds
+to ask how it comes to be in a given instance, say in the dog Toby.    [15]
+Before this dog was born or thought of, his form or species was displayed
+in each of his parents. And now it looks as though the form of dog had
+detached itself from them through the generative act, and set up anew on
+its own account. How does it do that? By getting hold of some materials in
+which to express itself. At first it takes them from the body of the
+mother, afterwards it collects them from a wider environment, and what the
+dog eats becomes the dog.
+
+What, then, is the relation of the assimilated materials to the dog-form
+which assimilates them? Before assimilation, they have their own form.
+Before the dog eats the leg of mutton, it has the form given to it by its
+place in the body of a sheep. What happens to the mutton? Is it without
+remainder transubstantiated from sheep into dog? It loses all its
+distinctively sheep-like characteristicsm but there may be some more
+basically material characteristics which it preserves. They underlay the
+structure of the mutton, and they continue to underlie the structure of the
+dog's flesh which supplants it. Whatever these characteristics may be, let
+us call them common material characteristics, and let us say that they
+belong to or compose a common material nature.
+
+The common material nature has its own way of existing, and perhaps its own
+principles of physical action. We may suppose that we know much or that we
+know little about it. This one thing at least we know, that it is capable
+of becoming alternatively either mutton or dog's flesh. It is not essential
+to it to be mutton, or mutton it would always be; nor dog's flesh, or it
+would always be dog's flesh. It is capable of becoming either, according as
+it is captured by one or other system of formal organization. So the voters
+who are to go to the polls are, by their common nature, Englishmen; they
+are essentially neither Socialist curs nor Conservative sheep, but
+intrinsically capable of becoming either, if they become captured by either
+system of party organization.
+
+According to this way of thinking, there is a certain _looseness_ about the
+relation of the common material nature to the higher forms of organization
+capable of capturing it. Considered in itself alone, it is perhaps to be
+seen as governed by absolutely determined laws of its own. It is heavy,
+then it will fall unless obstructed; it is solid, then it will resist
+intrusions. But considered as material for organization by higher forms, it
+is indeterminate. It acts in one sort of way under the persuasion of the
+sheep-form, and in another sort of way under the persuasion of the     [16]
+dog-form, and we cannot tell how it will act until we know which form is
+going to capture it. No amount of study bestowed on the common material
+nature will enable us to judge how it will behave under the persuasion of
+the higher organizing form. The only way to discover that is to examine the
+higher form itself.
+
+Every form, then, will really be the object of a distinct science. The form
+of the sheep and the form of the dog have much in common, but that merely
+happens to be so; we cannot depend upon it, or risk inferences from sheep
+to dog: we must examine each in itself; we shall really need a science of
+probatology about sheep, and cynology about dogs. Again, the common
+material nature has its own principles of being and action, so it will need
+a science of itself, which we may call hylology. Each of these sciences is
+mistress in her own province; but how many there are, and how puzzlingly
+they overlap! So long as we remain within the province of a single science,
+we may be able to think rigorously, everything will be 'tight'. But as soon
+as we consider border-issues between one province and another, farewell to
+exactitude: everything will be 'loose'. We can think out hylology till we
+are blue in the face, but we shall never discover anything about the entry
+of material elements into higher organizations, or how they behave when
+they get there. We may form perfect definitions and descriptions of the
+form of the dog as such, and still derive no rules for telling what
+elements of matter will enter into the body of a given dog or how they will
+be placed when they do. All we can be sure of is, that the dog-form will
+keep itself going in, and by means of, the material it embodies--unless the
+dog dies. But what happens to the matter in the body of the dog is
+'accidental' to the nature of the matter; and the use of this matter,
+rather than of some other equally suitable, is accidental to the nature of
+the dog.
+
+No account of material events can dispense with accidental relations
+altogether. We must at least recognize that there are accidental relations
+between particular things. Accident in the sense of brute fact had to be
+acknowledged even by the tidiest and most dogmatic atomism of the last
+century. That atomism must allow it to be accidental, in this sense, that
+the space surrounding any given atom was occupied by other atoms in a given
+manner. It belonged neither to the nature of space to be occupied by just
+those atoms in just those places, nor to the nature of the atoms to be [17]
+distributed just like that over space; and so in a certain sense the
+environment of any atom was an accidental environment. That is, the
+particular arrangement of the environment was accidental. The nature of the
+environment was not accidental at all. It was proper to the nature of the
+atom to be in interaction with other atoms over a spatial field, and it
+never encountered in the fellow-denizens of space any other nature but its
+own. It was not subject to the accident of meeting strange natures, nor of
+becoming suddenly subject to strange or unequal laws of interaction. All
+interactions, being with its own kind, were reciprocal and obedient to a
+single set of calculable laws.
+
+But the medieval philosophy had asserted accidental relations between
+distinct sorts of _natures_, the form of living dog and the form of dead
+matter, for example. No one could know _a priori_ what effect an accidental
+relation would produce, and all accidental relations between different
+pairs of natures were different: at the most there was analogy between
+them. Every different nature had to be separately observed, and when you
+had observed them all, you could still simply write an inventory of them,
+you could not hope to rationalize your body of knowledge. Let us narrow the
+field and consider what this doctrine allows us to know about the wood of a
+certain kind of tree. We shall begin by observing the impressions it makes
+on our several senses, and we shall attribute to it a substantial form such
+as naturally to give rise to these impressions, without, perhaps, being so
+rash as to claim a knowledge of what this substantial form is. Still we do
+not know what its capacities of physical action and passion may be. We
+shall find them out by observing it in relation to different 'natures'. It
+turns out to be combustible by fire, resistant to water, tractable to the
+carpenter's tools, intractable to his digestive organs, harmless to
+ostriches, nourishing to wood-beetles. Each of these capacities of the wood
+is distinct; we cannot relate them intelligibly to one another, nor deduce
+them from the assumed fundamental 'woodiness'.
+
+We can now see why 'substantial forms' were the _bêtes noires_ of the
+seventeenth-century philosophers. It was because they turned nature into an
+unmanageable jungle, in which trees, bushes, and parasites of a thousand
+kinds wildly interlaced. There was nothing for it, if science was to
+proceed, but to clear the ground and replant with spruce in rows: to
+postulate a single uniform nature, of which there should be a single
+science. Now neither probatology nor cynology could hope to be         [18]
+universal--the world is not all sheep nor all dog: it would have to be
+hylology; for the world is, in its spatial aspect, all material. Let us
+say, then, that there is one uniform material nature of things, and that
+everything else consists in the arrangements of the basic material nature;
+as the show of towers and mountains in the sunset results simply from an
+arrangement of vapours. And let us suppose that the interactions of the
+parts of matter are all like those which we can observe in dead manipulable
+bodies--in mechanism, in fact. Such was the postulate of the new
+philosophers, and it yielded them results.
+
+It yielded them results, and that was highly gratifying. But what,
+meanwhile, had happened to those palpable facts of common experience from
+which the whole philosophy of substantial forms had taken its rise? Is the
+wholeness of a living thing the mere resultant of the orderly operations of
+its parts? Is a bee no more essentially one than a swarm is? Is the life of
+a living animal indistinguishable from the rhythm of a going watch, except
+in degree of complication and subtlety of contrivance? And if an animal's
+body, say my own, is simply an agglomerate of minute interacting material
+units, and its wholeness is merely accidental and apparent, how is my
+conscious mind to be adjusted to it? For my consciousness appears to
+identify itself with that whole vital pattern which used to be called the
+substantial form. We are now told that the pattern is nothing real or
+active, but the mere accidental resultant of distinct interacting forces:
+it does no work, it exercises no influence or control, it _is_ nothing. How
+then can it be the vehicle and instrument of my conscious soul? It cannot.
+Then is my soul homeless? Or is it to be identified with the activity and
+fortunes of a single atomic constituent of my body, a single cog in the
+animal clockwork? If so, how irrational! For the soul does not experience
+itself as the soul of one minute part, but as the soul of the body.
+
+Such questions rose thick and fast in the minds of the seventeenth-century
+philosophers. It will cause us no great surprise that Leibniz should have
+quickly felt that the Formal Principle of Aristotle and of the Scholastic
+philosophy must be by hook or by crook reintroduced--not as the detested
+_substantial form_, but under a name by which it might hope to smell more
+sweet, _entelechy_.
+
+Nothing so tellingly revealed the difficulties of the new philosophy in[19]
+dealing with living bodies as the insufficiency of the solutions Descartes
+had proposed. He had boldly declared the unity of animal life to be purely
+mechanical, and denied that brutes had souls at all, or any sensation. He
+had to admit soul in man, but he still denied the substantial unity of the
+human body. It was put together like a watch, it was many things, not one:
+if Descartes had lived in our time, he would have been delighted to compare
+it with a telephone system, the nerves taking the place of the wires, and
+being so arranged that all currents of 'animal spirit' flowing in them
+converged upon a single unit, a gland at the base of the brain. In this
+unit, or in the convergence of all the motions upon it, the 'unity' of the
+body virtually consisted; and the soul was incarnate, not in the plurality
+of members (for how could it, being one, indwell many things?), but in the
+single gland.
+
+Even so, the relation between the soul and the gland was absolutely
+unintelligible, as Descartes disarmingly confessed. Incarnation was all
+very well in the old philosophy: those who had allowed the interaction of
+disparate natures throughout the physical world need find no particular
+difficulty about the special case of it provided by incarnation. Why should
+not a form of conscious life so interact with what would otherwise be dead
+matter as to 'indwell' it? But the very principle of the new philosophy
+disallowed the interaction of disparate natures, because such an
+interaction did not allow of exact formulation, it was a 'loose' and not a
+'tight' relation.
+
+From a purely practical point of view the much derided pineal gland theory
+would serve. If we could be content to view Descartes as a man who wanted
+to make the world safe for physical science, then there would be a good
+deal to be said for his doctrine. In the old philosophy exact science had
+been frustrated by the hypothesis of loose relations all over the field of
+nature. Descartes had cleared them from as much of the field as science was
+then in a position to investigate; he allowed only one such relation to
+subsist, the one which experience appeared unmistakably to force upon
+us--that between our own mind and its bodily vehicle. He had exorcized the
+spirits from the rest of nature; and though there was a spirit here which
+could not be exorcized, the philosophic conjurer had nevertheless confined
+it and its unaccountable pranks within a minutely narrow magic circle: all
+mind could do was to turn the one tiny switch at the centre of its     [20]
+animal telephone system. It could create no energy--it could merely
+redirect the currents actually flowing.
+
+Practically this might do, but speculatively it was most disturbing. For if
+the 'loose relation' had to be admitted in one instance, it was admitted in
+principle; and one could not get rid of the suspicion that it would turn up
+elsewhere, and that the banishment of it from every other field represented
+a convenient pragmatic postulate rather than a solid metaphysical truth.
+Moreover, the correlation of the unitary soul with the unitary gland might
+do justice to a mechanistical philosophy, but it did not do justice to the
+soul's own consciousness of itself. The soul's consciousness is the 'idea'
+or 'representation' of the life of the whole body, certainly not of the
+life of the pineal gland nor, as the unreflective nowadays would say, of
+the brain. I am not conscious in, or of, my brain except when I have a
+headache; consciousness is in my eyes and finger-tips and so on. It is
+physically true, no doubt, that consciousness in and of my finger-tips is
+not possible without the functioning of my brain; but that is a poor reason
+for locating the consciousness in the brain. The filament of the electric
+bulb will not be incandescent apart from the functioning of the dynamo; but
+that is a poor reason for saying that the incandescence is in the dynamo.
+
+Certainly the area of representation in our mind is not simply equivalent
+to the area of our body. But in so far as the confines of mental
+representation part company with the confines of the body, it is not that
+they may contract and fall back upon the pineal gland, but that they may
+expand and advance over the surrounding world. The mind does not represent
+its own body merely, it represents the world in so far as the world affects
+that body or is physically reproduced in it. The mind has no observable
+natural relation to the pineal gland. It has only two natural relations: to
+its body as a whole and to its effective environment. What Descartes had
+really done was to pretend that the soul was related to the pineal gland as
+it is in fact related to its whole body; and then that it was related to
+the bodily members as in fact it is related to outer environment. The
+members became an inner environment, known only in so far as they affected
+the pineal gland; just as the outer environment in its turn was to be known
+only in so far as it affected the members.
+
+                                                                       [21]
+This doctrine of a double environment was wholly artificial. It was forced
+on Descartes by the requirements of mechanistical science: if the members
+were simply a plurality of things, they must really be parts of
+environment; the body which the soul indwelt must be _a_ body; presumably,
+then, the pineal gland. An untenable compromise, surely, between admitting
+and denying the reality of the soul's incarnation.
+
+What, then, was to be done? Descartes's rivals and successors attempted
+several solutions, which it would be too long to examine here. They
+dissatisfied Leibniz and they have certainly no less dissatisfied
+posterity. It will be enough for us here to consider what Leibniz did. He
+admitted, to begin with, the psychological fact. The unity of consciousness
+is the representation of a plurality--the plurality of the members, and
+through them the plurality of the world. Here, surely, was the very
+principle the new philosophy needed for the reconciliation of substantial
+unity with mechanical plurality of parts. For it is directly evident to us
+that consciousness focuses the plurality of environing things in a unity of
+representation. This is no philosophical theory, it is a simple fact. Our
+body, then, as a physical system is a mechanical plurality; as focused in
+consciousness it is a unity of 'idea'.
+
+Very well: but we have not got far yet. For the old difficulty still
+remains--it is purely arbitrary, after all, that a unitary consciousness
+should be attached to, and represent, a mechanical collection of things
+which happen to interact in a sort of pattern. If there is a consciousness
+attached to human bodies, then why not to systems of clockwork? If the body
+is _represented_ as unity, it must surely be because it _is_ unity, as the
+old philosophy had held. But how can we reintroduce unity into the body
+without reintroducing substantial form, and destroying the mechanistical
+plurality which the new science demanded?
+
+It is at this point that Leibniz produces the speculative postulate of his
+system. Why not reverse the relation, and make the members represent the
+mind as the mind represents the members? For then the unity of person
+represented in the mind will become something actual in the members also.
+
+Representation appears to common sense to be a one-way sort of traffic. If
+my mind represents my bodily members, something happens to my mind, for it
+becomes a representation of such members in such a state; but nothing
+happens to the members by their being so represented in the mind. The  [22]
+mental representation obeys the bodily facts; the bodily facts do not obey
+the mental representation. It seems nonsense to say that my members obey my
+mind _because_ they are mirrored in it. And yet my members do obey my mind,
+or at least common sense supposes so. Sometimes my mind, instead of
+representing the state my members are in, represents a state which it
+intends that they shall be in, for example, that my hand should go through
+the motion of writing these words. And my hand obeys; its action becomes
+the moving diagram of my thought, my thought is represented or expressed in
+the manual act. Here the relation of mind and members appears to be
+reversed: instead of its representing them, they represent it. With this
+representation it is the opposite of what it was with the other. By the
+members' being represented in the mind, something happened to the mind, and
+nothing to the members; by the mind's being represented in the members
+something happens to the members and nothing to the mind.
+
+Why should not we take this seriously? Why not allow that there is two-way
+traffic--by one relation the mind represents the members, by another the
+members represent the mind? But then again, how can we take it seriously?
+For representation, in the required sense, is a mental act; brute matter
+can represent nothing, only mind can represent. And the members are brute
+matter. But are they? How do we know that? By brute matter we understand
+extended lumps of stuff, interacting with one another mechanically, as do,
+for example, two cogs in a piece of clockwork. But this is a large-scale
+view. The cogs are themselves composed of interrelated parts and those
+parts of others, and so on _ad infinitum_. Who knows what the ultimate
+constituents really are? The 'modern' philosophers, certainly, have
+proposed no hypothesis about them which even looks like making sense. They
+have supposed that the apparently inert lumps, the cogs, are composed of
+parts themselves equally inert, and that by subdivision we shall still
+reach nothing but the inert. But this supposition is in flat contradiction
+with what physical theory demands. We have to allow the reality of _force_
+in physics. Now the force which large-scale bodies display may easily be
+the block-effect of activity in their minute real constituents. If not,
+where does it come from? Let it be supposed, then, that these minute real
+constituents are active because they are alive, because they are minds; for
+indeed we have no notion of activity other than the perception we have [23]
+of our own. We have no notion of it except as something mental. On the
+hypothesis that the constituents of active body are also mental, this
+limitation in our conception of activity need cause us neither sorrow nor
+surprise.
+
+The mind-units which make up body will not of course be developed and fully
+conscious minds like yours or mine, and it is only for want of a better
+word that we call them minds at all. They will be mere unselfconscious
+representations of their physical environment, as it might be seen from the
+physical point to which they belong by a human mind paying no attention at
+all to its own seeing. How many of these rudimentary 'minds' will there be
+in my body? As many as you like--as many as it is possible there should
+be--say an infinite number and have done with it.
+
+We may now observe how this hypothesis introduces real formal unity without
+prejudicing mechanical plurality. Each of the mind-units in my body is
+itself and substantially distinct. But since each, in its own way and
+according to its own position, represents the superior and more developed
+mind which I call 'me', they will order themselves according to a common
+form. The order is real, not accidental: it is like the order of troops on
+a parade-ground. Each man is a distinct active unit, but each is really
+expressing by his action the mind of the officer in command. He is
+expressing no less his relation to the other men in the ranks--to obey the
+officer is to keep in step with them. So the metaphysical units of the
+body, being all minds, represent one another as well as the dominant mind:
+one another co-ordinately, the dominant mind subordinately.
+
+But if the metaphysically real units of the body are of the nature of mind,
+then _the_ mind is a mind among minds, a spirit-atom among spirit-atoms.
+What then constitutes its superiority or dominance, and makes it a mind
+_par excellence_? Well, what constitutes the officer an officer? Two
+things: a more developed mentality and the fact of being obeyed. In
+military life these two factors are not always perfectly proportioned to
+one another, but in the order of Leibniz's universe they are. A fuller
+power to represent the universe is necessarily combined with dominance over
+an organized troop of members; for the mind knows the universe only in so
+far as the universe is expressed in its body. That is what the         [24]
+_finitude_ of the mind means. Only an infinite mind appreciates the whole
+plurality of things in themselves; a finite mind perceives them in so far
+as mirrored in the physical being of an organized body of members. The more
+adequate the mirror, the more adequate the representation: the more highly
+organized the body, the more developed the mind.
+
+The developed mind has an elaborate body; but the least developed mind has
+still some body, or it would lack any mirror whatever through which to
+represent the world. This means, in effect, that Leibniz's system is not an
+unmitigated spiritual atomism. For though the spiritual atoms, or monads,
+are the ultimate constituents out of which nature is composed, they stand
+composed together from the beginning in a minimal order which cannot be
+broken up. Each monad, if it is to be anything at all, must be a continuing
+finite representation of the universe, and to be that it must have a body,
+that is to say, it must have other monads in a permanent relation of mutual
+correspondence with it. And if you said to Leibniz, 'But surely any
+physical body can be broken up, and this must mean the dissolution of the
+organic relation between its monadical constituents,' he would take refuge
+in the infinitesimal. The wonders revealed by that new miracle, the
+microscope, suggested what the intrinsic divisibility of space itself
+suggests--whatever organization is broken up, there will still be a minute
+organization within each of the fragments which remains unbroken--and so
+_ad infinitum_. You will never come down to loose monads, monads out of all
+organization. You will never disembody the monads, and so remove their
+representative power; you will only reduce their bodies and so impoverish
+their representative power. In this sense no animal dies and no animal is
+generated. Death is the reduction and generation the enrichment of some
+existing monad's body; and, by being that, is the enrichment or the
+reduction of the monad's mental life.
+
+'But,' our common sense protests, 'it is too great a strain on our
+credulity to make the real nature of things so utterly different from what
+sense and science make of them. If the real universe is what you say it is,
+why do our minds represent it to us as they do?' The philosopher's answer
+is, 'Because they _represent_ it. According to the truth of things, each
+monad is simply its own mental life, its own world-view, its own thoughts
+and desires. To know things as they are would be simultaneously to live
+over, as though from within and by a miracle of sympathy, the          [25]
+biographies of an infinite number of distinct monads. This is absolutely
+impossible. Our senses represent the coexistent families of monads _in the
+gross_, and therefore conventionally; what is in fact the mutual
+representation of monads in ordered systems, is represented as the
+mechanical interaction of spatially extended and material parts.' This does
+not mean that science is overthrown. The physical world-view is in terms of
+the convention of representation, but it is not, for all that, illusory. It
+can, ideally, be made as true as it is capable of being. There is no reason
+whatever for confusing the 'well-grounded seemings' of the apparent
+physical world with the fantastic seemings of dream and hallucination.
+
+So far the argument seems to draw whatever cogency it has from the
+simplicity and naturalness of the notion of representation. The nature of
+idea, it is assumed, is to represent plurality in a unified view. If idea
+did not represent, it would not be idea. And since there _is_ idea (for our
+minds at least exist and are made up of idea) there is representation. It
+belongs to idea to represent, and since the whole world has now been
+interpreted as a system of mutually representing ideations, or ideators, it
+might seem that all their mutual relations are perfectly natural, a harmony
+of agreement which could not be other than it is. But if so, why does
+Leibniz keep saying that the harmony is _pre-established_, by special and
+infinitely elaborate divine decrees?
+
+Leibniz himself says that the very nature of representation excludes
+interaction. By representing environment a mind does not do anything to
+environment, that is plain. But it is no less plain that environment does
+nothing to it, either. The act of representing is simply the act of the
+mind; it represents _in view of_ environment, of course, but not under the
+causal influence of environment. Representation is a business carried on by
+the mind on its own account, and in virtue of its innate power to
+represent.
+
+Very well; but does this consideration really drive us into theology? Is
+not Leibniz the victim of a familiar fallacy, that of incompletely stated
+alternatives? '_Either_ finite beings interact _or else_ they do not
+directly condition one another. Monads do not interact, therefore they do
+not directly condition one another. How then explain the actual conformity
+of their mutual representation, without recourse to divine fore-ordaining?'
+It seems sufficient to introduce a further alternative in the first line of
+the argument, and we are rid of the theology. Things may condition the [26]
+action of a further thing, without acting upon it. It acts of itself, but
+it acts in view of what they are. We are tempted to conclude that Leibniz
+has introduced the _Deus ex machina_ with the fatal facility of his age.
+'Where a little further meditation on the characters in the play would
+furnish a natural _dénouement_, he swings divine intervention on to the
+scene by wires from the ceiling. It is easy for us to reconstruct for him
+the end of the piece without recourse to stage-machines.'
+
+Is it? No, I fear it is not. There is really no avoiding the
+pre-established harmony. And so we shall discover, if we pursue our train
+of reflexion a little further. It is natural, we were saying, than an idea
+should represent an environment; indeed, it _is_ the representation of one.
+Given no environment to represent, it would be empty, a mere capacity for
+representation. Then every idea or ideator, taken merely in itself, _is_ an
+empty capacity. But of what is the environment of each made up? According
+to the Leibnitian theory, of further ideas or ideators: of empty
+capacities, therefore. Then no idea will either be anything in itself, or
+find anything in its neighbours to represent. An unhappy predicament, like
+that of a literary clique in which all the members are adepts at discussing
+one another's ideas--only that unfortunately none of them are provided with
+any; or like the shaky economics of the fabled Irish village where they all
+lived by taking in one another's washing.
+
+It is useless, then, to conceive representations as simply coming into
+existence in response to environment, and modelling themselves on
+environment. They must all mutually reflect environment or they would not
+be representations; but they must also exist as themselves and in their own
+right or there would be no environment for them mutually to represent.
+Since the world is infinitely various, each representor must have its own
+distinct character or nature, as our minds have: that is to say, it must
+represent in its own individual way; and all these endlessly various
+representations must be so constituted as to form a mutually reflecting
+harmony. Considered as a representation, each monadical existence simply
+reflects the universe after its own manner. But considered as something to
+be represented by the others, it is a self-existent mental life, or world
+of ideas. Now when we are considering the fact of representation, that
+which is to be represented comes first and the representation follows upon
+it. Thus in considering the Leibnitian universe, we must begin with the[27]
+monads as self-existent mental lives, or worlds of ideas; their
+representation of one another comes second. Nothing surely, then, but
+omnipotent creative wisdom could have pre-established between so many
+distinct given mental worlds that harmony which constitutes their mutual
+representation.
+
+Our common-sense pluralistic thinking escapes from the need of the
+pre-established harmony by distinguishing what we are from what we do. Let
+the world be made up of a plurality of agents in a 'loose' order, with room
+to manoeuvre and to adjust themselves to one another. Then, by good luck or
+good management, through friction and disaster, by trial and error, by
+accident or invention, they may work out for themselves a harmony of
+_action_. There is no need for divine preordaining here. But on Leibniz's
+view what the monads do is to represent, and what they are is
+representation; there is no ultimate distinction between what they are and
+what they do: all that they do belongs to what they are. The whole system
+of action in each monad, which fits with such infinite complexity the
+system of action in each other monad, is precisely the existence of that
+monad, and apart from it the monad is not. The monads do not _achieve_ a
+harmony, they _are_ a harmony, and therefore they are pre-established in
+harmony.
+
+Leibniz denied that he invoked God to intervene in nature, or that there
+was anything arbitrary or artificial about his physical theology. He was
+simply analysing nature and finding it to be a system of mutual
+representation; he was analysing mutual representation and finding it to be
+of its nature intrinsically pre-established, and therefore God-dependent.
+He was not adding anything to mutual representation, he was just showing
+what it necessarily contained or implied. At least he was doing nothing
+worse than recognized scholastic practice. Scholastic Aristotelianism
+explained all natural causality as response to stimulus, and then had to
+postulate a stimulus which stimulated without being stimulated, and this
+was God. Apart from this supreme and first stimulus nothing would in fact
+be moving. The Aristotelians claimed simply to be analysing the nature of
+physical motion as they perceived it, and to find the necessity of
+perpetually applied divine stimulation implicit in it. No violence was
+thereby done to the system of physical motion nor was anything brought in
+from without to patch it up; it was simply found to be of its own      [28]
+nature God-dependent.
+
+It seems as though the reproachful description _'Deus ex machina'_ should
+be reserved for more arbitrary expedients than Aristotle's or Leibniz's,
+say for the occasionalist theory. Occasionalism appeared to introduce God
+that he might make physical matter do what it had no natural tendency to
+do, viz. to obey the volitions of finite mind. Ideas, on the other hand,
+have a natural tendency to represent one another, for to be an idea is to
+be a representation; God is not introduced by Leibniz to make them
+correspond, he is introduced to work a system in which they shall
+correspond. This may not be _Deus-ex-machina philosophy_, but it is
+_physical theology_; that is to say, it treats divine action as one factor
+among the factors which together constitute the working of the natural
+system. And this appears to be perhaps unscientific, certainly blasphemous:
+God's action cannot be a factor among factors; the Creator works through
+and in all creaturely action equally; we can never say 'This is the
+creature, and that is God' of distinguishable causalities in the natural
+world. The creature is, in its creaturely action, self-sufficient: but
+because a creature, insufficient to itself throughout, and sustained by its
+Creator both in existence and in action.
+
+The only acceptable argument for theism is that which corresponds to the
+religious consciousness, and builds upon the insufficiency of finite
+existence throughout, because it is finite. All arguments to God's
+existence from a particular gap in our account of the world of finites are
+to be rejected. They do not indicate God, they indicate the failure of our
+power to analyse the world-order. When Leibniz discovered that his system
+of mutual representations needed to be pre-established, he ought to have
+seen that he had come up a cul-de-sac and backed out; he ought not to have
+said, 'With the help of God I will leap over the wall.'
+
+If we condemn Leibniz for writing physical theology, we condemn not him but
+his age. No contemporary practice was any better, and much of it a good
+deal worse, as Leibniz liked somewhat complacently to point out. And
+because he comes to theology through physical theology, that does not mean
+that all his theology was physical theology and as such to be written off.
+On the contrary, Leibniz is led to wrestle with many problems which beset
+any philosophical theism of the Christian type. This is particularly so[29]
+in the _Theodicy_, as its many citations of theologians suggest. His
+discussions never lack ingenuity, and the system of creation and providence
+in which they result has much of that luminous serenity which colours the
+best works of the Age of Reason.
+
+Every theistic philosopher is bound, with whatever cautions, to conceive
+God by the analogy of the human mind. When Leibniz declares the harmony of
+monads to be pre-established by God, he is invoking the image of
+intelligent human pre-arrangement. Nor is he content simply to leave it at
+that: he endeavours as well as he may to conceive the sort of act by which
+God pre-arranges; and this involves the detailed adaptation for theological
+purposes of Leibnitian doctrine about the human mind.
+
+The human mind, as we have seen, is the mind predominant in a certain
+system of 'minds', viz. in those which constitute the members of the human
+body. If we call it predominant, we mean that its system of ideas is more
+developed than theirs, so that there are more points in which each of them
+conforms to it than in which it conforms to any one of them. The conception
+of a divine pre-establishing mind will be analogous. It will be the
+conception of a mind _absolutely_ dominant, to whose ideas, that is to say,
+the whole system simply corresponds, without any reciprocating
+correspondence on his side. In a certain sense this is to make God the
+'Mind of the World'; and yet the associations of the phrase are misleading.
+It suggests that the world is an organism or body in which the divine mind
+is incarnate, and on which he relies for his representations. But that is
+nonsense; the world is not _a_ body, nor is it organic to God. Absolute
+dominance involves absolute transcendence: if everything in the world
+without remainder simply obeys the divine thoughts, that is only another
+way of saying that the world is the creature of God; the whole system is
+pre-established by him who is absolute Being and perfectly independent of
+the world.
+
+Of createdness, or pre-establishedness, there is no more to be said: we can
+think of it as nothing but the pure or absolute case of subjection to
+dominant mind. It is no use asking further _how_ God's thoughts are obeyed
+in the existence and action of things. What we can and must enquire into
+further, is the nature of the divine thoughts which are thus obeyed. They
+must be understood to be volitions or decrees. There are indeed two ways in
+which things obey the divine thought, and correspondingly two sorts of
+divine thoughts that they obey. In so far as created things conform to [30]
+the mere universal principles of reason, they obey a reasonableness which
+is an inherent characteristic of the divine mind itself. If God wills the
+existence of any creature, that creature's existence must observe the
+limits prescribed by eternal reason: it cannot, for example, both have and
+lack a certain characteristic in the same sense and at the same time; nor
+can it contain two parts and two parts which are not also countable as one
+part and three parts. Finite things, if they exist at all, must thus
+conform to the reasonableness of the divine nature, but what the divine
+reasonableness thus prescribes is highly general: we can deduce from it
+only certain laws which any finite things must obey, we can never deduce
+from it which finite things there are to be, nor indeed that there are to
+be any. Finite things are particular and individual: each of them might
+have been other than it is or, to speak more properly, instead of any one
+of them there might have existed something else; it was, according to the
+mere principles of eternal reason, equally possible. But if so, the whole
+universe, being made up of things each of which might be otherwise, might
+as a whole be otherwise. Therefore the divine thoughts which it obeys by
+existing have the nature of _choices_ or _decrees_.
+
+What material does the finite mind supply for an analogical picture of the
+infinite mind making choices or decrees? If we use such language of God, we
+are using language which has its first and natural application to
+ourselves. We all of us choose, and those of us who are in authority make
+decrees. What is to choose? It involves a real freedom in the mind. A
+finite mind, let us remember, is nothing but a self-operating succession of
+perceptions, ideas, or representations. With regard to some of our ideas we
+have no freedom, those, for example, which represent to us our body. We
+think of them as constituting our given substance. They are sheer datum for
+us, and so are those reflexions of our environment which they mediate to
+us. They make up a closely packed and confused mass; they persevere in
+their being with an obstinate innate force, the spiritual counterpart of
+the force which we have to recognize in things as physically interpreted.
+Being real spiritual force, it is quasi-voluntary, and indeed do we not
+love our own existence and, in a sense, will it in all its necessary
+circumstances? But if we can be said to will to be ourselves and to enact
+with native force what our body and its environment makes us, we are   [31]
+merely willing to conform to the conditions of our existence; we are making
+no choice. When, however, we think freely or perform deliberate acts, there
+is not only force but choice in our activity. Choice between what? Between
+alternative possibilities arising out of our situation. And choice in
+virtue of what? In virtue of the appeal exercised by one alternative as
+seemingly better.
+
+Can we adapt our scheme of choice to the description of God's creative
+decrees? We will take the second point in it first: our choice is in virtue
+of the appeal of the seeming best. Surely the only corrective necessary in
+applying this to God is the omission of the word 'seeming'. His choice is
+in virtue of the appeal of the simply best. The other point causes more
+trouble. We choose between possibilities which arise for us out of our
+situation in the system of the existing world. But as the world does not
+exist before God's creative choices, he is in no world-situation, and no
+alternative possibilities can arise out of it, between which he should have
+to choose. But if God does not choose between intrinsic possibilities of
+some kind, his choice becomes something absolutely meaningless to us--it is
+not a choice at all, it is an arbitrary and unintelligible _fiat_.
+
+Leibniz's solution is this: what are mere possibilities of thought for us
+are possibilities of action for God. For a human subject, possibilities of
+action are limited to what arises out of his actual situation, but
+possibilities for thought are not so limited. I can conceive a world
+different in many respects from this world, in which, for example,
+vegetables should be gifted with thought and speech; but I can do nothing
+towards bringing it about. My imaginary world is practically impossible but
+speculatively possible, in the sense that it contradicts no single
+principle of necessary and immutable reason. I, indeed, can explore only a
+very little way into the region of sheer speculative possibility; God does
+not explore it, he simply possesses it all: the whole region of the
+possible is but a part of the content of his infinite mind. So among all
+possible creatures he chooses the best and creates it.
+
+But the whole realm of the possible is an actual infinity of ideas. Out of
+the consideration of an infinity of ideas, how can God arrive at a choice?
+Why not? His mind is not, of course, discursive; he does not successively
+turn over the leaves of an infinite book of sample worlds, for then he
+would never come to the end of it. Embracing infinite possibility in   [32]
+the single act of his mind, he settles his will with intuitive immediacy
+upon the best. The inferior, the monstrous, the absurd is not a wilderness
+through which he painfully threads his way, it is that from which he
+immediately turns; his wisdom is his elimination of it.
+
+But in so applying the scheme of choice to God's act, have we not
+invalidated its application to our own? For if God has chosen the whole
+form and fabric of the world, he has chosen everything in it, including the
+choices we shall make. And if our choices have already been chosen for us
+by God, it would seem to follow that they are not real open choices on our
+part at all, but are pre-determined. And if they are pre-determined, it
+would seem that they are not really even choices, for a determined choice
+is not a choice. But if we do not ourselves exercise real choice in any
+degree, then we have no clue to what any choice would be: and if so, we
+have no power of conceiving divine choice, either; and so the whole
+argument cuts its own throat.
+
+There are two possible lines of escape from this predicament. One is to
+define human choice in such a sense that it allows of pre-determination
+without ceasing to be choice; and this is Leibniz's method, and it can be
+studied at length in the _Theodicy_. He certainly makes the very best he
+can of it, and it hardly seems that any of those contemporaries whose views
+he criticizes was in a position to answer him. The alternative method is to
+make the most of the negative element involved in all theology. After all,
+we do not positively or adequately understand the nature of infinite
+creative will. Perhaps it is precisely the transcendent glory of divine
+freedom to be able to work infallibly through free instruments. But so
+mystical a paradox is not the sort of thing we can expect to appeal to a
+late-seventeenth-century philosopher.
+
+One criticism of Leibniz's argument we cannot refrain from making. He
+allows himself too easy a triumph when he says that the only alternative to
+a choice determined by a prevailing inclination towards one proposal is a
+choice of mere caprice. There is a sort of choice Leibniz never so much as
+considers and which appears at least to fall quite outside his categories,
+and that is the sort of choice exercised in artistic creativity. In such
+choice we freely feel after the shaping of a scheme, we do not arbitrate
+simply between shaped and given possible schemes. And perhaps some such
+element enters into all our choices, since our life is to some extent  [33]
+freely designed by ourselves. If so, our minds are even more akin to the
+divine mind than Leibniz realized. For the sort of choice we are now
+referring to seems to be an intuitive turning away from an infinite, or at
+least indefinite, range of less attractive possibility. And such is the
+nature of the divine creative choice. The consequence of such a line of
+speculation would be, that the divine mind designs more through us, and
+less simply for us, than Leibniz allowed: the 'harmony' into which we enter
+would be no longer simply 'pre-established'. Leibniz, in fact, could have
+nothing to do with such a suggestion, and he would have found it easy to be
+ironical about it if his contemporaries had proposed it.
+
+II
+
+Leibniz wrote two books; a considerable number of articles in learned
+periodicals; and an enormous number of unpublished notes, papers and
+letters, preserved in the archives of the Electors of Hanover not because
+of the philosophical significance of some of them, but because of the
+political importance of most of them. From among this great mass various
+excerpts of philosophical interest have been made by successive editors of
+Leibniz's works. It may be that the most profound understanding of his mind
+is to be derived from some of these pieces, but if we wish to consider the
+public history of Leibniz, we may set them aside.
+
+Of the two books, one was published, and the other never was. The _New
+Essays_ remained in Leibniz's desk, the _Theodicy_ saw the light. And so,
+to his own and the succeeding generation, Leibniz was known as the author
+of the _Theodicy_.
+
+The articles in journals form the immediate background to the two books. In
+1696 Leibniz heard that a French translation of Locke's _Essay concerning
+Human Understanding_ was being prepared at Amsterdam. He wrote some polite
+comments on Locke's great work, and published them. He also sent them to
+Locke, hoping that Locke would write a reply, and that Leibniz's reflexions
+and Locke's reply might be appended to the projected French translation.
+But Locke set Leibniz's comments aside. Leibniz, not to be defeated, set to
+work upon the _New Essays_, in which the whole substance of Locke's book is
+systematically discussed in dialogue. The _New Essays_ were written in
+1703. But meanwhile a painful dispute had broken out between Leibniz   [34]
+and the disciples of Locke and Newton, in which the English, and perhaps
+Newton himself, were much to blame, and Leibniz thought it impolitic to
+publish his book. It was not issued until long after his death, in the
+middle of the century.
+
+The discussion with Locke was a failure: Locke would not play, and the book
+in which the whole controversy was to be systematized never appeared. The
+discussion with Bayle, on the other hand, was a model of what a discussion
+should be. Bayle played up tirelessly, and was never embarrassingly
+profound; he provided just the sort of objections most useful for drawing
+forth illuminating expositions; he was as good as a fictitious character in
+a philosophical dialogue. And the book in which the controversy was
+systematized duly appeared with great éclat.
+
+Here is the history of the controversy. In 1695 Leibniz was forty-nine
+years old. He had just emerged from a period of close employment under his
+prince's commands, and he thought fit to try his metaphysical principles
+upon the polite world and see what would come of it. He therefore published
+an article in the _Journal des Savants_ under the title: 'New System of
+Nature and of the Communication of Substances, as well as of the Union
+between Soul and Body'. In the same year Foucher published an article in
+the _Journal_ controverting Leibniz; and in the next year Leibniz replied
+with an 'Explanation'. A second explanation in the same year appeared in
+Basnage's _Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_, in answer to reflexions by
+the editor. M. Pierre Bayle had all these articles before him when he
+inserted a note on Leibniz's doctrine in his article on 'Rorarius', in the
+first edition of his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_. The point of
+connexion between Rorarius and Leibniz was no more than this, that both
+held views about the souls of beasts.
+
+Pierre Bayle was the son of a Calvinist pastor, early converted to
+Catholicism, but recovered to his old faith after a short time. He held
+academic employments in Switzerland and Holland; he promoted and edited the
+_Nouvelles de la République des Lettres_, and he produced that
+extraordinary work the _Historical and Critical Dictionary._ The notices it
+contains of authors and thinkers are little more than pegs upon which Bayle
+could hang his philosophical reflexions. He could write an intelligent
+discussion on any opinion; what he could not do was to reconcile the points
+of view from which he felt impelled to write upon this author and that.[35]
+His was not a systematic mind. So far as he had a philosophical opinion, he
+was a Cartesian; in theology he was an orthodox Calvinist. He could not
+reconcile his theology with his Cartesianism and he did not try to. He made
+a merit of the oppositions of faith to reason and reason to itself, so that
+he could throw himself upon a meritorious and voluntary faith.
+
+There is nothing original in this position. It was characteristic of
+decadent scholasticism, it squared with Luther's exaggerations about the
+impotence of reason in fallen man, and Pascal had given his own highly
+personal twist to it. Bayle has been hailed as a forerunner of Voltairean
+scepticism. It would be truer to say that a Voltairean sceptic could read
+Bayle's discussions in his own sense and for his own purposes if he wished.
+But Bayle was not a sceptic. It is hard to say what he was; his whole
+position as between faith and reason is hopelessly confused. He was a
+scholar, a wit, and a philosophical sparring-partner of so perfectly
+convenient a kind that if we had not evidence of his historical reality, we
+might have suspected Leibniz of inventing him.
+
+In the first edition of his _Dictionary_, under the article 'Rorarius',
+Bayle gave a very fair account of Leibniz's doctrine concerning the souls
+of animals, as it could be collected from his article in the _Journal des
+Savants_, 27 June 1695. He then proceeded to comment upon it in the
+following terms:
+
+'There are some things in Mr. Leibniz's hypothesis that are liable to some
+difficulties, though they show the great extent of his genius. He will have
+it, for example, that the soul of a dog acts independently of outward
+bodies; that _it stands upon its own bottom, by a perfect _spontaneity_
+with respect to itself, and yet with a perfect _conformity_ to outward
+things_.... That _its internal perceptions arise from its original
+constitution, that is to say, the representative constitution (capable of
+expressing beings outside itself in relation to its organs) which was
+bestowed upon it from the time of its creation, and makes its individual
+character_ (_Journal des Savants_, 4 July 1695). From whence it results
+that it would feel hunger and thirst at such and such an hour, though there
+were not any one body in the universe, and _though nothing should exist but
+God and that soul_. He has explained (_Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_,
+Feb. 1696) his thought by the example of two pendulums that should
+perfectly agree: that is, he supposes that according to the particular laws
+which put the soul upon action, it must feel hunger at such an hour;   [36]
+and that according to the particular laws which direct the motion of
+matter, the body which is united to that soul must be modified at that same
+hour as it is modified when the soul is hungry. I will forbear preferring
+this system to that of occasional causes till the learned author has
+perfected it. I cannot apprehend the connexion of internal and spontaneous
+actions which would have this effect, that the soul of a dog would feel
+pain immediately after having felt joy, though it were alone in the
+universe. I understand why a dog passes immediately from pleasure to pain
+when, being very hungry and eating a piece of bread, he is suddenly struck
+with a cudgel. But I cannot apprehend that his soul should be so framed
+that at the very moment of his being beaten he should feel pain though he
+were not beaten, and though he should continue to eat bread without any
+trouble or hindrance. Nor do I see how the spontaneity of that soul should
+be consistent with the sense of pain, and in general with any unpleasing
+perceptions.
+
+'Besides, the reason why this learned man does not like the Cartesian
+system seems to me to be a false supposition; for it cannot be said that
+the system of occasional causes brings in God acting by a miracle (ibid.),
+_Deum ex machina_, in the mutual dependency of the body and soul: for since
+God does only intervene according to general laws, he cannot be said to act
+in an extraordinary manner. Does the internal and active virtue
+communicated to the forms of bodies according to M. Leibniz know the train
+of actions which it is to produce? By no means; for we know by experience
+that we are ignorant whether we shall have such and such perceptions in an
+hour's time. It were therefore necessary that the forms should be directed
+by some internal principle in the production of their acts. But this would
+be _Deus ex machina,_ as much as in the system of occasional causes. In
+fine, as he supposes with great reason that all souls are simple and
+indivisible, it cannot be apprehended how they can be compared with a
+pendulum, that is, how by their original constitution they can diversify
+their operations by using the spontaneous activity bestowed upon them by
+their Creator. It may clearly be conceived that a simple being will always
+act in a uniform manner, if no external cause hinders it. If it were
+composed of several pieces, as a machine, it would act different ways,
+because the peculiar activity of each piece might change every moment the
+progress of others; but how will you find in a simple substance the    [37]
+cause of a change of operation?'
+
+Leibniz published a reply to Bayle in the _Histoire des Ouvrages des
+Savants_ for July 1698. As in all his references to Bayle, he is studiously
+polite and repays compliment for compliment. The following are perhaps the
+principal points of his answer.
+
+1. On the example of the dog:
+
+(_a_) How should it of itself change its sentiment, since everything left
+to itself continues in the state in which it is? Because the state may be a
+state of _change_, as in a moving body which, unless hindered, continues to
+move. And such is the nature of simple substances--they continue to evolve
+steadily.
+
+(_b_) Would it really feel as though beaten if it were not beaten, since
+Leibniz says that the action of every substance takes place as though
+nothing existed but God and itself? Leibniz replies that his remark refers
+to the causality behind an action, not to the reasons for it. The
+spontaneous action of the dog, which leads to the feeling of pain, is only
+decreed to be what it is, for the reason that the dog is part of a world of
+mutually reflecting substances, a world which also includes the cudgel.
+
+(_c_) Why should the dog ever be displeased _spontaneously_? Leibniz
+distinguishes the spontaneous from the voluntary: many things occur in the
+mind, of itself, but not chosen by it.
+
+2. On Cartesianism and miracle:
+
+Cartesianism in the form of occasionalism _does_ involve miracle, for
+though God is said by it to act according to laws in conforming body and
+mind to one another, he thereby causes them to act beyond their natural
+capacities.
+
+3. On the problem, how can the simple act otherwise than uniformly?
+
+Leibniz distinguishes: some uniform action is monotonous, but some is not.
+A point moves uniformly in describing a parabola, for it constantly fulfils
+the formula of the curve. But it does not move monotonously, for the curve
+constantly varies. Such is the uniformity of the action of simple
+substances.
+
+Bayle read this reply, and was pleased but not satisfied with it. In the
+second edition of the dictionary, under the same article 'Rorarius', he
+added the following note:
+
+'I declare first of all that I am very glad I have proposed some small
+difficulties against the system of that great philosopher, since they  [38]
+have occasioned some answers whereby that subject has been made clearer to
+me, and which have given me a more distinct notion of what is most to be
+admired in it. I look now upon that new system as an important conquest,
+which enlarges the bounds of philosophy. We had only two hypotheses, that
+of the Schools and that of the Cartesians: the one was a _way of influence_
+of the body upon the soul and of the soul upon the body; the other was a
+_way of assistance_ or occasional causality. But here is a new acquisition,
+a new hypothesis, which may be called, as Fr. Lami styles it, a _way of
+pre-established harmony_. We are beholden for it to M. Leibniz, and it is
+impossible to conceive anything that gives us a nobler idea of the power
+and wisdom of the Author of all things. This, together with the advantage
+of setting aside all notions of a miraculous conduct, would engage me to
+prefer this new system to that of the Cartesians, if I could conceive any
+possibility in the _way of pre-established harmony_.
+
+'I desire the reader to take notice that though I confess that this way
+removes all notions of a miraculous conduct, yet I do not retract what I
+have said formerly, that the system of occasional causes does not bring in
+God acting miraculously. (See M. Leibniz's article in _Histoire des
+Ouvrages des Savants_, July 1698.) I am as much persuaded as ever I was
+that an action cannot be said to be miraculous, unless God produces it as
+an exception to the general laws; and that everything of which he is
+immediately the author according to those laws is distinct from a miracle
+properly so called. But being willing to cut off from this dispute as many
+things as I possibly can, I consent it should be said that the surest way
+of removing all notions that include a miracle is to suppose that all
+created substances are actively the immediate causes of the effects of
+nature. I will therefore lay aside what I might reply to that part of M.
+Leibniz's answer.
+
+'I will also omit all objections which are not more contrary to his opinion
+than to that of some other philosophers. I will not therefore propose the
+difficulties that may be raised against the supposition that a creature can
+receive from God the power of moving itself. They are strong and almost
+unanswerable, but M. Leibniz's system does not lie more open to them than
+that of the Aristotelians; nay, I do not know whether the Cartesians would
+presume to say that God cannot communicate to our souls a power of acting.
+If they say so, how can they own that Adam sinned? And if they dare not[39]
+say so they weaken the arguments whereby they endeavour to prove that
+matter is not capable of any activity. Nor do I believe that it is more
+difficult for M. Leibniz than for the Cartesians or other philosophers, to
+free himself from the objection of a fatal mechanism which destroys human
+liberty. Wherefore, waiving this, I shall only speak of what is peculiar to
+the system of the _pre-established harmony_.
+
+'I. My first observation shall be, that it raises the power and wisdom of
+the divine art above everything that can be conceived. Fancy to yourself a
+ship which, without having any sense or knowledge, and without being
+directed by any created or uncreated being, has the power of moving itself
+so seasonably as to have always the wind favourable, to avoid currents and
+rocks, to cast anchor where it ought to be done, and to retire into a
+harbour precisely when it is necessary. Suppose such a ship sails in that
+manner for several years successively, being always turned and situated as
+it ought to be, according to the several changes of the air and the
+different situations of seas and lands; you will acknowledge that God,
+notwithstanding his infinite power, cannot communicate such a faculty to a
+ship; or rather you will say that the nature of a ship is not capable of
+receiving it from God. And yet what M. Leibniz supposes about the machine
+of a human body is more admirable and more surprising than all this. Let us
+apply his system concerning the union of the soul with the body to the
+person of Julius Caesar.
+
+'II. We must say according to this system that the body of Julius Caesar
+did so exercise its moving faculty that from its birth to its death it went
+through continual changes which did most exactly answer the perpetual
+changes of a certain soul which it did not know and which made no
+impression on it. We must say that the rule according to which that faculty
+of Caesar's body performed such actions was such, that he would have gone
+to the Senate upon such a day and at such an hour, that he would have
+spoken there such and such words, etc., though God had willed to annihilate
+his soul the next day after it was created. We must say that this moving
+power did change and modify itself exactly according to the volubility of
+the thoughts of that ambitious man, and that it was affected precisely in a
+certain manner rather than in another, because the soul of Caesar passed
+from a certain thought to another. Can a blind power modify itself so
+exactly by virtue of an impression communicated thirty or forty years  [40]
+before and never renewed since, but left to itself, without ever knowing
+what it is to do? Is not this much more incomprehensible than the
+navigation I spoke of in the foregoing paragraph?
+
+'III. The difficulty will be greater still, if it be considered that the
+human machine contains an almost infinite number of organs, and that it is
+continually exposed to the shock of the bodies that surround it,[1] and
+which by an innumerable variety of shakings produce in it a thousand sorts
+of modifications. How is it possible to conceive that this _pre-established
+harmony_ should never be disordered, but go on still during the longest
+life of a man, notwithstanding the infinite varieties of the reciprocal
+action of so many organs upon one another, which are surrounded on all
+sides with infinite corpuscles, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, sometimes
+dry and sometimes moist, and always acting, and pricking the nerves a
+thousand different ways? Suppose that the multiplicity of organs and of
+external agents be a necessary instrument of the almost infinite variety of
+changes in a human body: will that variety have the exactness here
+required? Will it never disturb the correspondence of those changes with
+the changes of the soul? This seems to be altogether impossible.
+
+[1] 'According to M. Leibniz what is active in every substance ought to be
+reduced to a true unity. Since therefore the body of every man is composed
+of several substances, each of them ought to have a principle of action
+really distinct from the principle of each of the others. He will have the
+action of every principle to be spontaneous. Now this must vary the effects
+_ad infinitum_, and confound them. For the impression of the neighbouring
+bodies must needs put some constraint upon the natural spontaneity of every
+one of them.'
+
+'IV. It is in vain to have recourse to the power of God, in order to
+maintain that brutes are mere machines; it is in vain to say that God was
+able to make machines so artfully contrived that the voice of a man, the
+reflected light of an object, etc., will strike them exactly where it is
+necessary, that they may move in a given manner. This supposition is
+rejected by everybody except some Cartesians; and no Cartesian would admit
+it if it were to be extended to man; that is, if anyone were to assert that
+God was able to form such bodies as would mechanically do whatever we see
+other men do. By denying this we do not pretend to limit the power and
+knowledge of God: we only mean that the nature of things does not permit
+that the faculties imparted to a creature should not be necessarily
+confined within certain bounds. The actions of creatures must be       [41]
+necessarily proportioned to their essential state, and performed according
+to the character belonging to each machine; for according to the maxim of
+the philosophers, whatever is received is proportionate to the capacity of
+the subject that receives it. We may therefore reject M. Leibniz's
+hypothesis as being impossible, since it is liable to greater difficulties
+than that of the Cartesians, which makes beasts to be mere machines. It
+puts a perpetual harmony between two beings, which do not act one upon
+another; whereas if servants were mere machines, and should punctually obey
+their masters' command, it could not be said that they do it without a real
+action of their masters upon them; for their masters would speak words and
+make signs which would really shake and move the organs of the servants.
+
+'V. Now let us consider the soul of Julius Caesar, and we shall find the
+thing more impossible still. That soul was in the world without being
+exposed to the influence of any spirit. The power it received from God was
+the only principle of the actions it produced at every moment: and if those
+actions were different one from another, it was not because some of them
+were produced by the united influence of some springs which did not
+contribute to the production of others, for the soul of man is simple,
+indivisible and immaterial. M. Leibniz owns it; and if he did not
+acknowledge it, but if, on the contrary, he should suppose with most
+philosophers and some of the most excellent metaphysicians of our age (Mr.
+Locke, for instance) that a compound of several material parts placed and
+disposed in a certain manner, is capable of thinking, his hypothesis would
+appear to be on that very ground absolutely impossible, and I could refute
+it several other ways; which I need not mention since he acknowledges the
+immateriality of our soul and builds upon it.
+
+'Let us return to the soul of Julius Caesar, and call it an immaterial
+automaton (M. Leibniz's own phrase), and compare it with an atom of
+Epicurus; I mean an atom surrounded with a vacuum on all sides, and which
+will never meet any other atom. This is a very just comparison: for this
+atom, on the one hand, has a natural power of moving itself and exerts it
+without any assistance, and without being retarded or hindered by anything:
+and, on the other hand, the soul of Caesar is a spirit which has received
+the faculty of producing thoughts, and exerts it without the influence [42]
+of any other spirit or of any body. It is neither assisted nor thwarted by
+anything whatsoever. If you consult the common notions and the ideas of
+order, you will find that this atom can never stop, and that having been in
+motion in the foregoing moment, it will continue in it at the present
+moment and in all the moments that shall follow, and that it will always
+move in the same manner. This is the consequence of an axiom approved by M.
+Leibniz: _since a thing does always remain in the same state wherein it
+happens to be, unless it receives some alteration from some other thing ...
+we conclude_, says he, _not only that a body which is at rest will always
+be at rest, but that a body in motion will always keep that motion or
+change, that is, the same swiftness and the same direction, unless
+something happens to hinder it_. (M. Leibniz, ibid.)
+
+'Everyone clearly sees that this atom, whether it moves by an innate power,
+as Democritus and Epicurus would have it, or by a power received from the
+Creator, will always move in the same line equally and after a uniform
+manner, without ever turning or going back. Epicurus was laughed at, when
+he invented the motion of declination; it was a needless supposition, which
+he wanted in order to get out of the labyrinth of a fatal necessity; and he
+could give no reason for this new part of his system. It was inconsistent
+with the clearest notions of our minds: for it is evident that an atom
+which describes a straight line for the space of two days cannot turn away
+at the beginning of a third, unless it meets with some obstacle, or has a
+mind all of a sudden to go out of its road, or contains some spring which
+begins to play at that very moment. The first of these reasons cannot be
+admitted in a vacuum. The second is impossible, since an atom has not the
+faculty of thinking. And the third is likewise impossible in a corpuscle
+that is a perfect unity. I must make some use of all this.
+
+'VI. Caesar's soul is a being to which unity belongs in a strict sense. The
+faculty of producing thoughts is a property of its nature (so M. Leibniz),
+which it has received from God, both as to possession and exercise. If the
+first thought it produces is a sense of pleasure, there is no reason why
+the second should not likewise be a sense of pleasure; for when the total
+cause of an effect remains the same, the effect cannot be altered. Now this
+soul, at the second moment of its existence, does not receive a new faculty
+of thinking; it only preserves the faculty it had at the first moment, and
+it is as independent of the concourse of any other cause at the second [43]
+moment as it was at the first. It must therefore produce again at the
+second moment the same thought it had produced just before. If it be
+objected that it ought to be in a state of change, and that it would not be
+in such a state, in the case that I have supposed; I answer that its change
+will be like the change of the atom; for an atom which continually moves in
+the same line acquires a new situation at every moment, but it is like the
+preceding situation. A soul may therefore continue in its state of change,
+if it does but produce a new thought like the preceding.
+
+'But suppose it to be not confined within such narrow bounds; it must be
+granted at least that its going from one thought to another implies some
+reason of affinity. If I suppose that in a certain moment the soul of
+Caesar sees a tree with leaves and blossoms, I can conceive that it does
+immediately desire to see one that has only leaves, and then one that has
+only blossoms, and that it will thus successively produce several images
+arising from one another; but one cannot conceive the odd change of
+thoughts, which have no affinity with, but are even contrary to, one
+another, and which are so common in men's souls. One cannot apprehend how
+God could place in the soul of Julius Caesar the principle of what I am
+going to say. He was without doubt pricked with a pin more than once, when
+he was sucking; and therefore according to M. Leibniz's hypothesis which I
+am here considering, his soul must have produced in itself a sense of pain
+immediately after the pleasant sensations of the sweetness of the milk,
+which it had enjoyed for the space of two or three minutes. By what springs
+was it determined to interrupt its pleasures and to give itself all of a
+sudden a sense of pain, without receiving any intimation of preparing
+itself to change, and without any new alteration in its substance? If you
+run over the life of that Roman emperor, every page will afford you matter
+for a stronger objection than this is.
+
+'VII. The thing would be less incomprehensible if it were supposed that the
+soul of man is not one spirit but rather a multitude of spirits, each of
+which has its functions, that begin and end precisely as the changes made
+in a human body require. By virtue of this supposition it should be said
+that something analogous to a great number of wheels and springs, or of
+matters that ferment, disposed according to the changes of our machine,
+awakens or lulls asleep for a certain time the action of each of those
+spirits. But then the soul of man would be no longer a single substance[44]
+but an _ens per aggregationem_, a collection and heap of substances just
+like all material beings. We are here in quest of a single being, which
+produces in itself sometimes joy, sometimes pain, etc., and not of many
+beings, one of which produces hope, another despair, etc.
+
+'In these observations I have merely cleared and unfolded those which M.
+Leibniz has done me the honour to examine: and now I shall make some
+reflexions upon his answers.
+
+'VIII. He says (ibid., p. 332) that _the law of the change which happens in
+the substance of the animal transports him from pleasure to pain at the
+very moment that a solution of continuity is made in his body; because the
+law of the indivisible substance of that animal is to represent what is
+done in his body as we experience it, and even to represent in some manner,
+and with respect to that body, whatever is done in the world_. These words
+are a very good explication of the grounds of this system; they are, as it
+were, the unfolding and key of it; but at the same time they are the very
+things at which the objections of those who take this system to be
+impossible are levelled. The law M. Leibniz speaks of supposes a decree of
+God, and shows wherein this system agrees with that of occasional causes.
+Those two systems agree in this point, that there are laws according to
+which the soul of man is _to represent what is done in the body of man, as
+we experience it_. But they disagree as to the manner of executing those
+laws. The Cartesians say that God executes them; M. Leibniz will have it,
+that the soul itself does it; which appears to me impossible, because the
+soul has not the necessary instruments for such an execution. Now however
+infinite the power and knowledge of God be, he cannot perform with a
+machine deprived of a certain piece, what requires the concourse of such a
+piece. He must supply that defect; but then the effect would be produced by
+him and not by the machine. I shall show that the soul has not the
+instruments requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it
+I shall make use of a comparison.
+
+'Fancy to yourself an animal created by God and designed to sing
+continually. It will always sing, that is most certain; but if God designs
+him a certain tablature, he must necessarily either put it before his eyes
+or imprint it upon his memory or dispose his muscles in such a manner that
+according to the laws of mechanism one certain note will always come after
+another, agreeably to the order of the tablature. Without this one cannot
+apprehend that the animal can always follow the whole set of the notes [45]
+appointed him by God. Let us apply this to man's soul. M. Leibniz will have
+it that it has received not only the power of producing thoughts
+continually, but also the faculty of following always a certain set of
+thoughts, which answers the continual changes that happen in the machine of
+the body. This set of thoughts is like the tablature prescribed to the
+singing animal above mentioned. Can the soul change its perceptions or
+modifications at every moment according to such a set of thoughts, without
+knowing the series of the notes, and actually thinking upon them? But
+experience teaches us that it knows nothing of it. Were it not at least
+necessary that in default of such a knowledge, there should be in the soul
+a set of particular instruments, each of which would be a necessary cause
+of such and such a thought? Must they not be so placed and disposed as to
+operate precisely one after another, according to the correspondence
+_pre-established_ between the changes of the body and the thoughts of the
+soul? but it is most certain that an immaterial simple and indivisible
+substance cannot be made up of such an innumerable multitude of particular
+instruments placed one before another, according to the order of the
+tablature in question. It is not therefore possible that a human soul
+should execute that law.
+
+'M. Leibniz supposes that the soul does not distinctly know its future
+perceptions, _but that it perceives them confusedly_, and that _there are
+in each substance traces of whatever hath happened, or shall happen to it:
+but that an infinite multitude of perceptions hinders us from
+distinguishing them. The present state of each substance is a natural
+consequence of its preceding state. The soul, though never so simple, has
+always a sentiment composed of several perceptions at one time: which
+answers our end as well as though it were composed of pieces, like a
+machine. For each foregoing perception has an influence on those that
+follow agreeably to a law of order, which is in perceptions as well as in
+motions...The perceptions that are together in one and the same soul at the
+same time, including an infinite multitude of little and indistinguishable
+sentiments that are to be unfolded, we need not wonder at the infinite
+variety of what is to result from it in time. This is only a consequence of
+the representative nature of the soul, which is, to express what happens
+and what will happen in its body, by the connexion and correspondence of
+all the parts of the world_. I have but little to say in answer to this: I
+shall only observe that this supposition when sufficiently cleared is the
+right way of solving all the difficulties. M. Leibniz, through the     [46]
+penetration of his great genius, has very well conceived the extent and
+strength of this objection, and what remedy ought to be applied to the main
+inconveniency. I do not doubt but that he will smooth the rough parts of
+his system, and teach us some excellent things about the nature of spirits.
+Nobody can travel more usefully or more safely than he in the intellectual
+world. I hope that his curious explanations will remove all the
+impossibilities which I have hitherto found in his system, and that he will
+solidly remove my difficulties, as well as those of Father Lami. And these
+hopes made me say before, without designing to pass a compliment upon that
+learned man, that his system ought to be looked upon as an important
+conquest.
+
+'He will not be much embarrassed by this, viz. that whereas according to
+the supposition of the Cartesians there is but one general law for the
+union of spirits and bodies, he will have it that God gives a particular
+law to each spirit; from whence it seems to result that the primitive
+constitution of each spirit is specifically different from all others. Do
+not the Thomists say, that there are as many species as individuals in
+angelic nature?'
+
+Leibniz acknowledged Bayle's note in a further reply, which is written as
+though for publication. It was communicated to Bayle, but it was not in
+fact published. It is dated 1702. It may be found in the standard
+collections of Leibniz's philosophical works. It reads almost like a sketch
+for the _Theodicy_.
+
+The principal point developed by Leibniz is the richness of content which,
+according to him, is to be found in each 'simple substance'. Its simplicity
+is more like the infinitely rich simplicity of the divine Being, than like
+the simplicity of the atom of Epicurus, with which Bayle had chosen to
+compare it. It contains a condensation in confused idea of the whole
+universe: and its essence is from the first defined by the part it is to
+play in the total harmony.
+
+As to the musical score ('tablature of notes') which the individual soul
+plays from, in order to perform its ordained part in the universal harmony,
+this 'score' is to be found in the confused or implicit ideas at any moment
+present, from which an omniscient observer could always deduce what is to
+happen next. To the objection 'But the created soul is not an omniscient
+observer, and if it cannot read the score, the score is useless to it',[47]
+Leibniz replies by affirming that much spontaneous action arises from
+subjective and yet unperceived reasons, as we are all perfectly aware, once
+we attend to the relevant facts. All he claims to be doing is to generalize
+this observation. All events whatsoever arise from the 'interpretation of
+the score' by monads, but very little of this 'interpretation' is in the
+least conscious.
+
+Leibniz passes from the remarks about his own doctrine under the article
+'Rorarius' to other articles of Bayle's dictionary, and touches the
+question of the origin of evil, and other matters which receive their
+fuller treatment in the _Theodicy_.
+
+In the same year Leibniz wrote a very friendly letter to Bayle himself,
+offering further explanations of disputed points. He concluded it with a
+paragraph of some personal interest, comparing himself the
+historian-philosopher with Bayle the philosophic lexicographer, and
+revealing by the way his attitude to philosophy, science and history:
+
+'We have good reason to admire, Sir, the way in which your striking
+reflexions on the deepest questions of philosophy remain unhindered by your
+boundless researches into matters of fact. I too am not always able to
+excuse myself from discussions of the sort, and have even been obliged to
+descend to questions of genealogy, which would be still more trifling, were
+it not that the interests of States frequently depend upon them. I have
+worked much on the history of Germany in so far as it bears upon these
+countries, a study which has furnished me with some observations belonging
+to general history. So I have learnt not to neglect the knowledge of sheer
+facts. But if the choice were open to me, I should prefer natural history
+to political, and the customs and laws God has established in nature, to
+what is observed among mankind.'
+
+Leibniz now conceived the idea of putting together all the passages in
+Bayle's works which interested him, and writing a systematic answer to
+them. Before he had leisure to finish the task, Bayle died. The work
+nevertheless appeared in 1710 as the Essays in _Theodicy_.
+
+                                                                       [49]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PREFACE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It has ever been seen that men in general have resorted to outward forms
+for the expression of their religion: sound piety, that is to say, light
+and virtue, has never been the portion of the many. One should not wonder
+at this, nothing is so much in accord with human weakness. We are impressed
+by what is outward, while the inner essence of things requires
+consideration of such a kind as few persons are fitted to give. As true
+piety consists in principles and practice, the outward forms of religion
+imitate these, and are of two kinds: the one kind consists in ceremonial
+practices, and the other in the formularies of belief. Ceremonies resemble
+virtuous actions, and formularies are like shadows of the truth and
+approach, more or less, the true light. All these outward forms would be
+commendable if those who invented them had rendered them appropriate to
+maintain and to express that which they imitate--if religious ceremonies,
+ecclesiastical discipline, the rules of communities, human laws were always
+like a hedge round the divine law, to withdraw us from any approach to
+vice, to inure us to the good and to make us familiar with virtue. That was
+the aim of Moses and of other good lawgivers, of the wise men who founded
+religious orders, and above all of Jesus Christ, divine founder of the
+purest and most enlightened religion. It is just the same with the
+formularies of belief: they would be valid provided there were nothing [50]
+in them inconsistent with truth unto salvation, even though the full truth
+concerned were not there. But it happens only too often that religion is
+choked in ceremonial, and that the divine light is obscured by the opinions
+of men.
+
+The pagans, who inhabited the earth before Christianity was founded, had
+only one kind of outward form: they had ceremonies in their worship, but
+they had no articles of faith and had never dreamed of drawing up
+formularies for their dogmatic theology. They knew not whether their gods
+were real persons or symbols of the forces of Nature, as the sun, the
+planets, the elements. Their mysteries consisted not in difficult dogmas
+but in certain secret observances, whence the profane, namely those who
+were not initiated, were excluded. These observances were very often
+ridiculous and absurd, and it was necessary to conceal them in order to
+guard them against contempt. The pagans had their superstitions: they
+boasted of miracles, everything with them was full of oracles, auguries,
+portents, divinations; the priests invented signs of the anger or of the
+goodness of the gods, whose interpreters they claimed to be. This tended to
+sway minds through fear and hope concerning human events; but the great
+future of another life was scarce envisaged; one did not trouble to impart
+to men true notions of God and of the soul.
+
+Of all ancient peoples, it appears that the Hebrews alone had public dogmas
+for their religion. Abraham and Moses established the belief in one God,
+source of all good, author of all things. The Hebrews speak of him in a
+manner worthy of the Supreme Substance; and one wonders at seeing the
+inhabitants of one small region of the earth more enlightened than the rest
+of the human race. Peradventure the wise men of other nations have
+sometimes said the same, but they have not had the good fortune to find a
+sufficient following and to convert the dogma into law. Nevertheless Moses
+had not inserted in his laws the doctrine of the immortality of souls: it
+was consistent with his ideas, it was taught by oral tradition; but it was
+not proclaimed for popular acceptance until Jesus Christ lifted the veil,
+and, without having force in his hand, taught with all the force of a
+lawgiver that immortal souls pass into another life, wherein they shall
+receive the wages of their deeds. Moses had already expressed the beautiful
+conceptions of the greatness and the goodness of God, whereto many
+civilized peoples to-day assent; but Jesus Christ demonstrated fully   [51]
+the results of these ideas, proclaiming that divine goodness and justice
+are shown forth to perfection in God's designs for the souls of men.
+
+I refrain from considering here the other points of the Christian doctrine,
+and I will show only how Jesus Christ brought about the conversion of
+natural religion into law, and gained for it the authority of a public
+dogma. He alone did that which so many philosophers had endeavoured in vain
+to do; and Christians having at last gained the upper hand in the Roman
+Empire, the master of the greater part of the known earth, the religion of
+the wise men became that of the nations. Later also Mahomet showed no
+divergence from the great dogmas of natural theology: his followers spread
+them abroad even among the most remote races of Asia and of Africa, whither
+Christianity had not been carried; and they abolished in many countries
+heathen superstitions which were contrary to the true doctrine of the unity
+of God and the immortality of souls.
+
+It is clear that Jesus Christ, completing what Moses had begun, wished that
+the Divinity should be the object not only of our fear and veneration but
+also of our love and devotion. Thus he made men happy by anticipation, and
+gave them here on earth a foretaste of future felicity. For there is
+nothing so agreeable as loving that which is worthy of love. Love is that
+mental state which makes us take pleasure in the perfections of the object
+of our love, and there is nothing more perfect than God, nor any greater
+delight than in him. To love him it suffices to contemplate his
+perfections, a thing easy indeed, because we find the ideas of these within
+ourselves. The perfections of God are those of our souls, but he possesses
+them in boundless measure; he is an Ocean, whereof to us only drops have
+been granted; there is in us some power, some knowledge, some goodness, but
+in God they are all in their entirety. Order, proportions, harmony delight
+us; painting and music are samples of these: God is all order; he always
+keeps truth of proportions, he makes universal harmony; all beauty is an
+effusion of his rays.
+
+It follows manifestly that true piety and even true felicity consist in the
+love of God, but a love so enlightened that its fervour is attended by
+insight. This kind of love begets that pleasure in good actions which gives
+relief to virtue, and, relating all to God as to the centre, transports the
+human to the divine. For in doing one's duty, in obeying reason, one   [52]
+carries out the orders of Supreme Reason. One directs all one's intentions
+to the common good, which is no other than the glory of God. Thus one finds
+that there is no greater individual interest than to espouse that of the
+community, and one gains satisfaction for oneself by taking pleasure in the
+acquisition of true benefits for men. Whether one succeeds therein or not,
+one is content with what comes to pass, being once resigned to the will of
+God and knowing that what he wills is best. But before he declares his will
+by the event one endeavours to find it out by doing that which appears most
+in accord with his commands. When we are in this state of mind, we are not
+disheartened by ill success, we regret only our faults; and the ungrateful
+ways of men cause no relaxation in the exercise of our kindly disposition.
+Our charity is humble and full of moderation, it presumes not to domineer;
+attentive alike to our own faults and to the talents of others, we are
+inclined to criticize our own actions and to excuse and vindicate those of
+others. We must work out our own perfection and do wrong to no man. There
+is no piety where there is not charity; and without being kindly and
+beneficent one cannot show sincere religion.
+
+Good disposition, favourable upbringing, association with pious and
+virtuous persons may contribute much towards such a propitious condition
+for our souls; but most securely are they grounded therein by good
+principles. I have already said that insight must be joined to fervour,
+that the perfecting of our understanding must accomplish the perfecting of
+our will. The practices of virtue, as well as those of vice, may be the
+effect of a mere habit, one may acquire a taste for them; but when virtue
+is reasonable, when it is related to God, who is the supreme reason of
+things, it is founded on knowledge. One cannot love God without knowing his
+perfections, and this knowledge contains the principles of true piety. The
+purpose of religion should be to imprint these principles upon our souls:
+but in some strange way it has happened all too often that men, that
+teachers of religion have strayed far from this purpose. Contrary to the
+intention of our divine Master, devotion has been reduced to ceremonies and
+doctrine has been cumbered with formulae. All too often these ceremonies
+have not been well fitted to maintain the exercise of virtue, and the
+formulae sometimes have not been lucid. Can one believe it? Some Christians
+have imagined that they could be devout without loving their neighbour,[53]
+and pious without loving God; or else people have thought that they could
+love their neighbour without serving him and could love God without knowing
+him. Many centuries have passed without recognition of this defect by the
+people at large; and there are still great traces of the reign of darkness.
+There are divers persons who speak much of piety, of devotion, of religion,
+who are even busied with the teaching of such things, and who yet prove to
+be by no means versed in the divine perfections. They ill understand the
+goodness and the justice of the Sovereign of the universe; they imagine a
+God who deserves neither to be imitated nor to be loved. This indeed seemed
+to me dangerous in its effect, since it is of serious moment that the very
+source of piety should be preserved from infection. The old errors of those
+who arraigned the Divinity or who made thereof an evil principle have been
+renewed sometimes in our own days: people have pleaded the irresistible
+power of God when it was a question rather of presenting his supreme
+goodness; and they have assumed a despotic power when they should rather
+have conceived of a power ordered by the most perfect wisdom. I have
+observed that these opinions, apt to do harm, rested especially on confused
+notions which had been formed concerning freedom, necessity and destiny;
+and I have taken up my pen more than once on such an occasion to give
+explanations on these important matters. But finally I have been compelled
+to gather up my thoughts on all these connected questions, and to impart
+them to the public. It is this that I have undertaken in the Essays which I
+offer here, on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of
+Evil.
+
+There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray:
+one concerns the great question of the Free and the Necessary, above all in
+the production and the origin of Evil; the other consists in the discussion
+of continuity and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements
+thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. The
+first perplexes almost all the human race, the other exercises philosophers
+only. I shall have perchance at another time an opportunity to declare
+myself on the second, and to point out that, for lack of a true conception
+of the nature of substance and matter, people have taken up false positions
+leading to insurmountable difficulties, difficulties which should properly
+be applied to the overthrow of these very positions. But if the        [54]
+knowledge of continuity is important for speculative enquiry, that of
+necessity is none the less so for practical application; and it, together
+with the questions therewith connected, to wit, the freedom of man and the
+justice of God, forms the object of this treatise.
+
+Men have been perplexed in well-nigh every age by a sophism which the
+ancients called the 'Lazy Reason', because it tended towards doing nothing,
+or at least towards being careful for nothing and only following
+inclination for the pleasure of the moment. For, they said, if the future
+is necessary, that which must happen will happen, whatever I may do. Now
+the future (so they said) is necessary, whether because the Divinity
+foresees everything, and even pre-establishes it by the control of all
+things in the universe; or because everything happens of necessity, through
+the concatenation of causes; or finally, through the very nature of truth,
+which is determinate in the assertions that can be made on future events,
+as it is in all assertions, since the assertion must always be true or
+false in itself, even though we know not always which it is. And all these
+reasons for determination which appear different converge finally like
+lines upon one and the same centre; for there is a truth in the future
+event which is predetermined by the causes, and God pre-establishes it in
+establishing the causes.
+
+The false conception of necessity, being applied in practice, has given
+rise to what I call _Fatum Mahometanum_, fate after the Turkish fashion,
+because it is said of the Turks that they do not shun danger or even
+abandon places infected with plague, owing to their use of such reasoning
+as that just recorded. For what is called _Fatum Stoicum_ was not so black
+as it is painted: it did not divert men from the care of their affairs, but
+it tended to give them tranquillity in regard to events, through the
+consideration of necessity, which renders our anxieties and our vexations
+needless. In which respect these philosophers were not far removed from the
+teaching of our Lord, who deprecates these anxieties in regard to the
+morrow, comparing them with the needless trouble a man would give himself
+in labouring to increase his stature.
+
+It is true that the teachings of the Stoics (and perhaps also of some
+famous philosophers of our time), confining themselves to this alleged
+necessity, can only impart a forced patience; whereas our Lord inspires
+thoughts more sublime, and even instructs us in the means of gaining
+contentment by assuring us that since God, being altogether good and   [55]
+wise, has care for everything, even so far as not to neglect one hair of
+our head, our confidence in him ought to be entire. And thus we should see,
+if we were capable of understanding him, that it is not even possible to
+wish for anything better (as much in general as for ourselves) than what he
+does. It is as if one said to men: Do your duty and be content with that
+which shall come of it, not only because you cannot resist divine
+providence, or the nature of things (which may suffice for tranquillity,
+but not for contentment), but also because you have to do with a good
+master. And that is what may be called _Fatum Christianum_.
+
+Nevertheless it happens that most men, and even Christians, introduce into
+their dealings some mixture of fate after the Turkish fashion, although
+they do not sufficiently acknowledge it. It is true that they are not
+inactive or negligent when obvious perils or great and manifest hopes
+present themselves; for they will not fail to abandon a house that is about
+to fall and to turn aside from a precipice they see in their path; and they
+will burrow in the earth to dig up a treasure half uncovered, without
+waiting for fate to finish dislodging it. But when the good or the evil is
+remote and uncertain and the remedy painful or little to our taste, the
+lazy reason seems to us to be valid. For example, when it is a question of
+preserving one's health and even one's life by good diet, people to whom
+one gives advice thereupon very often answer that our days are numbered and
+that it avails nothing to try to struggle against that which God destines
+for us. But these same persons run to even the most absurd remedies when
+the evil they had neglected draws near. One reasons in somewhat the same
+way when the question for consideration is somewhat thorny, as for instance
+when one asks oneself, _quod vitae sectabor iter_? what profession one must
+choose; when it is a question of a marriage being arranged, of a war being
+undertaken, of a battle being fought; for in these cases many will be
+inclined to evade the difficulty of consideration and abandon themselves to
+fate or to inclination, as if reason should not be employed except in easy
+cases. One will then all too often reason in the Turkish fashion (although
+this way is wrongly termed trusting in providence, a thing that in reality
+occurs only when one has done one's duty) and one will employ the lazy
+reason, derived from the idea of inevitable fate, to relieve oneself of the
+need to reason properly. One will thus overlook the fact that if this  [56]
+argument contrary to the practice of reason were valid, it would always
+hold good, whether the consideration were easy or not. This laziness is to
+some extent the source of the superstitious practices of fortune-tellers,
+which meet with just such credulity as men show towards the philosopher's
+stone, because they would fain have short cuts to the attainment of
+happiness without trouble.
+
+I do not speak here of those who throw themselves upon fortune because they
+have been happy before, as if there were something permanent therein. Their
+argument from the past to the future has just as slight a foundation as the
+principles of astrology and of other kinds of divination. They overlook the
+fact that there is usually an ebb and flow in fortune, _una marea_, as
+Italians playing basset are wont to call it. With regard to this they make
+their own particular observations, which I would, nevertheless, counsel
+none to trust too much. Yet this confidence that people have in their
+fortune serves often to give courage to men, and above all to soldiers, and
+causes them to have indeed that good fortune they ascribe to themselves.
+Even so do predictions often cause that to happen which has been foretold,
+as it is supposed that the opinion the Mahometans hold on fate makes them
+resolute. Thus even errors have their use at times, but generally as
+providing a remedy for other errors: and truth is unquestionably better.
+
+But it is taking an unfair advantage of this alleged necessity of fate to
+employ it in excuse for our vices and our libertinism. I have often heard
+it said by smart young persons, who wished to play the freethinker, that it
+is useless to preach virtue, to censure vice, to create hopes of reward and
+fears of punishment, since it may be said of the book of destiny, that what
+is written is written, and that our behaviour can change nothing therein.
+Thus, they would say, it were best to follow one's inclination, dwelling
+only upon such things as may content us in the present. They did not
+reflect upon the strange consequences of this argument, which would prove
+too much, since it would prove (for instance) that one should take a
+pleasant beverage even though one knows it is poisoned. For the same reason
+(if it were valid) I could say: if it is written in the records of the
+Parcae that poison will kill me now or will do me harm, this will happen
+even though I were not to take this beverage; and if this is not written,
+it will not happen even though I should take this same beverage;
+consequently I shall be able to follow with impunity my inclination to [57]
+take what is pleasing, however injurious it may be; the result of which
+reasoning is an obvious absurdity. This objection disconcerted them a
+little, but they always reverted to their argument, phrased in different
+ways, until they were brought to understand where the fault of the sophism
+lies. It is untrue that the event happens whatever one may do: it will
+happen because one does what leads thereto; and if the event is written
+beforehand, the cause that will make it happen is written also. Thus the
+connexion of effects and causes, so far from establishing the doctrine of a
+necessity detrimental to conduct, serves to overthrow it.
+
+Yet, without having evil intentions inclined towards libertinism, one may
+envisage differently the strange consequences of an inevitable necessity,
+considering that it would destroy the freedom of the will, so essential to
+the morality of action: for justice and injustice, praise and blame,
+punishment and reward cannot attach to necessary actions, and nobody will
+be under obligation to do the impossible or to abstain from doing what is
+absolutely necessary. Without any intention of abusing this consideration
+in order to favour irregularity, one will nevertheless not escape
+embarrassment sometimes, when it comes to a question of judging the actions
+of others, or rather of answering objections, amongst which there are some
+even concerned with the actions of God, whereof I will speak presently. And
+as an insuperable necessity would open the door to impiety, whether through
+the impunity one could thence infer or the hopelessness of any attempt to
+resist a torrent that sweeps everything along with it, it is important to
+note the different degrees of necessity, and to show that there are some
+which cannot do harm, as there are others which cannot be admitted without
+giving rise to evil consequences.
+
+Some go even further: not content with using the pretext of necessity to
+prove that virtue and vice do neither good nor ill, they have the hardihood
+to make the Divinity accessary to their licentious way of life, and they
+imitate the pagans of old, who ascribed to the gods the cause of their
+crimes, as if a divinity drove them to do evil. The philosophy of
+Christians, which recognizes better than that of the ancients the
+dependence of things upon the first Author and his co-operation with all
+the actions of creatures, appears to have increased this difficulty. Some
+able men in our own time have gone so far as to deny all action to     [58]
+creatures, and M. Bayle, who tended a little towards this extraordinary
+opinion, made use of it to restore the lapsed dogma of the two principles,
+or two gods, the one good, the other evil, as if this dogma were a better
+solution to the difficulties over the origin of evil. Yet again he
+acknowledges that it is an indefensible opinion and that the oneness of the
+Principle is incontestably founded on _a priori_ reasons; but he wishes to
+infer that our Reason is confounded and cannot meet her own objections, and
+that one should disregard them and hold fast the revealed dogmas, which
+teach us the existence of one God altogether good, altogether powerful and
+altogether wise. But many readers, convinced of the irrefutable nature of
+his objections and believing them to be at least as strong as the proofs
+for the truth of religion, would draw dangerous conclusions.
+
+Even though there were no co-operation by God in evil actions, one could
+not help finding difficulty in the fact that he foresees them and that,
+being able to prevent them through his omnipotence, he yet permits them.
+This is why some philosophers and even some theologians have rather chosen
+to deny to God any knowledge of the detail of things and, above all, of
+future events, than to admit what they believed repellent to his goodness.
+The Socinians and Conrad Vorstius lean towards that side; and Thomas
+Bonartes, an English Jesuit disguised under a pseudonym but exceedingly
+learned, who wrote a book _De Concordia Scientiae cum Fide_, of which I
+will speak later, appears to hint at this also.
+
+They are doubtless much mistaken; but others are not less so who, convinced
+that nothing comes to pass save by the will and the power of God, ascribe
+to him intentions and actions so unworthy of the greatest and the best of
+all beings that one would say these authors have indeed renounced the dogma
+which recognizes God's justice and goodness. They thought that, being
+supreme Master of the universe, he could without any detriment to his
+holiness cause sins to be committed, simply at his will and pleasure, or in
+order that he might have the pleasure of punishing; and even that he could
+take pleasure in eternally afflicting innocent people without doing any
+injustice, because no one has the right or the power to control his
+actions. Some even have gone so far as to say that God acts thus indeed;
+and on the plea that we are as nothing in comparison with him, they liken
+us to earthworms which men crush without heeding as they walk, or in
+general to animals that are not of our species and which we do not     [59]
+scruple to ill-treat.
+
+I believe that many persons otherwise of good intentions are misled by
+these ideas, because they have not sufficient knowledge of their
+consequences. They do not see that, properly speaking, God's justice is
+thus overthrown. For what idea shall we form of such a justice as has only
+will for its rule, that is to say, where the will is not guided by the
+rules of good and even tends directly towards evil? Unless it be the idea
+contained in that tyrannical definition by Thrasymachus in Plato, which
+designated as _just_ that which pleases the stronger. Such indeed is the
+position taken up, albeit unwittingly, by those who rest all obligation
+upon constraint, and in consequence take power as the gauge of right. But
+one will soon abandon maxims so strange and so unfit to make men good and
+charitable through the imitation of God. For one will reflect that a God
+who would take pleasure in the misfortune of others cannot be distinguished
+from the evil principle of the Manichaeans, assuming that this principle
+had become sole master of the universe; and that in consequence one must
+attribute to the true God sentiments that render him worthy to be called
+the good Principle.
+
+Happily these extravagant dogmas scarce obtain any longer among
+theologians. Nevertheless some astute persons, who are pleased to make
+difficulties, revive them: they seek to increase our perplexity by uniting
+the controversies aroused by Christian theology to the disputes of
+philosophy. Philosophers have considered the questions of necessity, of
+freedom and of the origin of evil; theologians have added thereto those of
+original sin, of grace and of predestination. The original corruption of
+the human race, coming from the first sin, appears to us to have imposed a
+natural necessity to sin without the succour of divine grace: but necessity
+being incompatible with punishment, it will be inferred that a sufficient
+grace ought to have been given to all men; which does not seem to be in
+conformity with experience.
+
+But the difficulty is great, above all, in relation to God's dispositions
+for the salvation of men. There are few saved or chosen; therefore the
+choice of many is not God's decreed will. And since it is admitted that
+those whom he has chosen deserve it no more than the rest, and are not even
+fundamentally less evil, the goodness which they have coming only from the
+gift of God, the difficulty is increased. Where is, then, his justice  [60]
+(people will say), or at the least, where is his goodness? Partiality, or
+respect of persons, goes against justice, and he who without cause sets
+bounds to his goodness cannot have it in sufficient measure. It is true
+that those who are not chosen are lost by their own fault: they lack good
+will or living faith; but it rested with God alone to grant it them. We
+know that besides inward grace there are usually outward circumstances
+which distinguish men, and that training, conversation, example often
+correct or corrupt natural disposition. Now that God should call forth
+circumstances favourable to some and abandon others to experiences which
+contribute to their misfortune, will not that give us cause for
+astonishment? And it is not enough (so it seems) to say with some that
+inward grace is universal and equal for all. For these same authors are
+obliged to resort to the exclamations of St. Paul, and to say: 'O the
+depth!' when they consider how men are distinguished by what we may call
+outward graces, that is, by graces appearing in the diversity of
+circumstances which God calls forth, whereof men are not the masters, and
+which have nevertheless so great an influence upon all that concerns their
+salvation.
+
+Nor will it help us to say with St. Augustine that, all men being involved
+in the damnation caused by the sin of Adam, God might have left them all in
+their misery; and that thus his goodness alone induces him to deliver some
+of them. For not only is it strange that the sin of another should condemn
+anyone, but there still remains the question why God does not deliver
+all--why he delivers the lesser number and why some in preference to
+others. He is in truth their master, but he is a good and just master; his
+power is absolute, but his wisdom permits not that he exercise that power
+in an arbitrary and despotic way, which would be tyrannous indeed.
+
+Moreover, the fall of the first man having happened only with God's
+permission, and God having resolved to permit it only when once he had
+considered its consequences, which are the corruption of the mass of the
+human race and the choice of a small number of elect, with the abandonment
+of all the rest, it is useless to conceal the difficulty by limiting one's
+view to the mass already corrupt. One must, in spite of oneself, go back to
+the knowledge of the consequences of the first sin, preceding the decree
+whereby God permitted it, and whereby he permitted simultaneously that [61]
+the damned should be involved in the mass of perdition and should not be
+delivered: for God and the sage make no resolve without considering its
+consequences.
+
+I hope to remove all these difficulties. I will point out that absolute
+necessity, which is called also logical and metaphysical and sometimes
+geometrical, and which would alone be formidable in this connexion, does
+not exist in free actions, and that thus freedom is exempt not only from
+constraint but also from real necessity. I will show that God himself,
+although he always chooses the best, does not act by an absolute necessity,
+and that the laws of nature laid down by God, founded upon the fitness of
+things, keep the mean between geometrical truths, absolutely necessary, and
+arbitrary decrees; which M. Bayle and other modern philosophers have not
+sufficiently understood. Further I will show that there is an indifference
+in freedom, because there is no absolute necessity for one course or the
+other; but yet that there is never an indifference of perfect equipoise.
+And I will demonstrate that there is in free actions a perfect spontaneity
+beyond all that has been conceived hitherto. Finally I will make it plain
+that the hypothetical and the moral necessity which subsist in free actions
+are open to no objection, and that the 'Lazy Reason' is a pure sophism.
+
+Likewise concerning the origin of evil in its relation to God, I offer a
+vindication of his perfections that shall extol not less his holiness, his
+justice and his goodness than his greatness, his power and his
+independence. I show how it is possible for everything to depend upon God,
+for him to co-operate in all the actions of creatures, even, if you will,
+to create these creatures continually, and nevertheless not to be the
+author of sin. Here also it is demonstrated how the privative nature of
+evil should be understood. Much more than that, I explain how evil has a
+source other than the will of God, and that one is right therefore to say
+of moral evil that God wills it not, but simply permits it. Most important
+of all, however, I show that it has been possible for God to permit sin and
+misery, and even to co-operate therein and promote it, without detriment to
+his holiness and his supreme goodness: although, generally speaking, he
+could have avoided all these evils.
+
+Concerning grace and predestination, I justify the most debatable
+assertions, as for instance: that we are converted only through the    [62]
+prevenient grace of God and that we cannot do good except with his aid;
+that God wills the salvation of all men and that he condemns only those
+whose will is evil; that he gives to all a sufficient grace provided they
+wish to use it; that, Jesus Christ being the source and the centre of
+election, God destined the elect for salvation, because he foresaw that
+they would cling with a lively faith to the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Yet
+it is true that this reason for election is not the final reason, and that
+this very pre-vision is still a consequence of God's anterior decree. Faith
+likewise is a gift of God, who has predestinated the faith of the elect,
+for reasons lying in a superior decree which dispenses grace and
+circumstance in accordance with God's supreme wisdom.
+
+Now, as one of the most gifted men of our time, whose eloquence was as
+great as his acumen and who gave great proofs of his vast erudition, had
+applied himself with a strange predilection to call attention to all the
+difficulties on this subject which I have just touched in general, I found
+a fine field for exercise in considering the question with him in detail. I
+acknowledge that M. Bayle (for it is easy to see that I speak of him) has
+on his side all the advantages except that of the root of the matter, but I
+hope that truth (which he acknowledges himself to be on our side) by its
+very plainness, and provided it be fittingly set forth, will prevail over
+all the ornaments of eloquence and erudition. My hope for success therein
+is all the greater because it is the cause of God I plead, and because one
+of the maxims here upheld states that God's help is never lacking for those
+that lack not good will. The author of this discourse believes that he has
+given proof of this good will in the attention he has brought to bear upon
+this subject. He has meditated upon it since his youth; he has conferred
+with some of the foremost men of the time; and he has schooled himself by
+the reading of good authors. And the success which God has given him
+(according to the opinion of sundry competent judges) in certain other
+profound meditations, of which some have much influence on this subject,
+gives him peradventure some right to claim the attention of readers who
+love truth and are fitted to search after it.
+
+The author had, moreover, particular and weighty reasons inducing him to
+take pen in hand for discussion of this subject. Conversations which he had
+concerning the same with literary and court personages, in Germany and in
+France, and especially with one of the greatest and most accomplished  [63]
+of princesses, have repeatedly prompted him to this course. He had had the
+honour of expressing his opinions to this Princess upon divers passages of
+the admirable _Dictionary_ of M. Bayle, wherein religion and reason appear
+as adversaries, and where M. Bayle wishes to silence reason after having
+made it speak too loud: which he calls the triumph of faith. The present
+author declared there and then that he was of a different opinion, but that
+he was nevertheless well pleased that a man of such great genius had
+brought about an occasion for going deeply into these subjects, subjects as
+important as they are difficult. He admitted having examined them also for
+some long time already, and having sometimes been minded to publish upon
+this matter some reflexions whose chief aim should be such knowledge of God
+as is needed to awaken piety and to foster virtue. This Princess exhorted
+and urged him to carry out his long-cherished intention, and some friends
+added their persuasions. He was all the more tempted to accede to their
+requests since he had reason to hope that in the sequel to his
+investigation M. Bayle's genius would greatly aid him to give the subject
+such illumination as it might receive with his support. But divers
+obstacles intervened, and the death of the incomparable Queen was not the
+least. It happened, however, that M. Bayle was attacked by excellent men
+who set themselves to examine the same subject; he answered them fully and
+always ingeniously. I followed their dispute, and was even on the point of
+being involved therein. This is how it came about.
+
+I had published a new system, which seemed well adapted to explain the
+union of the soul and the body: it met with considerable applause even from
+those who were not in agreement with it, and certain competent persons
+testified that they had already been of my opinion, without having reached
+so distinct an explanation, before they saw what I had written on the
+matter. M. Bayle examined it in his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_,
+article 'Rorarius'. He thought that my expositions were worthy of further
+development; he drew attention to their usefulness in various connexions,
+and he laid stress upon what might still cause difficulty. I could not but
+reply in a suitable way to expressions so civil and to reflexions so
+instructive as his. In order to turn them to greater account, I published
+some elucidations in the _Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_, July 1698. M.
+Bayle replied to them in the second edition of his _Dictionary_. I sent[64]
+him a rejoinder which has not yet been published; I know not whether he
+ever made a further reply.
+
+Meanwhile it happened that M. le Clerc had inserted in his _Select Library_
+an extract from the _Intellectual System_ of the late Mr. Cudworth, and had
+explained therein certain 'plastic natures' which this admirable author
+applied to the formation of animals. M. Bayle believed (see the
+continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, ch. 21, art. 11) that,
+these natures being without cognition, in establishing them one weakened
+the argument which proves, through the marvellous formation of things, that
+the universe must have an intelligent Cause. M. le Clerc replied (4th art.
+of the 5th vol. of his _Select Library_) that these natures required to be
+directed by divine wisdom. M. Bayle insisted (7th article of the _Histoire
+des Ouvrages des Savants_, August 1704) that direction alone was not
+sufficient for a cause devoid of cognition, unless one took the cause to be
+a mere instrument of God, in which case direction would be needless. My
+system was touched upon in passing; and that gave me an opportunity to send
+a short essay to the illustrious author of the _Histoire des Ouvrages des
+Savants_, which he inserted in the month of May 1705, art. 9. In this I
+endeavoured to make clear that in reality mechanism is sufficient to
+produce the organic bodies of animals, without any need of other plastic
+natures, provided there be added thereto the _preformation_ already
+completely organic in the seeds of the bodies that come into existence,
+contained in those of the bodies whence they spring, right back to the
+primary seeds. This could only proceed from the Author of things,
+infinitely powerful and infinitely wise, who, creating all in the beginning
+in due order, had _pre-established_ there all order and artifice that was
+to be. There is no chaos in the inward nature of things, and there is
+organism everywhere in a matter whose disposition proceeds from God. More
+and more of it would come to light if we pressed closer our examination of
+the anatomy of bodies; and we should continue to observe it even if we
+could go on to infinity, like Nature, and make subdivision as continuous in
+our knowledge as Nature has made it in fact.
+
+In order to explain this marvel of the formation of animals, I made use of
+a Pre-established Harmony, that is to say, of the same means I had used to
+explain another marvel, namely the correspondence of soul with body,   [65]
+wherein I proved the uniformity and the fecundity of the principles I had
+employed. It seems that this reminded M. Bayle of my system of accounting
+for this correspondence, which he had examined formerly. He declared (in
+chapter 180 of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, p.
+1253) that he did not believe God could give to matter or to any other
+cause the faculty of becoming organic without communicating to it the idea
+and the knowledge of organic nature. Also he was not yet disposed to
+believe that God, with all his power over Nature and with all the
+foreknowledge which he has of the contingencies that may arrive, could have
+so disposed things that by the laws of mechanics alone a vessel (for
+instance) should go to its port of destination without being steered during
+its passage by some intelligent guide. I was surprised to see that limits
+were placed on the power of God, without the adduction of any proof and
+without indication that there was any contradiction to be feared on the
+side of the object or any imperfection on God's side. Whereas I had shown
+before in my Rejoinder that even men often produce through automata
+something like the movements that come from reason, and that even a finite
+mind (but one far above ours) could accomplish what M. Bayle thinks
+impossible to the Divinity. Moreover, as God orders all things at once
+beforehand, the accuracy of the path of this vessel would be no more
+strange than that of a fuse passing along a cord in fireworks, since the
+whole disposition of things preserves a perfect harmony between them by
+means of their influence one upon the other.
+
+This declaration of M. Bayle pledged me to an answer. I therefore purposed
+to point out to him, that unless it be said that God forms organic bodies
+himself by a perpetual miracle, or that he has entrusted this care to
+intelligences whose power and knowledge are almost divine, we must hold the
+opinion that God _preformed_ things in such sort that new organisms are
+only a mechanical consequence of a preceding organic constitution. Even so
+do butterflies come out of silkworms, an instance where M. Swammerdam has
+shown that there is nothing but development. And I would have added that
+nothing is better qualified than the preformation of plants and of animals
+to confirm my System of Pre-established Harmony between the soul and the
+body. For in this the body is prompted by its original constitution to
+carry out with the help of external things all that it does in accordance
+with the will of the soul. So the seeds by their original constitution [66]
+carry out naturally the intentions of God, by an artifice greater still
+than that which causes our body to perform everything in conformity with
+our will. And since M. Bayle himself deems with reason that there is more
+artifice in the organism of animals than in the most beautiful poem in the
+world or in the most admirable invention whereof the human mind is capable,
+it follows that my system of the connexion between the body and the soul is
+as intelligible as the general opinion on the formation of animals. For
+this opinion (which appears to me true) states in effect that the wisdom of
+God has so made Nature that it is competent in virtue of its laws to form
+animals; I explain this opinion and throw more light upon the possibility
+of it through the system of preformation. Whereafter there will be no cause
+for surprise that God has so made the body that by virtue of its own laws
+it can carry out the intentions of the reasoning soul: for all that the
+reasoning soul can demand of the body is less difficult than the
+organization which God has demanded of the seeds. M. Bayle says (_Reply to
+the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 182, p. 1294) that it is only very
+recently there have been people who have understood that the formation of
+living bodies cannot be a natural process. This he could say also (in
+accordance with his principles) of the communication between the soul and
+the body, since God effects this whole communication in the system of
+occasional causes to which this author subscribes. But I admit the
+supernatural here only in the beginning of things, in respect of the first
+formation of animals or in respect of the original constitution of
+pre-established harmony between the soul and the body. Once that has come
+to pass, I hold that the formation of animals and the relation between the
+soul and the body are something as natural now as the other most ordinary
+operations of Nature. A close parallel is afforded by people's ordinary
+thinking about the instinct and the marvellous behaviour of brutes. One
+recognizes reason there not in the brutes but in him who created them. I
+am, then, of the general opinion in this respect; but I hope that my
+explanation will have added clearness and lucidity, and even a more ample
+range, to that opinion.
+
+Now when preparing to justify my system in face of the new difficulties of
+M. Bayle, I purposed at the same time to communicate to him the ideas which
+I had had for some time already, on the difficulties put forward by him[67]
+in opposition to those who endeavour to reconcile reason with faith in
+regard to the existence of evil. Indeed, there are perhaps few persons who
+have toiled more than I in this matter. Hardly had I gained some tolerable
+understanding of Latin writings when I had an opportunity of turning over
+books in a library. I flitted from book to book, and since subjects for
+meditation pleased me as much as histories and fables, I was charmed by the
+work of Laurentius Valla against Boethius and by that of Luther against
+Erasmus, although I was well aware that they had need of some mitigation. I
+did not omit books of controversy, and amongst other writings of this
+nature the records of the Montbéliard Conversation, which had revived the
+dispute, appeared to me instructive. Nor did I neglect the teachings of our
+theologians: and the study of their opponents, far from disturbing me,
+served to strengthen me in the moderate opinions of the Churches of the
+Augsburg Confession. I had opportunity on my journeys to confer with some
+excellent men of different parties, for instance with Bishop Peter von
+Wallenburg, Suffragan of Mainz, with Herr Johann Ludwig Fabricius, premier
+theologian of Heidelberg, and finally with the celebrated M. Arnauld. To
+him I even tendered a Latin Dialogue of my own composition upon this
+subject, about the year 1673, wherein already I laid it down that God,
+having chosen the most perfect of all possible worlds, had been prompted by
+his wisdom to permit the evil which was bound up with it, but which still
+did not prevent this world from being, all things considered, the best that
+could be chosen. I have also since read many and various good authors on
+these subjects, and I have endeavoured to make progress in the knowledge
+that seems to me proper for banishing all that could have obscured the idea
+of supreme perfection which must be acknowledged in God. I have not
+neglected to examine the most rigorous authors, who have extended furthest
+the doctrine of the necessity of things, as for instance Hobbes and
+Spinoza, of whom the former advocated this absolute necessity not only in
+his _Physical Elements_ and elsewhere, but also in a special book against
+Bishop Bramhall. And Spinoza insists more or less (like an ancient
+Peripatetic philosopher named Strato) that all has come from the first
+cause or from primitive Nature by a blind and geometrical necessity, with
+complete absence of capacity for choice, for goodness and for understanding
+in this first source of things.
+
+                                                                       [68]
+I have found the means, so it seems to me, of demonstrating the contrary in
+a way that gives one a clear insight into the inward essence of the matter.
+For having made new discoveries on the nature of active force and the laws
+of motion, I have shown that they have no geometrical necessity, as Spinoza
+appears to have believed they had. Neither, as I have made plain, are they
+purely arbitrary, even though this be the opinion of M. Bayle and of some
+modern philosophers: but they are dependent upon the fitness of things as I
+have already pointed out above, or upon that which I call the 'principle of
+the best'. Moreover one recognizes therein, as in every other thing, the
+marks of the first substance, whose productions bear the stamp of a supreme
+wisdom and make the most perfect of harmonies. I have shown also that this
+harmony connects both the future with the past and the present with the
+absent. The first kind of connexion unites times, and the other places.
+This second connexion is displayed in the union of the soul with the body,
+and in general in the communication of true substances with one another and
+with material phenomena. But the first takes place in the preformation of
+organic bodies, or rather of all bodies, since there is organism
+everywhere, although all masses do not compose organic bodies. So a pond
+may very well be full of fish or of other organic bodies, although it is
+not itself an animal or organic body, but only a mass that contains them.
+Thus I had endeavoured to build upon such foundations, established in a
+conclusive manner, a complete body of the main articles of knowledge that
+reason pure and simple can impart to us, a body whereof all the parts were
+properly connected and capable of meeting the most important difficulties
+of the ancients and the moderns. I had also in consequence formed for
+myself a certain system concerning the freedom of man and the cooperation
+of God. This system appeared to me to be such as would in no wise offend
+reason and faith; and I desired to submit it to the scrutiny of M. Bayle,
+as well as of those who are in controversy with him. Now he has departed
+from us, and such a loss is no small one, a writer whose learning and
+acumen few have equalled. But since the subject is under consideration and
+men of talent are still occupied with it, while the public also follows it
+attentively, I take this to be a fitting moment for the publication of
+certain of my ideas.
+
+It will perhaps be well to add the observation, before finishing this
+preface, that in denying the physical influence of the soul upon the   [69]
+body or of the body upon the soul, that is, an influence causing the one to
+disturb the laws of the other, I by no means deny the union of the one with
+the other which forms of them a suppositum; but this union is something
+metaphysical, which changes nothing in the phenomena. This is what I have
+already said in reply to the objection raised against me, in the _Mémoires
+de Trévoux_, by the Reverend Father de Tournemine, whose wit and learning
+are of no ordinary mould. And for this reason one may say also in a
+metaphysical sense that the soul acts upon the body and the body upon the
+soul. Moreover, it is true that the soul is the Entelechy or the active
+principle, whereas the corporeal alone or the mere material contains only
+the passive. Consequently the principle of action is in the soul, as I have
+explained more than once in the _Leipzig Journal_. More especially does
+this appear in my answer to the late Herr Sturm, philosopher and
+mathematician of Altorf, where I have even demonstrated that, if bodies
+contained only the passive, their different conditions would be
+indistinguishable. Also I take this opportunity to say that, having heard
+of some objections made by the gifted author of the book on
+_Self-knowledge_, in that same book, to my System of Pre-established
+Harmony, I sent a reply to Paris, showing that he has attributed to me
+opinions I am far from holding. On another matter recently I met with like
+treatment at the hands of an anonymous Doctor of the Sorbonne. And these
+misconceptions would have become plain to the reader at the outset if my
+own words, which were being taken in evidence, had been quoted.
+
+This tendency of men to make mistakes in presenting the opinions of others
+leads me to observe also, that when I said somewhere that man helps himself
+in conversion through the succour of grace, I mean only that he derives
+advantage from it through the cessation of the resistance overcome, but
+without any cooperation on his part: just as there is no co-operation in
+ice when it is broken. For conversion is purely the work of God's grace,
+wherein man co-operates only by resisting it; but human resistance is more
+or less great according to the persons and the occasions. Circumstances
+also contribute more or less to our attention and to the motions that arise
+in the soul; and the co-operation of all these things, together with the
+strength of the impression and the condition of the will, determines the
+operation of grace, although not rendering it necessary. I have expounded
+sufficiently elsewhere that in relation to matters of salvation        [70]
+unregenerate man is to be considered as dead; and I greatly approve the
+manner wherein the theologians of the Augsburg Confession declare
+themselves on this subject. Yet this corruption of unregenerate man is, it
+must be added, no hindrance to his possession of true moral virtues and his
+performance of good actions in his civic life, actions which spring from a
+good principle, without any evil intention and without mixture of actual
+sin. Wherein I hope I shall be forgiven, if I have dared to diverge from
+the opinion of St. Augustine: he was doubtless a great man, of admirable
+intelligence, but inclined sometimes, as it seems, to exaggerate things,
+above all in the heat of his controversies. I greatly esteem some persons
+who profess to be disciples of St. Augustine, amongst others the Reverend
+Father Quênel, a worthy successor of the great Arnauld in the pursuit of
+controversies that have embroiled them with the most famous of Societies.
+But I have found that usually in disputes between people of conspicuous
+merit (of whom there are doubtless some here in both parties) there is
+right on both sides, although in different points, and it is rather in the
+matter of defence than attack, although the natural malevolence of the
+human heart generally renders attack more agreeable to the reader than
+defence. I hope that the Reverend Father Ptolemei, who does his Society
+credit and is occupied in filling the gaps left by the famous Bellarmine,
+will give us, concerning all of that, some explanations worthy of his
+acumen and his knowledge, and I even dare to add, his moderation. And one
+must believe that among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession there
+will arise some new Chemnitz or some new Callixtus; even as one is
+justified in thinking that men like Usserius or Daillé will again appear
+among the Reformed, and that all will work more and more to remove the
+misconceptions wherewith this matter is charged. For the rest I shall be
+well pleased that those who shall wish to examine it closely read the
+objections with the answers I have given thereto, formulated in the small
+treatise I have placed at the end of the work by way of summary. I have
+endeavoured to forestall some new objections. I have explained, for
+instance, why I have taken the antecedent and consequent will as
+preliminary and final, after the example of Thomas, of Scotus and others;
+how it is possible that there be incomparably more good in the glory of all
+the saved than there is evil in the misery of all the damned, despite  [71]
+that there are more of the latter; how, in saying that evil has been
+permitted as a _conditio sine qua non_ of good, I mean not according to the
+principle of necessity, but according to the principle of the fitness of
+things. Furthermore I show that the predetermination I admit is such as
+always to predispose, but never to necessitate, and that God will not
+refuse the requisite new light to those who have made a good use of that
+which they had. Other elucidations besides I have endeavoured to give on
+some difficulties which have been put before me of late. I have, moreover,
+followed the advice of some friends who thought it fitting that I should
+add two appendices: the one treats of the controversy carried on between
+Mr. Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall touching Freedom and Necessity, the other of
+the learned work on _The Origin of Evil_, published a short time ago in
+England.
+
+Finally I have endeavoured in all things to consider edification: and if I
+have conceded something to curiosity, it is because I thought it necessary
+to relieve a subject whose seriousness may cause discouragement. It is with
+that in view that I have introduced into this dissertation the pleasing
+chimera of a certain astronomical theology, having no ground for
+apprehension that it will ensnare anyone and deeming that to tell it and
+refute it is the same thing. Fiction for fiction, instead of imagining that
+the planets were suns, one might conceive that they were masses melted in
+the sun and thrown out, and that would destroy the foundation of this
+hypothetical theology. The ancient error of the two principles, which the
+Orientals distinguished by the names Oromasdes and Arimanius, caused me to
+explain a conjecture on the primitive history of peoples. It appears indeed
+probable that these were the names of two great contemporary princes, the
+one monarch of a part of upper Asia, where there have since been others of
+this name, the other king of the Scythian Celts who made incursions into
+the states of the former, and who was also named amongst the divinities of
+Germania. It seems, indeed, that Zoroaster used the names of these princes
+as symbols of the invisible powers which their exploits made them resemble
+in the ideas of Asiatics. Yet elsewhere, according to the accounts of Arab
+authors, who in this might well be better informed than the Greeks, it
+appears from detailed records of ancient oriental history, that this
+Zerdust or Zoroaster, whom they make contemporary with the great Darius,
+did not look upon these two principles as completely primitive and     [72]
+independent, but as dependent upon one supreme and single principle. They
+relate that he believed, in conformity with the cosmogony of Moses, that
+God, who is without an equal, created all and separated the light from the
+darkness; that the light conformed with his original design, but that the
+darkness came as a consequence, even as the shadow follows the body, and
+that this is nothing but privation. Such a thesis would clear this ancient
+author of the errors the Greeks imputed to him. His great learning caused
+the Orientals to compare him with the Mercury or Hermes of the Egyptians
+and Greeks; just as the northern peoples compared their Wodan or Odin to
+this same Mercury. That is why Mercredi (Wednesday), or the day of Mercury,
+was called Wodansdag by the northern peoples, but day of Zerdust by the
+Asiatics, since it is named Zarschamba or Dsearschambe by the Turks and the
+Persians, Zerda by the Hungarians from the north-east, and Sreda by the
+Slavs from the heart of Great Russia, as far as the Wends of the Luneburg
+region, the Slavs having learnt the name also from the Orientals. These
+observations will perhaps not be displeasing to the curious. And I flatter
+myself that the small dialogue ending the Essays written to oppose M. Bayle
+will give some satisfaction to those who are well pleased to see difficult
+but important truths set forth in an easy and familiar way. I have written
+in a foreign language at the risk of making many errors in it, because that
+language has been recently used by others in treating of my subject, and
+because it is more generally read by those whom one would wish to benefit
+by this small work. It is to be hoped that the language errors will be
+pardoned: they are to be attributed not only to the printer and the
+copyist, but also to the haste of the author, who has been much distracted
+from his task. If, moreover, any error has crept into the ideas expressed,
+the author will be the first to correct it, once he has been better
+informed: he has given elsewhere such indications of his love of truth that
+he hopes this declaration will not be regarded as merely an empty phrase.
+
+                                                                       [73]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH REASON
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1. I begin with the preliminary question of the _conformity of faith with
+reason_, and the use of philosophy in theology, because it has much
+influence on the main subject of my treatise, and because M. Bayle
+introduces it everywhere. I assume that two truths cannot contradict each
+other; that the object of faith is the truth God has revealed in an
+extraordinary way; and that reason is the linking together of truths, but
+especially (when it is compared with faith) of those whereto the human mind
+can attain naturally without being aided by the light of faith. This
+definition of reason (that is to say of strict and true reason) has
+surprised some persons accustomed to inveigh against reason taken in a
+vague sense. They gave me the answer that they had never heard of any such
+explanation of it: the truth is that they have never conferred with people
+who expressed themselves clearly on these subjects. They have confessed to
+me, nevertheless, that one could not find fault with reason, understood in
+the sense which I gave to it. It is in the same sense that sometimes reason
+is contrasted with experience. Reason, since it consists in the linking
+together of truths, is entitled to connect also those wherewith experience
+has furnished it, in order thence to draw mixed conclusions; but reason
+pure and simple, as distinct from experience, only has to do with truths
+independent of the senses. And one may compare faith with experience, since
+faith (in respect of the motives that give it justification) depends   [74]
+upon the experience of those who have seen the miracles whereon revelation
+is founded, and upon the trustworthy tradition which has handed them down
+to us, whether through the Scriptures or by the account of those who have
+preserved them. It is rather as we rely upon the experience of those who
+have seen China and on the credibility of their account when we give
+credence to the wonders that are told us of that distant country. Yet I
+would also take into account the inward motion of the Holy Spirit, who
+takes possession of souls and persuades them and prompts them to good, that
+is, to faith and to charity, without always having need of motives.
+
+2. Now the truths of reason are of two kinds: the one kind is of those
+called the 'Eternal Verities', which are altogether necessary, so that the
+opposite implies contradiction. Such are the truths whose necessity is
+logical, metaphysical or geometrical, which one cannot deny without being
+led into absurdities. There are others which may be called _positive_,
+because they are the laws which it has pleased God to give to Nature, or
+because they depend upon those. We learn them either by experience, that
+is, _a posteriori_, or by reason and _a priori_, that is, by considerations
+of the fitness of things which have caused their choice. This fitness of
+things has also its rules and reasons, but it is the free choice of God,
+and not a geometrical necessity, which causes preference for what is
+fitting and brings it into existence. Thus one may say that physical
+necessity is founded on moral necessity, that is, on the wise one's choice
+which is worthy of his wisdom; and that both of these ought to be
+distinguished from geometrical necessity. It is this physical necessity
+that makes order in Nature and lies in the rules of motion and in some
+other general laws which it pleased God to lay down for things when he gave
+them being. It is therefore true that God gave such laws not without
+reason, for he chooses nothing from caprice and as though by chance or in
+pure indifference; but the general reasons of good and of order, which have
+prompted him to the choice, may be overcome in some cases by stronger
+reasons of a superior order.
+
+3. Thus it is made clear that God can exempt creatures from the laws he has
+prescribed for them, and produce in them that which their nature does not
+bear by performing a miracle. When they have risen to perfections and
+faculties nobler than those whereto they can by their nature attain, the
+Schoolmen call this faculty an 'Obediential Power', that is to say, a  [75]
+power which the thing acquires by obeying the command of him who can give
+that which the thing has not. The Schoolmen, however, usually give
+instances of this power which to me appear impossible: they maintain, for
+example, that God can give the creature the faculty to create. It may be
+that there are miracles which God performs through the ministry of angels,
+where the laws of Nature are not violated, any more than when men assist
+Nature by art, the skill of angels differing from ours only by degree of
+perfection. Nevertheless it still remains true that the laws of Nature are
+subject to be dispensed from by the Law-giver; whereas the eternal
+verities, as for instance those of geometry, admit no dispensation, and
+faith cannot contradict them. Thus it is that there cannot be any
+invincible objection to truth. For if it is a question of proof which is
+founded upon principles or incontestable facts and formed by a linking
+together of eternal verities, the conclusion is certain and essential, and
+that which is contrary to it must be false; otherwise two contradictories
+might be true at the same time. If the objection is not conclusive, it can
+only form a probable argument, which has no force against faith, since it
+is agreed that the Mysteries of religion are contrary to appearances. Now
+M. Bayle declares, in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc, that he does not
+claim that there are demonstrations contrary to the truths of faith: and as
+a result all these insuperable difficulties, these so-called wars between
+reason and faith, vanish away.
+
+  _Hi motus animorum atque haec discrimina tanta,_
+  _Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt._
+
+4. Protestant theologians as well as those of the Roman confession admit
+the maxims which I have just laid down, when they handle the matter with
+attention; and all that is said against reason has no force save against a
+kind of counterfeit reason, corrupted and deluded by false appearances. It
+is the same with our notions of the justice and the goodness of God, which
+are spoken of sometimes as if we had neither any idea nor any definition of
+their nature. But in that case we should have no ground for ascribing these
+attributes to him, or lauding him for them. His goodness and his justice as
+well as his wisdom differ from ours only because they are infinitely more
+perfect. Thus the simple notions, the necessary truths and the conclusive
+results of philosophy cannot be contrary to revelation. And when some  [76]
+philosophical maxims are rejected in theology, the reason is that they are
+considered to have only a physical or moral necessity, which speaks only of
+that which takes place usually, and is consequently founded on appearances,
+but which may be withheld if God so pleases.
+
+5. It seems, according to what I have just said, that there is often some
+confusion in the expressions of those who set at variance philosophy and
+theology, or faith and reason: they confuse the terms 'explain',
+'comprehend', 'prove', 'uphold'. And I find that M. Bayle, shrewd as he is,
+is not always free from this confusion. Mysteries may be _explained_
+sufficiently to justify belief in them; but one cannot _comprehend_ them,
+nor give understanding of how they come to pass. Thus even in natural
+philosophy we explain up to a certain point sundry perceptible qualities,
+but in an imperfect manner, for we do not comprehend them. Nor is it
+possible for us, either, to prove Mysteries by reason; for all that which
+can be proved _a priori_, or by pure reason, can be comprehended. All that
+remains for us then, after having believed in the Mysteries by reason of
+the proofs of the truth of religion (which are called 'motives of
+credibility') is to be able to _uphold_ them against objections. Without
+that our belief in them would have no firm foundation; for all that which
+can be refuted in a sound and conclusive manner cannot but be false. And
+such proofs of the truth of religion as can give only a _moral certainty_
+would be balanced and even outweighed by such objections as would give an
+_absolute certainty_, provided they were convincing and altogether
+conclusive. This little might suffice me to remove the difficulties
+concerning the use of reason and philosophy in relation to religion if one
+had not to deal all too often with prejudiced persons. But as the subject
+is important and it has fallen into a state of confusion, it will be well
+to take it in greater detail.
+
+6. The question of the _conformity of faith with reason_ has always been a
+great problem. In the primitive Church the ablest Christian authors adapted
+themselves to the ideas of the Platonists, which were the most acceptable
+to them, and were at that time most generally in favour. Little by little
+Aristotle took the place of Plato, when the taste for systems began to
+prevail, and when theology itself became more systematic, owing to the
+decisions of the General Councils, which provided precise and positive
+formularies. St. Augustine, Boethius and Cassiodorus in the West, and  [77]
+St. John of Damascus in the East contributed most towards reducing theology
+to scientific form, not to mention Bede, Alcuin, St. Anselm and some other
+theologians versed in philosophy. Finally came the Schoolmen. The leisure
+of the cloisters giving full scope for speculation, which was assisted by
+Aristotle's philosophy translated from the Arabic, there was formed at last
+a compound of theology and philosophy wherein most of the questions arose
+from the trouble that was taken to reconcile faith with reason. But this
+had not met with the full success hoped for, because theology had been much
+corrupted by the unhappiness of the times, by ignorance and obstinacy.
+Moreover, philosophy, in addition to its own faults, which were very great,
+found itself burdened with those of theology, which in its turn was
+suffering from association with a philosophy that was very obscure and very
+imperfect. One must confess, notwithstanding, with the incomparable
+Grotius, that there is sometimes gold hidden under the rubbish of the
+monks' barbarous Latin. I have therefore oft-times wished that a man of
+talent, whose office had necessitated his learning the language of the
+Schoolmen, had chosen to extract thence whatever is of worth, and that
+another Petau or Thomasius had done in respect of the Schoolmen what these
+two learned men have done in respect of the Fathers. It would be a very
+curious work, and very important for ecclesiastical history, and it would
+continue the History of Dogmas up to the time of the Revival of Letters
+(owing to which the aspect of things has changed) and even beyond that
+point. For sundry dogmas, such as those of physical predetermination, of
+mediate knowledge, philosophical sin, objective precisions, and many other
+dogmas in speculative theology and even in the practical theology of cases
+of conscience, came into currency even after the Council of Trent.
+
+7. A little before these changes, and before the great schism in the West
+that still endures, there was in Italy a sect of philosophers which
+disputed this conformity of faith with reason which I maintain. They were
+dubbed 'Averroists' because they were adherents of a famous Arab author,
+who was called the Commentator by pre-eminence, and who appeared to be the
+one of all his race that penetrated furthest into Aristotle's meaning. This
+Commentator, extending what Greek expositors had already taught, maintained
+that according to Aristotle, and even according to reason (and at that time
+the two were considered almost identical) there was no case for the    [78]
+immortality of the soul. Here is his reasoning. The human kind is eternal,
+according to Aristotle, therefore if individual souls die not, one must
+resort to the metempsychosis rejected by that philosopher. Or, if there are
+always new souls, one must admit the infinity of these souls existing from
+all eternity; but actual infinity is impossible, according to the doctrine
+of the same Aristotle. Therefore it is a necessary conclusion that the
+souls, that is, the forms of organic bodies, must perish with the bodies,
+or at least this must happen to the passive understanding that belongs to
+each one individually. Thus there will only remain the active understanding
+common to all men, which according to Aristotle comes from outside, and
+which must work wheresoever the organs are suitably disposed; even as the
+wind produces a kind of music when it is blown into properly adjusted organ
+pipes.
+
+8. Nothing could have been weaker than this would-be proof. It is not true
+that Aristotle refuted metempsychosis, or that he proved the eternity of
+the human kind; and after all, it is quite untrue that an actual infinity
+is impossible. Yet this proof passed as irresistible amongst Aristotelians,
+and induced in them the belief that there was a certain sublunary
+intelligence and that our active intellect was produced by participation in
+it. But others who adhered less to Aristotle went so far as to advocate a
+universal soul forming the ocean of all individual souls, and believed this
+universal soul alone capable of subsisting, whilst individual souls are
+born and die. According to this opinion the souls of animals are born by
+being separated like drops from their ocean, when they find a body which
+they can animate; and they die by being reunited to the ocean of souls when
+the body is destroyed, as streams are lost in the sea. Many even went so
+far as to believe that God is that universal soul, although others thought
+that this soul was subordinate and created. This bad doctrine is very
+ancient and apt to dazzle the common herd. It is expressed in these
+beautiful lines of Vergil (_Aen._, VI, v. 724):
+
+  _Principio coelum ac terram camposque liquentes,_
+  _Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra,_
+  _Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus_
+  _Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet._
+  _Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitaeque volantum._
+
+                                                                       [79]
+And again elsewhere (_Georg._, IV, v. 221):
+
+      _Deum namque ire per omnes_
+  _Terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum:_
+  _Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,_
+  _Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas._
+  _Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri._
+
+9. Plato's Soul of the World has been taken in this sense by some, but
+there is more indication that the Stoics succumbed to that universal soul
+which swallows all the rest. Those who are of this opinion might be called
+'Monopsychites', since according to them there is in reality only one soul
+that subsists. M. Bernier observes that this is an opinion almost
+universally accepted amongst scholars in Persia and in the States of the
+Grand Mogul; it appears even that it has gained a footing with the
+Cabalists and with the mystics. A certain German of Swabian birth,
+converted to Judaism some years ago, who taught under the name Moses
+Germanus, having adopted the dogmas of Spinoza, believed that Spinoza
+revived the ancient Cabala of the Hebrews. And a learned man who confuted
+this proselyte Jew appears to be of the same opinion. It is known that
+Spinoza recognizes only substance in the world, whereof individual souls
+are but transient modifications. Valentin Weigel, Pastor of Zschopau in
+Saxony, a man of wit, even of excessive wit, although people would have it
+that he was a visionary, was perhaps to some extent of that opinion; as was
+also a man known as Johann Angelus Silesius, author of certain quite
+pleasing little devotional verses in German, in the form of epigrams, which
+have just been reprinted. In general, the mystics' doctrine of deification
+was liable to such a sinister interpretation. Gerson already has written
+opposing Ruysbroek, a mystical writer, whose intention was evidently good
+and whose expressions are excusable. But it would be better to write in a
+manner that has no need of excuses: although I confess that oft-times
+expressions which are extravagant, and as it were poetical, have greater
+force to move and to persuade than correct forms of statement.
+
+10. The annihilation of all that belongs to us in our own right, carried to
+great lengths by the Quietists, might equally well be veiled irreligion in
+certain minds, as is related, for example, concerning the Quietism of Foë,
+originator of a great Chinese sect. After having preached his religion [80]
+for forty years, when he felt death was approaching, he declared to his
+disciples that he had hidden the truth from them under the veil of
+metaphors, and that all reduced itself to Nothingness, which he said was
+the first source of all things. That was still worse, so it would seem,
+than the opinion of the Averroists. Both of these doctrines are
+indefensible and even extravagant; nevertheless some moderns have made no
+difficulty about adopting this one and universal Soul that engulfs the
+rest. It has met with only too much applause amongst the so-called
+freethinkers, and M. de Preissac, a soldier and man of wit, who dabbled in
+philosophy, at one time aired it publicly in his discourses. The System of
+Pre-established Harmony is the one best qualified to cure this evil. For it
+shows that there are of necessity substances which are simple and without
+extension, scattered throughout all Nature; that these substances must
+subsist independently of every other except God; and that they are never
+wholly separated from organic body. Those who believe that souls capable of
+feeling but incapable of reason are mortal, or who maintain that none but
+reasoning souls can have feeling, offer a handle to the Monopsychites. For
+it will ever be difficult to persuade men that beasts feel nothing; and
+once the admission has been made that that which is capable of feeling can
+die, it is difficult to found upon reason a proof of the immortality of our
+souls.
+
+11. I have made this short digression because it appeared to me seasonable
+at a time when there is only too much tendency to overthrow natural
+religion to its very foundations. I return then to the Averroists, who were
+persuaded that their dogma was proved conclusively in accordance with
+reason. As a result they declared that man's soul is, according to
+philosophy, mortal, while they protested their acquiescence in Christian
+theology, which declares the soul's immortality. But this distinction was
+held suspect, and this divorce between faith and reason was vehemently
+rejected by the prelates and the doctors of that time, and condemned in the
+last Lateran Council under Leo X. On that occasion also, scholars were
+urged to work for the removal of the difficulties that appeared to set
+theology and philosophy at variance. The doctrine of their incompatibility
+continued to hold its ground _incognito_. Pomponazzi was suspected of it,
+although he declared himself otherwise; and that very sect of the
+Averroists survived as a school. It is thought that Caesar Cremoninus, [81]
+a philosopher famous in his time, was one of its mainstays. Andreas
+Cisalpinus, a physician (and an author of merit who came nearest after
+Michael Servetus to the discovery of the circulation of the blood), was
+accused by Nicolas Taurel (in a book entitled _Alpes Caesae_) of belonging
+to these anti-religious Peripatetics. Traces of this doctrine are found
+also in the _Circulus Pisanus Claudii Berigardi_, an author of French
+nationality who migrated to Italy and taught philosophy at Pisa: but
+especially the writings and the letters of Gabriel Naudé, as well as the
+_Naudaeana_, show that Averroism still lived on when this learned physician
+was in Italy. Corpuscular philosophy, introduced shortly after, appears to
+have extinguished this excessively Peripatetic sect, or perhaps to have
+been intermixed with its teaching. It may be indeed that there have been
+Atomists who would be inclined to teach dogmas like those of the
+Averroists, if circumstances so permitted: but this abuse cannot harm such
+good as there is in Corpuscular philosophy, which can very well be combined
+with all that is sound in Plato and in Aristotle, and bring them both into
+harmony with true theology.
+
+12. The Reformers, and especially Luther, as I have already observed, spoke
+sometimes as if they rejected philosophy, and deemed it inimical to faith.
+But, properly speaking, Luther understood by philosophy only that which is
+in conformity with the ordinary course of Nature, or perhaps even
+philosophy as it was taught in the schools. Thus for example he says that
+it is impossible in philosophy, that is, in the order of Nature, that the
+word be made flesh; and he goes so far as to maintain that what is true in
+natural philosophy might be false in ethics. Aristotle was the object of
+his anger; and so far back as the year 1516 he contemplated the purging of
+philosophy, when he perhaps had as yet no thoughts of reforming the Church.
+But at last he curbed his vehemence and in the _Apology for the Augsburg
+Confession_ allowed a favourable mention of Aristotle and his _Ethics_.
+Melanchthon, a man of sound and moderate ideas, made little systems from
+the several parts of philosophy, adapted to the truths of revelation and
+useful in civic life, which deserve to be read even now. After him, Pierre
+de la Ramée entered the lists. His philosophy was much in favour: the sect
+of the Ramists was powerful in Germany, gaining many adherents among the
+Protestants, and even concerning itself with theology, until the revival of
+Corpuscular philosophy, which caused that of Ramée to fall into        [82]
+oblivion and weakened the authority of the Peripatetics.
+
+13. Meanwhile sundry Protestant theologians, deviating as far as they could
+from Scholastic philosophy, which prevailed in the opposite party, went so
+far as to despise philosophy itself, which to them was suspect. The
+controversy blazed up finally owing to the rancour of Daniel Hoffmann. He
+was an able theologian, who had previously gained a reputation at the
+Conference of Quedlinburg, when Tilemann Heshusius and he had supported
+Duke Julius of Brunswick in his refusal to accept the Formula of Concord.
+For some reason or other Dr. Hoffmann flew into a passion with philosophy,
+instead of being content to find fault with the wrong uses made thereof by
+philosophers. He was, however, aiming at the famous Caselius, a man
+esteemed by the princes and scholars of his time; and Henry Julius, Duke of
+Brunswick (son of Julius, founder of the University), having taken the
+trouble himself to investigate the matter, condemned the theologian. There
+have been some small disputes of the kind since, but it has always been
+found that they were misunderstandings. Paul Slevogt, a famous Professor at
+Jena in Thuringia, whose still extant treatises prove how well versed he
+was in Scholastic philosophy, as also in Hebrew literature, had published
+in his youth under the title of _Pervigilium_ a little book 'de dissidio
+Theologi et Philosophi in utriusque principiis fundato', bearing on the
+question whether God is accidentally the cause of sin. But it was easy to
+see that his aim was to demonstrate that theologians sometimes misuse
+philosophical terms.
+
+14. To come now to the events of my own time, I remember that when in 1666
+Louis Meyer, a physician of Amsterdam, published anonymously the book
+entitled _Philosophia Scripturae Interpres_ (by many persons wrongly
+attributed to Spinoza, his friend) the theologians of Holland bestirred
+themselves, and their written attacks upon this book gave rise to great
+disputes among them. Divers of them held the opinion that the Cartesians,
+in confuting the anonymous philosopher, had conceded too much to
+philosophy. Jean de Labadie (before he had seceded from the Reformed
+Church, his pretext being some abuses which he said had crept into public
+observance and which he considered intolerable) attacked the book by Herr
+von Wollzogen, and called it pernicious. On the other hand Herr Vogelsang,
+Herr van der Weye and some other anti-Cocceïans also assailed the same [83]
+book with much acrimony. But the accused won his case in a Synod.
+Afterwards in Holland people spoke of 'rational' and 'non-rational'
+theologians, a party distinction often mentioned by M. Bayle, who finally
+declared himself against the former. But there is no indication that any
+precise rules have yet been defined which the rival parties accept or
+reject with regard to the use of reason in the interpretation of Holy
+Scripture.
+
+15. A like dispute has threatened of late to disturb the peace in the
+Churches of the Augsburg Confession. Some Masters of Arts in the University
+of Leipzig gave private lessons at their homes, to students who sought them
+out in order to learn what is called 'Sacra Philologia', according to the
+practice of this university and of some others where this kind of study is
+not restricted to the Faculty of Theology. These masters pressed the study
+of the Holy Scriptures and the practice of piety further than their fellows
+had been wont to do. It is alleged that they had carried certain things to
+excess, and aroused suspicions of certain doctrinal innovations. This
+caused them to be dubbed 'Pietists', as though they were a new sect; and
+this name is one which has since caused a great stir in Germany. It has
+been applied somehow or other to those whom one suspected, or pretended to
+suspect, of fanaticism, or even of hypocrisy, concealed under some
+semblance of reform. Now some of the students attending these masters had
+become conspicuous for behaviour which gave general offence, and amongst
+other things for their scorn of philosophy, even, so it was said, burning
+their notebooks. In consequence the belief arose that their masters
+rejected philosophy: but they justified themselves very well; nor could
+they be convicted either of this error or of the heresies that were being
+imputed to them.
+
+16. The question of the use of philosophy in theology was debated much
+amongst Christians, and difficulty was experienced over settling the limits
+of its use when it came to detailed consideration. The Mysteries of the
+Trinity, of the Incarnation and of the Holy Communion gave most occasion
+for dispute. The new Photinians, disputing the first two Mysteries, made
+use of certain philosophic maxims which Andreas Kessler, a theologian of
+the Augsburg Confession, summarized in the various treatises that he
+published on the parts of the Socinian philosophy. But as to their
+metaphysics, one might instruct oneself better therein by reading the  [84]
+work of Christopher Stegmann the Socinian. It is not yet in print; but I
+saw it in my youth and it has been recently again in my hands.
+
+17. Calovius and Scherzer, authors well versed in Scholastic philosophy,
+and sundry other able theologians answered the Socinians at great length,
+and often with success: for they would not content themselves with the
+general and somewhat cavalier answers that were commonly used against that
+sect. The drift of such answers was: that their maxims were good in
+philosophy and not in theology; that it was the fault of heterogeneousness
+called [Greek: metábasis eis állo génos] to apply those maxims to a matter
+transcending reason; and that philosophy should be treated as a servant and
+not a mistress in relation to theology, according to the title of the book
+by a Scot named Robert Baronius, _Philosophia Theologiae ancillans_. In
+fine, philosophy was a Hagar beside Sara and must be driven from the house
+with her Ishmael when she was refractory. There is something good in these
+answers: but one might abuse them, and set natural truths and truths of
+revelation at variance. Scholars therefore applied themselves to
+distinguishing between what is necessary and indispensable in natural or
+philosophic truths and that which is not so.
+
+18. The two Protestant parties are tolerably in agreement when it is a
+question of making war on the Socinians; and as the philosophy of these
+sectaries is not of the most exact, in most cases the attack succeeded in
+reducing it. But the Protestants themselves had dissensions on the matter
+of the Eucharistic Sacrament. A section of those who are called Reformed
+(namely those who on that point follow rather Zwingli than Calvin) seemed
+to reduce the participation in the body of Jesus Christ in the Holy
+Communion to a mere figurative representation, employing the maxim of the
+philosophers which states that a body can only be in one place at a time.
+Contrariwise the Evangelicals (who name themselves thus in a particular
+sense to distinguish themselves from the Reformed), being more attached to
+the literal sense of Scripture, opined with Luther that this participation
+was real, and that here there lay a supernatural Mystery. They reject, in
+truth, the dogma of Transubstantiation, which they believe to be without
+foundation in the Text; neither do they approve that of Consubstantiation
+or of Impanation, which one could only impute to them if one were
+ill-informed on their opinion. For they admit no inclusion of the body [85]
+of Jesus Christ in the bread, nor do they even require any union of the one
+with the other: but they demand at least a concomitance, so that these two
+substances be received both at the same time. They believe that the
+ordinary sense of the words of Jesus Christ on an occasion so important as
+that which concerned the expression of his last wishes ought to be
+preserved. Thus in order to show that this sense is free from all absurdity
+which could make it repugnant to us, they maintain that the philosophic
+maxim restricting the existence of, and partaking in, bodies to one place
+alone is simply a consequence of the ordinary course of Nature. They make
+that no obstacle to the presence, in the ordinary sense of the word, of the
+body of our Saviour in such form as may be in keeping with the most
+glorified body. They do not resort to a vague diffusion of ubiquity, which
+would disperse the body and leave it nowhere in particular; nor do they
+admit the multiple-reduplication theory of some Schoolmen, as if to say one
+and the same body could be at the same time seated here and standing
+elsewhere. In fine, they so express themselves that many consider the
+opinion of Calvin, authorized by sundry confessions of faith from the
+Churches that have accepted his teaching, to be not so far removed from the
+Augsburg Confession as one might think: for he affirmed a partaking in the
+substance. The divergence rests perhaps only upon the fact that Calvin
+demands true faith in addition to the oral reception of the symbols, and
+consequently excludes the unworthy.
+
+19. Thence we see that the dogma of real and substantial participation can
+be supported (without resorting to the strange opinions of some Schoolmen)
+by a properly understood analogy between _immediate operation_ and
+_presence_. Many philosophers have deemed that, even in the order of
+Nature, a body may operate from a distance immediately on many remote
+bodies at the same time. So do they believe, all the more, that nothing can
+prevent divine Omnipotence from causing one body to be present in many
+bodies together, since the transition from immediate operation to presence
+is but slight, the one perhaps depending upon the other. It is true that
+modern philosophers for some time now have denied the immediate natural
+operation of one body upon another remote from it, and I confess that I am
+of their opinion. Meanwhile remote operation has just been revived in
+England by the admirable Mr. Newton, who maintains that it is the nature of
+bodies to be attracted and gravitate one towards another, in proportion[86]
+to the mass of each one, and the rays of attraction it receives.
+Accordingly the famous Mr. Locke, in his answer to Bishop Stillingfleet,
+declares that having seen Mr. Newton's book he retracts what he himself
+said, following the opinion of the moderns, in his _Essay concerning Human
+Understanding_, to wit, that a body cannot operate immediately upon another
+except by touching it upon its surface and driving it by its motion. He
+acknowledges that God can put properties into matter which cause it to
+operate from a distance. Thus the theologians of the Augsburg Confession
+claim that God may ordain not only that a body operate immediately on
+divers bodies remote from one another, but that it even exist in their
+neighbourhood and be received by them in a way with which distances of
+place and dimensions of space have nothing to do. Although this effect
+transcends the forces of Nature, they do not think it possible to show that
+it surpasses the power of the Author of Nature. For him it is easy to annul
+the laws that he has given or to dispense with them as seems good to him,
+in the same way as he was able to make iron float upon water and to stay
+the operation of fire upon the human body.
+
+20. I found in comparing the _Rationale Theologicum_ of Nicolaus Vedelius
+with the refutation by Johann Musaeus that these two authors, of whom one
+died while a Professor at Franecker after having taught at Geneva and the
+other finally became the foremost theologian at Jena, are more or less in
+agreement on the principal rules for the use of reason, but that it is in
+the application of these rules they disagree. For they both agree that
+revelation cannot be contrary to the truths whose necessity is called by
+philosophers 'logical' or 'metaphysical', that is to say, whose opposite
+implies contradiction. They both admit also that revelation will be able to
+combat maxims whose necessity is called 'physical' and is founded only upon
+the laws that the will of God has prescribed for Nature. Thus the question
+whether the presence of one and the same body in divers places is possible
+in the supernatural order only touches the application of the rule; and in
+order to decide this question conclusively by reason, one must needs
+explain exactly wherein the essence of body consists. Even the Reformed
+disagree thereon amongst themselves; the Cartesians confine it to
+extension, but their adversaries oppose that; and I think I have even
+observed that Gisbertus Voëtius, a famous theologian of Utrecht,       [87]
+doubted the alleged impossibility of plurality of locations.
+
+21. Furthermore, although the two Protestant parties agree that one must
+distinguish these two necessities which I have just indicated, namely
+metaphysical necessity and physical necessity, and that the first excludes
+exceptions even in the case of Mysteries, they are not yet sufficiently
+agreed upon the rules of interpretation, which serve to determine in what
+cases it is permitted to desert the letter of Scripture when one is not
+certain that it is contrary to strictly universal truths. It is agreed that
+there are cases where one must reject a literal interpretation that is not
+absolutely impossible, when it is otherwise unsuitable. For instance, all
+commentators agree that when our Lord said that Herod was a fox he meant it
+metaphorically; and one must accept that, unless one imagine with some
+fanatics that for the time the words of our Lord lasted Herod was actually
+changed into a fox. But it is not the same with the texts on which
+Mysteries are founded, where the theologians of the Augsburg Confession
+deem that one must keep to the literal sense. Since, moreover, this
+discussion belongs to the art of interpretation and not to that which is
+the proper sphere of logic, we will not here enter thereon, especially as
+it has nothing in common with the disputes that have arisen recently upon
+the conformity of faith with reason.
+
+22. Theologians of all parties, I believe (fanatics alone excepted), agree
+at least that no article of faith must imply contradiction or contravene
+proofs as exact as those of mathematics, where the opposite of the
+conclusion can be reduced _ad absurdum_, that is, to contradiction. St.
+Athanasius with good reason made sport of the preposterous ideas of some
+writers of his time, who maintained that God had suffered without any
+suffering. _'Passus est impassibiliter. O ludicram doctrinam aedificantem
+simul et demolientem!'_ It follows thence that certain writers have been
+too ready to grant that the Holy Trinity is contrary to that great
+principle which states that two things which are the same as a third are
+also the same as each other: that is to say, if A is the same as B, and if
+C is the same as B, then A and C must also be the same as each other. For
+this principle is a direct consequence of that of contradiction, and forms
+the basis of all logic; and if it ceases, we can no longer reason with
+certainty. Thus when one says that the Father is God, that the Son is God
+and that the Holy Spirit is God, and that nevertheless there is only   [88]
+one God, although these three Persons differ from one another, one must
+consider that this word _God_ has not the same sense at the beginning as at
+the end of this statement. Indeed it signifies now the Divine Substance and
+now a Person of the Godhead. In general, one must take care never to
+abandon the necessary and eternal truths for the sake of upholding
+Mysteries, lest the enemies of religion seize upon such an occasion for
+decrying both religion and Mysteries.
+
+23. The distinction which is generally drawn between that which is _above_
+reason and that which is _against_ reason is tolerably in accord with the
+distinction which has just been made between the two kinds of necessity.
+For what is contrary to reason is contrary to the absolutely certain and
+inevitable truths; and what is above reason is in opposition only to what
+one is wont to experience or to understand. That is why I am surprised that
+there are people of intelligence who dispute this distinction, and that M.
+Bayle should be of this number. The distinction is assuredly very well
+founded. A truth is above reason when our mind (or even every created mind)
+cannot comprehend it. Such is, as it seems to me, the Holy Trinity; such
+are the miracles reserved for God alone, as for instance Creation; such is
+the choice of the order of the universe, which depends upon universal
+harmony, and upon the clear knowledge of an infinity of things at once. But
+a truth can never be contrary to reason, and once a dogma has been disputed
+and refuted by reason, instead of its being incomprehensible, one may say
+that nothing is easier to understand, nor more obvious, than its absurdity.
+For I observed at the beginning that by REASON here I do not mean the
+opinions and discourses of men, nor even the habit they have formed of
+judging things according to the usual course of Nature, but rather the
+inviolable linking together of truths.
+
+24. I must come now to the great question which M. Bayle brought up
+recently, to wit, whether a truth, and especially a truth of faith, can
+prove to be subject to irrefutable objections. This excellent author
+appears to answer with a bold affirmative: he quotes theologians of repute
+in his party, and even in the Church of Rome, who appear to say the same as
+he affirms; and he cites philosophers who have believed that there are even
+philosophical truths whose champions cannot answer the objections that are
+brought up against them. He believes that the theological doctrine of  [89]
+predestination is of this nature, and in philosophy that of the composition
+of the _Continuum_. These are, indeed, the two labyrinths which have ever
+exercised theologians and philosophers. Libertus Fromondus, a theologian of
+Louvain (a great friend of Jansenius, whose posthumous book entitled
+_Augustinus_ he in fact published), who also wrote a book entitled
+explicitly _Labyrinthus de Compositione Continui_, experienced in full
+measure the difficulties inherent in both doctrines; and the renowned
+Ochino admirably presented what he calls 'the labyrinths of
+predestination'.
+
+25. But these writers have not denied the possibility of finding thread in
+the labyrinth; they have recognized the difficulty, but they have surely
+not turned difficulty into sheer impossibility. As for me, I confess that I
+cannot agree with those who maintain that a truth can admit of irrefutable
+objections: for is an _objection_ anything but an argument whose conclusion
+contradicts our thesis? And is not an irrefutable argument a
+_demonstration_? And how can one know the certainty of demonstrations
+except by examining the argument in detail, the form and the matter, in
+order to see if the form is good, and then if each premiss is either
+admitted or proved by another argument of like force, until one is able to
+make do with admitted premisses alone? Now if there is such an objection
+against our thesis we must say that the falsity of this thesis is
+demonstrated, and that it is impossible for us to have reasons sufficient
+to prove it; otherwise two contradictories would be true at once. One must
+always yield to proofs, whether they be proposed in positive form or
+advanced in the shape of objections. And it is wrong and fruitless to try
+to weaken opponents' proofs, under the pretext that they are only
+objections, since the opponent can play the same game and can reverse the
+denominations, exalting his arguments by naming them 'proofs' and sinking
+ours under the blighting title of 'objections'.
+
+26. It is another question whether we are always obliged to examine the
+objections we may have to face, and to retain some doubt in respect of our
+own opinion, or what is called _formido oppositi_, until this examination
+has been made. I would venture to say no, for otherwise one would never
+attain to certainty and our conclusion would be always provisional. I
+believe that able geometricians will scarce be troubled by the objections
+of Joseph Scaliger against Archimedes, or by those of Mr. Hobbes       [90]
+against Euclid; but that is because they have fully understood and are sure
+of the proofs. Nevertheless it is sometimes well to show oneself ready to
+examine certain objections. On the one hand it may serve to rescue people
+from their error, while on the other we ourselves may profit by it; for
+specious fallacies often contain some useful solution and bring about the
+removal of considerable difficulties. That is why I have always liked
+ingenious objections made against my own opinions, and I have never
+examined them without profit: witness those which M. Bayle formerly made
+against my System of Pre-established Harmony, not to mention those which M.
+Arnauld, M. l'Abbé Foucher and Father Lami, O.S.B., made to me on the same
+subject. But to return to the principal question, I conclude from reasons I
+have just set forth that when an objection is put forward against some
+truth, it is always possible to answer it satisfactorily.
+
+27. It may be also that M. Bayle does not mean 'insoluble objections' in
+the sense that I have just explained. I observe that he varies, at least in
+his expressions: for in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc he does not
+admit that one can bring demonstrations against the truths of faith. It
+appears therefore that he takes the objections to be insoluble only in
+respect of our present degree of enlightenment; and in this Reply, p. 35,
+he even does not despair of the possibility that one day a solution
+hitherto unknown may be found by someone. Concerning that more will be said
+later. I hold an opinion, however, that will perchance cause surprise,
+namely that this solution has been discovered entire, and is not even
+particularly difficult. Indeed a mediocre intelligence capable of
+sufficient care, and using correctly the rules of common logic, is in a
+position to answer the most embarrassing objection made against truth, when
+the objection is only taken from reason, and when it is claimed to be a
+'demonstration'. Whatever scorn the generality of moderns have to-day for
+the logic of Aristotle, one must acknowledge that it teaches infallible
+ways of resisting error in these conjunctures. For one has only to examine
+the argument according to the rules and it will always be possible to see
+whether it is lacking in form or whether there are premisses such as are
+not yet proved by a good argument.
+
+28. It is quite another matter when there is only a question of
+_probabilities_, for the art of judging from probable reasons is not yet
+well established; so that our logic in this connexion is still very    [91]
+imperfect, and to this very day we have little beyond the art of judging
+from demonstrations. But this art is sufficient here: for when it is a
+question of opposing reason to an article of our faith, one is not
+disturbed by objections that only attain probability. Everyone agrees that
+appearances are against Mysteries, and that they are by no means probable
+when regarded only from the standpoint of reason; but it suffices that they
+have in them nothing of absurdity. Thus demonstrations are required if they
+are to be refuted.
+
+29. And doubtless we are so to understand it when Holy Scripture warns us
+that the wisdom of God is foolishness before men, and when St. Paul
+observed that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is foolishness unto the Greeks, as
+well as unto the Jews a stumbling-block. For, after all, one truth cannot
+contradict another, and the light of reason is no less a gift of God than
+that of revelation. Also it is a matter of no difficulty among theologians
+who are expert in their profession, that the motives of credibility
+justify, once for all, the authority of Holy Scripture before the tribunal
+of reason, so that reason in consequence gives way before it, as before a
+new light, and sacrifices thereto all its probabilities. It is more or less
+as if a new president sent by the prince must show his letters patent in
+the assembly where he is afterwards to preside. That is the tendency of
+sundry good books that we have on the truth of religion, such as those of
+Augustinus Steuchus, of Du Plessis-Mornay or of Grotius: for the true
+religion must needs have marks that the false religions have not, else
+would Zoroaster, Brahma, Somonacodom and Mahomet be as worthy of belief as
+Moses and Jesus Christ. Nevertheless divine faith itself, when it is
+kindled in the soul, is something more than an opinion, and depends not
+upon the occasions or the motives that have given it birth; it advances
+beyond the intellect, and takes possession of the will and of the heart, to
+make us act with zeal and joyfully as the law of God commands. Then we have
+no further need to think of reasons or to pause over the difficulties of
+argument which the mind may anticipate.
+
+30. Thus what we have just said of human reason, which is extolled and
+decried by turns, and often without rule or measure, may show our lack of
+exactitude and how much we are accessary to our own errors. Nothing would
+be so easy to terminate as these disputes on the rights of faith and of
+reason if men would make use of the commonest rules of logic and reason[92]
+with even a modicum of attention. Instead of that, they become involved in
+oblique and ambiguous phrases, which give them a fine field for
+declamation, to make the most of their wit and their learning. It would
+seem, indeed, that they have no wish to see the naked truth, peradventure
+because they fear that it may be more disagreeable than error: for they
+know not the beauty of the Author of all things, who is the source of
+truth.
+
+31. This negligence is a general defect of humanity, and one not to be laid
+to the charge of any particular person. _Abundamus dulcibus vitiis_, as
+Quintilian said of the style of Seneca, and we take pleasure in going
+astray. Exactitude incommodes us and rules we regard as puerilities. Thus
+it is that common logic (although it is more or less sufficient for the
+examination of arguments that tend towards certainty) is relegated to
+schoolboys; and there is not even a thought for a kind of logic which
+should determine the balance between probabilities, and would be so
+necessary in deliberations of importance. So true is it that our mistakes
+for the most part come from scorn or lack of the art of thinking: for
+nothing is more imperfect than our logic when we pass beyond necessary
+arguments. The most excellent philosophers of our time, such as the authors
+of _The Art of Thinking_, of _The Search for Truth_ and of the _Essay
+concerning Human Understanding_, have been very far from indicating to us
+the true means fitted to assist the faculty whose business it is to make us
+weigh the probabilities of the true and the false: not to mention the art
+of discovery, in which success is still more difficult of attainment, and
+whereof we have nothing beyond very imperfect samples in mathematics.
+
+32. One thing which might have contributed most towards M. Bayle's belief
+that the difficulties of reason in opposition to faith cannot be obviated
+is that he seems to demand that God be justified in some such manner as
+that commonly used for pleading the cause of a man accused before his
+judge. But he has not remembered that in the tribunals of men, which cannot
+always penetrate to the truth, one is often compelled to be guided by signs
+and probabilities, and above all by presumptions or prejudices; whereas it
+is agreed, as we have already observed, that Mysteries are not probable.
+For instance, M. Bayle will not have it that one can justify the goodness
+of God in the permission of sin, because probability would be against a man
+that should happen to be in circumstances comparable in our eyes to    [93]
+this permission. God foresees that Eve will be deceived by the serpent if
+he places her in the circumstances wherein she later found herself; and
+nevertheless he placed her there. Now if a father or a guardian did the
+same in regard to his child or his ward, if a friend did so in regard to a
+young person whose behaviour was his concern, the judge would not be
+satisfied by the excuses of an advocate who said that the man only
+permitted the evil, without doing it or willing it: he would rather take
+this permission as a sign of ill intention, and would regard it as a sin of
+omission, which would render the one convicted thereof accessary in
+another's sin of commission.
+
+33. But it must be borne in mind that when one has foreseen the evil and
+has not prevented it although it seems as if one could have done so with
+ease, and one has even done things that have facilitated it, it does not
+follow on that account _necessarily_ that one is accessary thereto. It is
+only a very strong presumption, such as commonly replaces truth in human
+affairs, but which would be destroyed by an exact consideration of the
+facts, supposing we were capable of that in relation to God. For amongst
+lawyers that is called 'presumption' which must provisionally pass for
+truth in case the contrary is not proved; and it says more than
+'conjecture', although the _Dictionary_ of the Academy has not sifted the
+difference. Now there is every reason to conclude unquestionably that one
+would find through this consideration, if only it were attainable, that
+reasons most just, and stronger than those which appear contrary to them,
+have compelled the All-Wise to permit the evil, and even to do things which
+have facilitated it. Of this some instances will be given later.
+
+34. It is none too easy, I confess, for a father, a guardian, a friend to
+have such reasons in the case under consideration. Yet the thing is not
+absolutely impossible, and a skilled writer of fiction might perchance find
+an extraordinary case that would even justify a man in the circumstances I
+have just indicated. But in reference to God there is no need to suppose or
+to establish particular reasons such as may have induced him to permit the
+evil; general reasons suffice. One knows that he takes care of the whole
+universe, whereof all the parts are connected; and one must thence infer
+that he has had innumerable considerations whose result made him deem it
+inadvisable to prevent certain evils.
+
+35. It should even be concluded that there must have been great or     [94]
+rather invincible reasons which prompted the divine Wisdom to the
+permission of the evil that surprises us, from the mere fact that this
+permission has occurred: for nothing can come from God that is not
+altogether consistent with goodness, justice and holiness. Thus we can
+judge by the event (or _a posteriori_) that the permission was
+indispensable, although it be not possible for us to show this (_a priori_)
+by the detailed reasons that God can have had therefor; as it is not
+necessary either that we show this to justify him. M. Bayle himself aptly
+says concerning that (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III,
+ch. 165, p. 1067): Sin made its way into the world; God therefore was able
+to permit it without detriment to his perfections; _ab actu ad potentiam
+valet consequentia._ In God this conclusion holds good: he did this,
+therefore he did it well. It is not, then, that we have no notion of
+justice in general fit to be applied also to God's justice; nor is it that
+God's justice has other rules than the justice known of men, but that the
+case in question is quite different from those which are common among men.
+Universal right is the same for God and for men; but the question of fact
+is quite different in their case and his.
+
+36. We may even assume or pretend (as I have already observed) that there
+is something similar among men to this circumstance in God's actions. A man
+might give such great and strong proofs of his virtue and his holiness that
+all the most apparent reasons one could put forward against him to charge
+him with an alleged crime, for instance a larceny or murder, would deserve
+to be rejected as the calumnies of false witnesses or as an extraordinary
+play of chance which sometimes throws suspicion on the most innocent. Thus
+in a case where every other would run the risk of being condemned or put to
+the torture (according to the laws of the country), this man would be
+absolved by his judges unanimously. Now in this case, which indeed is rare,
+but which is not impossible, one might say in a sense (_sano sensu_) that
+there is a conflict between reason and faith, and that the rules of law are
+other in respect of this person than they are in respect of the remainder
+of mankind. But that, when explained, will signify only that appearances of
+reason here give way before the faith that is due to the word and the
+integrity of this great and holy man, and that he is privileged above other
+men; not indeed as if there were one law for others and another for him,
+nor as if one had no understanding of what justice is in relation to him.
+It is rather because the rules of universal justice do not find here   [95]
+the application that they receive elsewhere, or because they favour him
+instead of accusing him, since there are in this personage qualities so
+admirable, that by virtue of a good logic of probabilities one should place
+more faith in his word than in that of many others.
+
+37. Since it is permitted here to imagine possible cases, may one not
+suppose this incomparable man to be the Adept or the Possessor of
+
+                  _'that blessed Stone_
+  _Able to enrich all earthly Kings alone'_
+
+and that he spends every day prodigious sums in order to feed and to rescue
+from distress countless numbers of poor men? Be there never so many
+witnesses or appearances of every kind tending to prove that this great
+benefactor of the human race has just committed some larceny, is it not
+true that the whole earth would make mock of the accusation, however
+specious it might be? Now God is infinitely above the goodness and the
+power of this man, and consequently there are no reasons at all, however
+apparent they be, that can hold good against faith, that is, against the
+assurance or the confidence in God wherewith we can and ought to say that
+God has done all things well. The objections are therefore not insoluble.
+They only involve prejudices and probabilities, which are, however,
+overthrown by reasons incomparably stronger. One must not say either that
+what we call _justice_ is nothing in relation to God, that he is the
+absolute Master of all things even to the point of being able to condemn
+the innocent without violating his justice, or finally that justice is
+something arbitrary where he is concerned. Those are rash and dangerous
+expressions, whereunto some have been led astray to the discredit of the
+attributes of God. For if such were the case there would be no reason for
+praising his goodness and his justice: rather would it be as if the most
+wicked spirit, the Prince of evil genii, the evil principle of the
+Manichaeans, were the sole master of the universe, just as I observed
+before. What means would there be of distinguishing the true God from the
+false God of Zoroaster if all things depended upon the caprice of an
+arbitrary power and there were neither rule nor consideration for anything
+whatever?
+
+38. It is therefore more than evident that nothing compels us to commit
+ourselves to a doctrine so strange, since it suffices to say that we   [96]
+have not enough knowledge of the facts when there is a question of
+answering probabilities which appear to throw doubt upon the justice and
+the goodness of God, and which would vanish away if the facts were well
+known to us. We need neither renounce reason in order to listen to faith
+nor blind ourselves in order to see clearly, as Queen Christine used to
+say: it is enough to reject ordinary appearances when they are contrary to
+Mysteries; and this is not contrary to reason, since even in natural things
+we are very often undeceived about appearances either by experience or by
+superior reasons. All that has been set down here in advance, only with the
+object of showing more plainly wherein the fault of the objections and the
+abuse of reason consists in the present case, where the claim is made that
+reason has greatest force against faith: we shall come afterwards to a more
+exact discussion of that which concerns the origin of evil and the
+permission of sin with its consequences.
+
+39. For now, it will be well to continue our examination of the important
+question of the use of reason in theology, and to make reflexions upon what
+M. Bayle has said thereon in divers passages of his works. As he paid
+particular attention in his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_ to
+expounding the objections of the Manichaeans and those of the Pyrrhonians,
+and as this procedure had been criticized by some persons zealous for
+religion, he placed a dissertation at the end of the second edition of this
+_Dictionary_, which aimed at showing, by examples, by authorities and by
+reasons, the innocence and usefulness of his course of action. I am
+persuaded (as I have said above) that the specious objections one can urge
+against truth are very useful, and that they serve to confirm and to
+illumine it, giving opportunity to intelligent persons to find new openings
+or to turn the old to better account. But M. Bayle seeks therein a
+usefulness quite the reverse of this: it would be that of displaying the
+power of faith by showing that the truths it teaches cannot sustain the
+attacks of reason and that it nevertheless holds its own in the heart of
+the faithful. M. Nicole seems to call that 'the triumph of God's authority
+over human reason', in the words of his quoted by M. Bayle in the third
+volume of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_ (ch. 177, p. 120).
+But since reason is a gift of God, even as faith is, contention between
+them would cause God to contend against God; and if the objections of
+reason against any article of faith are insoluble, then it must be said
+that this alleged article will be false and not revealed: this will be [97]
+a chimera of the human mind, and the triumph of this faith will be capable
+of comparison with bonfires lighted after a defeat. Such is the doctrine of
+the damnation of unbaptized children, which M. Nicole would have us assume
+to be a consequence of original sin; such would be the eternal damnation of
+adults lacking the light that is necessary for the attainment of salvation.
+
+40. Yet everyone need not enter into theological discussions; and persons
+whose condition allows not of exact researches should be content with
+instruction on faith, without being disturbed by the objections; and if
+some exceeding great difficulty should happen to strike them, it is
+permitted to them to avert the mind from it, offering to God a sacrifice of
+their curiosity: for when one is assured of a truth one has no need to
+listen to the objections. As there are many people whose faith is rather
+small and shallow to withstand such dangerous tests, I think one must not
+present them with that which might be poisonous for them; or, if one cannot
+hide from them what is only too public, the antidote must be added to it;
+that is to say, one must try to add the answer to the objection, certainly
+not withhold it as unobtainable.
+
+41. The passages from the excellent theologians who speak of this triumph
+of faith can and should receive a meaning appropriate to the principles I
+have just affirmed. There appear in some objects of faith two great
+qualities capable of making it triumph over reason, the one is
+_incomprehensibility_, the other is _the lack of probability_. But one must
+beware of adding thereto the third quality whereof M. Bayle speaks, and of
+saying that what one believes is _indefensible_: for that would be to cause
+reason in its turn to triumph in a manner that would destroy faith.
+Incomprehensibility does not prevent us from believing even natural truths.
+For instance (as I have already pointed out) we do not comprehend the
+nature of odours and savours, and yet we are persuaded, by a kind of faith
+which we owe to the evidence of the senses, that these perceptible
+qualities are founded upon the nature of things and that they are not
+illusions.
+
+42. There are also things contrary to appearances, which we admit when they
+are sufficiently verified. There is a little romance of Spanish origin,
+whose title states that one must not always believe what one sees. What was
+there more specious than the lie of the false Martin Guerre, who was
+acknowledged as the true Martin by the true Martin's wife and          [98]
+relatives, and caused the judges and the relatives to waver for a long time
+even after the arrival of the other? Nevertheless the truth was known in
+the end. It is the same with faith. I have already observed that all one
+can oppose to the goodness and the justice of God is nothing but
+appearances, which would be strong against a man, but which are nullified
+when they are applied to God and when they are weighed against the proofs
+that assure us of the infinite perfection of his attributes. Thus faith
+triumphs over false reasons by means of sound and superior reasons that
+have made us embrace it; but it would not triumph if the contrary opinion
+had for it reasons as strong as or even stronger than those which form the
+foundation of faith, that is, if there were invincible and conclusive
+objections against faith.
+
+43. It is well also to observe here that what M. Bayle calls a 'triumph of
+faith' is in part a triumph of demonstrative reason against apparent and
+deceptive reasons which are improperly set against the demonstrations. For
+it must be taken into consideration that the objections of the Manichaeans
+are hardly less contrary to natural theology than to revealed theology. And
+supposing one surrendered to them Holy Scripture, original sin, the grace
+of God in Jesus Christ, the pains of hell and the other articles of our
+religion, one would not even so be delivered from their objections: for one
+cannot deny that there is in the world physical evil (that is, suffering)
+and moral evil (that is, crime) and even that physical evil is not always
+distributed here on earth according to the proportion of moral evil, as it
+seems that justice demands. There remains, then, this question of natural
+theology, how a sole Principle, all-good, all-wise and all-powerful, has
+been able to admit evil, and especially to permit sin, and how it could
+resolve to make the wicked often happy and the good unhappy?
+
+44. Now we have no need of revealed faith to know that there is such a sole
+Principle of all things, entirely good and wise. Reason teaches us this by
+infallible proofs; and in consequence all the objections taken from the
+course of things, in which we observe imperfections, are only based on
+false appearances. For, if we were capable of understanding the universal
+harmony, we should see that what we are tempted to find fault with is
+connected with the plan most worthy of being chosen; in a word, we _should
+see_, and should not _believe_ only, that what God has done is the best. I
+call 'seeing' here what one knows _a priori_ by the causes; and        [99]
+'believing' what one only judges by the effects, even though the one be as
+certainly known as the other. And one can apply here too the saying of St.
+Paul (2 Cor. v. 7), that we walk by _faith_ and not by _sight_. For the
+infinite wisdom of God being known to us, we conclude that the evils we
+experience had to be permitted, and this we conclude from the effect or _a
+posteriori_, that is to say, because they exist. It is what M. Bayle
+acknowledges; and he ought to content himself with that, and not claim that
+one must put an end to the false appearances which are contrary thereto. It
+is as if one asked that there should be no more dreams or optical
+illusions.
+
+45. And it is not to be doubted that this faith and this confidence in God,
+who gives us insight into his infinite goodness and prepares us for his
+love, in spite of the appearances of harshness that may repel us, are an
+admirable exercise for the virtues of Christian theology, when the divine
+grace in Jesus Christ arouses these motions within us. That is what Luther
+aptly observed in opposition to Erasmus, saying that it is love in the
+highest degree to love him who to flesh and blood appears so unlovable, so
+harsh toward the unfortunate and so ready to condemn, and to condemn for
+evils in which he appears to be the cause or accessary, at least in the
+eyes of those who allow themselves to be dazzled by false reasons. One may
+therefore say that the triumph of true reason illumined by divine grace is
+at the same time the triumph of faith and love.
+
+46. M. Bayle appears to have taken the matter quite otherwise: he declares
+himself against reason, when he might have been content to censure its
+abuse. He quotes the words of Cotta in Cicero, where he goes so far as to
+say that if reason were a gift of the gods providence would be to blame for
+having given it, since it tends to our harm. M. Bayle also thinks that
+human reason is a source of destruction and not of edification (_Historical
+and Critical Dictionary_, p. 2026, col. 2), that it is a runner who knows
+not where to stop, and who, like another Penelope, herself destroys her own
+work.
+
+  _Destruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis._
+
+(_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, p. 725). But he takes
+pains especially to pile up many authorities one upon the other, in order
+to show that theologians of all parties reject the use of reason just as he
+does, and that they call attention to such gleams of reason as oppose
+religion only that they may sacrifice them to faith by a mere         [100]
+repudiation, answering nothing but the conclusion of the argument that is
+brought against them. He begins with the New Testament. Jesus Christ was
+content to say: 'Follow Me' (Luke v. 27; ix. 59). The Apostles said:
+'Believe, and thou shalt be saved' (Acts xvi. 3). St. Paul acknowledges
+that his 'doctrine is obscure' (1 Cor. xiii. 12), that 'one can comprehend
+nothing therein' unless God impart a spiritual discernment, and without
+that it only passes for foolishness (1 Cor. ii. 14). He exhorts the
+faithful 'to beware of philosophy' (Col. ii. 8) and to avoid disputations
+in that science, which had caused many persons to lose faith.
+
+47. As for the Fathers of the Church, M. Bayle refers us to the collection
+of passages from them against the use of philosophy and of reason which M.
+de Launoy made (_De Varia Aristotelis Fortuna,_ cap. 2) and especially to
+the passages from St. Augustine collected by M. Arnauld (against Mallet),
+which state: that the judgements of God are inscrutable; that they are not
+any the less just for that they are unknown to us; that it is a deep abyss,
+which one cannot fathom without running the risk of falling down the
+precipice; that one cannot without temerity try to elucidate that which God
+willed to keep hidden; that his will cannot but be just; that many men,
+having tried to explain this incomprehensible depth, have fallen into vain
+imaginations and opinions full of error and bewilderment.
+
+48. The Schoolmen have spoken in like manner. M. Bayle quotes a beautiful
+passage from Cardinal Cajetan (Part I, _Summ._, qu. 22, art. 4) to this
+effect: 'Our mind', he says, 'rests not upon the evidence of known truth
+but upon the impenetrable depth of hidden truth. And as St. Gregory says:
+He who believes touching the Divinity only that which he can gauge with his
+mind belittles the idea of God. Yet I do not surmise that it is necessary
+to deny any of the things which we know, or which we see as appertaining to
+the immutability, the actuality, the certainty, the universality, etc., of
+God: but I think that there is here some secret, either in regard to the
+relation which exists between God and the event, or in respect of what
+connects the event itself with his prevision. Thus, reflecting that the
+understanding of our soul is the eye of the owl, I find the soul's repose
+only in ignorance. For it is better both for the Catholic Faith and for
+Philosophic Faith to confess our blindness, than to affirm as evident what
+does not afford our mind the contentment which self-evidence gives. I do
+not accuse of presumption, on that account, all the learned men who   [101]
+stammeringly have endeavoured to suggest, as far as in them lay, the
+immobility and the sovereign and eternal efficacy of the understanding, of
+the will and of the power of God, through the infallibility of divine
+election and divine relation to all events. Nothing of all that interferes
+with my surmise that there is some depth which is hidden from us.' This
+passage of Cajetan is all the more notable since he was an author competent
+to reach the heart of the matter.
+
+49. Luther's book against Erasmus is full of vigorous comments hostile to
+those who desire to submit revealed truths to the tribunal of our reason.
+Calvin often speaks in the same tone, against the inquisitive daring of
+those who seek to penetrate into the counsels of God. He declares in his
+treatise on predestination that God had just causes for damning some men,
+but causes unknown to us. Finally M. Bayle quotes sundry modern writers who
+have spoken to the same effect (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_,
+ch. 161 et seq.).
+
+50. But all these expressions and innumerable others like them do not prove
+that the objections opposed to faith are so insoluble as M. Bayle supposes.
+It is true that the counsels of God are inscrutable, but there is no
+invincible objection which tends to the conclusion that they are unjust.
+What appears injustice on the part of God, and foolishness in our faith,
+only appears so. The famous passage of Tertullian (_De Carne Christi_),
+'mortuus est Dei filius, credibile est, quia ineptum est; et sepultus
+revixit, certum est, quia impossibile', is a sally that can only be meant
+to concern appearances of absurdity. There are others like them in Luther's
+book on _Freewill in Bondage_, as when he says (ch. 174): 'Si placet tibi
+Deus indignos coronans, non debet displicere immeritos damnans.' Which
+being reduced to more temperate phrasing, means: If you approve that God
+give eternal glory to those who are not better than the rest, you should
+not disapprove that he abandon those who are not worse than the rest. And
+to judge that he speaks only of appearances of injustice, one only has to
+weigh these words of the same author taken from the same book: 'In all the
+rest', he says, 'we recognize in God a supreme majesty; there is only
+justice that we dare to question: and we will not believe provisionally
+[tantisper] that he is just, albeit he has promised us that the time shall
+come when his glory being revealed all men shall see clearly that he has
+been and that he is just.'
+
+                                                                      [102]
+51. It will be found also that when the Fathers entered into a discussion
+they did not simply reject reason. And, in disputations with the pagans,
+they endeavour usually to show how paganism is contrary to reason, and how
+the Christian religion has the better of it on that side also. Origen
+showed Celsus how reasonable Christianity is and why, notwithstanding, the
+majority of Christians should believe without examination. Celsus had
+jeered at the behaviour of Christians, 'who, willing', he said, 'neither to
+listen to your reasons nor to give you any for what they believe, are
+content to say to you: Examine not, only believe, or: Your faith will save
+you; and they hold this as a maxim, that the wisdom of the world is an
+evil.'
+
+52. Origen gives the answer of a wise man, and in conformity with the
+principles we have established in the matter. For reason, far from being
+contrary to Christianity, serves as a foundation for this religion, and
+will bring about its acceptance by those who can achieve the examination of
+it. But, as few people are capable of this, the heavenly gift of plain
+faith tending towards good suffices for men in general. 'If it were
+possible', he says, 'for all men, neglecting the affairs of life, to apply
+themselves to study and meditation, one need seek no other way to make them
+accept the Christian religion. For, to say nothing likely to offend anyone'
+(he insinuates that the pagan religion is absurd, but he will not say so
+explicitly), 'there will be found therein no less exactitude than
+elsewhere, whether in the discussion of its dogmas, or in the elucidation
+of the enigmatical expressions of its prophets, or in the interpretation of
+the parables of its gospels and of countless other things happening or
+ordained symbolically. But since neither the necessities of life nor the
+infirmities of men permit of this application to study, save for a very
+small number of persons, what means could one find more qualified to
+benefit everyone else in the world than those Jesus Christ wished to be
+used for the conversion of the nations? And I would fain ask with regard to
+the great number of those who believe, and who thereby have withdrawn
+themselves from the quagmire of vices wherein before they were plunged,
+which would be the better: to have thus changed one's morals and reformed
+one's life, believing without examination that there are punishments for
+sin and rewards for good actions; or to have waited for one's conversion
+until one not only believed but had examined with care the foundations of
+these dogmas? It is certain that, were this method to be followed, few[103]
+indeed would reach that point whither they are led by their plain and
+simple faith, but the majority would remain in their corruption.'
+
+53. M. Bayle (in his explanation concerning the objections of the
+Manichaeans, placed at the end of the second edition of the _Dictionary_)
+takes those words where Origen points out that religion can stand the test
+of having her dogmas discussed, as if it were not meant in relation to
+philosophy, but only in relation to the accuracy wherewith the authority
+and the true meaning of Holy Scripture is established. But there is nothing
+to indicate this restriction. Origen wrote against a philosopher whom such
+a restriction would not have suited. And it appears that this Father wished
+to point out that among Christians there was no less exactitude than among
+the Stoics and some other philosophers, who established their doctrine as
+much by reason as by authorities, as, for example, Chrysippus did, who
+found his philosophy even in the symbols of pagan antiquity.
+
+54. Celsus brings up still another objection to the Christians, in the same
+place. 'If they withdraw', he says, 'regularly into their "Examine not,
+only believe", they must tell me at least what are the things they wish me
+to believe.' Therein he is doubtless right, and that tells against those
+who would say that God is good and just, and who yet would maintain that we
+have no notion of goodness and of justice when we attribute these
+perfections to him. But one must not always demand what I call 'adequate
+notions', involving nothing that is not explained, since even perceptible
+qualities, like heat, light, sweetness, cannot give us such notions. Thus
+we agreed that Mysteries should receive an explanation, but this
+explanation is imperfect. It suffices for us to have some analogical
+understanding of a Mystery such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, to the
+end that in accepting them we pronounce not words altogether devoid of
+meaning: but it is not necessary that the explanation go as far as we would
+wish, that is, to the extent of comprehension and to the _how_.
+
+55. It appears strange therefore that M. Bayle rejects the tribunal of
+_common notions_ (in the third volume of his _Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, pp. 1062 and 1140) as if one should not consult the idea of
+goodness in answering the Manichaeans; whereas he had declared himself
+quite differently in his _Dictionary_. Of necessity there must be agreement
+upon the meaning of _good_ and _bad_, amongst those who are in dispute[104]
+over the question whether there is only one principle, altogether good, or
+whether there are two, the one good and the other bad. We understand
+something by union when we are told of the union of one body with another
+or of a substance with its accident, of a subject with its adjunct, of the
+place with the moving body, of the act with the potency; we also mean
+something when we speak of the union of the soul with the body to make
+thereof one single person. For albeit I do not hold that the soul changes
+the laws of the body, or that the body changes the laws of the soul, and I
+have introduced the Pre-established Harmony to avoid this derangement, I
+nevertheless admit a true union between the soul and the body, which makes
+thereof a suppositum. This union belongs to the metaphysical, whereas a
+union of influence would belong to the physical. But when we speak of the
+union of the Word of God with human nature we should be content with an
+analogical knowledge, such as the comparison of the union of the soul with
+the body is capable of giving us. We should, moreover, be content to say
+that the Incarnation is the closest union that can exist between the
+Creator and the creature; and further we should not want to go.
+
+56. It is the same with the other Mysteries, where moderate minds will ever
+find an explanation sufficient for belief, but never such as would be
+necessary for understanding. A certain _what it is_ ([Greek: ti esti]) is
+enough for us, but the _how_ ([Greek: pôs]) is beyond us, and is not
+necessary for us. One may say concerning the explanations of Mysteries
+which are given out here and there, what the Queen of Sweden inscribed upon
+a medal concerning the crown she had abandoned, 'Non mi bisogna, e non mi
+basta.' Nor have we any need either (as I have already observed) to prove
+the Mysteries _a priori_, or to give a reason for them; it suffices us
+_that the thing is thus_ ([Greek: to hoti]) even though we know not the
+_why_ ([Greek: to dioti]), which God has reserved for himself. These lines,
+written on that theme by Joseph Scaliger, are beautiful and renowned:
+
+  _Ne curiosus quaere causas omnium,_
+  _Quaecumque libris vis Prophetarum indidit_
+  _Afflata caelo, plena veraci Deo:_
+  _Nec operta sacri supparo silentii_
+  _Irrumpere aude, sed pudenter praeteri._
+  [Page 105]
+  _Nescire velle, quae Magister optimus_
+  _Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est._
+
+M. Bayle, who quotes them (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol.
+III, p. 1055), holds the likely opinion that Scaliger made them upon the
+disputes between Arminius and Gomarus. I think M. Bayle repeated them from
+memory, for he put _sacrata_ instead of _afflata_. But it is apparently the
+printer's fault that _prudenter_ stands in place of _pudenter_ (that is,
+modestly) which the metre requires.
+
+57. Nothing can be more judicious than the warning these lines contain; and
+M. Bayle is right in saying (p. 729) that those who claim that the
+behaviour of God with respect to sin and the consequences of sin contains
+nothing but what they can account for, deliver themselves up to the mercy
+of their adversary. But he is not right in combining here two very
+different things, 'to account for a thing', and 'to uphold it against
+objections'; as he does when he presently adds: 'They are obliged to follow
+him [their adversary] everywhere whither he shall wish to lead them, and it
+would be to retire ignominiously and ask for quarter, if they were to admit
+that our intelligence is too weak to remove completely all the objections
+advanced by a philosopher.'
+
+58. It seems here that, according to M. Bayle, 'accounting for' comes short
+of 'answering objections', since he threatens one who should undertake the
+first with the resulting obligation to pass on to the second. But it is
+quite the opposite: he who maintains a thesis (the _respondens_) is not
+bound to account for it, but he is bound to meet the objections of an
+opponent. A defendant in law is not bound (as a general rule) to prove his
+right or to produce his title to possession; but he is obliged to reply to
+the arguments of the plaintiff. I have marvelled many times that a writer
+so precise and so shrewd as M. Bayle so often here confuses things where so
+much difference exists as between these three acts of reason: to
+comprehend, to prove, and to answer objections; as if when it is a question
+of the use of reason in theology one term were as good as another. Thus he
+says in his posthumous Conversations, p. 73: 'There is no principle which
+M. Bayle has more often inculcated than this, that the incomprehensibility
+of a dogma and the insolubility of the objections that oppose it provide no
+legitimate reason for rejecting it.' This is true as regards the
+incomprehensibility, but it is not the same with the insolubility. And it
+is indeed just as if one said that an invincible reason against a     [106]
+thesis was not a legitimate reason for rejecting it. For what other
+legitimate reason for rejecting an opinion can one find, if an invincible
+opposing argument is not such an one? And what means shall one have
+thereafter of demonstrating the falsity, and even the absurdity, of any
+opinion?
+
+59. It is well to observe also that he who proves a thing _a priori_
+accounts for it through the efficient cause; and whosoever can thus account
+for it in a precise and adequate manner is also in a position to comprehend
+the thing. Therefore it was that the Scholastic theologians had already
+censured Raymond Lully for having undertaken to demonstrate the Trinity by
+philosophy. This so-called demonstration is to be found in his _Works_; and
+Bartholomaeus Keckermann, a writer renowned in the Reformed party, having
+made an attempt of just the same kind upon the same Mystery, has been no
+less censured for it by some modern theologians. Therefore censure will
+fall upon those who shall wish to account for this Mystery and make it
+comprehensible, but praise will be given to those who shall toil to uphold
+it against the objections of adversaries.
+
+60. I have said already that theologians usually distinguish between what
+is above reason and what is against reason. They place _above_ reason that
+which one cannot comprehend and which one cannot account for. But _against_
+reason will be all opinion that is opposed by invincible reasons, or the
+contrary of which can be proved in a precise and sound manner. They avow,
+therefore, that the Mysteries are above reason, but they do not admit that
+they are contrary to it. The English author of a book which is ingenious,
+but has met with disapproval, entitled _Christianity not Mysterious_,
+wished to combat this distinction; but it does not seem to me that he has
+at all weakened it. M. Bayle also is not quite satisfied with this accepted
+distinction. This is what he says on the matter (vol. III of the _Reply to
+the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 158). Firstly (p. 998) he
+distinguishes, together with M. Saurin, between these two theses: the one,
+_all the dogmas of Christianity are in conformity with reason_; the other,
+_human reason knows that they are in conformity with reason_. He affirms
+the first and denies the second. I am of the same opinion, if in saying
+'that a dogma conforms to reason' one means that it is possible to account
+for it or to explain its _how_ by reason; for God could doubtless do so,
+and we cannot. But I think that one must affirm both theses if by     [107]
+'knowing that a dogma conforms to reason' one means that we can
+demonstrate, if need be, that there is no contradiction between this dogma
+and reason, repudiating the objections of those who maintain that this
+dogma is an absurdity.
+
+61. M. Bayle explains himself here in a manner not at all convincing. He
+acknowledges fully that our Mysteries are in accordance with the supreme
+and universal reason that is in the divine understanding, or with reason in
+general; yet he denies that they are in accordance with that part of reason
+which man employs to judge things. But this portion of reason which we
+possess is a gift of God, and consists in the natural light that has
+remained with us in the midst of corruption; thus it is in accordance with
+the whole, and it differs from that which is in God only as a drop of water
+differs from the ocean or rather as the finite from the infinite. Therefore
+Mysteries may transcend it, but they cannot be contrary to it. One cannot
+be contrary to one part without being contrary to the whole. That which
+contradicts a proposition of Euclid is contrary to the _Elements_ of
+Euclid. That which in us is contrary to the Mysteries is not reason nor is
+it the natural light or the linking together of truths; it is corruption,
+or error, or prejudice, or darkness.
+
+62. M. Bayle (p. 1002) is not satisfied with the opinion of Josua Stegman
+and of M. Turretin, Protestant theologians who teach that the Mysteries are
+contrary only to corrupt reason. He asks, mockingly, whether by right
+reason is meant perchance that of an orthodox theologian and by corrupt
+reason that of an heretic; and he urges the objection that the evidence of
+the Mystery of the Trinity was no greater in the soul of Luther than in the
+soul of Socinius. But as M. Descartes has well observed, good sense is
+distributed to all: thus one must believe that both the orthodox and
+heretics are endowed therewith. Right reason is a linking together of
+truths, corrupt reason is mixed with prejudices and passions. And in order
+to discriminate between the two, one need but proceed in good order, admit
+no thesis without proof, and admit no proof unless it be in proper form,
+according to the commonest rules of logic. One needs neither any other
+criterion nor other arbitrator in questions of reason. It is only through
+lack of this consideration that a handle has been given to the sceptics,
+and that even in theology François Véron and some others, who         [108]
+exacerbated the dispute with the Protestants, even to the point of
+dishonesty, plunged headlong into scepticism in order to prove the
+necessity of accepting an infallible external judge. Their course meets
+with no approval from the most expert, even in their own party: Calixtus
+and Daillé derided it as it deserved, and Bellarmine argued quite
+otherwise.
+
+63. Now let us come to what M. Bayle says (p. 999) on the distinction we
+are concerned with. 'It seems to me', he says, 'that an ambiguity has crept
+into the celebrated distinction drawn between things that are above reason
+and things that are against reason. The Mysteries of the Gospel are above
+reason, so it is usually said, but they are not contrary to reason. I think
+that the same sense is not given to the word reason in the first part of
+this axiom as in the second: by the first is understood rather the reason
+of man, or reason _in concreto_ and by the second reason in general, or
+reason _in abstracto_. For supposing that it is understood always as reason
+in general or the supreme reason, the universal reason that is in God, it
+is equally true that the Mysteries of the Gospels are not above reason and
+that they are not against reason. But if in both parts of the axiom human
+reason is meant, I do not clearly see the soundness of the distinction: for
+the most orthodox confess that we know not how our Mysteries can conform to
+the maxims of philosophy. It seems to us, therefore, that they are not in
+conformity with our reason. Now that which appears to us not to be in
+conformity with our reason appears contrary to our reason, just as that
+which appears to us not in conformity with truth appears contrary to truth.
+Thus why should not one say, equally, that the Mysteries are against our
+feeble reason, and that they are above our feeble reason?' I answer, as I
+have done already, that 'reason' here is the linking together of the truths
+that we know by the light of nature, and in this sense the axiom is true
+and without any ambiguity. The Mysteries transcend our reason, since they
+contain truths that are not comprised in this sequence; but they are not
+contrary to our reason, and they do not contradict any of the truths
+whereto this sequence can lead us. Accordingly there is no question here of
+the universal reason that is in God, but of our reason. As for the question
+whether we know the Mysteries to conform with our reason, I answer that at
+least we never know of any non-conformity or any opposition between the
+Mysteries and reason. Moreover, we can always abolish such alleged    [109]
+opposition, and so, if this can be called reconciling or harmonizing faith
+with reason, or recognizing the conformity between them, it must be said
+that we can recognize this conformity and this harmony. But if the
+conformity consists in a reasonable explanation of the _how_, we cannot
+recognize it.
+
+64. M. Bayle makes one more ingenious objection, which he draws from the
+example of the sense of sight. 'When a square tower', he says, 'from a
+distance appears to us round, our eyes testify very clearly not only that
+they perceive nothing square in this tower, but also that they discover
+there a round shape, incompatible with the square shape. One may therefore
+say that the truth which is the square shape is not only above, but even
+against, the witness of our feeble sight.' It must be admitted that this
+observation is correct, and although it be true that the appearance of
+roundness comes simply from the effacement of the angles, which distance
+causes to disappear, it is true, notwithstanding, that the round and the
+square are opposites. Therefore my answer to this objection is that the
+representation of the senses, even when they do all that in them lies, is
+often contrary to the truth; but it is not the same with the faculty of
+reasoning, when it does its duty, since a strictly reasoned argument is
+nothing but a linking together of truths. And as for the sense of sight in
+particular, it is well to consider that there are yet other false
+appearances which come not from the 'feebleness of our eyes' nor from the
+loss of visibility brought about by distance, but from the very _nature of
+vision_, however perfect it be. It is thus, for instance, that the circle
+seen sideways is changed into that kind of oval which among geometricians
+is known as an ellipse, and sometimes even into a parabola or a hyperbola,
+or actually into a straight line, witness the ring of Saturn.
+
+65. The _external_ senses, properly speaking, do not deceive us. It is our
+inner sense which often makes us go too fast. That occurs also in brute
+beasts, as when a dog barks at his reflexion in the mirror: for beasts have
+_consecutions_ of perception which resemble reasoning, and which occur also
+in the inner sense of men, when their actions have only an empirical
+quality. But beasts do nothing which compels us to believe that they have
+what deserves to be properly called a _reasoning_ sense, as I have shown
+elsewhere. Now when the understanding uses and follows the false decision
+of the inner sense (as when the famous Galileo thought that Saturn had[110]
+two handles) it is deceived by the judgement it makes upon the effect of
+appearances, and it infers from them more than they imply. For the
+appearances of the senses do not promise us absolutely the truth of things,
+any more than dreams do. It is we who deceive ourselves by the use we make
+of them, that is, by our consecutions. Indeed we allow ourselves to be
+deluded by probable arguments, and we are inclined to think that phenomena
+such as we have found linked together often are so always. Thus, as it
+happens usually that that which appears without angles has none, we readily
+believe it to be always thus. Such an error is pardonable, and sometimes
+inevitable, when it is necessary to act promptly and choose that which
+appearances recommend; but when we have the leisure and the time to collect
+our thoughts, we are in fault if we take for certain that which is not so.
+It is therefore true that appearances are often contrary to truth, but our
+reasoning never is when it proceeds strictly in accordance with the rules
+of the art of reasoning. If by _reason_ one meant generally the faculty of
+reasoning whether well or ill, I confess that it might deceive us, and does
+indeed deceive us, and the appearances of our understanding are often as
+deceptive as those of the senses: but here it is a question of the linking
+together of truths and of objections in due form, and in this sense it is
+impossible for reason to deceive us.
+
+66. Thus it may be seen from all I have just said that M. Bayle carries too
+far _the being above reason_, as if it included the insoluble nature of
+objections: for according to him (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_,
+vol. III, ch. 130, p. 651) 'once a dogma is above reason, philosophy can
+neither explain it nor comprehend it, nor meet the difficulties that are
+urged against it'. I agree with regard to comprehension, but I have already
+shown that the Mysteries receive a necessary verbal explanation, to the end
+that the terms employed be not _sine mente soni_, words signifying nothing.
+I have shown also that it is necessary for one to be capable of answering
+the objections, and that otherwise one must needs reject the thesis.
+
+67. He adduces the authority of theologians, who appear to recognize the
+insoluble nature of the objections against the Mysteries. Luther is one of
+the chief of these; but I have already replied, in § 12, to the passage
+where he seems to say that philosophy contradicts theology. There is
+another passage (_De Servo Arbitrio_, ch. 246) where he says that the
+apparent injustice of God is proved by arguments taken from the       [111]
+adversity of good people and the prosperity of the wicked, an argument
+irresistible both for all reason and for natural intelligence ('Argumentis
+talibus traducta, quibus nulla ratio aut lumen naturae potest resistere').
+But soon afterwards he shows that he means it only of those who know
+nothing of the life to come, since he adds that an expression in the Gospel
+dissipates this difficulty, teaching us that there is another life, where
+that which has not been punished and rewarded in this life shall receive
+its due. The objection is then far from being insuperable, and even without
+the aid of the Gospel one could bethink oneself of this answer. There is
+also quoted (_Reply_, vol. III, p. 652) a passage from Martin Chemnitz,
+criticized by Vedelius and defended by Johann Musaeus, where this famous
+theologian seems to say clearly that there are truths in the word of God
+which are not only above reason but also against reason. But this passage
+must be taken as referring only to the principles of reason that are in
+accordance with the order of Nature, as Musaeus also interprets it.
+
+68. It is true nevertheless that M. Bayle finds some authorities who are
+more favourable to him, M. Descartes being one of the chief. This great man
+says positively (Part I of his _Principles_, art. 41) 'that we shall have
+not the slightest trouble in ridding ourselves of the difficulty' (which
+one may have in harmonizing the freedom of our will with the order of the
+eternal providence of God) 'if we observe that our thought is finite, and
+that the Knowledge and the Omnipotence of God, whereby he has not only
+known from all eternity all that which is or which can be, but also has
+willed it, is infinite. We have therefore quite enough intelligence to
+recognize clearly and distinctly that this knowledge and this power are in
+God; but we have not enough so to comprehend their scope that we can know
+how they leave the actions of men entirely free and undetermined. Yet the
+Power and the Knowledge of God must not prevent us from believing that we
+have a free will; for we should be wrong to doubt of that whereof we are
+inwardly conscious, and which we know by experience to be within us, simply
+because we do not comprehend some other thing which we know to be
+incomprehensible in its nature.'
+
+69. This passage from M. Descartes, followed by his adherents (who rarely
+think of doubting what he asserts), has always appeared strange to me. Not
+content with saying that, as for him, he sees no way of reconciling   [112]
+the two dogmas, he puts the whole human race, and even all rational
+creatures, in the same case. Yet could he have been unaware that there is
+no possibility of an insuperable objection against truth? For such an
+objection could only be a necessary linking together of other truths whose
+result would be contrary to the truth that one maintains; and consequently
+there would be contradiction between the truths, which would be an utter
+absurdity. Moreover, albeit our mind is finite and cannot comprehend the
+infinite, of the infinite nevertheless it has proofs whose strength or
+weakness it comprehends; why then should it not have the same comprehension
+in regard to the objections? And since the power and the wisdom of God are
+infinite and comprehend everything, there is no pretext for doubting their
+scope. Further, M. Descartes demands a freedom which is not needed, by his
+insistence that the actions of the will of man are altogether undetermined,
+a thing which never happens. Finally, M. Bayle himself maintains that this
+experience or this inward sense of our independence, upon which M.
+Descartes founds the proof of our freedom, does not prove it: for from the
+fact that we are not conscious of the causes whereon we depend, it does not
+follow, according to M. Bayle, that we are independent. But that is
+something we will speak of in its proper place.
+
+70. It seems that M. Descartes confesses also, in a passage of his
+_Principles_, that it is impossible to find an answer to the difficulties
+on the division of matter to infinity, which he nevertheless recognizes as
+actual. Arriaga and other Schoolmen make well-nigh the same confession: but
+if they took the trouble to give to the objections the form these ought to
+have, they would see that there are faults in the reasoning, and sometimes
+false assumptions which cause confusion. Here is an example. A man of parts
+one day brought up to me an objection in the following form: Let the
+straight line BA be cut in two equal parts at the point C, and the part CA
+at the point D, and the part DA at the point E, and so on to infinity; all
+the halves, BC, CD, DE, etc., together make the whole BA; therefore there
+must be a last half, since the straight line BA finishes at A. But this
+last half is absurd: for since it is a line, it will be possible again to
+cut it in two. Therefore division to infinity cannot be admitted. But I
+pointed out to him that one is not justified in the inference that there
+must be a last half, although there be a last point A, for this last point
+belongs to all the halves of its side. And my friend acknowledged it  [113]
+himself when he endeavoured to prove this deduction by a formal argument;
+on the contrary, just because the division goes on to infinity, there is no
+last half. And although the straight line AB be finite, it does not follow
+that the process of dividing it has any final end. The same confusion
+arises with the series of numbers going on to infinity. One imagines a
+final end, a number that is infinite, or infinitely small; but that is all
+simple fiction. Every number is finite and specific; every line is so
+likewise, and the infinite or infinitely small signify only magnitudes that
+one may take as great or as small as one wishes, to show that an error is
+smaller than that which has been specified, that is to say, that there is
+no error; or else by the infinitely small is meant the state of a magnitude
+at its vanishing point or its beginning, conceived after the pattern of
+magnitudes already actualized.
+
+71. It will, however, be well to consider the argument that M. Bayle puts
+forward to show that one cannot refute the objections which reason opposes
+to the Mysteries. It is in his comment on the Manichaeans (p. 3140 of the
+second edition of his _Dictionary_). 'It is enough for me', he says, 'that
+it be unanimously acknowledged that the Mysteries of the Gospel are above
+reason. For thence comes the necessary conclusion that it is impossible to
+settle the difficulties raised by the philosophers, and in consequence that
+a dispute where only the light of Nature is followed will always end
+unfavourably for the theologians, and that they will see themselves forced
+to give way and to take refuge in the canon of the supernatural light.' I
+am surprised that M. Bayle speaks in such general terms, since he has
+acknowledged himself that the light of Nature is against the Manichaeans,
+and for the oneness of the Principle, and that the goodness of God is
+proved incontrovertibly by reason. Yet this is how he continues:
+
+72. 'It is evident that reason can never attain to that which is above it.
+Now if it could supply answers to the objections which are opposed to the
+dogma of the Trinity and that of hypostatic union, it would attain to those
+two Mysteries, it would have them in subjection and submit them to the
+strictest examination by comparison with its first principles, or with the
+aphorisms that spring from common notions, and proceed until finally it had
+drawn the conclusion that they are in accordance with natural light. It
+would therefore do what exceeds its powers, it would soar above its   [114]
+confines, and that is a formal contradiction. One must therefore say that
+it cannot provide answers to its own objections, and that thus they remain
+victorious, so long as one does not have recourse to the authority of God
+and to the necessity of subjugating one's understanding to the obedience of
+faith.' I do not find that there is any force in this reasoning. We can
+attain to that which is above us not by penetrating it but by maintaining
+it; as we can attain to the sky by sight, and not by touch. Nor is it
+necessary that, in order to answer the objections which are made against
+the Mysteries, one should have them in subjection to oneself, and submit
+them to examination by comparison with the first principles that spring
+from common notions. For if he who answers the objections had to go so far,
+he who proposes the objections needs must do it first. It is the part of
+the objection to open up the subject, and it is enough for him who answers
+to say Yes or No. He is not obliged to counter with a distinction: it will
+do, in case of need, if he denies the universality of some proposition in
+the objection or criticizes its form, and one may do both these things
+without penetrating beyond the objection. When someone offers me a proof
+which he maintains is invincible, I can keep silence while I compel him
+merely to prove in due form all the enunciations that he brings forward,
+and such as appear to me in the slightest degree doubtful. For the purpose
+of doubting only, I need not at all probe to the heart of the matter; on
+the contrary, the more ignorant I am the more shall I be justified in
+doubting. M. Bayle continues thus:
+
+73. 'Let us endeavour to clarify that. If some doctrines are above reason
+they are beyond its reach, it cannot attain to them; if it cannot attain to
+them, it cannot comprehend them.' (He could have begun here with the
+'comprehend', saying that reason cannot comprehend that which is above it.)
+'If it cannot comprehend them, it can find in them no idea' (_Non valet
+consequentia_: for, to 'comprehend' something, it is not enough that one
+have some ideas thereof; one must have all the ideas of everything that
+goes to make it up, and all these ideas must be clear, distinct,
+_adequate_. There are a thousand objects in Nature in which we understand
+something, but which we do not therefore necessarily comprehend. We have
+some ideas on the rays of light, we demonstrate upon them up to a certain
+point; but there ever remains something which makes us confess that we do
+not yet comprehend the whole nature of light.) 'nor any principle such[115]
+as may give rise to a solution;' (Why should not evident principles be
+found mingled with obscure and confused knowledge?) 'and consequently the
+objections that reason has made will remain unanswered;' (By no means; the
+difficulty is rather on the side of the opposer. It is for him to seek an
+evident principle such as may give rise to some objection; and the more
+obscure the subject, the more trouble he will have in finding such a
+principle. Moreover, when he has found it he will have still more trouble
+in demonstrating an opposition between the principle and the Mystery: for,
+if it happened that the Mystery was evidently contrary to an evident
+principle, it would not be an obscure Mystery, it would be a manifest
+absurdity.) 'or what is the same thing, answer will be made with some
+distinction as obscure as the very thesis that will have been attacked.'
+(One can do without distinctions, if need be, by denying either some
+premiss or some conclusion; and when one is doubtful of the meaning of some
+term used by the opposer one may demand of him its definition. Thus the
+defender has no need to incommode himself when it is a question of
+answering an adversary who claims that he is offering us an invincible
+proof. But even supposing that the defender, perchance being kindly
+disposed, or for the sake of brevity, or because he feels himself strong
+enough, should himself vouchsafe to show the ambiguity concealed in the
+objection, and to remove it by making some distinction, this distinction
+need not of necessity lead to anything clearer than the first thesis, since
+the defender is not obliged to elucidate the Mystery itself.)
+
+74. 'Now it is certain', so M. Bayle continues, 'that an objection which is
+founded on distinct notions remains equally victorious, whether you give to
+it no answer, or you make an answer where none can comprehend anything. Can
+the contest be equal between a man who alleges in objection to you that
+which you and he very clearly conceive, and you, who can only defend
+yourself by answers wherein neither of you understands anything?' (It is
+not enough that the objection be founded on quite distinct notions, it is
+necessary also that one apply it in contradiction of the thesis. And when I
+answer someone by denying some premiss, in order to compel him to prove it,
+or some conclusion, to compel him to put it in good form, it cannot be said
+that I answer nothing or that I answer nothing intelligible. For as it is
+the doubtful premiss of the adversary that I deny, my denial will be  [116]
+as intelligible as his affirmation. Finally, when I am so obliging as to
+explain myself by means of some distinction, it suffices that the terms I
+employ have some meaning, as in the Mystery itself. Thus something in my
+answer will be comprehended: but one need not of necessity comprehend all
+that it involves; otherwise one would comprehend the Mystery also.)
+
+75. M. Bayle continues thus: 'Every philosophical dispute assumes that the
+disputant parties agree on certain definitions' (This would be desirable,
+but usually it is only in the dispute itself that one reaches such a point,
+if the necessity arises.) 'and that they admit the rules of Syllogisms, and
+the signs for the recognition of bad arguments. After that everything lies
+in the investigation as to whether a thesis conforms mediately or
+immediately to the principles one is agreed upon' (which is done by means
+of the syllogisms of him who makes objections); 'whether the premisses of a
+proof (advanced by the opposer) 'are true; whether the conclusion is
+properly drawn; whether a four-term Syllogism has been employed; whether
+some aphorism of the chapter _de oppositis_ or _de sophisticis elenchis_,
+etc., has not been violated.' (It is enough, putting it briefly, to deny
+some premiss or some conclusion, or finally to explain or get explained
+some ambiguous term.) 'One comes off victorious either by showing that the
+subject of dispute has no connexion with the principles which had been
+agreed upon' (that is to say, by showing that the objection proves nothing,
+and then the defender wins the case), 'or by reducing the defender to
+absurdity' (when all the premisses and all the conclusions are well
+proved). 'Now one can reduce him to that point either by showing him that
+the conclusions of his thesis are "yes" and "no" at once, or by
+constraining him to say only intelligible things in answer.' (This last
+embarrassment he can always avoid, because he has no need to advance new
+theses.) 'The aim in disputes of this kind is to throw light upon
+obscurities and to arrive at self-evidence.' (It is the aim of the opposer,
+for he wishes to demonstrate that the Mystery is false; but this cannot
+here be the aim of the defender, for in admitting Mystery he agrees that
+one cannot demonstrate it.) 'This leads to the opinion that during the
+course of the proceedings victory sides more or less with the defender or
+with the opposer, according to whether there is more or less clarity in the
+propositions of the one than in the propositions of the other.' (That [117]
+is speaking as if the defender and the opposer were equally unprotected;
+but the defender is like a besieged commander, covered by his defence
+works, and it is for the attacker to destroy them. The defender has no need
+here of self-evidence, and he seeks it not: but it is for the opposer to
+find it against him, and to break through with his batteries in order that
+the defender may be no longer protected.)
+
+76. 'Finally, it is judged that victory goes against him whose answers are
+such that one comprehends nothing in them,' (It is a very equivocal sign of
+victory: for then one must needs ask the audience if they comprehend
+anything in what has been said, and often their opinions would be divided.
+The order of formal disputes is to proceed by arguments in due form and to
+answer them by denying or making a distinction.) 'and who confesses that
+they are incomprehensible.' (It is permitted to him who maintains the truth
+of a Mystery to confess that this mystery is incomprehensible; and if this
+confession were sufficient for declaring him vanquished there would be no
+need of objection. It will be possible for a truth to be incomprehensible,
+but never so far as to justify the statement that one comprehends nothing
+at all therein. It would be in that case what the ancient Schools called
+_Scindapsus_ or _Blityri_ (Clem. Alex., _Stromateis_, 8), that is, words
+devoid of meaning.) 'He is condemned thenceforth by the rules for awarding
+victory; and even when he cannot be pursued in the mist wherewith he has
+covered himself, and which forms a kind of abyss between him and his
+antagonists, he is believed to be utterly defeated, and is compared to an
+army which, having lost the battle, steals away from the pursuit of the
+victor only under cover of night.' (Matching allegory with allegory, I will
+say that the defender is not vanquished so long as he remains protected by
+his entrenchments; and if he risks some sortie beyond his need, it is
+permitted to him to withdraw within his fort, without being open to blame
+for that.)
+
+77. I was especially at pains to analyse this long passage where M. Bayle
+has put down his strongest and most skilfully reasoned statements in
+support of his opinion: and I hope that I have shown clearly how this
+excellent man has been misled. That happens all too easily to the ablest
+and shrewdest persons when they give free rein to their wit without
+exercising the patience necessary for delving down to the very foundations
+of their systems. The details we have entered into here will serve as [118]
+answer to some other arguments upon the subject which are dispersed through
+the works of M. Bayle, as for instance when he says in his _Reply to the
+Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, ch. 133, p. 685): 'To prove that one
+has brought reason and religion into harmony one must show not only that
+one has philosophic maxims favourable to our faith, but also that the
+particular maxims cast up against us as not being consistent with our
+Catechism are in reality consistent with it in a clearly conceived way.' I
+do not see that one has need of all that, unless one aspire to press
+reasoning as far as the _how_ of the Mystery. When one is content to uphold
+its truth, without attempting to render it comprehensible, one has no need
+to resort to philosophic maxims, general or particular, for the proof; and
+when another brings up some philosophic maxims against us, it is not for us
+to prove clearly and distinctly that these maxims are consistent with our
+dogma, but it is for our opponent to prove that they are contrary thereto.
+
+78. M. Bayle continues thus in the same passage: 'For this result we need
+an answer as clearly evident as the objection.' I have already shown that
+it is obtained when one denies the premisses, but that for the rest it is
+not necessary for him who maintains the truth of the Mystery always to
+advance evident propositions, since the principal thesis concerning the
+Mystery itself is not evident. He adds further: 'If we must make reply and
+rejoinder, we must never rest in our positions, nor claim that we have
+accomplished our design, so long as our opponent shall make answer with
+things as evident as our reasons can be.' But it is not for the defender to
+adduce reasons; it is enough for him to answer those of his opponent.
+
+79. Finally the author draws the conclusion: 'If it were claimed that, on
+making an evident objection, a man has to be satisfied with an answer which
+we can only state as a thing possible though incomprehensible to us, that
+would be unfair.' He repeats this in the posthumous Dialogues, against M.
+Jacquelot, p. 69. I am not of this opinion. If the objection were
+completely evident, it would triumph, and the thesis would be overthrown.
+But when the objection is only founded on appearances or on instances of
+the most frequent occurrence, and when he who makes it desires to draw from
+it a universal and certain conclusion, he who upholds the Mystery may
+answer with the instance of a bare possibility. For such an instance  [119]
+suffices to show that what one wished to infer from the premisses, is
+neither certain nor general; and it suffices for him who upholds the
+Mystery to maintain that it is possible, without having to maintain that it
+is probable. For, as I have often said, it is agreed that the Mysteries are
+against appearances. He who upholds the Mystery need not even adduce such
+an instance; and should he adduce it, it were indeed a work of
+supererogation, or else an instrument of greater confusion to the
+adversary.
+
+80. There are passages of M. Bayle in the posthumous reply that he made to
+M. Jacquelot which seem to me still worthy of scrutiny. 'M. Bayle'
+(according to pp. 36, 37) 'constantly asserts in his _Dictionary_, whenever
+the subject allows, that our reason is more capable of refuting and
+destroying than of proving and building; that there is scarcely any
+philosophical or theological matter in respect of which it does not create
+great difficulties. Thus', he says, 'if one desired to follow it in a
+disputatious spirit, as far as it can go, one would often be reduced to a
+state of troublesome perplexity; and in fine, there are doctrines certainly
+true, which it disputes with insoluble objections.' I think that what is
+said here in reproach of reason is to its advantage. When it overthrows
+some thesis, it builds up the opposing thesis. And when it seems to be
+overthrowing the two opposing theses at the same time, it is then that it
+promises us something profound, provided that we follow it _as far as it
+can go_, not in a disputatious spirit but with an ardent desire to search
+out and discover the truth, which will always be recompensed with a great
+measure of success.
+
+81. M. Bayle continues: 'that one must then ridicule these objections,
+recognizing the narrow bounds of the human mind.' And I think, on the other
+hand, that one must recognize the signs of the force of the human mind,
+which causes it to penetrate into the heart of things. These are new
+openings and, as it were, rays of the dawn which promises us a greater
+light: I mean in philosophical subjects or those of natural theology. But
+when these objections are made against revealed faith it is enough that one
+be able to repel them, provided that one do so in a submissive and zealous
+spirit, with intent to sustain and exalt the glory of God. And when we
+succeed in respect of his justice, we shall likewise be impressed by his
+greatness and charmed by his goodness, which will show themselves through
+the clouds of a seeming reason that is deceived by outward            [120]
+appearances, in proportion as the mind is elevated by true reason to that
+which to us is invisible, but none the less sure.
+
+82. 'Thus' (to continue with M. Bayle) 'reason will be compelled to lay
+down its arms, and to subjugate itself to the obedience of the faith, which
+it can and ought to do, in virtue of some of its most incontestable maxims.
+Thus also in renouncing some of its other maxims it acts nevertheless in
+accordance with that which it is, that is to say, in reason.' But one must
+know 'that such maxims of reason as must be renounced in this case are only
+those which make us judge by appearances or according to the ordinary
+course of things.' This reason enjoins upon us even in philosophical
+subjects, when there are invincible proofs to the contrary. It is thus
+that, being made confident by demonstrations of the goodness and the
+justice of God, we disregard the appearances of harshness and injustice
+which we see in this small portion of his Kingdom that is exposed to our
+gaze. Hitherto we have been illumined by the _light of Nature_ and by that
+of _grace_, but not yet by that of _glory_. Here on earth we see apparent
+injustice, and we believe and even know the truth of the hidden justice of
+God; but we shall see that justice when at last the Sun of Justice shall
+show himself as he is.
+
+83. It is certain that M. Bayle can only be understood as meaning those
+ostensible maxims which must give way before the eternal verities; for he
+acknowledges that reason is not in reality contrary to faith. In these
+posthumous Dialogues he complains (p. 73, against M. Jacquelot) of being
+accused of the belief that our Mysteries are in reality against reason, and
+(p. 9, against M. le Clerc) of the assertion made that he who acknowledges
+that a doctrine is exposed to irrefutable objections acknowledges also by a
+necessary consequence the falsity of this doctrine. Nevertheless one would
+be justified in the assertion if the irrefutability were more than an
+outward appearance.
+
+84. It may be, therefore, that having long contended thus against M. Bayle
+on the matter of the use of reason I shall find after all that his opinions
+were not fundamentally so remote from mine as his expressions, which have
+provided matter for our considerations, have led one to believe. It is true
+that frequently he appears to deny absolutely that one can ever answer the
+objections of reason against faith, and that he asserts the necessity of
+comprehending, in order to achieve such an end, how the Mystery comes [121]
+to be or exists. Yet there are passages where he becomes milder, and
+contents himself with saying that the answers to these objections are
+unknown to him. Here is a very precise passage, taken from the excursus on
+the Manichaeans, which is found at the end of the second edition of his
+_Dictionary_: 'For the greater satisfaction of the most punctilious
+readers, I desire to declare here' (he says, p. 3148) 'that wherever the
+statement is to be met with in my _Dictionary_ that such and such arguments
+are irrefutable I do not wish it to be taken that they are so in actuality.
+I mean naught else than that they appear to me irrefutable. That is of no
+consequence: each one will be able to imagine, if he pleases, that if I
+deem thus of a matter it is owing to my lack of acumen.' I do not imagine
+such a thing; his great acumen is too well known to me: but I think that,
+after having applied his whole mind to magnifying the objections, he had
+not enough attention left over for the purpose of answering them.
+
+85. M. Bayle confesses, moreover, in his posthumous work against M. le
+Clerc, that the objections against faith have not the force of proofs. It
+is therefore _ad hominem_ only, or rather _ad homines_, that is, in
+relation to the existing state of the human race, that he deems these
+objections irrefutable and the subject unexplainable. There is even a
+passage where he implies that he despairs not of the possibility that the
+answer or the explanation may be found, and even in our time. For here is
+what he says in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc (p. 35): 'M. Bayle
+dared to hope that his toil would put on their mettle some of those great
+men of genius who create new systems, and that they could discover a
+solution hitherto unknown.' It seems that by this 'solution' he means such
+an explanation of Mystery as would penetrate to the _how_: but that is not
+necessary for replying to the objections.
+
+86. Many have undertaken to render this _how_ comprehensible, and to prove
+the possibility of Mysteries. A certain writer named Thomas Bonartes
+Nordtanus Anglus, in his _Concordia Scientiae cum Fide,_ claimed to do so.
+This work seemed to me ingenious and learned, but crabbed and involved, and
+it even contains indefensible opinions. I learned from the _Apologia
+Cyriacorum_ of the Dominican Father Vincent Baron that that book was
+censured in Rome, that the author was a Jesuit, and that he suffered for
+having published it. The Reverend Father des Bosses, who now teaches
+Theology in the Jesuit College of Hildesheim, and who has combined    [122]
+rare erudition with great acumen, which he displays in philosophy and
+theology, has informed me that the real name of Bonartes was Thomas Barton,
+and that after leaving the Society he retired to Ireland, where the manner
+of his death brought about a favourable verdict on his last opinions. I
+pity the men of talent who bring trouble upon themselves by their toil and
+their zeal. Something of like nature happened in time past to Pierre
+Abelard, to Gilbert de la Porree, to John Wyclif, and in our day to the
+Englishman Thomas Albius, as well as to some others who plunged too far
+into the explanation of the Mysteries.
+
+87. St. Augustine, however (as well as M. Bayle), does not despair of the
+possibility that the desired solution may be found upon earth; but this
+Father believes it to be reserved for some holy man illumined by a peculiar
+grace: 'Est aliqua causa fortassis occultior, quae melioribus
+sanctioribusque reservatur, illius gratia potius quam meritis illorum' (in
+_De Genesi ad Literam_, lib. 11, c. 4). Luther reserves the knowledge of
+the Mystery of Election for the academy of heaven (lib. _De Servo
+Arbitrio_, c. 174): 'Illic [Deus] gratiam et misericordiam spargit in
+indignos, his iram et severitatem spargit in immeritos; utrobique nimius et
+iniquus apud homines, sed justus et verax apud se ipsum. Nam quomodo hoc
+justum sit ut indignos coronet, incomprehensibile est modo, videbimus
+autem, cum illuc venerimus, ubi jam non credetur, sed revelata facie
+videbitur. Ita quomodo hoc justum sit, ut immeritos damnet,
+incomprehensibile est modo, creditur tamen, donec revelabitur filius
+hominis.' It is to be hoped that M. Bayle now finds himself surrounded by
+that light which is lacking to us here below, since there is reason to
+suppose that he was not lacking in good will.
+
+  VIRGIL
+    _Candidus insueti miratur limen Olympi,_
+    _Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis._
+
+  LUCAN
+    _...Illic postquam se lumine vero_
+    _Implevit, stellasque vagas miratur et astra_
+    _Fixa polis, vidit quanta sub nocte jaceret_
+    _Nostra dies._
+
+                                                                      [123]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PART ONE
+
+1. Having so settled the rights of faith and of reason as rather to place
+reason at the service of faith than in opposition to it, we shall see how
+they exercise these rights to support and harmonize what the light of
+nature and the light of revelation teach us of God and of man in relation
+to evil. The _difficulties_ are distinguishable into two classes. The one
+kind springs from man's freedom, which appears incompatible with the divine
+nature; and nevertheless freedom is deemed necessary, in order that man may
+be deemed guilty and open to punishment. The other kind concerns the
+conduct of God, and seems to make him participate too much in the existence
+of evil, even though man be free and participate also therein. And this
+conduct appears contrary to the goodness, the holiness and the justice of
+God, since God co-operates in evil as well physical as moral, and
+co-operates in each of them both morally and physically; and since it seems
+that these evils are manifested in the order of nature as well as in that
+of grace, and in the future and eternal life as well as, nay, more than, in
+this transitory life.
+
+2. To present these difficulties in brief, it must be observed that freedom
+is opposed, to all appearance, by determination or certainty of any kind
+whatever; and nevertheless the common dogma of our philosophers states that
+the truth of contingent futurities is determined. The foreknowledge of[124]
+God renders all the future certain and determined, but his providence and
+his foreordinance, whereon foreknowledge itself appears founded, do much
+more: for God is not as a man, able to look upon events with unconcern and
+to suspend his judgement, since nothing exists save as a result of the
+decrees of his will and through the action of his power. And even though
+one leave out of account the co-operation of God, all is perfectly
+connected in the order of things, since nothing can come to pass unless
+there be a cause so disposed as to produce the effect, this taking place no
+less in voluntary than in all other actions. According to which it appears
+that man is compelled to do the good and evil that he does, and in
+consequence that he deserves therefor neither recompense nor chastisement:
+thus is the morality of actions destroyed and all justice, divine and
+human, shaken.
+
+3. But even though one should grant to man this freedom wherewith he arrays
+himself to his own hurt, the conduct of God could not but provide matter
+for a criticism supported by the presumptuous ignorance of men, who would
+wish to exculpate themselves wholly or in part at the expense of God. It is
+objected that all the reality and what is termed the substance of the act
+in sin itself is a production of God, since all creatures and all their
+actions derive from him that reality they have. Whence one could infer not
+only that he is the physical cause of sin, but also that he is its moral
+cause, since he acts with perfect freedom and does nothing without a
+complete knowledge of the thing and the consequences that it may have. Nor
+is it enough to say that God has made for himself a law to co-operate with
+the wills or resolutions of man, whether we express ourselves in terms of
+the common opinion or in terms of the system of occasional causes. Not only
+will it be found strange that he should have made such a law for himself,
+of whose results he was not ignorant, but the principal difficulty is that
+it seems the evil will itself cannot exist without co-operation, and even
+without some predetermination, on his part, which contributes towards
+begetting this will in man or in some other rational creature. For an
+action is not, for being evil, the less dependent on God. Whence one will
+come at last to the conclusion that God does all, the good and the evil,
+indifferently; unless one pretend with the Manichaeans that there are two
+principles, the one good and the other evil. Moreover, according to the
+general opinion of theologians and philosophers, conservation being a [125]
+perpetual creation, it will be said that man is perpetually created corrupt
+and erring. There are, furthermore, modern Cartesians who claim that God is
+the sole agent, of whom created beings are only the purely passive organs;
+and M. Bayle builds not a little upon that idea.
+
+4. But even granting that God should co-operate in actions only with a
+general co-operation, or even not at all, at least in those that are bad,
+it suffices, so it is said, to inculpate him and to render him the moral
+cause that nothing comes to pass without his permission. To say nothing of
+the fall of the angels, he knows all that which will come to pass, if,
+having created man, he places him in such and such circumstances; and he
+places him there notwithstanding. Man is exposed to a temptation to which
+it is known that he will succumb, thereby causing an infinitude of
+frightful evils, by which the whole human race will be infected and brought
+as it were into a necessity of sinning, a state which is named 'original
+sin'. Thus the world will be brought into a strange confusion, by this
+means death and diseases being introduced, with a thousand other
+misfortunes and miseries that in general afflict the good and the bad;
+wickedness will even hold sway and virtue will be oppressed on earth, so
+that it will scarce appear that a providence governs affairs. But it is
+much worse when one considers the life to come, since but a small number of
+men will be saved and since all the rest will perish eternally. Furthermore
+these men destined for salvation will have been withdrawn from the corrupt
+mass through an unreasoning election, whether it be said that God in
+choosing them has had regard to their future actions, to their faith or to
+their works, or one claim that he has been pleased to give them these good
+qualities and these actions because he has predestined them to salvation.
+For though it be said in the most lenient system that God wished to save
+all men, and though in the other systems commonly accepted it be granted,
+that he has made his Son take human nature upon him to expiate their sins,
+so that all they who shall believe in him with a lively and final faith
+shall be saved, it still remains true that this lively faith is a gift of
+God; that we are dead to all good works; that even our will itself must be
+aroused by a prevenient grace, and that God gives us the power to will and
+to do. And whether that be done through a grace efficacious of itself, that
+is to say, through a divine inward motion which wholly determines our [126]
+will to the good that it does; or whether there be only a sufficient grace,
+but such as does not fail to attain its end, and to become efficacious in
+the inward and outward circumstances wherein the man is and has been placed
+by God: one must return to the same conclusion that God is the final reason
+of salvation, of grace, of faith and of election in Jesus Christ. And be
+the election the cause or the result of God's design to give faith, it
+still remains true that he gives faith or salvation to whom he pleases,
+without any discernible reason for his choice, which falls upon but few
+men.
+
+5. So it is a terrible judgement that God, giving his only Son for the
+whole human race and being the sole author and master of the salvation of
+men, yet saves so few of them and abandons all others to the devil his
+enemy, who torments them eternally and makes them curse their Creator,
+though they have all been created to diffuse and show forth his goodness,
+his justice and his other perfections. And this outcome inspires all the
+more horror, as the sole cause why all these men are wretched to all
+eternity is God's having exposed their parents to a temptation that he knew
+they would not resist; as this sin is inherent and imputed to men before
+their will has participated in it; as this hereditary vice impels their
+will to commit actual sins; and as countless men, in childhood or maturity,
+that have never heard or have not heard enough of Jesus Christ, Saviour of
+the human race, die before receiving the necessary succour for their
+withdrawal from this abyss of sin. These men too are condemned to be for
+ever rebellious against God and plunged in the most horrible miseries, with
+the wickedest of all creatures, though in essence they have not been more
+wicked than others, and several among them have perchance been less guilty
+than some of that little number of elect, who were saved by a grace without
+reason, and who thereby enjoy an eternal felicity which they had not
+deserved. Such in brief are the difficulties touched upon by sundry
+persons; but M. Bayle was one who insisted on them the most, as will appear
+subsequently when we examine his passages. I think that now I have recorded
+the main essence of these difficulties: but I have deemed it fitting to
+refrain from some expressions and exaggerations which might have caused
+offence, while not rendering the objections any stronger.
+
+6. Let us now turn the medal and let us also point out what can be said in
+answer to those objections; and here a course of explanation through  [127]
+fuller dissertation will be necessary: for many difficulties can be opened
+up in few words, but for their discussion one must dilate upon them. Our
+end is to banish from men the false ideas that represent God to them as an
+absolute prince employing a despotic power, unfitted to be loved and
+unworthy of being loved. These notions are the more evil in relation to God
+inasmuch as the essence of piety is not only to fear him but also to love
+him above all things: and that cannot come about unless there be knowledge
+of his perfections capable of arousing the love which he deserves, and
+which makes the felicity of those that love him. Feeling ourselves animated
+by a zeal such as cannot fail to please him, we have cause to hope that he
+will enlighten us, and that he will himself aid us in the execution of a
+project undertaken for his glory and for the good of men. A cause so good
+gives confidence: if there are plausible appearances against us there are
+proofs on our side, and I would dare to say to an adversary:
+
+  _Aspice, quam mage sit nostrum penetrabile telum._
+
+7. _God is the first reason of things_: for such things as are bounded, as
+all that which we see and experience, are contingent and have nothing in
+them to render their existence necessary, it being plain that time, space
+and matter, united and uniform in themselves and indifferent to everything,
+might have received entirely other motions and shapes, and in another
+order. Therefore one must seek the reason for the existence of the world,
+which is the whole assemblage of _contingent_ things, and seek it in the
+substance which carries with it the reason for its existence, and which in
+consequence is _necessary_ and eternal. Moreover, this cause must be
+intelligent: for this existing world being contingent and an infinity of
+other worlds being equally possible, and holding, so to say, equal claim to
+existence with it, the cause of the world must needs have had regard or
+reference to all these possible worlds in order to fix upon one of them.
+This regard or relation of an existent substance to simple possibilities
+can be nothing other than the _understanding_ which has the ideas of them,
+while to fix upon one of them can be nothing other than the act of the
+_will_ which chooses. It is the _power_ of this substance that renders its
+will efficacious. Power relates to _being_, wisdom or understanding to
+_truth_, and will to _good_. And this intelligent cause ought to be
+infinite in all ways, and absolutely perfect in _power_, in _wisdom_ and in
+_goodness_, since it relates to all that which is possible.           [128]
+Furthermore, since all is connected together, there is no ground for
+admitting more than _one_. Its understanding is the source of _essences_,
+and its will is the origin of _existences_. There in few words is the proof
+of one only God with his perfections, and through him of the origin of
+things.
+
+8. Now this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite,
+cannot but have chosen the best. For as a lesser evil is a kind of good,
+even so a lesser good is a kind of evil if it stands in the way of a
+greater good; and there would be something to correct in the actions of God
+if it were possible to do better. As in mathematics, when there is no
+maximum nor minimum, in short nothing distinguished, everything is done
+equally, or when that is not possible nothing at all is done: so it may be
+said likewise in respect of perfect wisdom, which is no less orderly than
+mathematics, that if there were not the best (_optimum_) among all possible
+worlds, God would not have produced any. I call 'World' the whole
+succession and the whole agglomeration of all existent things, lest it be
+said that several worlds could have existed in different times and
+different places. For they must needs be reckoned all together as one world
+or, if you will, as one Universe. And even though one should fill all times
+and all places, it still remains true that one might have filled them in
+innumerable ways, and that there is an infinitude of possible worlds among
+which God must needs have chosen the best, since he does nothing without
+acting in accordance with supreme reason.
+
+9. Some adversary not being able to answer this argument will perchance
+answer the conclusion by a counter-argument, saying that the world could
+have been without sin and without sufferings; but I deny that then it would
+have been _better_. For it must be known that all things are _connected_ in
+each one of the possible worlds: the universe, whatever it may be, is all
+of one piece, like an ocean: the least movement extends its effect there to
+any distance whatsoever, even though this effect become less perceptible in
+proportion to the distance. Therein God has ordered all things beforehand
+once for all, having foreseen prayers, good and bad actions, and all the
+rest; and each thing _as an idea_ has contributed, before its existence, to
+the resolution that has been made upon the existence of all things; so that
+nothing can be changed in the universe (any more than in a number) save its
+essence or, if you will, save its _numerical individuality_. Thus, if the
+smallest evil that comes to pass in the world were missing in it, it  [129]
+would no longer be this world; which, with nothing omitted and all
+allowance made, was found the best by the Creator who chose it.
+
+10. It is true that one may imagine possible worlds without sin and without
+unhappiness, and one could make some like Utopian or Sevarambian romances:
+but these same worlds again would be very inferior to ours in goodness. I
+cannot show you this in detail. For can I know and can I present infinities
+to you and compare them together? But you must judge with me _ab effectu_,
+since God has chosen this world as it is. We know, moreover, that often an
+evil brings forth a good whereto one would not have attained without that
+evil. Often indeed two evils have made one great good:
+
+  _Et si fata volunt, bina venena juvant_.
+
+Even so two liquids sometimes produce a solid, witness the spirit of wine
+and spirit of urine mixed by Van Helmont; or so do two cold and dark bodies
+produce a great fire, witness an acid solution and an aromatic oil combined
+by Herr Hoffmann. A general makes sometimes a fortunate mistake which
+brings about the winning of a great battle; and do they not sing on the eve
+of Easter, in the churches of the Roman rite:
+
+  _O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est!_
+  _O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!_
+
+11. The illustrious prelates of the Gallican church who wrote to Pope
+Innocent XII against Cardinal Sfondrati's book on predestination, being of
+the principles of St. Augustine, have said things well fitted to elucidate
+this great point. The cardinal appears to prefer even to the Kingdom of
+Heaven the state of children dying without baptism, because sin is the
+greatest of evils, and they have died innocent of all actual sin. More will
+be said of that below. The prelates have observed that this opinion is ill
+founded. The apostle, they say (Rom. iii. 8), is right to disapprove of the
+doing of evil that good may come, but one cannot disapprove that God,
+through his exceeding power, derive from the permitting of sins greater
+goods than such as occurred before the sins. It is not that we ought to
+take pleasure in sin, God forbid! but that we believe the same apostle when
+he says (Rom. v. 20) that where sin abounded, grace did much more     [130]
+abound; and we remember that we have gained Jesus Christ himself by reason
+of sin. Thus we see that the opinion of these prelates tends to maintain
+that a sequence of things where sin enters in may have been and has been,
+in effect, better than another sequence without sin.
+
+12. Use has ever been made of comparisons taken from the pleasures of the
+senses when these are mingled with that which borders on pain, to prove
+that there is something of like nature in intellectual pleasures. A little
+acid, sharpness or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar; shadows
+enhance colours; and even a dissonance in the right place gives relief to
+harmony. We wish to be terrified by rope-dancers on the point of falling
+and we wish that tragedies shall well-nigh cause us to weep. Do men relish
+health enough, or thank God enough for it, without having ever been sick?
+And is it not most often necessary that a little evil render the good more
+discernible, that is to say, greater?
+
+13. But it will be said that evils are great and many in number in
+comparison with the good: that is erroneous. It is only want of attention
+that diminishes our good, and this attention must be given to us through
+some admixture of evils. If we were usually sick and seldom in good health,
+we should be wonderfully sensible of that great good and we should be less
+sensible of our evils. But is it not better, notwithstanding, that health
+should be usual and sickness the exception? Let us then by our reflexion
+supply what is lacking in our perception, in order to make the good of
+health more discernible. Had we not the knowledge of the life to come, I
+believe there would be few persons who, being at the point of death, were
+not content to take up life again, on condition of passing through the same
+amount of good and evil, provided always that it were not the same kind:
+one would be content with variety, without requiring a better condition
+than that wherein one had been.
+
+14. When one considers also the fragility of the human body, one looks in
+wonder at the wisdom and the goodness of the Author of Nature, who has made
+the body so enduring and its condition so tolerable. That has often made me
+say that I am not astonished men are sometimes sick, but that I am
+astonished they are sick so little and not always. This also ought to make
+us the more esteem the divine contrivance of the mechanism of animals,
+whose Author has made machines so fragile and so subject to corruption[131]
+and yet so capable of maintaining themselves: for it is Nature which cures
+us rather than medicine. Now this very fragility is a consequence of the
+nature of things, unless we are to will that this kind of creature,
+reasoning and clothed in flesh and bones, be not in the world. But that, to
+all appearance, would be a defect which some philosophers of old would have
+called _vacuum formarum_, a gap in the order of species.
+
+15. Those whose humour it is to be well satisfied with Nature and with
+fortune and not to complain about them, even though they should not be the
+best endowed, appear to me preferable to the other sort; for besides that
+these complaints are ill founded, it is in effect murmuring against the
+orders of providence. One must not readily be among the malcontents in the
+State where one is, and one must not be so at all in the city of God,
+wherein one can only wrongfully be of their number. The books of human
+misery, such as that of Pope Innocent III, to me seem not of the most
+serviceable: evils are doubled by being given an attention that ought to be
+averted from them, to be turned towards the good which by far
+preponderates. Even less do I approve books such as that of Abbé Esprit,
+_On the Falsity of Human Virtues_, of which we have lately been given a
+summary: for such a book serves to turn everything wrong side out, and
+cause men to be such as it represents them.
+
+16. It must be confessed, however, that there are disorders in this life,
+which appear especially in the prosperity of sundry evil men and in the
+misfortune of many good people. There is a German proverb which even grants
+the advantage to the evil ones, as if they were commonly the most
+fortunate:
+
+  _Je krümmer Holz, je bessre Krücke:_
+  _Je ärger Schalck, je grösser Glücke._
+
+And it were to be desired that this saying of Horace should be true in our
+eyes:
+
+  _Raro antecedentem scelestum_
+  _Deseruit pede poena claudo._
+
+Yet it often comes to pass also, though this perchance not the most often,
+
+                                                                      [132]
+  _That in the world's eyes Heaven is justified,_
+
+and that one may say with Claudian:
+
+  _Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poena tumultum,_
+  _Absolvitque deos..._
+
+17. But even though that should not happen here, the remedy is all prepared
+in the other life: religion and reason itself teach us that, and we must
+not murmur against a respite which the supreme wisdom has thought fit to
+grant to men for repentance. Yet there objections multiply on another side,
+when one considers salvation and damnation: for it appears strange that,
+even in the great future of eternity, evil should have the advantage over
+good, under the supreme authority of him who is the sovereign good, since
+there will be many that are called and few that are chosen or are saved. It
+is true that one sees from some lines of Prudentius (Hymn. ante Somnum),
+
+  _Idem tamen benignus_
+  _Ultor retundit iram,_
+  _Paucosque non piorum_
+  _Patitur perire in aevum,_
+
+that divers men believed in his time that the number of those wicked enough
+to be damned would be very small. To some indeed it seems that men believed
+at that time in a sphere between Hell and Paradise; that this same
+Prudentius speaks as if he were satisfied with this sphere; that St.
+Gregory of Nyssa also inclines in that direction, and that St. Jerome leans
+towards the opinion according whereunto all Christians would finally be
+taken into grace. A saying of St. Paul which he himself gives out as
+mysterious, stating that all Israel will be saved, has provided much food
+for reflexion. Sundry pious persons, learned also, but daring, have revived
+the opinion of Origen, who maintains that good will predominate in due
+time, in all and everywhere, and that all rational creatures, even the bad
+angels, will become at last holy and blessed. The book of the eternal
+Gospel, published lately in German and supported by a great and learned
+work entitled [Greek: 'Apokatástasis pántôn], has caused much stir over
+this great paradox. M. le Clerc also has ingeniously pleaded the cause of
+the Origenists, but without declaring himself for them.
+
+                                                                      [133]
+18. There is a man of wit who, pushing my principle of harmony even to
+arbitrary suppositions that I in no wise approve, has created for himself a
+theology well-nigh astronomical. He believes that the present confusion in
+this world below began when the Presiding Angel of the globe of the earth,
+which was still a sun (that is, a star that was fixed and luminous of
+itself) committed a sin with some lesser angels of his department, perhaps
+rising inopportunely against an angel of a greater sun; that
+simultaneously, by the Pre-established Harmony of the Realms of Nature and
+of Grace, and consequently by natural causes occurring at the appointed
+time, our globe was covered with stains, rendered opaque and driven from
+its place; which has made it become a wandering star or planet, that is, a
+Satellite of another sun, and even perhaps of that one whose superiority
+its angel refused to recognize; and that therein consists the fall of
+Lucifer. Now the chief of the bad angels, who in Holy Scripture is named
+the prince, and even the god of this world, being, with the angels of his
+train, envious of that rational animal which walks on the surface of this
+globe, and which God has set up there perhaps to compensate himself for
+their fall, strives to render it accessary in their crimes and a
+participator in their misfortunes. Whereupon Jesus Christ came to save men.
+He is the eternal Son of God, even as he is his only Son; but (according to
+some ancient Christians, and according to the author of this hypothesis)
+having taken upon him at first, from the beginning of things, the most
+excellent nature among created beings, to bring them all to perfection, he
+set himself amongst them: and this is the second filiation, whereby he is
+the first-born of all creatures. This is he whom the Cabalists called Adam
+Kadmon. Haply he had planted his tabernacle in that great sun which
+illumines us; but he came at last into this globe where we are, he was born
+of the Virgin, and took human nature upon him to save mankind from the
+hands of their enemy and his. And when the time of judgement shall draw
+near, when the present face of our globe shall be about to perish, he will
+return to it in visible form, thence to withdraw the good, transplanting
+them, it may be, into the sun, and to punish here the wicked with the
+demons that have allured them; then the globe of the earth will begin to
+burn and will be perhaps a comet. This fire will last for aeons upon aeons.
+The tail of the comet is intended by the smoke which will rise incessantly,
+according to the Apocalypse, and this fire will be hell, or the second[134]
+death whereof Holy Scripture speaks. But at last hell will render up its
+dead, death itself will be destroyed; reason and peace will begin to hold
+sway again in the spirits that had been perverted; they will be sensible of
+their error, they will adore their Creator, and will even begin to love him
+all the more for seeing the greatness of the abyss whence they emerge.
+Simultaneously (by virtue of the _harmonic parallelism_ of the Realms of
+Nature and of Grace) this long and great conflagration will have purged the
+earth's globe of its stains. It will become again a sun; its Presiding
+Angel will resume his place with the angels of his train; humans that were
+damned shall be with them numbered amongst the good angels; this chief of
+our globe shall render homage to the Messiah, chief of created beings. The
+glory of this angel reconciled shall be greater than it was before his
+fall.
+
+  _Inque Deos iterum factorum lege receptus_
+  _Aureus aeternum noster regnabit Apollo._
+
+The vision seemed to me pleasing, and worthy of a follower of Origen: but
+we have no need of such hypothesis or fictions, where Wit plays a greater
+part than Revelation, and which even Reason cannot turn to account. For it
+does not appear that there is one principal place in the known universe
+deserving in preference to the rest to be the seat of the eldest of created
+beings; and the sun of our system at least is not it.
+
+19. Holding then to the established doctrine that the number of men damned
+eternally will be incomparably greater than that of the saved, we must say
+that the evil could not but seem to be almost as nothing in comparison with
+the good, when one contemplates the true vastness of the city of God.
+Coelius Secundus Curio wrote a little book, _De Amplitudine Regni
+Coelestis_, which was reprinted not long since; but he is indeed far from
+having apprehended the compass of the kingdom of heaven. The ancients had
+puny ideas on the works of God, and St. Augustine, for want of knowing
+modern discoveries, was at a loss when there was question of explaining the
+prevalence of evil. It seemed to the ancients that there was only one earth
+inhabited, and even of that men held the antipodes in dread: the remainder
+of the world was, according to them, a few shining globes and a few
+crystalline spheres. To-day, whatever bounds are given or not given to the
+universe, it must be acknowledged that there is an infinite number of
+globes, as great as and greater than ours, which have as much right as[135]
+it to hold rational inhabitants, though it follows not at all that they are
+human. It is only one planet, that is to say one of the six principal
+satellites of our sun; and as all fixed stars are suns also, we see how
+small a thing our earth is in relation to visible things, since it is only
+an appendix of one amongst them. It may be that all suns are peopled only
+by blessed creatures, and nothing constrains us to think that many are
+damned, for few instances or few samples suffice to show the advantage
+which good extracts from evil. Moreover, since there is no reason for the
+belief that there are stars everywhere, is it not possible that there may
+be a great space beyond the region of the stars? Whether it be the Empyrean
+Heaven, or not, this immense space encircling all this region may in any
+case be filled with happiness and glory. It can be imagined as like the
+Ocean, whither flow the rivers of all blessed creatures, when they shall
+have reached their perfection in the system of the stars. What will become
+of the consideration of our globe and its inhabitants? Will it not be
+something incomparably less than a physical point, since our earth is as a
+point in comparison with the distance of some fixed stars? Thus since the
+proportion of that part of the universe which we know is almost lost in
+nothingness compared with that which is unknown, and which we yet have
+cause to assume, and since all the evils that may be raised in objection
+before us are in this near nothingness, haply it may be that all evils are
+almost nothingness in comparison with the good things which are in the
+universe.
+
+20. But it is necessary also to meet the more speculative and metaphysical
+difficulties which have been mentioned, and which concern the cause of
+evil. The question is asked first of all, whence does evil come? _Si Deus
+est, unde malum? Si non est, unde bonum?_ The ancients attributed the cause
+of evil to _matter_, which they believed uncreate and independent of God:
+but we, who derive all being from God, where shall we find the source of
+evil? The answer is, that it must be sought in the ideal nature of the
+creature, in so far as this nature is contained in the eternal verities
+which are in the understanding of God, independently of his will. For we
+must consider that there is an _original imperfection in the creature_
+before sin, because the creature is limited in its essence; whence ensues
+that it cannot know all, and that it can deceive itself and commit other
+errors. Plato said in _Timaeus_ that the world originated in          [136]
+Understanding united to Necessity. Others have united God and Nature. This
+can be given a reasonable meaning. God will be the Understanding; and the
+Necessity, that is, the essential nature of things, will be the object of
+the understanding, in so far as this object consists in the eternal
+verities. But this object is inward and abides in the divine understanding.
+And therein is found not only the primitive form of good, but also the
+origin of evil: the Region of the Eternal Verities must be substituted for
+matter when we are concerned with seeking out the source of things.
+
+This region is the ideal cause of evil (as it were) as well as of good:
+but, properly speaking, the formal character of evil has no _efficient_
+cause, for it consists in privation, as we shall see, namely, in that which
+the efficient cause does not bring about. That is why the Schoolmen are
+wont to call the cause of evil _deficient_.
+
+21. Evil may be taken metaphysically, physically and morally. _Metaphysical
+evil_ consists in mere imperfection, _physical evil_ in suffering, and
+_moral evil_ in sin. Now although physical evil and moral evil be not
+necessary, it is enough that by virtue of the eternal verities they be
+possible. And as this vast Region of Verities contains all possibilities it
+is necessary that there be an infinitude of possible worlds, that evil
+enter into divers of them, and that even the best of all contain a measure
+thereof. Thus has God been induced to permit evil.
+
+22. But someone will say to me: why speak you to us of 'permitting'? Is it
+not God that doeth the evil and that willeth it? Here it will be necessary
+to explain what 'permission' is, so that it may be seen how this term is
+not employed without reason. But before that one must explain the nature of
+will, which has its own degrees. Taking it in the general sense, one may
+say that _will_ consists in the inclination to do something in proportion
+to the good it contains. This will is called _antecedent_ when it is
+detached, and considers each good separately in the capacity of a good. In
+this sense it may be said that God tends to all good, as good, _ad
+perfectionem simpliciter simplicem_, to speak like the Schoolmen, and that
+by an antecedent will. He is earnestly disposed to sanctify and to save all
+men, to exclude sin, and to prevent damnation. It may even be said that
+this will is efficacious _of itself (per se)_, that is, in such sort that
+the effect would ensue if there were not some stronger reason to prevent
+it: for this will does not pass into final exercise (_ad summum conatum_),
+else it would never fail to produce its full effect, God being the    [137]
+master of all things. Success entire and infallible belongs only to the
+_consequent will_, as it is called. This it is which is complete; and in
+regard to it this rule obtains, that one never fails to do what one wills,
+when one has the power. Now this consequent will, final and decisive,
+results from the conflict of all the antecedent wills, of those which tend
+towards good, even as of those which repel evil; and from the concurrence
+of all these particular wills comes the total will. So in mechanics
+compound movement results from all the tendencies that concur in one and
+the same moving body, and satisfies each one equally, in so far as it is
+possible to do all at one time. It is as if the moving body took equal
+account of these tendencies, as I once showed in one of the Paris Journals
+(7 Sept. 1693), when giving the general law of the compositions of
+movement. In this sense also it may be said that the antecedent will is
+efficacious in a sense and even effective with success.
+
+23. Thence it follows that God wills _antecedently_ the good and
+_consequently_ the best. And as for evil, God wills moral evil not at all,
+and physical evil or suffering he does not will absolutely. Thus it is that
+there is no absolute predestination to damnation; and one may say of
+physical evil, that God wills it often as a penalty owing to guilt, and
+often also as a means to an end, that is, to prevent greater evils or to
+obtain greater good. The penalty serves also for amendment and example.
+Evil often serves to make us savour good the more; sometimes too it
+contributes to a greater perfection in him who suffers it, as the seed that
+one sows is subject to a kind of corruption before it can germinate: this
+is a beautiful similitude, which Jesus Christ himself used.
+
+24. Concerning sin or moral evil, although it happens very often that it
+may serve as a means of obtaining good or of preventing another evil, it is
+not this that renders it a sufficient object of the divine will or a
+legitimate object of a created will. It must only be admitted or
+_permitted_ in so far as it is considered to be a certain consequence of an
+indispensable duty: as for instance if a man who was determined not to
+permit another's sin were to fail of his own duty, or as if an officer on
+guard at an important post were to leave it, especially in time of danger,
+in order to prevent a quarrel in the town between two soldiers of the
+garrison who wanted to kill each other.
+
+25. The rule which states, _non esse facienda mala, ut eveniant bona_, and
+which even forbids the permission of a moral evil with the end of     [138]
+obtaining a physical good, far from being violated, is here proved, and its
+source and its reason are demonstrated. One will not approve the action of
+a queen who, under the pretext of saving the State, commits or even permits
+a crime. The crime is certain and the evil for the State is open to
+question. Moreover, this manner of giving sanction to crimes, if it were
+accepted, would be worse than a disruption of some one country, which is
+liable enough to happen in any case, and would perchance happen all the
+more by reason of such means chosen to prevent it. But in relation to God
+nothing is open to question, nothing can be opposed to _the rule of the
+best_, which suffers neither exception nor dispensation. It is in this
+sense that God permits sin: for he would fail in what he owes to himself,
+in what he owes to his wisdom, his goodness, his perfection, if he followed
+not the grand result of all his tendencies to good, and if he chose not
+that which is absolutely the best, notwithstanding the evil of guilt, which
+is involved therein by the supreme necessity of the eternal verities. Hence
+the conclusion that God wills all good _in himself antecedently_, that he
+wills the best _consequently_ as an _end_, that he wills what is
+indifferent, and physical evil, sometimes as a _means_, but that he will
+only permit moral evil as the _sine quo non_ or as a hypothetical necessity
+which connects it with the best. Therefore the _consequent will_ of God,
+which has sin for its object, is only _permissive_.
+
+26. It is again well to consider that moral evil is an evil so great only
+because it is a source of physical evils, a source existing in one of the
+most powerful of creatures, who is also most capable of causing those
+evils. For an evil will is in its department what the evil principle of the
+Manichaeans would be in the universe; and reason, which is an image of the
+Divinity, provides for evil souls great means of causing much evil. One
+single Caligula, one Nero, has caused more evil than an earthquake. An evil
+man takes pleasure in causing suffering and destruction, and for that there
+are only too many opportunities. But God being inclined to produce as much
+good as possible, and having all the knowledge and all the power necessary
+for that, it is impossible that in him there be fault, or guilt, or sin;
+and when he permits sin, it is wisdom, it is virtue.
+
+27. It is indeed beyond question that we must refrain from preventing the
+sin of others when we cannot prevent their sin without sinning ourselves.
+But someone will perhaps bring up the objection that it is God himself[139]
+who acts and who effects all that is real in the sin of the creature. This
+objection leads us to consider the _physical co-operation_ of God with the
+creature, after we have examined the _moral co-operation_, which was the
+more perplexing. Some have believed, with the celebrated Durand de
+Saint-Pourçain and Cardinal Aureolus, the famous Schoolman, that the
+co-operation of God with the creature (I mean the physical cooperation) is
+only general and mediate, and that God creates substances and gives them
+the force they need; and that thereafter he leaves them to themselves, and
+does naught but conserve them, without aiding them in their actions. This
+opinion has been refuted by the greater number of Scholastic theologians,
+and it appears that in the past it met with disapproval in the writings of
+Pelagius. Nevertheless a Capuchin named Louis Pereir of Dole, about the
+year 1630, wrote a book expressly to revive it, at least in relation to
+free actions. Some moderns incline thereto, and M. Bernier supports it in a
+little book on freedom and freewill. But one cannot say in relation to God
+what 'to conserve' is, without reverting to the general opinion. Also it
+must be taken into account that the action of God in conserving should have
+some reference to that which is conserved, according to what it is and to
+the state wherein it is; thus his action cannot be general or
+indeterminate. These generalities are abstractions not to be found in the
+truth of individual things, and the conservation of a man standing is
+different from the conservation of a man seated. This would not be so if
+conservation consisted only in the act of preventing and warding off some
+foreign cause which could destroy that which one wishes to conserve; as
+often happens when men conserve something. But apart from the fact that we
+are obliged ourselves sometimes to maintain that which we conserve, we must
+bear in mind that conservation by God consists in the perpetual immediate
+influence which the dependence of creatures demands. This dependence
+attaches not only to the substance but also to the action, and one can
+perhaps not explain it better than by saying, with theologians and
+philosophers in general, that it is a continued creation.
+
+28. The objection will be made that God therefore now creates man a sinner,
+he that in the beginning created him innocent. But here it must be said,
+with regard to the moral aspect, that God being supremely wise cannot fail
+to observe certain laws, and to act according to the rules, as well   [140]
+physical as moral, that wisdom has made him choose. And the same reason
+that has made him create man innocent, but liable to fall, makes him
+re-create man when he falls; for God's knowledge causes the future to be
+for him as the present, and prevents him from rescinding the resolutions
+made.
+
+29. As for physical co-operation, here one must consider the truth which
+has made already so much stir in the Schools since St. Augustine declared
+it, that evil is a privation of being, whereas the action of God tends to
+the positive. This answer is accounted a quibble, and even something
+chimerical in the minds of many people. But here is an instance somewhat
+similar, which will serve to disabuse them.
+
+30. The celebrated Kepler and M. Descartes (in his letters) after him have
+spoken of the 'natural inertia of bodies'; and it is something which may be
+regarded as a perfect image and even as a sample of the original limitation
+of creatures, to show that privation constitutes the formal character of
+the imperfections and disadvantages that are in substance as well as in its
+actions. Let us suppose that the current of one and the same river carried
+along with it various boats, which differ among themselves only in the
+cargo, some being laden with wood, others with stone, and some more, the
+others less. That being so, it will come about that the boats most heavily
+laden will go more slowly than the others, provided it be assumed that the
+wind or the oar, or some other similar means, assist them not at all. It is
+not, properly speaking, weight which is the cause of this retardation,
+since the boats are going down and not upwards; but it is the same cause
+which also increases the weight in bodies that have greater density, which
+are, that is to say, less porous and more charged with matter that is
+proper to them: for the matter which passes through the pores, not
+receiving the same movement, must not be taken into account. It is
+therefore matter itself which originally is inclined to slowness or
+privation of speed; not indeed of itself to lessen this speed, having once
+received it, since that would be action, but to moderate by its receptivity
+the effect of the impression when it is to receive it. Consequently, since
+more matter is moved by the same force of the current when the boat is more
+laden, it is necessary that it go more slowly; and experiments on the
+impact of bodies, as well as reason, show that twice as much force    [141]
+must be employed to give equal speed to a body of the same matter but of
+twice the size. But that indeed would not be necessary if the matter were
+absolutely indifferent to repose and to movement, and if it had not this
+natural inertia whereof we have just spoken to give it a kind of repugnance
+to being moved. Let us now compare the force which the current exercises on
+boats, and communicates to them, with the action of God, who produces and
+conserves whatever is positive in creatures, and gives them perfection,
+being and force: let us compare, I say, the inertia of matter with the
+natural imperfection of creatures, and the slowness of the laden boat with
+the defects to be found in the qualities and the action of the creature;
+and we shall find that there is nothing so just as this comparison. The
+current is the cause of the boat's movement, but not of its retardation;
+God is the cause of perfection in the nature and the actions of the
+creature, but the limitation of the receptivity of the creature is the
+cause of the defects there are in its action. Thus the Platonists, St.
+Augustine and the Schoolmen were right to say that God is the cause of the
+material element of evil which lies in the positive, and not of the formal
+element, which lies in privation. Even so one may say that the current is
+the cause of the material element of the retardation, but not of the
+formal: that is, it is the cause of the boat's speed without being the
+cause of the limits to this speed. And God is no more the cause of sin than
+the river's current is the cause of the retardation of the boat. Force also
+in relation to matter is as the spirit in relation to the flesh; the spirit
+is willing and the flesh is weak, and spirits act...
+
+  _quantum non noxia corpora tardant._
+
+31. There is, then, a wholly similar relation between such and such an
+action of God, and such and such a passion or reception of the creature,
+which in the ordinary course of things is perfected only in proportion to
+its 'receptivity', such is the term used. And when it is said that the
+creature depends upon God in so far as it exists and in so far as it acts,
+and even that conservation is a continual creation, this is true in that
+God gives ever to the creature and produces continually all that in it is
+positive, good and perfect, every perfect gift coming from the Father of
+lights. The imperfections, on the other hand, and the defects in operations
+spring from the original limitation that the creature could not but   [142]
+receive with the first beginning of its being, through the ideal reasons
+which restrict it. For God could not give the creature all without making
+of it a God; therefore there must needs be different degrees in the
+perfection of things, and limitations also of every kind.
+
+32. This consideration will serve also to satisfy some modern philosophers
+who go so far as to say that God is the only agent. It is true that God is
+the only one whose action is pure and without admixture of what is termed
+'to suffer': but that does not preclude the creature's participation in
+actions, since _the action of the creature_ is a modification of the
+substance, flowing naturally from it and containing a variation not only in
+the perfections that God has communicated to the creature, but also in the
+limitations that the creature, being what it is, brings with it. Thus we
+see that there is an actual distinction between the substance and its
+modification or accidents, contrary to the opinion of some moderns and in
+particular of the late Duke of Buckingham, who spoke of that in a little
+_Discourse on Religion_ recently reprinted. Evil is therefore like
+darkness, and not only ignorance but also error and malice consist formally
+in a certain kind of privation. Here is an example of error which we have
+already employed. I see a tower which from a distance appears round
+although it is square. The thought that the tower is what it appears to be
+flows naturally from that which I see; and when I dwell on this thought it
+is an affirmation, it is a false judgement; but if I pursue the
+examination, if some reflexion causes me to perceive that appearances
+deceive me, lo and behold, I abandon my error. To abide in a certain place,
+or not to go further, not to espy some landmark, these are privations.
+
+33. It is the same in respect of malice or ill will. The will tends towards
+good in general, it must strive after the perfection that befits us, and
+the supreme perfection is in God. All pleasures have within themselves some
+feeling of perfection. But when one is limited to the pleasures of the
+senses, or to other pleasures to the detriment of greater good, as of
+health, of virtue, of union with God, of felicity, it is in this privation
+of a further aspiration that the defect consists. In general perfection is
+positive, it is an absolute reality; defect is privative, it comes from
+limitation and tends towards new privations. This saying is therefore as
+true as it is ancient: _bonum ex causa integra, malum ex quolibet defectu_;
+as also that which states: _malum causam habet non efficientem, sed   [143]
+deficientem_. And I hope that the meaning of these axioms will be better
+apprehended after what I have just said.
+
+34. The physical co-operation of God and of creatures with the will
+contributes also to the difficulties existing in regard to freedom. I am of
+opinion that our will is exempt not only from constraint but also from
+necessity. Aristotle has already observed that there are two things in
+freedom, to wit, spontaneity and choice, and therein lies our mastery over
+our actions. When we act freely we are not being forced, as would happen if
+we were pushed on to a precipice and thrown from top to bottom; and we are
+not prevented from having the mind free when we deliberate, as would happen
+if we were given a draught to deprive us of discernment. There is
+_contingency_ in a thousand actions of Nature; but when there is no
+judgement in him who acts there is no _freedom_. And if we had judgement
+not accompanied by any inclination to act, our soul would be an
+understanding without will.
+
+35. It is not to be imagined, however, that our freedom consists in an
+indetermination or an indifference of equipoise, as if one must needs be
+inclined equally to the side of yes and of no and in the direction of
+different courses, when there are several of them to take. This equipoise
+in all directions is impossible: for if we were equally inclined towards
+the courses A, B and C, we could not be equally inclined towards A and
+towards not A. This equipoise is also absolutely contrary to experience,
+and in scrutinizing oneself one will find that there has always been some
+cause or reason inclining us towards the course taken, although very often
+we be not aware of that which prompts us: just in the same way one is
+hardly aware why, on issuing from a door, one has placed the right foot
+before the left or the left before the right.
+
+36. But let us pass to the difficulties. Philosophers agree to-day that the
+truth of contingent futurities is determinate, that is to say that
+contingent futurities are future, or that they will be, that they will
+happen: for it is as sure that the future will be, as it is sure that the
+past has been. It was true already a hundred years ago that I should write
+to-day, as it will be true after a hundred years that I have written. Thus
+the contingent is not, because it is future, any the less contingent; and
+_determination_, which would be called certainty if it were known, is not
+incompatible with contingency. Often the certain and the determinate are
+taken as one thing, because a determinate truth is capable of being   [144]
+known: thus it may be said that determination is an objective certainty.
+
+37. This determination comes from the very nature of truth, and cannot
+injure freedom: but there are other determinations taken from elsewhere,
+and in the first place from the foreknowledge of God, which many have held
+to be contrary to freedom. They say that what is foreseen cannot fail to
+exist, and they say so truly; but it follows not that what is foreseen is
+necessary, for _necessary truth_ is that whereof the contrary is impossible
+or implies contradiction. Now this truth which states that I shall write
+tomorrow is not of that nature, it is not necessary. Yet supposing that God
+foresees it, it is necessary that it come to pass; that is, the consequence
+is necessary, namely, that it exist, since it has been foreseen; for God is
+infallible. This is what is termed a _hypothetical necessity_. But our
+concern is not this necessity: it is an _absolute necessity_ that is
+required, to be able to say that an action is necessary, that it is not
+contingent, that it is not the effect of a free choice. Besides it is very
+easily seen that foreknowledge in itself adds nothing to the determination
+of the truth of contingent futurities, save that this determination is
+known: and this does not augment the determination or the 'futurition' (as
+it is termed) of these events, that whereon we agreed at the outset.
+
+38. This answer is doubtless very correct. It is agreed that foreknowledge
+in itself does not make truth more determinate; truth is foreseen because
+it is determinate, because it is true; but it is not true because it is
+foreseen: and therein the knowledge of the future has nothing that is not
+also in the knowledge of the past or of the present. But here is what an
+opponent will be able to say: I grant you that foreknowledge in itself does
+not make truth more determinate, but it is the cause of the foreknowledge
+that makes it so. For it needs must be that the foreknowledge of God have
+its foundation in the nature of things, and this foundation, making the
+truth _predeterminate_, will prevent it from being contingent and free.
+
+39. It is this difficulty that has caused two parties to spring up, one of
+the _predeterminators_, the other of the supporters of _mediate knowledge_.
+The Dominicans and the Augustinians are for predetermination, the
+Franciscans and the modern Jesuits on the other hand are for mediate
+knowledge. These two parties appeared towards the middle of the sixteenth
+century and a little later. Molina himself, who is perhaps one of the [145]
+first, with Fonseca, to have systematized this point, and from whom the
+others derived their name of Molinists, says in the book that he wrote on
+the reconciliation of freewill with grace, about the year 1570, that the
+Spanish doctors (he means principally the Thomists), who had been writing
+then for twenty years, finding no other way to explain how God could have a
+certain knowledge of contingent futurities, had introduced predetermination
+as being necessary to free actions.
+
+40. As for himself, he thought to have found another way. He considers that
+there are three objects of divine knowledge, the possibles, the actual
+events and the conditional events that would happen in consequence of a
+certain condition if it were translated into action. The knowledge of
+possibilities is what is called the 'knowledge of mere intelligence'; that
+of events occurring actually in the progress of the universe is called the
+'knowledge of intuition'. And as there is a kind of mean between the merely
+possible and the pure and absolute event, to wit, the conditional event, it
+can be said also, according to Molina, that there is a mediate knowledge
+between that of intuition and that of intelligence. Instance is given of
+the famous example of David asking the divine oracle whether the
+inhabitants of the town of Keilah, where he designed to shut himself in,
+would deliver him to Saul, supposing that Saul should besiege the town. God
+answered yes; whereupon David took a different course. Now some advocates
+of this mediate knowledge are of opinion that God, foreseeing what men
+would do of their own accord, supposing they were placed in such and such
+circumstances, and knowing that they would make ill use of their free will,
+decrees to refuse them grace and favourable circumstances. And he may
+justly so decree, since in any case these circumstances and these aids
+would not have served them aught. But Molina contents himself with finding
+therein generally a reason for the decrees of God, founded on what the free
+creature would do in such and such circumstances.
+
+41. I will not enter into all the detail of this controversy; it will
+suffice for me to give one instance. Certain older writers, not acceptable
+to St. Augustine and his first disciples, appear to have had ideas somewhat
+approaching those of Molina. The Thomists and those who call themselves
+disciples of St. Augustine (but whom their opponents call Jansenists)
+combat this doctrine on philosophical and theological grounds. Some   [146]
+maintain that mediate knowledge must be included in the knowledge of mere
+intelligence. But the principal objection is aimed at the foundation of
+this knowledge. For what foundation can God have for seeing what the people
+of Keilah would do? A simple contingent and free act has nothing in itself
+to yield a principle of certainty, unless one look upon it as predetermined
+by the decrees of God, and by the causes that are dependent upon them.
+Consequently the difficulty existing in actual free actions will exist also
+in conditional free actions, that is to say, God will know them only under
+the condition of their causes and of his decrees, which are the first
+causes of things: and it will not be possible to separate such actions from
+those causes so as to know a contingent event in a way that is independent
+of the knowledge of its causes. Therefore all must of necessity be traced
+back to the predetermination of God's decrees, and this mediate knowledge
+(so it will be said) will offer no remedy. The theologians who profess to
+be adherents of St. Augustine claim also that the system of the Molinists
+would discover the source of God's grace in the good qualities of man, and
+this they deem an infringement of God's honour and contrary to St. Paul's
+teaching.
+
+42. It would be long and wearisome to enter here into the replies and
+rejoinders coming from one side and the other, and it will suffice for me
+to explain how I conceive that there is truth on both sides. For this
+result I resort to my principle of an infinitude of possible worlds,
+represented in the region of eternal verities, that is, in the object of
+the divine intelligence, where all conditional futurities must be
+comprised. For the case of the siege of Keilah forms part of a possible
+world, _which differs from ours only in all that is connected with this
+hypothesis_, and the idea of this possible world represents that which
+would happen in this case. Thus we have a principle for the certain
+knowledge of contingent futurities, whether they happen actually or must
+happen in a certain case. For in the region of the possibles they are
+represented as they are, namely, as free contingencies. Therefore neither
+the foreknowledge of contingent futurities nor the foundation for the
+certainty of this foreknowledge should cause us perplexity or seem to
+prejudice freedom. And though it were true and possible that contingent
+futurities consisting in free actions of reasonable creatures were entirely
+independent of the decrees of God and of external causes, there would [147]
+still be means of foreseeing them; for God would see them as they are in
+the region of the possibles, before he decrees to admit them into
+existence.
+
+43. But if the foreknowledge of God has nothing to do with the dependence
+or independence of our free actions, it is not so with the foreordinance of
+God, his decrees, and the sequence of causes which, as I believe, always
+contribute to the determination of the will. And if I am for the Molinists
+in the first point, I am for the predeterminators in the second, provided
+always that predetermination be taken as not necessitating. In a word, I am
+of opinion that the will is always more inclined towards the course it
+adopts, but that it is never bound by the necessity to adopt it. That it
+will adopt this course is certain, but it is not necessary. The case
+corresponds to that of the famous saying, _Astra inclinant, non
+necessitant_, although here the similarity is not complete. For the event
+towards which the stars tend (to speak with the common herd, as if there
+were some foundation for astrology) does not always come to pass, whereas
+the course towards which the will is more inclined never fails to be
+adopted. Moreover the stars would form only a part of the inclinations that
+co-operate in the event, but when one speaks of the greater inclination of
+the will, one speaks of the result of all the inclinations. It is almost as
+we have spoken above of the consequent will in God, which results from all
+the antecedent wills.
+
+44. Nevertheless, objective certainty or determination does not bring about
+the necessity of the determinate truth. All philosophers acknowledge this,
+asserting that the truth of contingent futurities is determinate, and that
+nevertheless they remain contingent. The thing indeed would imply no
+contradiction in itself if the effect did not follow; and therein lies
+contingency. The better to understand this point, we must take into account
+that there are two great principles of our arguments. The one is the
+principle of _contradiction_, stating that of two contradictory
+propositions the one is true, the other false; the other principle is that
+of the _determinant reason_: it states that nothing ever comes to pass
+without there being a cause or at least a reason determining it, that is,
+something to give an _a priori_ reason why it is existent rather than
+non-existent, and in this wise rather than in any other. This great
+principle holds for all events, and a contrary instance will never be
+supplied: and although more often than not we are insufficiently      [148]
+acquainted with these determinant reasons, we perceive nevertheless that
+there are such. Were it not for this great principle we could never prove
+the existence of God, and we should lose an infinitude of very just and
+very profitable arguments whereof it is the foundation; moreover, it
+suffers no exception, for otherwise its force would be weakened. Besides,
+nothing is so weak as those systems where all is unsteady and full of
+exceptions. That fault cannot be laid to the charge of the system I
+approve, where everything happens in accordance with general rules that at
+most are mutually restrictive.
+
+45. We must therefore not imagine with some Schoolmen, whose ideas tend
+towards the chimerical, that free contingent futurities have the privilege
+of exemption from this general rule of the nature of things. There is
+always a prevailing reason which prompts the will to its choice, and for
+the maintenance of freedom for the will it suffices that this reason should
+incline without necessitating. That is also the opinion of all the
+ancients, of Plato, of Aristotle, of St. Augustine. The will is never
+prompted to action save by the representation of the good, which prevails
+over the opposite representations. This is admitted even in relation to
+God, the good angels and the souls in bliss: and it is acknowledged that
+they are none the less free in consequence of that. God fails not to choose
+the best, but he is not constrained so to do: nay, more, there is no
+necessity in the object of God's choice, for another sequence of things is
+equally possible. For that very reason the choice is free and independent
+of necessity, because it is made between several possibles, and the will is
+determined only by the preponderating goodness of the object. This is
+therefore not a defect where God and the saints are concerned: on the
+contrary, it would be a great defect, or rather a manifest absurdity, were
+it otherwise, even in men here on earth, and if they were capable of acting
+without any inclining reason. Of such absurdity no example will ever be
+found; and even supposing one takes a certain course out of caprice, to
+demonstrate one's freedom, the pleasure or advantage one thinks to find in
+this conceit is one of the reasons tending towards it.
+
+46. There is therefore a freedom of contingency or, in a way, of
+indifference, provided that by 'indifference' is understood that nothing
+necessitates us to one course or the other; but there is never any
+_indifference of equipoise_, that is, where all is completely even on [149]
+both sides, without any inclination towards either. Innumerable great and
+small movements, internal and external, co-operate with us, for the most
+part unperceived by us. And I have already said that when one leaves a room
+there are such and such reasons determining us to put the one foot first,
+without pausing to reflect. For there is not everywhere a slave, as in
+Trimalchio's house in Petronius, to cry to us: the right foot first. All
+that we have just said agrees entirely also with the maxims of the
+philosophers, who teach that a cause cannot act without having a
+disposition towards action. It is this disposition which contains a
+predetermination, whether the doer have received it from without, or have
+had it in consequence of his own antecedent character.
+
+47. Thus we have no need to resort, in company with some new Thomists, to a
+new immediate predetermination by God, such as may cause the free creature
+to abandon his indifference, and to a decree of God for predetermining the
+creature, making it possible for God to know what the creature will do: for
+it suffices that the creature be predetermined by its preceding state,
+which inclines it to one course more than to the other. Moreover, all these
+connexions of the actions of the creature and of all creatures were
+represented in the divine understanding, and known to God through the
+knowledge of mere intelligence, before he had decreed to give them
+existence. Thus we see that, in order to account for the foreknowledge of
+God, one may dispense with both the mediate knowledge of the Molinists and
+the predetermination which a Bañez or an Alvarez (writers otherwise of
+great profundity) have taught.
+
+48. By this false idea of an indifference of equipoise the Molinists were
+much embarrassed. They were asked not only how it was possible to know in
+what direction a cause absolutely indeterminate would be determined, but
+also how it was possible that there should finally result therefrom a
+determination for which there is no source: to say with Molina that it is
+the privilege of the free cause is to say nothing, but simply to grant that
+cause the privilege of being chimerical. It is pleasing to see their
+harassed efforts to emerge from a labyrinth whence there is absolutely no
+means of egress. Some teach that the will, before it is determined
+formally, must be determined virtually, in order to emerge from its state
+of equipoise; and Father Louis of Dole, in his book on the _Co-operation of
+God_, quotes Molinists who attempt to take refuge in this expedient:  [150]
+for they are compelled to acknowledge that the cause must needs be disposed
+to act. But they gain nothing, they only defer the difficulty: for they
+will still be asked how the free cause comes to be determined virtually.
+They will therefore never extricate themselves without acknowledging that
+there is a predetermination in the preceding state of the free creature,
+which inclines it to be determined.
+
+49. In consequence of this, the case also of Buridan's ass between two
+meadows, impelled equally towards both of them, is a fiction that cannot
+occur in the universe, in the order of Nature, although M. Bayle be of
+another opinion. It is true that, if the case were possible, one must say
+that the ass would starve himself to death: but fundamentally the question
+deals in the impossible, unless it be that God bring the thing about
+expressly. For the universe cannot be halved by a plane drawn through the
+middle of the ass, which is cut vertically through its length, so that all
+is equal and alike on both sides, in the manner wherein an ellipse, and
+every plane figure of the number of those I term 'ambidexter', can be thus
+halved, by any straight line passing through its centre. Neither the parts
+of the universe nor the viscera of the animal are alike nor are they evenly
+placed on both sides of this vertical plane. There will therefore always be
+many things in the ass and outside the ass, although they be not apparent
+to us, which will determine him to go on one side rather than the other.
+And although man is free, and the ass is not, nevertheless for the same
+reason it must be true that in man likewise the case of a perfect equipoise
+between two courses is impossible. Furthermore it is true that an angel, or
+God certainly, could always account for the course man has adopted, by
+assigning a cause or a predisposing reason which has actually induced him
+to adopt it: yet this reason would often be complex and incomprehensible to
+ourselves, because the concatenation of causes linked together is very
+long.
+
+50. Hence it is that the reason M. Descartes has advanced to prove the
+independence of our free actions, by what he terms an intense inward
+sensation, has no force. We cannot properly speaking be sensible of our
+independence, and we are not aware always of the causes, often
+imperceptible, whereon our resolution depends. It is as though the magnetic
+needle took pleasure in turning towards the north: for it would think that
+it was turning independently of any other cause, not being aware of the
+imperceptible movements of the magnetic matter. Nevertheless we shall [151]
+see later in what sense it is quite true that the human soul is altogether
+its own natural principle in relation to its actions, dependent upon itself
+and independent of all other creatures.
+
+51. As for _volition_ itself, to say that it is an object of free will is
+incorrect. We will to act, strictly speaking, and we do not will to will;
+else we could still say that we will to have the will to will, and that
+would go on to infinity. Besides, we do not always follow the latest
+judgement of practical understanding when we resolve to will; but we always
+follow, in our willing, the result of all the inclinations that come from
+the direction both of reasons and passions, and this often happens without
+an express judgement of the understanding.
+
+52. All is therefore certain and determined beforehand in man, as
+everywhere else, and the human soul is a kind of _spiritual automaton_,
+although contingent actions in general and free action in particular are
+not on that account necessary with an absolute necessity, which would be
+truly incompatible with contingency. Thus neither futurition in itself,
+certain as it is, nor the infallible prevision of God, nor the
+predetermination either of causes or of God's decrees destroys this
+contingency and this freedom. That is acknowledged in respect of futurition
+and prevision, as has already been set forth. Since, moreover, God's decree
+consists solely in the resolution he forms, after having compared all
+possible worlds, to choose that one which is the best, and bring it into
+existence together with all that this world contains, by means of the
+all-powerful word _Fiat_, it is plain to see that this decree changes
+nothing in the constitution of things: God leaves them just as they were in
+the state of mere possibility, that is, changing nothing either in their
+essence or nature, or even in their accidents, which are represented
+perfectly already in the idea of this possible world. Thus that which is
+contingent and free remains no less so under the decrees of God than under
+his prevision.
+
+53. But could God himself (it will be said) then change nothing in the
+world? Assuredly he could not now change it, without derogation to his
+wisdom, since he has foreseen the existence of this world and of what it
+contains, and since, likewise, he has formed this resolution to bring it
+into existence: for he cannot be mistaken nor repent, and it did not behove
+him to from an imperfect resolution applying to one part and not the  [152]
+whole. Thus, all being ordered from the beginning, it is only because of
+this hypothetical necessity, recognized by everyone, that after God's
+prevision or after his resolution nothing can be changed: and yet the
+events in themselves remain contingent. For (setting aside this supposition
+of the futurition of the thing and of the prevision or of the resolution of
+God, a supposition which already lays it down as a fact that the thing will
+happen, and in accordance with which one must say, 'Unumquodque, quando
+est, oportet esse, aut unumquodque, siquidem erit, oportet futurum esse'),
+the event has nothing in it to render it necessary and to suggest that no
+other thing might have happened in its stead. And as for the connexion
+between causes and effects, it only inclined, without necessitating, the
+free agency, as I have just explained; thus it does not produce even a
+hypothetical necessity, save in conjunction with something from outside, to
+wit, this very maxim, that the prevailing inclination always triumphs.
+
+54. It will be said also that, if all is ordered, God cannot then perform
+miracles. But one must bear in mind that the miracles which happen in the
+world were also enfolded and represented as possible in this same world
+considered in the state of mere possibility; and God, who has since
+performed them, when he chose this world had even then decreed to perform
+them. Again the objection will be made that vows and prayers, merits and
+demerits, good and bad actions avail nothing, since nothing can be changed.
+This objection causes most perplexity to people in general, and yet it is
+purely a sophism. These prayers, these vows, these good or bad actions that
+occur to-day were already before God when he formed the resolution to order
+things. Those things which happen in this existing world were represented,
+with their effects and their consequences, in the idea of this same world,
+while it was still possible only; they were represented therein, attracting
+God's grace whether natural or supernatural, requiring punishments or
+rewards, just as it has happened actually in this world since God chose it.
+The prayer or the good action were even then an _ideal cause_ or
+_condition_, that is, an inclining reason able to contribute to the grace
+of God, or to the reward, as it now does in reality. Since, moreover, all
+is wisely connected together in the world, it is clear that God, foreseeing
+that which would happen freely, ordered all other things on that basis
+beforehand, or (what is the same) he chose that possible world in     [153]
+which everything was ordered in this fashion.
+
+55. This consideration demolishes at the same time what the ancients called
+the 'Lazy Sophism' ([Greek: logos argos]) which ended in a decision to do
+nothing: for (people would say) if what I ask is to happen it will happen
+even though I should do nothing; and if it is not to happen it will never
+happen, no matter what trouble I take to achieve it. This necessity,
+supposedly existent in events, and detached from their causes, might be
+termed _Fatum Mahometanum_, as I have already observed above, because a
+similar line of reasoning, so it is said, causes the Turks not to shun
+places ravaged by plague. But the answer is quite ready: the effect being
+certain, the cause that shall produce it is certain also; and if the effect
+comes about it will be by virtue of a proportionate cause. Thus your
+laziness perchance will bring it about that you will obtain naught of what
+you desire, and that you will fall into those misfortunes which you would
+by acting with care have avoided. We see, therefore, that the _connexion of
+causes with effects_, far from causing an unendurable fatality, provides
+rather a means of obviating it. There is a German proverb which says that
+death will ever have a cause; and nothing is so true. You will die on that
+day (let us presume it is so, and that God foresees it): yes, without
+doubt; but it will be because you will do what shall lead you thither. It
+is likewise with the chastisements of God, which also depend upon their
+causes. And it will be apposite in this connexion to quote this famous
+passage from St. Ambrose (in cap. I _Lucae_), 'Novit Dominus mutare
+sententiam, si tu noveris mutare delictum', which is not to be understood
+as of reprobation, but of denunciation, such as that which Jonah dealt out
+for God to the Ninevites. This common saying: 'Si non es praedestinatus,
+fac ut praedestineris', must not be taken literally, its true sense being
+that he who has doubts of his predestination need only do what is required
+for him to obtain it by the grace of God. The sophism which ends in a
+decision to trouble oneself over nothing will haply be useful sometimes to
+induce certain people to face danger fearlessly. It has been applied in
+particular to Turkish soldiers: but it seems that hashish is a more
+important factor than this sophism, not to mention the fact that this
+resolute spirit in the Turks has greatly belied itself in our days.
+
+56. A learned physician of Holland named Johan van Beverwyck took the
+trouble to write _De Termino Vitae_ and to collect sundry answers,    [154]
+letters and discourses of some learned men of his time on this subject.
+This collection has been printed, and it is astonishing to see there how
+often people are misled, and how they have confused a problem which,
+properly speaking, is the easiest in the world. After that it is no wonder
+that there are very many doubts which the human race cannot abandon. The
+truth is that people love to lose themselves, and this is a kind of ramble
+of the mind, which is unwilling to subject itself to attention, to order,
+to rules. It seems as though we are so accustomed to games and jesting that
+we play the fool even in the most serious occupations, and when we least
+think to do so.
+
+57. I fear that in the recent dispute between the theologians of the
+Augsburg Confession, _De Termino Paenitentiae Peremptorio_, which has
+called forth so many treatises in Germany, some misunderstanding, though of
+a different nature, has slipped in. The terms prescribed by the laws are
+amongst lawyers known as _fatalia_. It may be said, in a sense, that the
+_peremptory term_, prescribed to man for his repentance and amendment, is
+certain in the sight of God, with whom all is certain. God knows when a
+sinner will be so hardened that thereafter nothing can be done for him: not
+indeed that it would be impossible for him to do penance or that sufficient
+grace needs must be refused to him after a certain term, a grace that never
+fails; but because there will be a time whereafter he will no more approach
+the ways of salvation. But we never have certain marks for recognizing this
+term, and we are never justified in considering a man utterly abandoned:
+that would be to pass a rash judgement. It were better always to have room
+for hope; and this is an occasion, with a thousand others, where our
+ignorance is beneficial.
+
+  _Prudens futuri temporis exitum_
+  _Caliginosa nocte premit Deus_.
+
+58. The whole future is doubtless determined: but since we know not what it
+is, nor what is foreseen or resolved, we must do our duty, according to the
+reason that God has given us and according to the rules that he has
+prescribed for us; and thereafter we must have a quiet mind, and leave to
+God himself the care for the outcome. For he will never fail to do that
+which shall be the best, not only in general but also in particular, for
+those who have true confidence in him, that is, a confidence composed [155]
+of true piety, a lively faith and fervent charity, by virtue of which we
+will, as far as in us lies, neglect nothing appertaining to our duty and
+his service. It is true that we cannot 'render service' to him, for he has
+need of nothing: but it is 'serving him', in our parlance, when we strive
+to carry out his presumptive will, co-operating in the good as it is known
+to us, wherever we can contribute thereto. For we must always presume that
+God is prompted towards the good we know, until the event shows us that he
+had stronger reasons, although perhaps unknown to us, which have made him
+subordinate this good that we sought to some other greater good of his own
+designing, which he has not failed or will not fail to effect.
+
+59. I have just shown how the action of the will depends upon its causes;
+that there is nothing so appropriate to human nature as this dependence of
+our actions; and that otherwise one would slip into a preposterous and
+unendurable fatality, namely into the _Fatum Mahometanum_, which is the
+worst of all because it overthrows foresight and good counsel. It is well
+to show, notwithstanding, how this dependence of voluntary actions does not
+fundamentally preclude the existence within us of a wonderful
+_spontaneity_, which in a certain sense makes the soul in its resolves
+independent of the physical influence of all other creatures. This
+spontaneity, hitherto little recognized, which exalts our command over our
+actions to the highest pitch, is a consequence of the System of
+Pre-established Harmony, of which I must give some explanation here. The
+Scholastic philosophers believed that there was a reciprocal physical
+influence between body and soul: but since it has been recognized that
+thought and dimensional mass have no mutual connexion, and that they are
+creatures differing _toto genere_, many moderns have acknowledged that
+there is no _physical communication_ between soul and body, despite the
+_metaphysical communication_ always subsisting, which causes soul and body
+to compose one and the same _suppositum_, or what is called a person. This
+physical communication, if there were such, would cause the soul to change
+the degree of speed and the directional line of some motions that are in
+the body, and _vice versa_ the body to change the sequence of the thoughts
+that are in the soul. But this effect cannot be inferred from any notion
+conceived in the body and in the soul; though nothing be better known to us
+than the soul, since it is inmost to us, that is to say inmost to itself.
+
+                                                                      [156]
+60. M. Descartes wished to compromise and to make a part of the body's
+action dependent upon the soul. He believed in the existence of a rule of
+Nature to the effect, according to him, that the same quantity of movement
+is conserved in bodies. He deemed it not possible that the influence of the
+soul should violate this law of bodies, but he believed that the soul
+notwithstanding might have power to change the direction of the movements
+that are made in the body; much as a rider, though giving no force to the
+horse he mounts, nevertheless controls it by guiding that force in any
+direction he pleases. But as that is done by means of the bridle, the bit,
+the spurs and other material aids, it is conceivable how that can be; there
+are, however, no instruments such as the soul may employ for this result,
+nothing indeed either in the soul or in the body, that is, either in
+thought or in the mass, which may serve to explain this change of the one
+by the other. In a word, that the soul should change the quantity of force
+and that it should change the line of direction, both these things are
+equally inexplicable.
+
+61. Moreover, two important truths on this subject have been discovered
+since M. Descartes' day. The first is that the quantity of absolute force
+which is in fact conserved is different from the quantity of movement, as I
+have demonstrated elsewhere. The second discovery is that the same
+direction is still conserved in all bodies together that are assumed as
+interacting, in whatever way they come into collision. If this rule had
+been known to M. Descartes, he would have taken the direction of bodies to
+be as independent of the soul as their force; and I believe that that would
+have led direct to the Hypothesis of Pre-established Harmony, whither these
+same rules have led me. For apart from the fact that the physical influence
+of one of these substances on the other is inexplicable, I recognized that
+without a complete derangement of the laws of Nature the soul could not act
+physically upon the body. And I did not believe that one could here listen
+to philosophers, competent in other respects, who produce a God, as it
+were, _ex machina_, to bring about the final solution of the piece,
+maintaining that God exerts himself deliberately to move bodies as the soul
+pleases, and to give perceptions to the soul as the body requires. For this
+system, which is called that of _occasional causes_ (because it teaches
+that God acts on the body at the instance of the soul, and _vice versa_),
+besides introducing perpetual miracles to establish communication     [157]
+between these two substances, does not obviate the derangement of the
+natural laws obtaining in each of these same substances, which, in the
+general opinion, their mutual influence would cause.
+
+62. Being on other considerations already convinced of the principle of
+Harmony in general, I was in consequence convinced likewise of the
+_preformation_ and the Pre-established Harmony of all things amongst
+themselves, of that between nature and grace, between the decrees of God
+and our actions foreseen, between all parts of matter, and even between the
+future and the past, the whole in conformity with the sovereign wisdom of
+God, whose works are the most harmonious it is possible to conceive. Thus I
+could not fail to arrive at the system which declares that God created the
+soul in the beginning in such a fashion that it must produce and represent
+to itself successively that which takes place within the body, and the body
+also in such a fashion that it must do of itself that which the soul
+ordains. Consequently the laws that connect the thoughts of the soul in the
+order of final causes and in accordance with the evolution of perceptions
+must produce pictures that meet and harmonize with the impressions of
+bodies on our organs; and likewise the laws of movements in the body, which
+follow one another in the order of efficient causes, meet and so harmonize
+with the thoughts of the soul that the body is induced to act at the time
+when the soul wills it.
+
+63. Far from its being prejudicial, nothing can be more favourable to
+freedom than that system. And M. Jacquelot has demonstrated well in his
+book on the _Conformity of Faith with Reason_, that it is just as if he who
+knows all that I shall order a servant to do the whole day long on the
+morrow made an automaton entirely resembling this servant, to carry out
+to-morrow at the right moment all that I should order; and yet that would
+not prevent me from ordering freely all that I should please, although the
+action of the automaton that would serve me would not be in the least free.
+
+64. Moreover, since all that passes in the soul depends, according to this
+system, only upon the soul, and its subsequent state is derived only from
+it and from its present state, how can one give it a greater
+_independence_? It is true that there still remains some imperfection in
+the constitution of the soul. All that happens to the soul depends upon it,
+but depends not always upon its will; that were too much. Nor are such[158]
+happenings even recognized always by its understanding or perceived with
+distinctness. For there is in the soul not only an order of distinct
+perceptions, forming its dominion, but also a series of confused
+perceptions or passions, forming its bondage: and there is no need for
+astonishment at that; the soul would be a Divinity if it had none but
+distinct perceptions. It has nevertheless some power over these confused
+perceptions also, even if in an indirect manner. For although it cannot
+change its passions forthwith, it can work from afar towards that end with
+enough success, and endue itself with new passions and even habits. It even
+has a like power over the more distinct perceptions, being able to endue
+itself indirectly with opinions and intentions, and to hinder itself from
+having this one or that, and stay or hasten its judgement. For we can seek
+means beforehand to arrest ourselves, when occasion arises, on the sliding
+step of a rash judgement; we can find some incident to justify postponement
+of our resolution even at the moment when the matter appears ready to be
+judged. Although our opinion and our act of willing be not directly objects
+of our will (as I have already observed), one sometimes, takes measures
+nevertheless, to will and even to believe in due time, that which one does
+not will, or believe, now. So great is the profundity of the spirit of man.
+
+65. And now, to bring to a conclusion this question of _spontaneity_, it
+must be said that, on a rigorous definition, the soul has within it the
+principle of all its actions, and even of all its passions, and that the
+same is true in all the simple substances scattered throughout Nature,
+although there be freedom only in those that are intelligent. In the
+popular sense notwithstanding, speaking in accordance with appearances, we
+must say that the soul depends in some way upon the body and upon the
+impressions of the senses: much as we speak with Ptolemy and Tycho in
+everyday converse, and think with Copernicus, when it is a question of the
+rising and the setting of the sun.
+
+66. One may however give a true and philosophic sense to this _mutual
+dependence_ which we suppose between the soul and the body. It is that the
+one of these two substances depends upon the other ideally, in so far as
+the reason of that which is done in the one can be furnished by that which
+is in the other. This had already happened when God ordered beforehand the
+harmony that there would be between them. Even so would that          [159]
+automaton, that should fulfil the servant's function, depend upon me
+_ideally_, in virtue of the knowledge of him who, foreseeing my future
+orders, would have rendered it capable of serving me at the right moment
+all through the morrow. The knowledge of my future intentions would have
+actuated this great craftsman, who would accordingly have fashioned the
+automaton: my influence would be objective, and his physical. For in so far
+as the soul has perfection and distinct thoughts, God has accommodated the
+body to the soul, and has arranged beforehand that the body is impelled to
+execute its orders. And in so far as the soul is imperfect and as its
+perceptions are confused, God has accommodated the soul to the body, in
+such sort that the soul is swayed by the passions arising out of corporeal
+representations. This produces the same effect and the same appearance as
+if the one depended immediately upon the other, and by the agency of a
+physical influence. Properly speaking, it is by its confused thoughts that
+the soul represents the bodies which encompass it. The same thing must
+apply to all that we understand by the actions of simple substances one
+upon another. For each one is assumed to act upon the other in proportion
+to its perfection, although this be only ideally, and in the reasons of
+things, as God in the beginning ordered one substance to accord with
+another in proportion to the perfection or imperfection that there is in
+each. (Withal action and passion are always reciprocal in creatures,
+because one part of the reasons which serve to explain clearly what is
+done, and which have served to bring it into existence, is in the one of
+these substances, and another part of these reasons is in the other,
+perfections and imperfections being always mingled and shared.) Thus it is
+we attribute _action_ to the one, and _passion_ to the other.
+
+67. But after all, whatsoever dependence be conceived in voluntary actions,
+and even though there were an absolute and mathematical necessity (which
+there is not) it would not follow that there would not be a sufficient
+degree of freedom to render rewards and punishments just and reasonable. It
+is true that generally we speak as though the necessity of the action put
+an end to all merit and all demerit, all justification for praise and
+blame, for reward and punishment: but it must be admitted that this
+conclusion is not entirely correct. I am very far from sharing the opinions
+of Bradwardine, Wyclif, Hobbes and Spinoza, who advocate, so it seems,[160]
+this entirely mathematical necessity, which I think I have adequately
+refuted, and perhaps more clearly than is customary. Yet one must always
+bear testimony to the truth and not impute to a dogma anything that does
+not result from it. Moreover, these arguments prove too much, since they
+would prove just as much against hypothetical necessity, and would justify
+the lazy sophism. For the absolute necessity of the sequence of causes
+would in this matter add nothing to the infallible certainty of a
+hypothetical necessity.
+
+68. In the first place, therefore, it must be agreed that it is permitted
+to kill a madman when one cannot by other means defend oneself. It will be
+granted also that it is permitted, and often even necessary, to destroy
+venomous or very noxious animals, although they be not so by their own
+fault.
+
+69. Secondly, one inflicts punishments upon a beast, despite its lack of
+reason and freedom, when one deems that this may serve to correct it: thus
+one punishes dogs and horses, and indeed with much success. Rewards serve
+us no less in the managing of animals: when an animal is hungry, the food
+that is given to him causes him to do what otherwise would never be
+obtained from him.
+
+70. Thirdly, one would inflict even on beasts capital punishments (where it
+is no longer a question of correcting the beast that is punished) if this
+punishment could serve as an example, or inspire terror in others, to make
+them cease from evil doing. Rorarius, in his book on reason in beasts, says
+that in Africa they crucified lions, in order to drive away other lions
+from the towns and frequented places, and that he had observed in passing
+through the province of Jülich that they hanged wolves there in order to
+ensure greater safety for the sheepfolds. There are people in the villages
+also who nail birds of prey to the doors of houses, with the idea that
+other birds of the same kind will then not so readily appear. These
+measures would always be justified if they were of any avail.
+
+71. Then, in the fourth place, since experience proves that the fear of
+chastisements and the hope of rewards serves to make men abstain from evil
+and strive to do good, one would have good reason to avail oneself of such,
+even though men were acting under necessity, whatever the necessity might
+be. The objection will be raised that if good or evil is necessary it is
+useless to avail oneself of means to obtain it or to hinder it: but the
+answer has already been given above in the passage combating the lazy [161]
+sophism. If good or evil were a necessity without these means, then such
+means would be unavailing; but it is not so. These goods and evils come
+only with the aid of these means, and if these results were necessary the
+means would be a part of the causes rendering them necessary, since
+experience teaches us that often fear or hope hinders evil or advances
+good. This objection, then, differs hardly at all from the lazy sophism,
+which we raise against the certainty as well as the necessity of future
+events. Thus one may say that these objections are directed equally against
+hypothetical necessity and absolute necessity, and that they prove as much
+against the one as against the other, that is to say, nothing at all.
+
+72. There was a great dispute between Bishop Bramhall and Mr. Hobbes, which
+began when they were both in Paris, and which was continued after their
+return to England; all the parts of it are to be found collected in a
+quarto volume published in London in the year 1656. They are all in
+English, and have not been translated as far as I know, nor inserted in the
+Collection of Works in Latin by Mr. Hobbes. I had already read these
+writings, and have obtained them again since. And I had observed at the
+outset that he had not at all proved the absolute necessity of all things,
+but had shown sufficiently that necessity would not overthrow all the rules
+of divine or human justice, and would not prevent altogether the exercise
+of this virtue.
+
+73. There is, however, a kind of justice and a certain sort of rewards and
+of punishments which appear not so applicable to those who should act by an
+absolute necessity, supposing such necessity existed. It is that kind of
+justice which has for its goal neither improvement nor example, nor even
+redress of the evil. This justice has its foundation only in the fitness of
+things, which demands a certain satisfaction for the expiation of an evil
+action. The Socinians, Hobbes and some others do not admit this punitive
+justice, which properly speaking is avenging justice. God reserves it for
+himself in many cases; but he does not fail to grant it to those who are
+entitled to govern others, and he exercises it through their agency,
+provided that they act under the influence of reason and not of passion.
+The Socinians believe it to be without foundation, but it always has some
+foundation in that fitness of things which gives satisfaction not only to
+the injured but also to the wise who see it; even as a beautiful piece of
+music, or again a good piece of architecture, satisfies cultivated    [162]
+minds. And the wise lawgiver having threatened, and having, so to speak,
+promised a chastisement, it befits his consistency not to leave the action
+completely unpunished, even though the punishment would no longer avail to
+correct anyone. But even though he should have promised nothing, it is
+enough that there is a fitness of things which could have prompted him to
+make this promise, since the wise man likewise promises only that which is
+fitting. And one may even say that there is here a certain compensation of
+the mind, which would be scandalized by disorder if the chastisement did
+not contribute towards restoring order. One can also consult what Grotius
+wrote against the Socinians, of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ, and the
+answer of Crellius thereto.
+
+74. Thus it is that the pains of the damned continue, even when they no
+longer serve to turn them away from evil, and that likewise the rewards of
+the blessed continue, even when they no longer serve for strengthening them
+in good. One may say nevertheless that the damned ever bring upon
+themselves new pains through new sins, and that the blessed ever bring upon
+themselves new joys by new progress in goodness: for both are founded on
+the _principle of the fitness of things_, which has seen to it that affairs
+were so ordered that the evil action must bring upon itself a chastisement.
+There is good reason to believe, following the parallelism of the two
+realms, that of final causes and that of efficient causes, that God has
+established in the universe a connexion between punishment or reward and
+bad or good action, in accordance wherewith the first should always be
+attracted by the second, and virtue and vice obtain their reward and their
+punishment in consequence of the natural sequence of things, which contains
+still another kind of pre-established harmony than that which appears in
+the communication between the soul and the body. For, in a word, all that
+God does, as I have said already, is harmonious to perfection. Perhaps then
+this principle of the fitness of things would no longer apply to beings
+acting without true freedom or exemption from absolute necessity; and in
+that case corrective justice alone would be administered, and not punitive
+justice. That is the opinion of the famous Conringius, in a dissertation he
+published on what is just. And indeed, the reasons Pomponazzi employed in
+his book on fate, to prove the usefulness of chastisements and rewards,
+even though all should come about in our actions by a fatal necessity,[163]
+concern only amendment and not satisfaction, [Greek: kolasin ou timôrian].
+Moreover, it is only for the sake of outward appearances that one destroys
+animals accessary to certain crimes, as one razes the houses of rebels,
+that is, to inspire terror. Thus it is an act of corrective justice,
+wherein punitive justice has no part at all.
+
+75. But we will not amuse ourselves now by discussing a question more
+curious than necessary, since we have shown sufficiently that there is no
+such necessity in voluntary actions. Nevertheless it was well to show that
+_imperfect freedom_ alone, that is, freedom which is exempt only from
+constraint, would suffice as foundation for chastisements and rewards of
+the kind conducive to the avoidance of evil, and to amendment. One sees
+also from this that some persons of intelligence, who persuade themselves
+that everything is necessary, are wrong in saying that none must be praised
+or blamed, rewarded or punished. Apparently they say so only to exercise
+their wit: the pretext is that all being necessary nothing would be in our
+power. But this pretext is ill founded: necessary actions would be still in
+our power, at least in so far as we could perform them or omit them, when
+the hope or the fear of praise or blame, of pleasure or pain prompted our
+will thereto, whether they prompted it of necessity, or in prompting it
+they left spontaneity, contingency and freedom all alike unimpaired. Thus
+praise and blame, rewards and punishments would preserve always a large
+part of their use, even though there were a true necessity in our actions.
+We can praise and blame also natural good and bad qualities, where the will
+has no part--in a horse, in a diamond, in a man; and he who said of Cato of
+Utica that he acted virtuously through the goodness of his nature, and that
+it was impossible for him to behave otherwise, thought to praise him the
+more.
+
+76. The difficulties which I have endeavoured up to now to remove have been
+almost all common to natural and revealed theology. Now it will be
+necessary to come to a question of revealed theology, concerning the
+election or the reprobation of men, with the dispensation or use of divine
+grace in connexion with these acts of the mercy or the justice of God. But
+when I answered the preceding objections, I opened up a way to meet those
+that remain. This confirms the observation I made thereon (_Preliminary
+Dissertation,_ 43) that there is rather a conflict between the true   [164]
+reasons of natural theology and the false reasons of human appearances,
+than between revealed faith and reason. For on this subject scarcely any
+difficulty arises that is new, and not deriving its origin from those which
+can be placed in the way of the truths discerned by reason.
+
+77. Now as theologians of all parties are divided among themselves on this
+subject of predestination and grace, and often give different answers to
+the same objections, according to their various principles, one cannot
+avoid touching on the differences which prevail among them. One may say in
+general that some look upon God more metaphysically and others more
+morally: and it has already been stated on other occasions that the
+Counter-Remonstrants took the first course and the Remonstrants the second.
+But to act rightly we must affirm alike on one side the independence of God
+and the dependence of creatures, and on the other side the justice and
+goodness of God, which makes him dependent upon himself, his will upon his
+understanding or his wisdom.
+
+78. Some gifted and well-intentioned authors, desiring to show the force of
+the reasons advocated by the two principal parties, in order to persuade
+them to a mutual tolerance, deem that the whole controversy is reduced to
+this essential point, namely: What was God's principal aim in making his
+decrees with regard to man? Did he make them solely in order to show forth
+his glory by manifesting his attributes, and forming, to that end, the
+great plan of creation and providence? Or has he had regard rather to the
+voluntary movements of intelligent substances which he designed to create,
+considering what they would will and do in the different circumstances and
+situations wherein he might place them, so as to form a fitting resolve
+thereupon? It appears to me that the two answers to this great question
+thus given as opposites to one another are easy to reconcile, and that in
+consequence the two parties would be agreed in principle, without any need
+of tolerance, if all were reduced to this point. In truth God, in designing
+to create the world, purposed solely to manifest and communicate his
+perfections in the way that was most efficacious, and most worthy of his
+greatness, his wisdom and his goodness. But that very purpose pledged him
+to consider all the actions of creatures while still in the state of pure
+possibility, that he might form the most fitting plan. He is like a great
+architect whose aim in view is the satisfaction or the glory of having[165]
+built a beautiful palace, and who considers all that is to enter into this
+construction: the form and the materials, the place, the situation, the
+means, the workmen, the expense, before he forms a complete resolve. For a
+wise person in laying his plans cannot separate the end from the means; he
+does not contemplate any end without knowing if there are means of
+attaining thereto.
+
+79. I know not whether there are also perchance persons who imagine that,
+God being the absolute master of all things, one can thence infer that
+everything outside him is indifferent to him, that he considers himself
+alone, without concern for others, and that thus he has made some happy and
+others unhappy without any cause, without choice, without reason. But to
+teach so about God were to deprive him of wisdom and of goodness. We need
+only observe that he considers himself and neglects nothing of what he owes
+to himself, to conclude that he considers his creatures also, and that he
+uses them in the manner most consistent with order. For the more a great
+and good prince is mindful of his glory, the more he will think of making
+his subjects happy, even though he were the most absolute of all monarchs,
+and though his subjects were slaves from birth, bondsmen (in lawyers'
+parlance), people entirely in subjection to arbitrary power. Calvin himself
+and some others of the greatest defenders of the absolute decree rightly
+maintained that God had _great and just reasons_ for his election and the
+dispensation of his grace, although these reasons be unknown to us in
+detail: and we must judge charitably that the most rigid predestinators
+have too much reason and too much piety to depart from this opinion.
+
+80. There will therefore be no argument for debate on that point (as I
+hope) with people who are at all reasonable. But there will always be
+argument among those who are called Universalists and Particularists,
+according to what they teach of the grace and the will of God. Yet I am
+somewhat inclined to believe that the heated dispute between them on the
+will of God to save all men, and on that which depends upon it (when one
+keeps separate the doctrine _de Auxiliis_, or of the assistance of grace),
+rests rather in expressions than in things. For it is sufficient to
+consider that God, as well as every wise and beneficent mind, is inclined
+towards all possible good, and that this inclination is proportionate to
+the excellence of the good. Moreover, this results (if we take the    [166]
+matter precisely and in itself) from an 'antecedent will', as it is termed,
+which, however, is not always followed by its complete effect, because this
+wise mind must have many other inclinations besides. Thus it is the result
+of all the inclinations together that makes his will complete and
+decretory, as I have already explained. One may therefore very well say
+with ancient writers that God wills to save all men according to his
+antecedent will, but not according to his consequent will, which never
+fails to be followed by its effect. And if those who deny this universal
+will do not allow that the antecedent inclination be called a will, they
+are only troubling themselves about a question of name.
+
+81. But there is a question more serious in regard to predestination to
+eternal life and to all other destination by God, to wit, whether this
+destination is absolute or respective. There is destination to good and
+destination to evil; and as evil is moral or physical, theologians of all
+parties agree that there is no destination to moral evil, that is to say,
+that none is destined to sin. As for the greatest physical evil, which is
+damnation, one can distinguish between destination and predestination: for
+predestination appears to contain within itself an absolute destination,
+which is anterior to the consideration of the good or evil actions of those
+whom it concerns. Thus one may say that the reprobate are _destined_ to be
+condemned, because they are known to be impenitent. But it cannot so well
+be said that the reprobate are _predestined_ to damnation: for there is no
+_absolute_ reprobation, its foundation being final foreseen impenitence.
+
+82. It is true that there are writers who maintain that God, wishing to
+manifest his mercy and his justice in accordance with reasons worthy of
+him, but unknown to us, chose the elect, and in consequence rejected the
+damned, prior to all thought of sin, even of Adam, that after this resolve
+he thought fit to permit sin in order to be able to exercise these two
+virtues, and that he has bestowed grace in Jesus Christ to some in order to
+save them, while he has refused it to others in order to be able to punish
+them. Hence these writers are named 'Supralapsarians', because the decree
+to punish precedes, according to them, the knowledge of the future
+existence of sin. But the opinion most common to-day amongst those who are
+called Reformed, and one that is favoured by the Synod of Dordrecht, is
+that of the 'Infralapsarians', corresponding somewhat to the conception of
+St. Augustine. For he asserts that God having resolved to permit the  [167]
+sin of Adam and the corruption of the human race, for reasons just but
+hidden, his mercy made him choose some of the corrupt mass to be freely
+saved by the merit of Jesus Christ, and his justice made him resolve to
+punish the others by the damnation that they deserved. That is why, with
+the Schoolmen, only the saved were called _Praedestinati_ and the damned
+were called _Praesciti_. It must be admitted that some Infralapsarians and
+others speak sometimes of predestination to damnation, following the
+example of Fulgentius and of St. Augustine himself: but that signifies the
+same as destination to them, and it avails nothing to wrangle about words.
+That pretext, notwithstanding, was in time past used for maltreating that
+Godescalc who caused a stir about the middle of the ninth century, and who
+took the name of Fulgentius to indicate that he followed that author.
+
+83. As for the destination of the elect to eternal life, the Protestants,
+as well as those of the Roman Church, dispute much among themselves as to
+whether election is absolute or is founded on the prevision of final living
+faith. Those who are called Evangelicals, that is, those of the Augsburg
+Confession, hold the latter opinion: they believe that one need not go into
+the hidden causes of election while one may find a manifest cause of it
+shown in Holy Scripture, which is faith in Jesus Christ; and it appears to
+them that the prevision of the cause is also the cause of the prevision of
+the effect. Those who are called Reformed are of a different opinion: they
+admit that salvation comes from faith in Jesus Christ, but they observe
+that often the cause anterior to the effect in execution is posterior in
+intention, as when the cause is the means and the effect is the end. Thus
+the question is, whether faith or salvation is anterior in the intention of
+God, that is, whether God's design is rather to save man than to make him a
+believer.
+
+84. Hence we see that the question between the Supralapsarians and the
+Infralapsarians in part, and again between them and the Evangelicals, comes
+back to a right conception of the order that is in God's decrees. Perhaps
+one might put an end to this dispute at once by saying that, properly
+speaking, all the decrees of God that are here concerned are simultaneous,
+not only in respect of time, as everyone agrees, but also _in signo
+rationis_, or in the order of nature. And indeed, the Formula of Concord,
+building upon some passages of St. Augustine, comprised in the same   [168]
+Decree of Election salvation and the means that conduce to it. To
+demonstrate this synchronism of destinations or of decrees with which we
+are concerned, we must revert to the expedient that I have employed more
+than once, which states that God, before decreeing anything, considered
+among other possible sequences of things that one which he afterwards
+approved. In the idea of this is represented how the first parents sin and
+corrupt their posterity; how Jesus Christ redeems the human race; how some,
+aided by such and such graces, attain to final faith and to salvation; and
+how others, with or without such or other graces, do not attain thereto,
+continue in sin, and are damned. God grants his sanction to this sequence
+only after having entered into all its detail, and thus pronounces nothing
+final as to those who shall be saved or damned without having pondered upon
+everything and compared it with other possible sequences. Thus God's
+pronouncement concerns the whole sequence at the same time; he simply
+decrees its existence. In order to save other men, or in a different way,
+he must needs choose an altogether different sequence, seeing that all is
+connected in each sequence. In this conception of the matter, which is that
+most worthy of the All-wise, all whose actions are connected together to
+the highest possible degree, there would be only one total decree, which is
+to create such a world. This total decree comprises equally all the
+particular decrees, without setting one of them before or after another.
+Yet one may say also that each particular act of antecedent will entering
+into the total result has its value and order, in proportion to the good
+whereto this act inclines. But these acts of antecedent will are not called
+decrees, since they are not yet inevitable, the outcome depending upon the
+total result. According to this conception of things, all the difficulties
+that can here be made amount to the same as those I have already stated and
+removed in my inquiry concerning the origin of evil.
+
+85. There remains only one important matter of discussion, which has its
+peculiar difficulties. It is that of the dispensation of the means and
+circumstances contributing to salvation and to damnation. This comprises
+amongst others the subject of the Aids of Grace (_de auxiliis gratiae_), on
+which Rome (since the Congregation _de Auxiliis_ under Clement VIII, when a
+debate took place between the Dominicans and the Jesuits) does not readily
+permit books to be published. Everyone must agree that God is         [169]
+altogether good and just, that his goodness makes him contribute the least
+possible to that which can render men guilty, and the most possible to that
+which serves to save them (possible, I say, subject to the general order of
+things); that his justice prevents him from condemning innocent men, and
+from leaving good actions without reward; and that he even keeps an exact
+proportion in punishments and rewards. Nevertheless, this idea that one
+should have of the goodness and the justice of God does not appear enough
+in what we know of his actions with regard to the salvation and the
+damnation of men: and it is that which makes difficulties concerning sin
+and its remedies.
+
+86. The first difficulty is how the soul could be infected with original
+sin, which is the root of actual sins, without injustice on God's part in
+exposing the soul thereto. This difficulty has given rise to three opinions
+on the origin of the soul itself. The first is that of the _pre-existence
+of human souls_ in another world or in another life, where they had sinned
+and on that account had been condemned to this prison of the human body, an
+opinion of the Platonists which is attributed to Origen and which even
+to-day finds adherents. Henry More, an English scholar, advocated something
+like this dogma in a book written with that express purpose. Some of those
+who affirm this pre-existence have gone as far as metempsychosis. The
+younger van Helmont held this opinion, and the ingenious author of some
+metaphysical _Meditations_, published in 1678 under the name of William
+Wander, appears to have some leaning towards it. The second opinion is that
+of _Traduction_, as if the soul of children were engendered (_per
+traducem_) from the soul or souls of those from whom the body is
+engendered. St. Augustine inclined to this judgement the better to explain
+original sin. This doctrine is taught also by most of the theologians of
+the Augsburg Confession. Nevertheless it is not completely established
+among them, since the Universities of Jena and Helmstedt, and others
+besides, have long been opposed to it. The third opinion, and that most
+widely accepted to-day, is that of _Creation_: it is taught in the majority
+of the Christian Schools, but it is fraught with the greatest difficulty in
+respect of original sin.
+
+87. Into this controversy of theologians on the origin of the human soul
+has entered the philosophic dispute on _the origin of forms._ Aristotle and
+scholastic philosophy after him called _Form_ that which is a         [170]
+principle of action and is found in that which acts. This inward principle
+is either substantial, being then termed 'Soul', when it is in an organic
+body, or accidental, and customarily termed 'Quality'. The same philosopher
+gave to the soul the generic name of 'Entelechy' or _Act_. This word
+'Entelechy' apparently takes its origin from the Greek word signifying
+'perfect', and hence the celebrated Ermolao Barbaro expressed it literally
+in Latin by _perfectihabia_: for Act is a realization of potency. And he
+had no need to consult the Devil, as men say he did, in order to learn
+that. Now the Philosopher of Stagira supposes that there are two kinds of
+Act, the permanent act and the successive act. The permanent or lasting act
+is nothing but the Substantial or Accidental Form: the substantial form (as
+for example the soul) is altogether permanent, at least according to my
+judgement, and the accidental is only so for a time. But the altogether
+momentary act, whose nature is transitory, consists in action itself. I
+have shown elsewhere that the notion of Entelechy is not altogether to be
+scorned, and that, being permanent, it carries with it not only a mere
+faculty for action, but also that which is called 'force', 'effort',
+'conatus', from which action itself must follow if nothing prevents it.
+Faculty is only an _attribute_, or rather sometimes a mode; but force, when
+it is not an ingredient of substance itself (that is, force which is not
+primitive but derivative), is a _quality_, which is distinct and separable
+from substance. I have shown also how one may suppose that the soul is a
+primitive force which is modified and varied by derivative forces or
+qualities, and exercised in actions.
+
+88. Now philosophers have troubled themselves exceedingly on the question
+of the origin of substantial forms. For to say that the compound of form
+and matter is produced and that the form is only _comproduced_ means
+nothing. The common opinion was that forms were derived from the potency of
+matter, this being called _Eduction_. That also meant in fact nothing, but
+it was explained in a sense by a comparison with shapes: for that of a
+statue is produced only by removal of the superfluous marble. This
+comparison might be valid if form consisted in a mere limitation, as in the
+case of shape. Some have thought that forms were sent from heaven, and even
+created expressly, when bodies were produced. Julius Scaliger hinted that
+it was possible that forms were rather derived from the active potency of
+the efficient cause (that is to say, either from that of God in the   [171]
+case of Creation or from that of other forms in the case of generation),
+than from the passive potency of matter. And that, in the case of
+generation, meant a return to traduction. Daniel Sennert, a famous doctor
+and physicist at Wittenberg, cherished this opinion, particularly in
+relation to animate bodies which are multiplied through seed. A certain
+Julius Caesar della Galla, an Italian living in the Low Countries, and a
+doctor of Groningen named Johan Freitag wrote with much vehemence in
+opposition to Sennert. Johann Sperling, a professor at Wittenberg, made a
+defence of his master, and finally came into conflict with Johann Zeisold,
+a professor at Jena, who upheld the belief that the human soul is created.
+
+89. But traduction and eduction are equally inexplicable when it is a
+question of finding the origin of the soul. It is not the same with
+accidental forms, since they are only modifications of the substance, and
+their origin may be explained by eduction, that is, by variation of
+limitations, in the same way as the origin of shapes. But it is quite
+another matter when we are concerned with the origin of a substance, whose
+beginning and destruction are equally difficult to explain. Sennert and
+Sperling did not venture to admit the subsistence and the indestructibility
+of the souls of beasts or of other primitive forms, although they allowed
+that they were indivisible and immaterial. But the fact is that they
+confused indestructibility with immortality, whereby is understood in the
+case of man that not only the soul but also the personality subsists. In
+saying that the soul of man is immortal one implies the subsistence of what
+makes the identity of the person, something which retains its moral
+qualities, conserving the _consciousness_, or the reflective inward
+feeling, of what it is: thus it is rendered susceptible to chastisement or
+reward. But this conservation of personality does not occur in the souls of
+beasts: that is why I prefer to say that they are imperishable rather than
+to call them immortal. Yet this misapprehension appears to have been the
+cause of a great inconsistency in the doctrine of the Thomists and of other
+good philosophers: they recognized the immateriality or indivisibility of
+all souls, without being willing to admit their indestructibility, greatly
+to the prejudice of the immortality of the human soul. John Scot, that is,
+the Scotsman (which formerly signified Hibernian or Erigena), a famous
+writer of the time of Louis the Debonair and of his sons, was for the
+conservation of all souls: and I see not why there should be less     [172]
+objection to making the atoms of Epicurus or of Gassendi endure, than to
+affirming the subsistence of all truly simple and indivisible substances,
+which are the sole and true atoms of Nature. And Pythagoras was right in
+saying generally, as Ovid makes him say:
+
+  _Morte carent animae_.
+
+90. Now as I like maxims which hold good and admit of the fewest exceptions
+possible, here is what has appeared to me most reasonable in every sense on
+this important question. I consider that souls and simple substances
+altogether cannot begin except by creation, or end except by annihilation.
+Moreover, as the formation of organic animate bodies appears explicable in
+the order of nature only when one assumes a _preformation_ already organic,
+I have thence inferred that what we call generation of an animal is only a
+transformation and augmentation. Thus, since the same body was already
+furnished with organs, it is to be supposed that it was already animate,
+and that it had the same soul: so I assume _vice versa_, from the
+conservation of the soul when once it is created, that the animal is also
+conserved, and that apparent death is only an envelopment, there being no
+likelihood that in the order of nature souls exist entirely separated from
+all body, or that what does not begin naturally can cease through natural
+forces.
+
+91. Considering that so admirable an order and rules so general are
+established in regard to animals, it does not appear reasonable that man
+should be completely excluded from that order, and that everything in
+relation to his soul should come about in him by miracle. Besides I have
+pointed out repeatedly that it is of the essence of God's wisdom that all
+should be harmonious in his works, and that nature should be parallel with
+grace. It is thus my belief that those souls which one day shall be human
+souls, like those of other species, have been in the seed, and in the
+progenitors as far back as Adam, and have consequently existed since the
+beginning of things, always in a kind of organic body. On this point it
+seems that M. Swammerdam, Father Malebranche, M. Bayle, Mr. Pitcairne, M.
+Hartsoeker and numerous other very able persons share my opinion. This
+doctrine is also sufficiently confirmed by the microscope observations of
+M. Leeuwenhoek and other good observers. But it also for divers reasons
+appears likely to me that they existed then as sentient or animal     [173]
+souls only, endowed with perception and feeling, and devoid of reason.
+Further I believe that they remained in this state up to the time of the
+generation of the man to whom they were to belong, but that then they
+received reason, whether there be a natural means of raising a sentient
+soul to the degree of a reasoning soul (a thing I find it difficult to
+imagine) or whether God may have given reason to this soul through some
+special operation, or (if you will) by a kind of _transcreation_. This
+latter is easier to admit, inasmuch as revelation teaches much about other
+forms of immediate operation by God upon our souls. This explanation
+appears to remove the obstacles that beset this matter in philosophy or
+theology. For the difficulty of the origin of forms thus disappears
+completely; and besides it is much more appropriate to divine justice to
+give the soul, already corrupted _physically_ or on the animal side by the
+sin of Adam, a new perfection which is reason, than to put a reasoning
+soul, by creation or otherwise, in a body wherein it is to be corrupted
+_morally_.
+
+92. Now the soul being once under the domination of sin, and ready to
+commit sin in actual fact as soon as the man is fit to exercise reason, a
+new question arises, to wit: whether this tendency in a man who has not
+been regenerated by baptism suffices to damn him, even though he should
+never come to commit sin, as may happen, and happens often, whether he die
+before reaching years of discretion or he become dull of sense before he
+has made use of his reason. St. Gregory of Nazianzos is supposed to have
+denied this (_Orat. de Baptismo_); but St. Augustine is for the
+affirmative, and maintains that original sin of itself is sufficient to
+earn the flames of hell, although this opinion is, to say the least, very
+harsh. When I speak here of damnation or of hell, I mean pains, and not
+mere deprivation of supreme felicity; I mean _poenam sensus, non damni_.
+Gregory of Rimini, General of the Augustinians, with a few others followed
+St. Augustine in opposition to the accepted opinion of the Schools of his
+time, and for that reason he was called the torturer of children, _tortor
+infantum_. The Schoolmen, instead of sending them into the flames of hell,
+have assigned to them a special Limbo, where they do not suffer, and are
+only punished by privation of the beatific vision. The Revelations of St.
+Birgitta (as they are called), much esteemed in Rome, also uphold this
+dogma. Salmeron and Molina, and before them Ambrose Catharin and      [174]
+others, grant them a certain natural bliss; and Cardinal Sfondrati, a man
+of learning and piety, who approves this, latterly went so far as to prefer
+in a sense their state, which is the state of happy innocence, to that of a
+sinner saved, as we may see in his _Nodus Praedestinationis Solutus_. That,
+however, seems to go too far. Certainly a soul truly enlightened would not
+wish to sin, even though it could by this means obtain all imaginable
+pleasures. But the case of choosing between sin and true bliss is simply
+chimerical, and it is better to obtain bliss (even after repentance) than
+to be deprived of it for ever.
+
+93. Many prelates and theologians of France who are well pleased to differ
+from Molina, and to join with St. Augustine, seem to incline towards the
+opinion of this great doctor, who condemns to eternal flames children that
+die in the age of innocence before having received baptism. This is what
+appears from the letter mentioned above, written by five distinguished
+prelates of France to Pope Innocent XII, against that posthumous book by
+Cardinal Sfondrati. But therein they did not venture to condemn the
+doctrine of the purely privative punishment of children dying without
+baptism, seeing it approved by the venerable Thomas Aquinas, and by other
+great men. I do not speak of those who are called on one side Jansenists
+and on the other disciples of St. Augustine, for they declare themselves
+entirely and firmly for the opinion of this Father. But it must be
+confessed that this opinion has not sufficient foundation either in reason
+or in Scripture, and that it is outrageously harsh. M. Nicole makes rather
+a poor apology for it in his book on the _Unity of the Church_, written to
+oppose M. Jurieu, although M. Bayle takes his side in chapter 178 of the
+_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III. M. Nicole makes use of
+this pretext, that there are also other dogmas in the Christian religion
+which appear harsh. On the one hand, however, that does not lead to the
+conclusion that these instances of harshness may be multiplied without
+proof; and on the other we must take into account that the other dogmas
+mentioned by M. Nicole, namely original sin and eternity of punishment, are
+only harsh and unjust to outward appearance, while the damnation of
+children dying without actual sin and without regeneration would in truth
+be harsh, since it would be in effect the damning of innocents. For that
+reason I believe that the party which advocates this opinion will never
+altogether have the upper hand in the Roman Church itself. Evangelical[175]
+theologians are accustomed to speak with fair moderation on this question,
+and to surrender these souls to the judgement and the clemency of their
+Creator. Nor do we know all the wonderful ways that God may choose to
+employ for the illumination of souls.
+
+94. One may say that those who condemn for original sin alone, and who
+consequently condemn children dying unbaptized or outside the Covenant,
+fall, in a sense, without being aware of it, into a certain attitude to
+man's inclination and God's foreknowledge which they disapprove in others.
+They will not have it that God should refuse his grace to those whose
+resistance to it he foresees, nor that this expectation and this tendency
+should cause the damnation of these persons: and yet they claim that the
+tendency which constitutes original sin, and in which God foresees that the
+child will sin as soon as he shall reach years of discretion, suffices to
+damn this child beforehand. Those who maintain the one and reject the other
+do not preserve enough uniformity and connexion in their dogmas.
+
+95. There is scarcely less difficulty in the matter of those who reach
+years of discretion and plunge into sin, following the inclination of
+corrupt nature, if they receive not the succour of the grace necessary for
+them to stop on the edge of the precipice, or to drag themselves from the
+abyss wherein they have fallen. For it seems hard to damn them eternally
+for having done that which they had no power to prevent themselves from
+doing. Those that damn even children, who are without discretion, trouble
+themselves even less about adults, and one would say that they have become
+callous through the very expectation of seeing people suffer. But it is not
+the same with other theologians, and I would be rather on the side of those
+who grant to all men a grace sufficient to draw them away from evil,
+provided they have a sufficient tendency to profit by this succour, and not
+to reject it voluntarily. The objection is made that there has been and
+still is a countless multitude of men, among civilized peoples and among
+barbarians, who have never had this knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ
+which is necessary for those who would tread the wonted paths to salvation.
+But without excusing them on the plea of a sin purely philosophical, and
+without stopping at a mere penalty of privation, things for which there is
+no opportunity of discussion here, one may doubt the fact: for how do we
+know whether they do not receive ordinary or extraordinary succour of [176]
+kinds unknown to us? This maxim, _Quod facienti, quod in se est, non
+denegatur gratia necessaria_, appears to me to have eternal truth. Thomas
+Aquinas, Archbishop Bradwardine and others have hinted that, in regard to
+this, something comes to pass of which we are not aware. (Thom. quest. XIV,
+_De Veritate_, artic. XI, ad I et alibi. Bradwardine, _De Causa Dei_, non
+procul ab initio.) And sundry theologians of great authority in the Roman
+Church itself have taught that a sincere act of the love of God above all
+things, when the grace of Jesus Christ arouses it, suffices for salvation.
+Father Francis Xavier answered the Japanese that if their ancestors had
+used well their natural light God would have given them the grace necessary
+for salvation; and the Bishop of Geneva, Francis of Sales, gives full
+approval to this answer (Book 4, _On the Love of God,_ ch. 5).
+
+96. This I pointed out some time ago to the excellent M Pélisson, to show
+him that the Roman Church, going further than the Protestants, does not
+damn utterly those who are outside its communion, and even outside
+Christianity, by using as its only criterion explicit faith. Nor did he
+refute it, properly speaking, in the very kind answer he gave me, and which
+he published in the fourth part of his _Reflexions_, also doing me the
+honour of adding to it my letter. I offered him then for consideration what
+a famous Portuguese theologian, by name Jacques Payva Andradius, envoy to
+the Council of Trent, wrote concerning this, in opposition to Chemnitz,
+during this same Council. And now, without citing many other authors of
+eminence, I will content myself with naming Father Friedrich Spee, the
+Jesuit, one of the most excellent in his Society, who also held this common
+opinion upon the efficacy of the love of God, as is apparent in the preface
+to the admirable book which he wrote in Germany on the Christian virtues.
+He speaks of this observation as of a highly important secret of piety, and
+expatiates with great clearness upon the power of divine love to blot out
+sin, even without the intervention of the Sacraments of the Catholic
+Church, provided one scorn them not, for that would not at all be
+compatible with this love. And a very great personage, whose character was
+one of the most lofty to be found in the Roman Church, was the first to
+make me acquainted with it. Father Spee was of a noble family of Westphalia
+(it may be said in passing) and he died in the odour of sanctity, according
+to the testimony of him who published this book in Cologne with the   [177]
+approval of the Superiors.
+
+97. The memory of this excellent man ought to be still precious to persons
+of knowledge and good sense, because he is the author of the book entitled:
+_Cautio Criminalis circa Processus contra Sagas_, which has caused much
+stir, and has been translated into several languages. I learnt from the
+Grand Elector of Mainz, Johann Philipp von Schonborn, uncle of His Highness
+the present Elector, who walks gloriously in the footsteps of that worthy
+predecessor, the story that follows. That Father was in Franconia when
+there was a frenzy there for burning alleged sorcerers. He accompanied even
+to the pyre many of them, all of whom he recognized as being innocent, from
+their confessions and the researches that he had made thereon. Therefore in
+spite of the danger incurred at that time by one telling the truth in this
+matter, he resolved to compile this work, without however naming himself.
+It bore great fruit and on this matter converted that Elector, at that time
+still a simple canon and afterwards Bishop of Würzburg, finally also
+Archbishop of Mainz, who, as soon as he came to power, put an end to these
+burnings. Therein he was followed by the Dukes of Brunswick, and finally by
+the majority of the other princes and states of Germany.
+
+98. This digression appeared to me to be seasonable, because that writer
+deserves to be more widely known. Returning now to the subject I make a
+further observation. Supposing that to-day a knowledge of Jesus Christ
+according to the flesh is absolutely necessary to salvation, as indeed it
+is safest to teach, it will be possible to say that God will give that
+knowledge to all those who do, humanly speaking, that which in them lies,
+even though God must needs give it by a miracle. Moreover, we cannot know
+what passes in souls at the point of death; and if sundry learned and
+serious theologians claim that children receive in baptism a kind of faith,
+although they do not remember it afterwards when they are questioned about
+it, why should one maintain that nothing of a like nature, or even more
+definite, could come about in the dying, whom we cannot interrogate after
+their death? Thus there are countless paths open to God, giving him means
+of satisfying his justice and his goodness: and the only thing one may
+allege against this is that we know not what way he employs; which is far
+from being a valid objection.
+
+                                                                      [178]
+99. Let us pass on to those who lack not power to amend, but good will.
+They are doubtless not to be excused; but there always remains a great
+difficulty concerning God, since it rested with him to give them this same
+good will. He is the master of wills, the hearts of kings and those of all
+other men are in his hand. Holy Scripture goes so far as to say that God at
+times hardened the wicked in order to display his power by punishing them.
+This hardening is not to be taken as meaning that God inspires men with a
+kind of anti-grace, that is, a kind of repugnance to good, or even an
+inclination towards evil, just as the grace that he gives is an inclination
+towards good. It is rather that God, having considered the sequence of
+things that he established, found it fitting, for superior reasons, to
+permit that Pharaoh, for example, should be in such _circumstances_ as
+should increase his wickedness, and divine wisdom willed to derive a good
+from this evil.
+
+100. Thus it all often comes down to _circumstances_, which form a part of
+the combination of things. There are countless examples of small
+circumstances serving to convert or to pervert. Nothing is more widely
+known than the _Tolle, lege_ (Take and read) cry which St. Augustine heard
+in a neighbouring house, when he was pondering on what side he should take
+among the Christians divided into sects, and saying to himself,
+
+  _Quod vitae sectabor iter?_
+
+This brought him to open at random the book of the Holy Scriptures which he
+had before him, and to read what came before his eyes: and these were words
+which finally induced him to give up Manichaeism. The good Steno, a Dane,
+who was titular Bishop of Titianopolis, Vicar Apostolic (as they say) of
+Hanover and the region around, when there was a Duke Regent of his
+religion, told us that something of that kind had happened to him. He was a
+great anatomist and deeply versed in natural science; but he unfortunately
+gave up research therein, and from being a great physicist he became a
+mediocre theologian. He would almost listen to nothing more about the
+marvels of Nature, and an express order from the Pope _in virtute sanctae
+obedientiae_ was needed to extract from him the observations M. Thévenot
+asked of him. He told us then that what had greatly helped towards inducing
+him to place himself on the side of the Roman Church had been the voice of
+a lady in Florence, who had cried out to him from a window: 'Go not on[179]
+the side where you are about to go, sir, go on the other side.' 'That voice
+struck me,' he told us, 'because I was just meditating upon religion.' This
+lady knew that he was seeking a man in the house where she was, and, when
+she saw him making his way to the other house, wished to point out where
+his friend's room was.
+
+101. Father John Davidius, the Jesuit, wrote a book entitled _Veridicus
+Christianus_, which is like a kind of _Bibliomancy_, where one takes
+passages at random, after the pattern of the _Tolle, lege_ of St.
+Augustine, and it is like a devotional game. But the chances to which, in
+spite of ourselves, we are subject, play only too large a part in what
+brings salvation to men, or removes it from them. Let us imagine twin
+Polish children, the one taken by the Tartars, sold to the Turks, brought
+to apostasy, plunged in impiety, dying in despair; the other saved by some
+chance, falling then into good hands to be educated properly, permeated by
+the soundest truths of religion, exercised in the virtues that it commends
+to us, dying with all the feelings of a good Christian. One will lament the
+misfortune of the former, prevented perhaps by a slight circumstance from
+being saved like his brother, and one will marvel that this slight chance
+should have decided his fate for eternity.
+
+102. Someone will perchance say that God foresaw by mediate knowledge that
+the former would have been wicked and damned even if he had remained in
+Poland. There are perhaps conjunctures wherein something of the kind takes
+place. But will it therefore be said that this is a general rule, and that
+not one of those who were damned amongst the pagans would have been saved
+if he had been amongst Christians? Would that not be to contradict our
+Lord, who said that Tyre and Sidon would have profited better by his
+preaching, if they had had the good fortune to hear it, than Capernaum?
+
+103. But were one to admit even here this use of mediate knowledge against
+all appearances, this knowledge still implies that God considers what a man
+would do in such and such circumstances; and it always remains true that
+God could have placed him in other circumstances more favourable, and given
+him inward or outward succour capable of vanquishing the most abysmal
+wickedness existing in any soul. I shall be told that God is not bound to
+do so, but that is not enough; it must be added that greater reasons
+prevent him from making all his goodness felt by all. Thus there must [180]
+needs be choice; but I do not think one must seek the reason altogether in
+the good or bad nature of men. For if with some people one assume that God,
+choosing the plan which produces the most good, but which involves sin and
+damnation, has been prompted by his wisdom to choose the best natures in
+order to make them objects of his grace, this grace would not sufficiently
+appear to be a free gift. Accordingly man will be distinguishable by a kind
+of inborn merit, and this assumption seems remote from the principles of
+St. Paul, and even from those of Supreme Reason.
+
+104. It is true that there are reasons for God's choice, and the
+consideration of the object, that is, the nature of man, must needs enter
+therein; but it does not seem that this choice can be subjected to a rule
+such as we are capable of conceiving, and such as may flatter the pride of
+men. Some famous theologians believe that God offers more grace, and in a
+more favourable way, to those whose resistance he foresees will be less,
+and that he abandons the rest to their self-will. We may readily suppose
+that this is often the case, and this expedient, among those which make man
+distinguishable by anything favourable in his nature, is the farthest
+removed from Pelagianism. But I would not venture, notwithstanding, to make
+of it a universal rule. Moreover, that we may not have cause to vaunt
+ourselves, it is necessary that we be ignorant of the reasons for God's
+choice. Those reasons are too diverse to become known to us; and it may be
+that God at times shows the power of his grace by overcoming the most
+obstinate resistance, to the end that none may have cause either to despair
+or to be puffed up. St. Paul, as it would seem, had this in mind when he
+offered himself as an example. God, he said, has had mercy upon me, to give
+a great example of his patience.
+
+105. It may be that fundamentally all men are equally bad, and consequently
+incapable of being distinguished the one from the other through their good
+or less bad natural qualities; but they are not bad all in the same way:
+for there is an inherent individual difference between souls, as the
+Pre-established Harmony proves. Some are more or less inclined towards a
+particular good or a particular evil, or towards their opposites, all in
+accordance with their natural dispositions. But since the general plan of
+the universe, chosen by God for superior reasons, causes men to be in
+different circumstances, those who meet with such as are more         [181]
+favourable to their nature will become more readily the least wicked, the
+most virtuous, the most happy; yet it will be always by aid of the
+influence of that inward grace which God unites with the circumstances.
+Sometimes it even comes to pass, in the progress of human life, that a more
+excellent nature succeeds less, for lack of cultivation or opportunities.
+One may say that men are chosen and ranged not so much according to their
+excellence as according to their conformity with God's plan. Even so it may
+occur that a stone of lesser quality is made use of in a building or in a
+group because it proves to be the particular one for filling a certain gap.
+
+106. But, in fine, all these attempts to find reasons, where there is no
+need to adhere altogether to certain hypotheses, serve only to make clear
+to us that there are a thousand ways of justifying the conduct of God. All
+the disadvantages we see, all the obstacles we meet with, all the
+difficulties one may raise for oneself, are no hindrance to a belief
+founded on reason, even when it cannot stand on conclusive proof, as has
+been shown and will later become more apparent, that there is nothing so
+exalted as the wisdom of God, nothing so just as his judgements, nothing so
+pure as his holiness, and nothing more vast than his goodness.
+
+                                                                      [182]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PART TWO
+
+107. Hitherto I have devoted myself to giving a full and clear exposition
+of this whole subject: and although I have not yet spoken of M. Bayle's
+objections in particular, I have endeavoured to anticipate them, and to
+suggest ways of answering them. But as I have taken upon myself the task of
+meeting them in detail, not only because there will perhaps still be
+passages calling for elucidation, but also because his arguments are
+usually full of wit and erudition, and serve to throw greater light on this
+controversy, it will be well to give an account of the chief objections
+that are dispersed through his works, and to add my answers. At the
+beginning I observed 'that God co-operates in moral evil, and in physical
+evil, and in each of them both morally and physically; and that man
+co-operates therein also morally and physically in a free and active way,
+becoming in consequence subject to blame and punishment'. I have shown also
+that each point has its own difficulty; but the greatest of these lies in
+maintaining that God co-operates morally in moral evil, that is, in sin,
+without being the originator of the sin, and even without being accessary
+thereto.
+
+108. He does this by _permitting_ it justly, and by _directing_ it wisely
+towards the good, as I have shown in a manner that appears tolerably
+intelligible. But as it is here principally that M. Bayle undertakes  [183]
+to discomfit those who maintain that there is nothing in faith which cannot
+be harmonized with reason, it is also here especially I must show that my
+dogmas are fortified (to make use of his own allegory) with a rampart, even
+of reasons, which is able to resist the fire of his strongest batteries. He
+has ranged them against me in chapter 144 of his _Reply to the Questions of
+a Provincial_ (vol. III, p. 812), where he includes the theological
+doctrine in seven propositions and opposes thereto nineteen philosophic
+maxims, like so many large cannon capable of breaching my rampart. Let us
+begin with the theological propositions.
+
+109. I. 'God,' he says, 'the Being eternal and necessary, infinitely good,
+holy, wise and powerful, possesses from all eternity a glory and a bliss
+that can never either increase or diminish.' This proposition of M. Bayle's
+is no less philosophical than theological. To say that God possesses a
+'glory' when he is alone, that depends upon the meaning of the term. One
+may say, with some, that glory is the satisfaction one finds in being aware
+of one's own perfections; and in this sense God possesses it always. But
+when glory signifies that others become aware of these perfections, one may
+say that God acquires it only when he reveals himself to intelligent
+creatures; even though it be true that God thereby gains no new good, and
+it is rather the rational creatures who thence derive advantage, when they
+apprehend aright the glory of God.
+
+110. II. 'He resolved freely upon the production of creatures, and he chose
+from among an infinite number of possible beings those whom it pleased him
+to choose, to give them existence, and to compose the universe of them,
+while he left all the rest in nothingness.' This proposition is also, just
+like the preceding one, in close conformity with that part of philosophy
+which is called natural theology. One must dwell a little on what is said
+here, that he chose the possible beings 'whom it pleased him to choose'.
+For it must be borne in mind that when I say, 'that pleases me', it is as
+though I were saying, 'I find it good'. Thus it is the ideal goodness of
+the object which pleases, and which makes me choose it among many others
+which do not please or which please less, that is to say, which contain
+less of that goodness which moves me. Now it is only the genuinely good
+that is capable of pleasing God: and consequently that which pleases God
+most, and which meets his choice, is the best.
+
+                                                                      [184]
+111. III. 'Human nature having been among the Beings that he willed to
+produce, he created a man and a woman, and granted them amongst other
+favours free will, so that they had the power to obey him; but he
+threatened them with death if they should disobey the order that he gave
+them to abstain from a certain fruit.' This proposition is in part
+revealed, and should be admitted without difficulty, provided that _free
+will_ be understood properly, according to the explanation I have given.
+
+112. IV. 'They ate thereof nevertheless, and thenceforth they were
+condemned, they and all their posterity, to the miseries of this life, to
+temporal death and eternal damnation, and made subject to such a tendency
+to sin that they abandoned themselves thereto endlessly and without
+ceasing.' There is reason to suppose that the forbidden action by itself
+entailed these evil results in accordance with a natural effect, and that
+it was for that very reason, and not by a purely arbitrary decree, that God
+had forbidden it: much as one forbids knives to children. The famous Fludde
+or de Fluctibus, an Englishman, once wrote a book _De Vita, Morte et
+Resurrectione_ under the name of R. Otreb, wherein he maintained that the
+fruit of the forbidden tree was a poison: but we cannot enter into this
+detail. It suffices that God forbade a harmful thing; one must not
+therefore suppose that God acted here simply in the character of a
+legislator who enacts a purely positive law, or of a judge who imposes and
+inflicts a punishment by an order of his will, without any connexion
+between the evil of guilt and the evil of punishment. And it is not
+necessary to suppose that God in justifiable annoyance deliberately put a
+corruption in the soul and the body of man, by an extraordinary action, in
+order to punish him: much as the Athenians gave hemlock-juice to their
+criminals. M. Bayle takes the matter thus: he speaks as if the original
+corruption had been put in the soul of the first man by an order and
+operation of God. It is that which calls forth his objection (_Reply to the
+Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 178, p. 1218) 'that reason would
+not commend the monarch who, in order to chastise a rebel, condemned him
+and his descendants to have a tendency towards rebellion'. But this
+chastisement happens naturally to the wicked, without any ordinance of a
+legislator, and they become addicted to evil. If drunkards begot children
+inclined to the same vice, by a natural consequence of what takes place in
+bodies, that would be a punishment of their progenitors, but it would [185]
+not be a penalty of law. There is something comparable to this in the
+consequences of the first man's sin. For the contemplation of divine wisdom
+leads us to believe that the realm of nature serves that of grace; and that
+God as an Architect has done all in a manner befitting God considered as a
+Monarch. We do not sufficiently know the nature of the forbidden fruit, or
+that of the action, or its effects, to judge of the details of this matter:
+nevertheless we must do God justice so far as to believe that it comprised
+something other than what painters depict for us.
+
+113. V. 'It has pleased him by his infinite mercy to deliver a very few men
+from this condemnation; and, leaving them exposed during this life to the
+corruption of sin and misery, he has given them aids which enable them to
+obtain the never-ending bliss of paradise.' Many in the past have doubted,
+as I have already observed, whether the number of the damned is so great as
+is generally supposed; and it appears that they believed in the existence
+of some intermediate state between eternal damnation and perfect bliss. But
+we have no need of these opinions, and it is enough to keep to the ideas
+accepted in the Church. In this connexion it is well to observe that this
+proposition of M. Bayle's is conceived in accordance with the principles of
+sufficient grace, given to all men, and sufficing them provided that they
+have good will. Although M. Bayle holds the opposite opinion, he wished (as
+he states in the margin) to avoid the terms that would not agree with a
+system of decrees subsequent to the prevision of contingent events.
+
+114. VI. 'He foresaw from eternity all that which should happen, he ordered
+all things and placed them each one in its own place, and he guides and
+controls them continually, according to his pleasure. Thus nothing is done
+without his permission or against his will, and he can prevent, as seems
+good to him, as much and as often as seems good to him, all that does not
+please him, and in consequence sin, which is the thing in the world that
+most offends him and that he most detests; and he can produce in each human
+soul all the thoughts that he approves.' This thesis is also purely
+philosophic, that is, recognizable by the light of natural reason. It is
+opportune also, as one has dwelt in thesis II on _that which pleases_, to
+dwell here upon _that which seems good_, that is, upon that which God finds
+good to do. He can avoid or put away as 'seems good to him' all 'that does
+not please him'. Nevertheless it must be borne in mind that some objects of
+his aversion, such as certain evils, and especially sin, which his    [186]
+antecedent will repelled, could only have been rejected by his consequent
+or decretory will, in so far as it was prompted by the rule of the best,
+which the All-wise must choose after having taken all into account. When
+one says 'that sin offends God most, and that he detests it most', these
+are human ways of speaking. God cannot, properly speaking, be _offended_,
+that is, injured, disturbed, disquieted or angered; and he _detests_
+nothing of that which exists, in the sense that to detest something is to
+look upon it with abomination and in a way that causes us disgust, that
+greatly pains and distresses us; for God cannot suffer either vexation, or
+grief or discomfort; he is always altogether content and at ease. Yet these
+expressions in their true sense are justified. The supreme goodness of God
+causes his antecedent will to repel all evil, but moral evil more than any
+other: it only admits evil at all for irresistible superior reasons, and
+with great correctives which repair its ill effects to good advantage. It
+is true also that God could produce in each human soul all the thoughts
+that he approves: but this would be to act by miracles, more than his most
+perfectly conceived plan admits.
+
+115. VII. 'He offers grace to people that he knows are destined not to
+accept it, and so destined by this refusal to make themselves more criminal
+than they would be if he had not offered them that grace; he assures them
+that it is his ardent wish that they accept it, and he does not give them
+the grace which he knows they would accept.' It is true that these people
+become more criminal through their refusal than if one had offered them
+nothing, and that God knows this. Yet it is better to permit their crime
+than to act in a way which would render God himself blameworthy, and
+provide the criminals with some justification for the complaint that it was
+not possible for them to do better, even though they had or might have
+wished it. God desires that they receive such grace from him as they are
+fit to receive, and that they accept it; and he desires to give them in
+particular that grace whose acceptance by them he foresees: but it is
+always by a will antecedent, detached or particular, which cannot always be
+carried out in the general plan of things. This thesis also is among the
+number of those which philosophy establishes no less than revelation, like
+three others of the seven that we have just stated here, the third, fourth
+and fifth being the only ones where revelation is necessary.
+
+                                                                      [187]
+116. Here now are the nineteen philosophic maxims which M. Bayle opposes to
+the seven theological propositions.
+
+I. 'As the infinitely perfect Being finds in himself a glory and a bliss
+that can never either diminish or increase, his goodness alone has
+determined him to create this universe: neither the ambition to be praised,
+nor any interested motive of preserving or augmenting his bliss and his
+glory, has had any part therein.' This maxim is very good: praises of God
+do him no service, but they are of service to the men who praise him, and
+he desired their good. Nevertheless, when one says that _goodness_ alone
+determined God to create this universe, it is well to add that his GOODNESS
+prompted him _antecedently_ to create and to produce all possible good; but
+that his WISDOM made the choice and caused him to select the best
+_consequently_; and finally that his POWER gave him the means to carry out
+_actually_ the great design which he had formed.
+
+117. II. 'The goodness of the infinitely perfect Being is infinite, and
+would not be infinite if one could conceive of a goodness greater than
+this. This characteristic of infinity is proper also to all his other
+perfections, to love of virtue, hatred of vice, etc., they must be the
+greatest one can imagine. (See M. Jurieu in the first three sections of the
+_Judgement on Methods_, where he argues constantly upon this principle, as
+upon a primary notion. See also in Wittich, _De Providentia Dei_, n. 12,
+these words of St. Augustine, lib. I, _De Doctrina Christiana_, c. 7: "Cum
+cogitatur Deus, ita cogitatur, ut aliquid, quo nihil melius sit atque
+sublimius. Et paulo post: Nec quisquam inveniri potest, qui hoc Deum credat
+esse, quo melius aliquid est.")'
+
+This maxim is altogether to my liking, and I draw from it this conclusion,
+that God does the very best possible: otherwise the exercise of his
+goodness would be restricted, and that would be restricting his _goodness_
+itself, if it did not prompt him to the best, if he were lacking in good
+will. Or again it would be restricting his _wisdom_ and his _power_, if he
+lacked the knowledge necessary for discerning the best and for finding the
+means to obtain it, or if he lacked the strength necessary for employing
+these means. There is, however, ambiguity in the assertion that love of
+virtue and hatred of vice are infinite in God: if that were absolutely and
+unreservedly true, in practice there would be no vice in the world. But
+although each one of God's perfections is infinite in itself, it is
+exercised only in proportion to the object and as the nature of things
+prompts it. Thus love of the best in the whole carries the day over   [188]
+all other individual inclinations or hatreds; it is the only impulse whose
+very exercise is absolutely infinite, nothing having power to prevent God
+from declaring himself for the best; and some vice being combined with the
+best possible plan, God permits it.
+
+118. III. 'An infinite goodness having guided the Creator in the production
+of the world, all the characteristics of knowledge, skill, power and
+greatness that are displayed in his work are destined for the happiness of
+intelligent creatures. He wished to show forth his perfections only to the
+end that creatures of this kind should find their felicity in the
+knowledge, the admiration and the love of the Supreme Being.'
+
+This maxim appears to me not sufficiently exact. I grant that the happiness
+of intelligent creatures is the principal part of God's design, for they
+are most like him; but nevertheless I do not see how one can prove that to
+be his sole aim. It is true that the realm of nature must serve the realm
+of grace: but, since all is connected in God's great design, we must
+believe that the realm of grace is also in some way adapted to that of
+nature, so that nature preserves the utmost order and beauty, to render the
+combination of the two the most perfect that can be. And there is no reason
+to suppose that God, for the sake of some lessening of moral evil, would
+reverse the whole order of nature. Each perfection or imperfection in the
+creature has its value, but there is none that has an infinite value. Thus
+the moral or physical good and evil of rational creatures does not
+infinitely exceed the good and evil which is simply metaphysical, namely
+that which lies in the perfection of the other creatures; and yet one would
+be bound to say this if the present maxim were strictly true. When God
+justified to the Prophet Jonah the pardon that he had granted to the
+inhabitants of Nineveh, he even touched upon the interest of the beasts who
+would have been involved in the ruin of this great city. No substance is
+absolutely contemptible or absolutely precious before God. And the abuse or
+the exaggerated extension of the present maxim appears to be in part the
+source of the difficulties that M. Bayle puts forward. It is certain that
+God sets greater store by a man than a lion; nevertheless it can hardly be
+said with certainty that God prefers a single man in all respects to the
+whole of lion-kind. Even should that be so, it would by no means follow
+that the interest of a certain number of men would prevail over the   [189]
+consideration of a general disorder diffused through an infinite number of
+creatures. This opinion would be a remnant of the old and somewhat
+discredited maxim, that all is made solely for man.
+
+119. IV. 'The benefits he imparts to the creatures that are capable of
+felicity tend only to their happiness. He therefore does not permit that
+these should serve to make them unhappy, and, if the wrong use that they
+made of them were capable of destroying them, he would give them sure means
+of always using them well. Otherwise they would not be true benefits, and
+his goodness would be smaller than that we can conceive of in another
+benefactor. (I mean, in a Cause that united with its gifts the sure skill
+to make good use of them.)'
+
+There already is the abuse or the ill effect of the preceding maxim. It is
+not strictly true (though it appear plausible) that the benefits God
+imparts to the creatures who are capable of felicity tend solely to their
+happiness. All is connected in Nature; and if a skilled artisan, an
+engineer, an architect, a wise politician often makes one and the same
+thing serve several ends, if he makes a double hit with a single throw,
+when that can be done conveniently, one may say that God, whose wisdom and
+power are perfect, does so always. That is husbanding the ground, the time,
+the place, the material, which make up as it were his outlay. Thus God has
+more than one purpose in his projects. The felicity of all rational
+creatures is one of the aims he has in view; but it is not his whole aim,
+nor even his final aim. Therefore it happens that the unhappiness of some
+of these creatures may come about _by concomitance_, and as a result of
+other greater goods: this I have already explained, and M. Bayle has to
+some extent acknowledged it. The goods as such, considered in themselves,
+are the object of the antecedent will of God. God will produce as much
+reason and knowledge in the universe as his plan can admit. One can
+conceive of a mean between an antecedent will altogether pure and
+primitive, and a consequent and final will. The _primitive antecedent will_
+has as its object each good and each evil in itself, detached from all
+combination, and tends to advance the good and prevent the evil. The
+_mediate will_ relates to combinations, as when one attaches a good to an
+evil: then the will will have some tendency towards this combination when
+the good exceeds the evil therein. But the _final and decisive will_
+results from consideration of all the goods and all the evils that enter
+into our deliberation, it results from a total combination. This shows[190]
+that a mediate will, although it may in a sense pass as consequent in
+relation to a pure and primitive antecedent will, must be considered
+antecedent in relation to the final and decretory will. God gives reason to
+the human race; misfortunes arise thence by concomitance. His pure
+antecedent will tends towards giving reason, as a great good, and
+preventing the evils in question. But when it is a question of the evils
+that accompany this gift which God has made to us of reason, the compound,
+made up of the combination of reason and of these evils, will be the object
+of a mediate will of God, which will tend towards producing or preventing
+this compound, according as the good or the evil prevails therein. But even
+though it should prove that reason did more harm than good to men (which,
+however, I do not admit), whereupon the mediate will of God would discard
+it with all its concomitants, it might still be the case that it was more
+in accordance with the perfection of the universe to give reason to men,
+notwithstanding all the evil consequences which it might have with
+reference to them. Consequently, the final will or the decree of God,
+resulting from all the considerations he can have, would be to give it to
+them. And, far from being subject to blame for this, he would be
+blameworthy if he did not so. Thus the evil, or the mixture of goods and
+evils wherein the evil prevails, happens only _by concomitance_, because it
+is connected with greater goods that are outside this mixture. This
+mixture, therefore, or this compound, is not to be conceived as a grace or
+as a gift from God to us; but the good that is found mingled therein will
+nevertheless be good. Such is God's gift of reason to those who make ill
+use thereof. It is always a good in itself; but the combination of this
+good with the evils that proceed from its abuse is not a good with regard
+to those who in consequence thereof become unhappy. Yet it comes to be by
+concomitance, because it serves a greater good in relation to the universe.
+And it is doubtless that which prompted God to give reason to those who
+have made it an instrument of their unhappiness. Or, to put it more
+precisely, in accordance with my system God, having found among the
+possible beings some rational creatures who misuse their reason, gave
+existence to those who are included in the best possible plan of the
+universe. Thus nothing prevents us from admitting that God grants goods
+which turn into evil by the fault of men, this often happening to men in
+just punishment of the misuse they had made of God's grace. Aloysius  [191]
+Novarinus wrote a book _De Occultis Dei Beneficiis_: one could write one
+_De Occultis Dei Poenis_. This saying of Claudian would be in place here
+with regard to some persons:
+
+      _Tolluntur in altum,_ _Ut lapsu graviore ruant_.
+
+But to say that God should not give a good which he knows an evil will will
+abuse, when the general plan of things demands that he give it; or again to
+say that he should give certain means for preventing it, contrary to this
+same general order: that is to wish (as I have observed already) that God
+himself become blameworthy in order to prevent man from being so. To
+object, as people do here, that the goodness of God would be smaller than
+that of another benefactor who would give a more useful gift, is to
+overlook the fact that the goodness of a benefactor is not measured by a
+single benefit. It may well be that a gift from a private person is greater
+than one from a prince, but the gifts of this private person all taken
+together will be much inferior to the prince's gifts all together. Thus one
+can esteem fittingly the good things done by God only when one considers
+their whole extent by relating them to the entire universe. Moreover, one
+may say that the gifts given in the expectation that they will harm are the
+gifts of an enemy, [Greek: hechthrôn dôra adôra],
+
+    _Hostibus eveniant talia dona meis._
+
+But that applies to when there is malice or guilt in him who gives them, as
+there was in that Eutrapelus of whom Horace speaks, who did good to people
+in order to give them the means of destroying themselves. His design was
+evil, but God's design cannot be better than it is. Must God spoil his
+system, must there be less beauty, perfection and reason in the universe,
+because there are people who misuse reason? The common sayings are in place
+here: _Abusus non tollit usum_; there is _scandalum datum et scandalum
+acceptum_.
+
+120. V. 'A maleficent being is very capable of heaping magnificent gifts
+upon his enemies, when he knows that they will make thereof a use that will
+destroy them. It therefore does not beseem the infinitely good Being to
+give to creatures a free will, whereof, as he knows for certain, they would
+make a use that would render them unhappy. Therefore if he gives them free
+will he combines with it the art of using it always opportunely, and
+permits not that they neglect the practice of this art in any         [192]
+conjuncture; and if there were no sure means of determining the good use of
+this free will, he would rather take from them this faculty, than allow it
+to be the cause of their unhappiness. That is the more manifest, as free
+will is a grace which he has given them of his own choice and without their
+asking for it; so that he would be more answerable for the unhappiness it
+would bring upon them than if he had only granted it in response to their
+importunate prayers.'
+
+What was said at the end of the remark on the preceding maxim ought to be
+repeated here, and is sufficient to counter the present maxim. Moreover,
+the author is still presupposing that false maxim advanced as the third,
+stating that the happiness of rational creatures is the sole aim of God. If
+that were so, perhaps neither sin nor unhappiness would ever occur, even by
+concomitance. God would have chosen a sequence of possibles where all these
+evils would be excluded. But God would fail in what is due to the universe,
+that is, in what he owes to himself. If there were only spirits they would
+be without the required connexion, without the order of time and place.
+This order demands matter, movement and its laws; to adjust these to
+spirits in the best possible way means to return to our world. When one
+looks at things only in the mass, one imagines to be practicable a thousand
+things that cannot properly take place. To wish that God should not give
+free will to rational creatures is to wish that there be none of these
+creatures; and to wish that God should prevent them from misusing it is to
+wish that there be none but these creatures alone, together with what was
+made for them only. If God had none but these creatures in view, he would
+doubtless prevent them from destroying themselves. One may say in a sense,
+however, that God has given to these creatures the art of always making
+good use of their free will, for the natural light of reason is this art.
+But it would be necessary always to have the will to do good, and often
+creatures lack the means of giving themselves the will they ought to have;
+often they even lack the will to use those means which indirectly give a
+good will. Of this I have already spoken more than once. This fault must be
+admitted, and one must even acknowledge that God would perhaps have been
+able to exempt creatures from that fault, since there is nothing to
+prevent, so it seems, the existence of some whose nature it would be always
+to have good will. But I reply that it is not necessary, and that it was
+not feasible for all rational creatures to have so great a perfection,[193]
+and such as would bring them so close to the Divinity. It may even be that
+that can only be made possible by a special divine grace. But in this case,
+would it be proper for God to grant it to all, that is, always to act
+miraculously in respect of all rational creatures? Nothing would be less
+rational than these perpetual miracles. There are degrees among creatures:
+the general order requires it. And it appears quite consistent with the
+order of divine government that the great privilege of strengthening in the
+good should be granted more easily to those who had a good will when they
+were in a more imperfect state, in the state of struggle and of pilgrimage,
+_in Ecclesia militante, in statu viatorum_. The good angels themselves were
+not created incapable of sin. Nevertheless I would not dare to assert that
+there are no blessed creatures born, or such as are sinless and holy by
+their nature. There are perhaps people who give this privilege to the
+Blessed Virgin, since, moreover, the Roman Church to-day places her above
+the angels. But it suffices us that the universe is very great and very
+varied: to wish to limit it is to have little knowledge thereof. 'But', M.
+Bayle goes on, 'God has given free will to creatures capable of sinning,
+without their having asked him for this grace. And he who gave such a gift
+would be more answerable for the unhappiness that it brought upon those who
+made use of it, than if he had granted it only in response to their
+importunate prayers.' But importunity in prayers makes no difference to
+God; he knows better than we what we need, and he only grants what serves
+the interest of the whole. It seems that M. Bayle here makes free will
+consist in the faculty for sinning; yet he acknowledges elsewhere that God
+and the Saints are free, without having this faculty. However that may be,
+I have already shown fully that God, doing what his wisdom and his goodness
+combined ordain, is not answerable for the evil that he permits. Even men,
+when they do their duty, are not answerable for consequences, whether they
+foresee them or not.
+
+121. VI. 'It is as sure a means of taking a man's life to give him a silk
+cord that one knows certainly he will make use of freely to strangle
+himself, as to plant a few dagger thrusts in his body. One desires his
+death not less when one makes use of the first way, than when one employs
+the second: it even seems as though one desires it with a more malicious
+intention, since one tends to leave to him the whole trouble and the whole
+blame of his destruction.'
+
+                                                                      [194]
+Those who write treatises on Duties (De Officiis) as, for instance, Cicero,
+St. Ambrose, Grotius, Opalenius, Sharrok, Rachelius, Pufendorf, as well as
+the Casuists, teach that there are cases where one is not obliged to return
+to its owner a thing deposited: for example, one will not give back a
+dagger when one knows that he who has deposited it is about to stab
+someone. Let us pretend that I have in my hands the fatal draught that
+Meleager's mother will make use of to kill him; the magic javelin that
+Cephalus will unwittingly employ to kill his Procris; the horses of Theseus
+that will tear to pieces Hippolytus, his son: these things are demanded
+back from me, and I am right in refusing them, knowing the use that will be
+made of them. But how will it be if a competent judge orders me to restore
+them, when I cannot prove to him what I know of the evil consequences that
+restitution will have, Apollo perchance having given to me, as to
+Cassandra, the gift of prophecy under the condition that I shall not be
+believed? I should then be compelled to make restitution, having no
+alternative other than my own destruction: thus I cannot escape from
+contributing towards the evil. Another comparison: Jupiter promises Semele,
+the Sun Phaeton, Cupid Psyche to grant whatever favour the other shall ask.
+They swear by the Styx,
+
+  _Di cujus jurare timent et fallere Numen_.
+
+One would gladly stop, but too late, the request half heard,
+
+              _Voluit Deus ora loquentis_
+  _Opprimere; exierat jam vox properata sub auras_.
+
+One would gladly draw back after the request was made, making vain
+remonstrances; but they press you, they say to you: 'Do you make oaths that
+you will not keep?' The law of the Styx is inviolable, one must needs
+submit to it; if one has erred in making the oath, one would err more in
+not keeping it; the promise must be fulfilled, however harmful it may be to
+him who exacts it. It would be ruinous to you if you did not fulfil it. It
+seems as though the moral of these fables implies that a supreme necessity
+may constrain one to comply with evil. God, in truth, knows no other judge
+that can compel him to give what may turn to evil, he is not like Jupiter
+who fears the Styx. But his own wisdom is the greatest judge that he can
+find, there is no appeal from its judgements: they are the decrees of
+destiny. The eternal verities, objects of his wisdom, are more        [195]
+inviolable than the Styx. These laws and this judge do not constrain: they
+are stronger, for they persuade. Wisdom only shows God the best possible
+exercise of his goodness: after that, the evil that occurs is an inevitable
+result of the best. I will add something stronger: To permit the evil, as
+God permits it, is the greatest goodness.
+
+  _Si mala sustulerat, non erat ille bonus._
+
+One would need to have a bent towards perversity to say after this that it
+is more malicious to leave to someone the whole trouble and the whole blame
+of his destruction. When God does leave it to a man, it has belonged to him
+since before his existence; it was already in the idea of him as still
+merely possible, before the decree of God which makes him to exist. Can
+one, then, leave it or give it to another? There is the whole matter.
+
+122. VII. 'A true benefactor gives promptly, and does not wait to give
+until those he loves have suffered long miseries from the privation of what
+he could have imparted to them at first very easily, and without causing
+any inconvenience to himself. If the limitation of his forces does not
+permit him to do good without inflicting pain or some other inconvenience,
+he acquiesces in this, but only regretfully, and he never employs this way
+of rendering service when he can render it without mingling any kind of
+evil in his favours. If the profit one could derive from the evils he
+inflicted could spring as easily from an unalloyed good as from those
+evils, he would take the straight road of unalloyed good, and not the
+indirect road that would lead from the evil to the good. If he showers
+riches and honours, it is not to the end that those who have enjoyed them,
+when they come to lose them, should be all the more deeply afflicted in
+proportion to their previous experience of pleasure, and that thus they
+should become more unhappy than the persons who have always been deprived
+of these advantages. A malicious being would shower good things at such a
+price upon the people for whom he had the most hatred.'
+
+(Compare this passage of Aristotle, _Rhetor._, 1. 2, c. 23, p. m. 446:
+[Greek: hoion ei doiê an tis tini hina aphelomenos leipêsêi; hothen kai
+tout' eirêtai,]
+
+  [Greek: pollois ho daimôn ou kat' eunoian pherôn]
+  [Greek: Megala didôsin eutychêmat', all' hina]
+  [Greek: tas symphoras labôsin epiphanesteras.]
+
+                                                                      [196]
+Id est: Veluti si quis alicui aliquid det, ut (postea) hoc (ipsi) erepto
+(ipsum) afficiat dolore. Unde etiam illud est dictum:
+
+  _Bona magna multis non amicus dat Deus,_
+  _Insigniore ut rursus his privet malo._)
+
+All these objections depend almost on the same sophism; they change and
+mutilate the fact, they only half record things: God has care for men, he
+loves the human race, he wishes it well, nothing so true. Yet he allows men
+to fall, he often allows them to perish, he gives them goods that tend
+towards their destruction; and when he makes someone happy, it is after
+many sufferings: where is his affection, where is his goodness or again
+where is his power? Vain objections, which suppress the main point, which
+ignore the fact that it is of God one speaks. It is as though one were
+speaking of a mother, a guardian, a tutor, whose well-nigh only care is
+concerned with the upbringing, the preservation, the happiness of the
+person in question, and who neglect their duty. God takes care of the
+universe, he neglects nothing, he chooses what is best on the whole. If in
+spite of all that someone is wicked and unhappy, it behoved him to be so.
+God (so they say) could have given happiness to all, he could have given it
+promptly and easily, and without causing himself any inconvenience, for he
+can do all. But should he? Since he does not so, it is a sign that he had
+to act altogether differently. If we infer from this either that God only
+regretfully, and owing to lack of power, fails to make men happy and to
+give the good first of all and without admixture of evil, or else that he
+lacks the good will to give it unreservedly and for good and all, then we
+are comparing our true God with the God of Herodotus, full of envy, or with
+the demon of the poet whose iambics Aristotle quotes, and I have just
+translated into Latin, who gives good things in order that he may cause
+more affliction by taking them away. That would be trifling with God in
+perpetual anthropomorphisms, representing him as a man who must give
+himself up completely to one particular business, whose goodness must be
+chiefly exercised upon those objects alone which are known to us, and who
+lacks either aptitude or good will. God is not lacking therein, he could do
+the good that we would desire; he even wishes it, taking it separately, but
+he must not do it in preference to other greater goods which are opposed to
+it. Moreover, one has no cause to complain of the fact that usually   [197]
+one attains salvation only through many sufferings, and by bearing the
+cross of Jesus Christ. These evils serve to make the elect imitators of
+their master, and to increase their happiness.
+
+123. VIII. 'The greatest and the most substantial glory that he who is the
+master of others can gain is to maintain amongst them virtue, order, peace,
+contentment of mind. The glory that he would derive from their unhappiness
+can be nothing but a false glory.'
+
+If we knew the city of God just as it is, we should see that it is the most
+perfect state which can be devised; that virtue and happiness reign there,
+as far as is possible, in accordance with the laws of the best; that sin
+and unhappiness (whose entire exclusion from the nature of things reasons
+of the supreme order did not permit), are well-nigh nothing there in
+comparison with the good, and even are of service for greater good. Now
+since these evils were to exist, there must needs be some appointed to be
+subject to them, and we are those people. If it were others, would there
+not be the same appearance of evil? Or rather, would not these others be
+those known as We? When God derives some glory from the evil through having
+made it serve a greater good, it was proper that he should derive that
+glory. It is not therefore a false glory, as would be that of a prince who
+overthrew his state in order to have the honour of setting it up again.
+
+124. IX. 'The way whereby that master can give proof of greatest love for
+virtue is to cause it, if he can, to be always practised without any
+mixture of vice. If it is easy for him to procure for his subjects this
+advantage, and nevertheless he permits vice to raise its head, save that he
+punishes it finally after having long tolerated it, his affection for
+virtue is not the greatest one can conceive; it is therefore not infinite.'
+
+I am not yet half way through the nineteen maxims, and already I am weary
+of refuting, and making the same answer always. M. Bayle multiplies
+unnecessarily his so-called maxims in opposition to my dogmas. If things
+connected together may be separated, the parts from their whole, the human
+kind from the universe, God's attributes the one from the other, power from
+wisdom, it may be said that God _can cause_ virtue to be in the world
+without any mixture of vice, and even that he can do so _easily_. But,
+since he has permitted vice, it must be that that order of the universe
+which was found preferable to every other plan required it. One must
+believe that it is not permitted to do otherwise, since it is not     [198]
+possible to do better. It is a hypothetical necessity, a moral necessity,
+which, far from being contrary to freedom, is the effect of its choice.
+_Quae rationi contraria sunt, ea nec fieri a Sapiente posse credendum est_.
+The objection is made here, that God's affection for virtue is therefore
+not the greatest which can be conceived, that it is not _infinite_. To that
+an answer has already been given on the second maxim, in the assertion that
+God's affection for any created thing whatsoever is proportionate to the
+value of the thing. Virtue is the noblest quality of created things, but it
+is not the only good quality of creatures. There are innumerable others
+which attract the inclination of God: from all these inclinations there
+results the most possible good, and it turns out that if there were only
+virtue, if there were only rational creatures, there would be less good.
+Midas proved to be less rich when he had only gold. And besides, wisdom
+must vary. To multiply one and the same thing only would be superfluity,
+and poverty too. To have a thousand well-bound Vergils in one's library,
+always to sing the airs from the opera of Cadmus and Hermione, to break all
+the china in order only to have cups of gold, to have only diamond buttons,
+to eat nothing but partridges, to drink only Hungarian or Shiraz
+wine--would one call that reason? Nature had need of animals, plants,
+inanimate bodies; there are in these creatures, devoid of reason, marvels
+which serve for exercise of the reason. What would an intelligent creature
+do if there were no unintelligent things? What would it think of, if there
+were neither movement, nor matter, nor sense? If it had only distinct
+thoughts it would be a God, its wisdom would be without bounds: that is one
+of the results of my meditations. As soon as there is a mixture of confused
+thoughts, there is sense, there is matter. For these confused thoughts come
+from the relation of all things one to the other by way of duration and
+extent. Thus it is that in my philosophy there is no rational creature
+without some organic body, and there is no created spirit entirely detached
+from matter. But these organic bodies vary no less in perfection than the
+spirits to which they belong. Therefore, since God's wisdom must have a
+world of bodies, a world of substances capable of perception and incapable
+of reason; since, in short, it was necessary to choose from all the things
+possible what produced the best effect together, and since vice entered in
+by this door, God would not have been altogether good, altogether wise if
+he had excluded it.
+
+                                                                      [199]
+125. X. 'The way to evince the greatest hatred for vice is not indeed to
+allow it to prevail for a long time and then chastise it, but to crush it
+before its birth, that is, prevent it from showing itself anywhere. A king,
+for example, who put his finances in such good order that no malversation
+was ever committed, would thus display more hatred for the wrong done by
+factionaries than if, after having suffered them to batten on the blood of
+the people, he had them hanged.'
+
+It is always the same song, it is anthropomorphism pure and simple. A king
+should generally have nothing so much at heart as to keep his subjects free
+from oppression. One of his greatest interests is to bring good order into
+his finances. Nevertheless there are times when he is obliged to tolerate
+vice and disorders. He has a great war on his hands, he is in a state of
+exhaustion, he has no choice of generals, it is necessary to humour those
+he has, those possessed of great authority with the soldiers: a Braccio, a
+Sforza, a Wallenstein. He lacks money for the most pressing needs, it is
+necessary to turn to great financiers, who have an established credit, and
+he must at the same time connive at their malversations. It is true that
+this unfortunate necessity arises most often from previous errors. It is
+not the same with God: he has need of no man, he commits no error, he
+always does the best. One cannot even wish that things may go better, when
+one understands them: and it would be a vice in the Author of things if he
+wished to change anything whatsoever in them, if he wished to exclude the
+vice that was found there. Is this State with perfect government, where
+good is willed and performed as far as it is possible, where evil even
+serves the greatest good, comparable with the State of a prince whose
+affairs are in ruin and who escapes as best he can? Or with that of a
+prince who encourages oppression in order to punish it, and who delights to
+see the little men with begging bowls and the great on scaffolds?
+
+126. XI. 'A ruler devoted to the interests of virtue, and to the good of
+his subjects, takes the utmost care to ensure that they never disobey his
+laws; and if he must needs chastise them for their disobedience, he sees to
+it that the penalty cures them of the inclination to evil, and restores in
+their soul a strong and constant tendency towards good: so far is he from
+any desire that the penalty for the error should incline them more and more
+towards evil.'
+
+                                                                      [200]
+To make men better, God does all that is due, and even all that can be done
+on his side without detriment to what is due. The most usual aim of
+punishment is amendment; but it is not the sole aim, nor that which God
+always intends. I have said a word on that above. Original sin, which
+disposes men towards evil, is not merely a penalty for the first sin; it is
+a natural consequence thereof. On that too a word has been said, in the
+course of an observation on the fourth theological proposition. It is like
+drunkenness, which is a penalty for excess in drinking and is at the same
+time a natural consequence that easily leads to new sins.
+
+127. XII. 'To permit the evil that one could prevent is not to care whether
+it be committed or not, or is even to wish that it be committed.'
+
+By no means. How many times do men permit evils which they could prevent if
+they turned all their efforts in that direction? But other more important
+cares prevent them from doing so. One will rarely resolve upon adjusting
+irregularities in the coinage while one is involved in a great war. And the
+action of an English Parliament in this direction a little before the Peace
+of Ryswyck will be rather praised than imitated. Can one conclude from this
+that the State has no anxiety about this irregularity, or even that it
+desires it? God has a far stronger reason, and one far more worthy of him,
+for tolerating evils. Not only does he derive from them greater goods, but
+he finds them connected with the greatest goods of all those that are
+possible: so that it would be a fault not to permit them.
+
+128. XIII. 'It is a very great fault in those who govern, if they do not
+care whether there be disorder in their States or not. The fault is still
+greater if they wish and even desire disorder there. If by hidden and
+indirect, but infallible, ways they stirred up a sedition in their States
+to bring them to the brink of ruin, in order to gain for themselves the
+glory of showing that they have the courage and the prudence necessary for
+saving a great kingdom on the point of perishing, they would be most
+deserving of condemnation. But if they stirred up this sedition because
+there were no other means than that, of averting the total ruin of their
+subjects and of strengthening on new foundations, and for several
+centuries, the happiness of nations, one must needs lament the unfortunate
+necessity (see above, pp. 146, 147, what has been said of the force of[201]
+necessity) to which they were reduced, and praise them for the use that
+they made thereof.'
+
+This maxim, with divers others set forth here, is not applicable to the
+government of God. Not to mention the fact that it is only the disorders of
+a very small part of his kingdom which are brought up in objection, it is
+untrue that he has no anxiety about evils, that he desires them, that he
+brings them into being, to have the glory of allaying them. God wills order
+and good; but it happens sometimes that what is disorder in the part is
+order in the whole. I have already stated this legal axiom: _Incivile est
+nisi tota lege inspecta judicare_. The permission of evils comes from a
+kind of moral necessity: God is constrained to this by his wisdom and by
+his goodness; _this necessity is happy_, whereas that of the prince spoken
+of in the maxim is _unhappy_. His State is one of the most corrupt; and the
+government of God is the best State possible.
+
+129. XIV. 'The permission of a certain evil is only excusable when one
+cannot remedy it without introducing a greater evil; but it cannot be
+excusable in those who have in hand a remedy more efficacious against this
+evil, and against all the other evils that could spring from the
+suppression of this one.'
+
+The maxim is true, but it cannot be brought forward against the government
+of God. Supreme reason constrains him to permit the evil. If God chose what
+would not be the best absolutely and in all, that would be a greater evil
+than all the individual evils which he could prevent by this means. This
+wrong choice would destroy his wisdom and his goodness.
+
+130. XV. 'The Being infinitely powerful, Creator of matter and of spirits,
+makes whatever he wills of this matter and these spirits. There is no
+situation or shape that he cannot communicate to spirits. If he then
+permitted a physical or a moral evil, this would not be for the reason that
+otherwise some other still greater physical or moral evil would be
+altogether inevitable. None of those reasons for the mixture of good and
+evil which are founded on the limitation of the forces of benefactors can
+apply to him.'
+
+It is true that God makes of matter and of spirits whatever he wills; but
+he is like a good sculptor, who will make from his block of marble only
+that which he judges to be the best, and who judges well. God makes of
+matter the most excellent of all possible machines; he makes of spirits the
+most excellent of all governments conceivable; and over and above all that,
+he establishes for their union the most perfect of all harmonies,     [202]
+according to the system I have proposed. Now since physical evil and moral
+evil occur in this perfect work, one must conclude (contrary to M. Bayle's
+assurance here) that _otherwise a still greater evil would have been
+altogether inevitable_. This great evil would be that God would have chosen
+ill if he had chosen otherwise than he has chosen. It is true that God is
+infinitely powerful; but his power is indeterminate, goodness and wisdom
+combined determine him to produce the best. M. Bayle makes elsewhere an
+objection which is peculiar to him, which he derives from the opinions of
+the modern Cartesians. They say that God could have given to souls what
+thoughts he would, without making them depend upon any relation to the
+body: by this means souls would be spared a great number of evils which
+only spring from derangement of the body. More will be said of this later;
+now it is sufficient to bear in mind that God cannot establish a system
+ill-connected and full of dissonances. It is to some extent the nature of
+souls to represent bodies.
+
+131. XVI. 'One is just as much the cause of an event when one brings it
+about in moral ways, as when one brings it about in physical ways. A
+Minister of State, who, without going out of his study, and simply by
+utilizing the passions of the leaders of a faction, overthrew all their
+plots, would thus be bringing about the ruin of this faction, no less than
+if he destroyed it by a surprise attack.'
+
+I have nothing to say against this maxim. Evil is always attributed to
+moral causes, and not always to physical causes. Here I observe simply that
+if I could not prevent the sin of others except by committing a sin myself,
+I should be justified in permitting it, and I should not be accessary
+thereto, or its moral cause. In God, every fault would represent a sin; it
+would be even more than sin, for it would destroy Divinity. And it would be
+a great fault in him not to choose the best. I have said so many times. He
+would then prevent sin by something worse than all sins.
+
+132. XVII. 'It is all the same whether one employ a necessary cause, or
+employ a free cause while choosing the moments when one knows it to be
+determined. If I imagine that gunpowder has the power to ignite or not to
+ignite when fire touches it, and if I know for certain that it will be
+disposed to ignite at eight o'clock in the morning, I shall be just as much
+the cause of its effects if I apply the fire to it at that hour, as I
+should be in assuming, as is the case, that it is a necessary cause.  [203]
+For where I am concerned it would no longer be a free cause. I should be
+catching it at the moment when I knew it to be necessitated by its own
+choice. It is impossible for a being to be free or indifferent with regard
+to that to which it is already determined, and at the time when it is
+determined thereto. All that which exists exists of necessity while it
+exists. [Greek: To einai to on hotan êi, kai to mê einai hotan mê êi,
+anankê.] "Necesse est id quod est, quando est, esse; et id quod non est,
+quando non est, non esse": Arist., _De Interpret._, cap. 9. The Nominalists
+have adopted this maxim of Aristotle. Scotus and sundry other Schoolmen
+appear to reject it, but fundamentally their distinctions come to the same
+thing. See the Jesuits of Coimbra on this passage from Aristotle, p. 380
+_et seq._)'
+
+This maxim may pass also; I would wish only to change something in the
+phraseology. I would not take 'free' and 'indifferent' for one and the same
+thing, and would not place 'free' and 'determined' in antithesis. One is
+never altogether indifferent with an indifference of equipoise; one is
+always more inclined and consequently more determined on one side than on
+another: but one is never necessitated to the choice that one makes. I mean
+here a _necessity_ absolute and metaphysical; for it must be admitted that
+God, that wisdom, is prompted to the best by a _moral_ necessity. It must
+be admitted also that one is necessitated to the choice by a hypothetical
+necessity, when one actually makes the choice; and even before one is
+necessitated thereto by the very truth of the futurition, since one will do
+it. These hypothetical necessities do no harm. I have spoken sufficiently
+on this point already.
+
+133. XVIII. 'When a whole great people has become guilty of rebellion, it
+is not showing clemency to pardon the hundred thousandth part, and to kill
+all the rest, not excepting even babes and sucklings.'
+
+It seems to be assumed here that there are a hundred thousand times more
+damned than saved, and that children dying unbaptized are included among
+the former. Both these points are disputed, and especially the damnation of
+these children. I have spoken of this above. M. Bayle urges the same
+objection elsewhere (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III,
+ch. 178, p. 1223): 'We see clearly', he says, 'that the Sovereign who
+wishes to exercise both justice and clemency when a city has revolted must
+be content with the punishment of a small number of mutineers, and    [204]
+pardon all the rest. For if the number of those who are chastised is as a
+thousand to one, in comparison with those whom he freely pardons, he cannot
+be accounted mild, but, on the contrary, cruel. He would assuredly be
+accounted an abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration,
+and if he eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would
+prefer death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to take
+revenge were more responsible for his severities than the desire to turn to
+the service of the common weal the penalty that he would inflict on almost
+all the rebels. Criminals who are executed are considered to expiate their
+crimes so completely by the loss of their life, that the public requires
+nothing more, and is indignant when executioners are clumsy. These would be
+stoned if they were known deliberately to give repeated strokes of the axe;
+and the judges who are present at the execution would not be immune from
+danger if they were thought to take pleasure in this evil sport of the
+executioners, and to have surreptitiously urged them to practise it.' (Note
+that this is not to be understood as strictly universal. There are cases
+where the people approve of the slow killing of certain criminals, as when
+Francis I thus put to death some persons accused of heresy after the
+notorious Placards of 1534. No pity was shown to Ravaillac, who was
+tortured in divers horrible ways. See the _French Mercury_, vol. I, fol.
+m., 455 _et seq._ See also Pierre Matthieu in his _History of the Death of
+Henry IV_; and do not forget what he says on page m. 99 concerning the
+discussion by the judges with regard to the torture of this parricide.)
+'Finally it is an exceptionally notorious fact that Rulers who should be
+guided by St. Paul, I mean who should condemn to the extreme penalty all
+those whom he condemns to eternal death, would be accounted enemies of the
+human kind and destroyers of their communities. It is incontestable that
+their laws, far from being fitted, in accordance with the aim of
+legislators, to uphold society, would be its complete ruin. (Apply here
+these words of Pliny the Younger, _Epist._, 22, lib. 8: Mandemus memoriae
+quod vir mitissimus, et ob hoc quoque maximus, Thrasea crebro dicere
+solebat, Qui vitia odit, homines odit.)' He adds that it was said of the
+laws of Draco, an Athenian lawgiver, that they had not been written with
+ink, but with blood, because they punished all sins with the extreme
+penalty, and because damnation is a penalty even worse than death. But it
+must be borne in mind that damnation is a consequence of sin. Thus I  [205]
+once answered a friend, who raised as an objection the disproportion
+existing between an eternal punishment and a limited crime, that there is
+no injustice when the continuation of the punishment is only a result of
+the continuation of the sin. I will speak further on this point later. As
+for the number of the damned, even though it should be incomparably greater
+among men than the number of the saved, that would not preclude the
+possibility that in the universe the happy creatures infinitely outnumber
+those who are unhappy. Such examples as that of a prince who punishes only
+the leaders of rebels or of a general who has a regiment decimated, are of
+no importance here. Self-interest compels the prince and the general to
+pardon the guilty, even though they should remain wicked. God only pardons
+those who become better: he can distinguish them; and this severity is more
+consistent with perfect justice. But if anyone asks why God gives not to
+all the grace of conversion, the question is of a different nature, having
+no relation to the present maxim. I have already answered it in a sense,
+not in order to find God's reasons, but to show that he cannot lack such,
+and that there are no opposing reasons of any validity. Moreover, we know
+that sometimes whole cities are destroyed and the inhabitants put to the
+sword, to inspire terror in the rest. That may serve to shorten a great war
+or a rebellion, and would mean a saving of blood through the shedding of
+it: there is no decimation there. We cannot assert, indeed, that the wicked
+of our globe are punished so severely in order to intimidate the
+inhabitants of the other globes and to make them better. Yet an abundance
+of reasons in the universal harmony which are unknown to us, because we
+know not sufficiently the extent of the city of God, nor the form of the
+general republic of spirits, nor even the whole architecture of bodies, may
+produce the same effect.
+
+134. XIX. 'Those physicians who chose, among many remedies capable of
+curing a sick man, whereof divers were such as they well knew he would take
+with enjoyment, precisely that one which they knew he would refuse to take,
+would vainly urge and pray him not to refuse it; we should still have just
+cause for thinking that they had no desire to cure him: for if they wished
+to do so, they would choose for him among those good medicines one which
+they knew he would willingly swallow. If, moreover, they knew that
+rejection of the remedy they offered him would augment his sickness to[206]
+the point of making it fatal, one could not help saying that, despite all
+their exhortations, they must certainly be desirous of the sick man's
+death.'
+
+God wishes to save all men: that means that he would save them if men
+themselves did not prevent it, and did not refuse to receive his grace; and
+he is not bound or prompted by reason always to overcome their evil will.
+He does so sometimes nevertheless, when superior reasons allow of it, and
+when his consequent and decretory will, which results from all his reasons,
+makes him resolve upon the election of a certain number of men. He gives
+aids to all for their conversion and for perseverance, and these aids
+suffice in those who have good will, but they do not always suffice to give
+good will. Men obtain this good will either through particular aids or
+through circumstances which cause the success of the general aids. God
+cannot refrain from offering other remedies which he knows men will reject,
+bringing upon themselves all the greater guilt: but shall one wish that God
+be unjust in order that man may be less criminal? Moreover, the grace that
+does not serve the one may serve the other, and indeed always serves the
+totality of God's plan, which is the best possible in conception. Shall God
+not give the rain, because there are low-lying places which will be thereby
+incommoded? Shall the sun not shine as much as it should for the world in
+general, because there are places which will be too much dried up in
+consequence? In short, all these comparisons, spoken of in these maxims
+that M. Bayle has just given, of a physician, a benefactor, a minister of
+State, a prince, are exceedingly lame, because it is well known what their
+duties are and what can and ought to be the object of their cares: they
+have scarce more than the one affair, and they often fail therein through
+negligence or malice. God's object has in it something infinite, his cares
+embrace the universe: what we know thereof is almost nothing, and we desire
+to gauge his wisdom and his goodness by our knowledge. What temerity, or
+rather what absurdity! The objections are on false assumptions; it is
+senseless to pass judgement on the point of law when one does not know the
+matter of fact. To say with St. Paul, _O altitudo divitiarum et
+sapientiae,_ is not renouncing reason, it is rather employing the reasons
+that we know, for they teach us that immensity of God whereof the Apostle
+speaks. But therein we confess our ignorance of the facts, and we
+acknowledge, moreover, before we see it, that God does all the best   [207]
+possible, in accordance with the infinite wisdom which guides his actions.
+It is true that we have already before our eyes proofs and tests of this,
+when we see something entire, some whole complete in itself, and isolated,
+so to speak, among the works of God. Such a whole, shaped as it were by the
+hand of God, is a plant, an animal, a man. We cannot wonder enough at the
+beauty and the contrivance of its structure. But when we see some broken
+bone, some piece of animal's flesh, some sprig of a plant, there appears to
+be nothing but confusion, unless an excellent anatomist observe it: and
+even he would recognize nothing therein if he had not before seen like
+pieces attached to their whole. It is the same with the government of God:
+that which we have been able to see hitherto is not a large enough piece
+for recognition of the beauty and the order of the whole. Thus the very
+nature of things implies that this order in the Divine City, which we see
+not yet here on earth, should be an object of our faith, of our hope, of
+our confidence in God. If there are any who think otherwise, so much the
+worse for them, they are malcontents in the State of the greatest and the
+best of all monarchs; and they are wrong not to take advantage of the
+examples he has given them of his wisdom and his infinite goodness, whereby
+he reveals himself as being not only wonderful, but also worthy of love
+beyond all things.
+
+135. I hope it will be found that nothing of what is comprised in the
+nineteen maxims of M. Bayle, which we have just considered, has been left
+without a necessary answer. It is likely that, having often before
+meditated on this subject, he will have put there all his strongest
+convictions touching the moral cause of moral evil. There are, however,
+still sundry passages here and there in his works which it will be well not
+to pass over in silence. Very often he exaggerates the difficulty which he
+assumes with regard to freeing God from the imputation of sin. He observes
+_(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 161, p. 1024) that Molina,
+if he reconciled free will with foreknowledge, did not reconcile the
+goodness and the holiness of God with sin. He praises the sincerity of
+those who bluntly declare (as he claims Piscator did) that everything is to
+be traced back to the will of God, and who maintain that God could not but
+be just, even though he were the author of sin, even though he condemned
+innocence. And on the other side, or in other passages, he seems to show
+more approval of the opinions of those who preserve God's goodness at [208]
+the expense of his greatness, as Plutarch does in his book against the
+Stoics. 'It was more reasonable', he says, 'to say' (with the Epicureans)
+'that innumerable parts' (or atoms flying about at haphazard through an
+infinite space) 'by their force prevailed over the weakness of Jupiter and,
+in spite of him and against his nature and will, did many bad and
+irrational things, than to agree that there is neither confusion nor
+wickedness but he is the author thereof.' What may be said for both these
+parties, Stoics and Epicureans, appears to have led M. Bayle to the [Greek:
+epechein] of the Pyrrhonians, the suspension of his judgement in respect of
+reason, so long as faith is set apart; and to that he professes sincere
+submission.
+
+136. Pursuing his arguments, however, he has gone as far as attempting
+almost to revive and reinforce those of the disciples of Manes, a Persian
+heretic of the third century after Christ, or of a certain Paul, chief of
+the Manichaeans in Armenia in the seventh century, from whom they were
+named Paulicians. All these heretics renewed what an ancient philosopher of
+Upper Asia, known under the name of Zoroaster, had taught, so it is said,
+of two intelligent principles of all things, the one good, the other bad, a
+dogma that had perhaps come from the Indians. Among them numbers of people
+still cling to their error, one that is exceedingly prone to overtake human
+ignorance and superstition, since very many barbarous peoples, even in
+America, have been deluded by it, without having had need of philosophy.
+The Slavs (according to Helmold) had their Zernebog or black God. The
+Greeks and Romans, wise as they seem to be, had a Vejovis or Anti-Jupiter,
+otherwise called Pluto, and numerous other maleficent divinities. The
+Goddess Nemesis took pleasure in abasing those who were too fortunate; and
+Herodotus in some passages hints at his belief that all Divinity is
+envious; which, however, is not in harmony with the doctrine of the two
+principles.
+
+137. Plutarch, in his treatise _On Isis and Osiris_, knows of no writer
+more ancient than Zoroaster the magician, as he calls him, that is likely
+to have taught the two principles. Trogus or Justin makes him a King of the
+Bactrians, who was conquered by Ninus or Semiramis; he attributes to him
+the knowledge of astronomy and the invention of magic. But this magic was
+apparently the religion of the fire-worshippers: and it appears that he
+looked upon light and heat as the good principle, while he added the  [209]
+evil, that is to say, opacity, darkness, cold. Pliny cites the testimony of
+a certain Hermippus, an interpreter of Zoroaster's books, according to whom
+Zoroaster was a disciple in the art of magic to one named Azonacus; unless
+indeed this be a corruption of Oromases, of whom I shall speak presently,
+and whom Plato in the _Alcibiades_ names as the father of Zoroaster. Modern
+Orientals give the name Zerdust to him whom the Greeks named Zoroaster; he
+is regarded as corresponding to Mercury, because with some nations
+Wednesday _(mercredi)_ takes its name from him. It is difficult to
+disentangle the story of Zoroaster and know exactly when he lived. Suidas
+puts him five hundred years before the taking of Troy. Some Ancients cited
+by Pliny and Plutarch took it to be ten times as far back. But Xanthus the
+Lydian (in the preface to Diogenes Laertius) put him only six hundred years
+before the expedition of Xerxes. Plato declares in the same passage, as M.
+Bayle observes, that the magic of Zoroaster was nothing but the study of
+religion. Mr. Hyde in his book on the religion of the ancient Persians
+tries to justify this magic, and to clear it not only of the crime of
+impiety but also of idolatry. Fire-worship prevailed among the Persians and
+the Chaldaeans also; it is thought that Abraham left it when he departed
+from Ur of the Chaldees. Mithras was the sun and he was also the God of the
+Persians; and according to Ovid's account horses were offered in sacrifice
+to him,
+
+  _Placat equo Persis radiis Hyperiona cinctum,_
+  _Ne detur celeri victima tarda Deo._
+
+But Mr. Hyde believes that they only made use of the sun and fire in their
+worship as symbols of the Divinity. It may be necessary to distinguish, as
+elsewhere, between the Wise and the Multitude. There are in the splendid
+ruins of Persepolis or of Tschelminaar (which means forty columns)
+sculptured representations of their ceremonies. An ambassador of Holland
+had had them sketched at very great cost by a painter, who had devoted a
+considerable time to the task: but by some chance or other these sketches
+fell into the hands of a well-known traveller, M. Chardin, according to
+what he tells us himself. It would be a pity if they were lost. These ruins
+are one of the most ancient and most beautiful monuments of the earth; and
+in this respect I wonder at such lack of curiosity in a century so curious
+as ours.
+
+                                                                      [210]
+138. The ancient Greeks and the modern Orientals agree in saying that
+Zoroaster called the good God Oromazes, or rather Oromasdes, and the evil
+God Arimanius. When I pondered on the fact that great princes of Upper Asia
+had the name of Hormisdas and that Irminius or Herminius was the name of a
+god or ancient hero of the Scythian Celts, that is, of the Germani, it
+occurred to me that this Arimanius or Irminius might have been a great
+conqueror of very ancient time coming from the west, just as Genghis Khan
+and Tamburlaine were later, coming from the east. Arimanius would therefore
+have come from the north-west, that is, from Germania and Sarmatia, through
+the territory of the Alani and Massagetae, to raid the dominions of one
+Ormisdas, a great king in Upper Asia, just as other Scythians did in the
+days of Cyaxares, King of the Medes, according to the account given by
+Herodotus. The monarch governing civilized peoples, and working to defend
+them against the barbarians, would have gone down to posterity, amongst the
+same peoples, as the good god; but the chief of these devastators will have
+become the symbol of the evil principle: that is altogether reasonable. It
+appears from this same mythology that these two princes contended for long,
+but that neither of them was victorious. Thus they both held their own,
+just as the two principles shared the empire of the world according to the
+hypothesis attributed to Zoroaster.
+
+139. It remains to be proved that an ancient god or hero of the Germani was
+called Herman, Arimanius or Irminius. Tacitus relates that the three tribes
+which composed Germania, the Ingaevones, the Istaevones and the Herminones
+or Hermiones, were thus named from the three sons of Mannus. Whether that
+be true or not, he wished in any case to indicate that there was a hero
+named Herminius, from whom he was told the Herminones were named.
+Herminones, Hermenner, Hermunduri all mean the same, that is, Soldiers.
+Even in the Dark Ages Arimanni were _viri militares,_ and there is _feudum
+Arimandiae_ in Lombard law.
+
+140. I have shown elsewhere that apparently the name of one part of
+Germania was given to the whole, and that from these Herminones or
+Hermunduri all the Teutonic peoples were named _Hermanni_ or _Germani_. The
+difference between these two words is only in the force of the aspiration:
+there is the same difference of initial letter between the _Germani_ of the
+Latins and _Hermanos_ of the Spaniards, or in the _Gammarus_ of the Latins
+and the _Hummer_ (that is, marine crayfish) of the Low Germans.       [211]
+Besides it is very usual for one part of a nation to give the name to the
+whole: so all the Germani were called Alemanni by the French, and yet this,
+according to the old nomenclature, only applied to the Suabians and the
+Swiss. Although Tacitus did not actually know the origin of the name of the
+Germani, he said something which supports my opinion, when he observed that
+it was a name which inspired terror, taken or given _ob metum_. In fact it
+signifies a warrior: _Heer_, _Hari_ is army, whence comes _Hariban_, or
+'call to Haro', that is, a general order to be with the army, since
+corrupted into _Arrièreban_. Thus Hariman or Ariman, German _Guerre-man_,
+is a soldier. For as _Hari_, _Heer_ means army, so _Wehr_ signifies arms,
+_Wehren_ to fight, to make war, the word _Guerre_, _Guerra_ coming
+doubtless from the same source. I have already spoken of the _feudum
+Arimandiae_: not only did Herminones or Germani signify the same, but also
+that ancient Herman, so-called son of Mannus, appears to have been given
+this name as being pre-eminently a warrior.
+
+141. Now it is not the passage in Tacitus only which indicates for us this
+god or hero: we cannot doubt the existence of one of this name among these
+peoples, since Charlemagne found and destroyed near the Weser the column
+called _Irminsäule_, erected in honour of this god. And that combined with
+the passage in Tacitus leaves us with the conclusion that it was not that
+famous Arminius who was an enemy of the Romans, but a much greater and more
+ancient hero, that this cult concerned. Arminius bore the same name as
+those who are called Hermann to-day. Arminius was not great enough, nor
+fortunate enough, nor well enough known throughout Germania to attain to
+the honour of a public cult, even at the hands of remote tribes, like the
+Saxons, who came long after him into the country of the Cherusci. And our
+Arminius, taken by the Asiatics for the evil God, provides ample
+confirmation of my opinion. For in these matters conjectures confirm one
+another without any logical circle, when their foundations tend towards one
+and the same end.
+
+142. It is not beyond belief that the Hermes (that is, Mercury) of the
+Greeks is the same Herminius or Arimanius. He may have been an inventor or
+promoter of the arts and of a slightly more civilized life among his own
+people and in the countries where he held supremacy, while amongst his
+enemies he was looked upon as the author of confusion. Who knows but that
+he may have penetrated even into Egypt, like the Scythians who in     [212]
+pursuit of Sesostris came nearly so far. Theut, Menes and Hermes were known
+and revered in Egypt. They might have been Tuiscon, his son Mannus and
+Herman, son of Mannus, according to the genealogy of Tacitus. Menes is held
+to be the most ancient king of the Egyptians; 'Theut' was with them a name
+for Mercury. At least Theut or Tuiscon, from whom Tacitus derives the
+descent of the Germani, and from whom the Teutons, _Tuitsche_ (that is,
+Germani) even to-day have their name, is the same as that _Teutates_ who
+according to Lucan was worshipped by the Gauls, and whom Caesar took _pro
+Dite Patre_, for Pluto, because of the resemblance between his Latin name
+and that of _Teut_ or _Thiet_, _Titan_, _Theodon_; this in ancient times
+signified men, people, and also an excellent man (like the word 'baron'),
+in short, a prince. There are authorities for all these significations: but
+one must not delay over this point. Herr Otto Sperling, who is well known
+for various learned writings, but has many more in readiness to appear, in
+a special dissertation has treated the question of this Teutates, God of
+the Celts. Some observations which I imparted to him on that subject have
+been published, with his reply, in the _Literary News of the Baltic Sea_.
+He interprets this passage from Lucan somewhat otherwise than I do:
+
+  _Teutates, pollensque feris altaribus Hesus,_
+  _Et Tamaris Scythicae non mitior ara Dianae._
+
+Hesus was, it appears, the God of War, who was called Ares by the Greeks
+and Erich by the ancient Germani, whence still remains _Erichtag_, Tuesday.
+The letters R and S, which are produced by the same organ, are easily
+interchanged, for instance: _Moor_ and _Moos_, _Geren_ and _Gesen_, _Er
+war_ and _Er was_, _Fer_, _Hierro_, _Eiron_, _Eisen_. Likewise _Papisius_,
+_Valesius_, _Fusius_, instead of _Papirius_, _Valerius_, _Furius_, with the
+ancient Romans. As for Taramis or perhaps Taranis, one knows that _Taran_
+was the thunder, or the God of Thunder, with the ancient Celts, called
+_Thor_ by the Germani of the north; whence the English have preserved the
+name 'Thursday', _jeudi_, _diem Jovis_. And the passage from Lucan means
+that the altar of Taran, God of the Celts, was not less cruel than that of
+Diana in Tauris: _Taranis aram non mitiorem ara Dianae Scythicae fuisse_.
+
+143. It is also not impossible that there was a time when the western [213]
+or Celtic princes made themselves masters of Greece, of Egypt and a good
+part of Asia, and that their cult remained in those countries. When one
+considers with what rapidity the Huns, the Saracens and the Tartars gained
+possession of a great part of our continent one will be the less surprised
+at this; and it is confirmed by the great number of words in the Greek and
+German tongues which correspond so closely. Callimachus, in a hymn in
+honour of Apollo, seems to imply that the Celts who attacked the Temple at
+Delphi, under their Brennus, or chief, were descendants of the ancient
+Titans and Giants who made war on Jupiter and the other gods, that is to
+say, on the Princes of Asia and of Greece. It may be that Jupiter is
+himself descended from the Titans or Theodons, that is, from the earlier
+Celto-Scythian princes; and the material collected by the late Abbé de la
+Charmoye in his _Celtic Origins_ conforms to that possibility. Yet there
+are opinions on other matters in this work by this learned writer which to
+me do not appear probable, especially when he excludes the Germani from the
+number of the Celts, not having recalled sufficiently the facts given by
+ancient writers and not being sufficiently aware of the relation between
+the ancient Gallic and Germanic tongues. Now the so-called Giants, who
+wished to scale the heavens, were new Celts who followed the path of their
+ancestors; and Jupiter, although of their kindred, as it were, was
+constrained to resist them. Just so did the Visigoths established in Gallic
+territory resist, together with the Romans, other peoples of Germania and
+Scythia, who succeeded them under Attila their leader, he being at that
+time in control of the Scythian, Sarmatic and Germanic tribes from the
+frontiers of Persia up to the Rhine. But the pleasure one feels when one
+thinks to find in the mythologies of the gods some trace of the old history
+of fabulous times has perhaps carried me too far, and I know not whether I
+shall have been any more successful than Goropius Becanus, Schrieckius,
+Herr Rudbeck and the Abbe de la Charmoye.
+
+144. Let us return to Zoroaster, who led us to Oromasdes and Arimanius, the
+sources of good and evil, and let us assume that he looked upon them as two
+eternal principles opposed to each other, although there is reason to doubt
+this assumption. It is thought that Marcion, disciple of Cerdon, was of
+this opinion before Manes. M. Bayle acknowledges that these men used
+lamentable arguments; but he thinks that they did not sufficiently    [214]
+recognize their advantages or know how to apply their principal instrument,
+which was the difficulty over the origin of evil. He believes that an able
+man on their side would have thoroughly embarrassed the orthodox, and it
+seems as though he himself, failing any other, wished to undertake a task
+so unnecessary in the opinion of many people. 'All the hypotheses' (he
+says, _Dictionary_, v., 'Marcion', p. 2039) 'that Christians have
+established parry but poorly the blows aimed at them: they all triumph when
+they act on the offensive; but they lose their whole advantage when they
+have to sustain the attack.' He confesses that the 'Dualists' (as with Mr.
+Hyde he calls them), that is, the champions of two principles, would soon
+have been routed by _a priori_ reasons, taken from the nature of God; but
+he thinks that they triumph in their turn when one comes to the _a
+posteriori_ reasons, which are taken from the existence of evil.
+
+145. He treats of the matter with abundant detail in his _Dictionary_,
+article 'Manichaeans', p. 2025, which we must examine a little, in order to
+throw greater light upon this subject: 'The surest and clearest ideas of
+order teach us', he says, 'that a Being who exists through himself, who is
+necessary, who is eternal, must be single, infinite, all powerful, and
+endowed with all kinds of perfections.' This argument deserves to have been
+developed more completely. 'Now it is necessary to see', he goes on, 'if
+the phenomena of nature can be conveniently explained by the hypothesis of
+one single principle.' I have explained it sufficiently by showing that
+there are cases where some disorder in the part is necessary for producing
+the greatest order in the whole. But it appears that M. Bayle asks a little
+too much: he wishes for a detailed exposition of how evil is connected with
+the best possible scheme for the universe. That would be a complete
+explanation of the phenomena: but I do not undertake to give it; nor am I
+bound to do so, for there is no obligation to do that which is impossible
+for us in our existing state. It is sufficient for me to point out that
+there is nothing to prevent the connexion of a certain individual evil with
+what is the best on the whole. This incomplete explanation, leaving
+something to be discovered in the life to come, is sufficient for answering
+the objections, though not for a comprehension of the matter.
+
+146. 'The heavens and all the rest of the universe', adds M. Bayle, 'preach
+the glory, the power, the oneness of God.' Thence the conclusion      [215]
+should have been drawn that this is the case (as I have already observed
+above) because there is seen in these objects something entire and
+isolated, so to speak. Every time we see such a work of God, we find it so
+perfect that we must wonder at the contrivance and the beauty thereof: but
+when we do not see an entire work, when we only look upon scraps and
+fragments, it is no wonder if the good order is not evident there. Our
+planetary system composes such an isolated work, which is complete also
+when it is taken by itself; each plant, each animal, each man furnishes one
+such work, to a certain point of perfection: one recognizes therein the
+wonderful contrivance of the author. But the human kind, so far as it is
+known to us, is only a fragment, only a small portion of the City of God or
+of the republic of Spirits, which has an extent too great for us, and
+whereof we know too little, to be able to observe the wonderful order
+therein. 'Man alone,' says M. Bayle, 'that masterpiece of his Creator among
+things visible, man alone, I say, gives rise to great objections with
+regard to the oneness of God.' Claudian made the same observation,
+unburdening his heart in these well-known lines:
+
+  _Saepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem_, etc.
+
+But the harmony existing in all the rest allows of a strong presumption
+that it would exist also in the government of men, and generally in that of
+Spirits, if the whole were known to us. One must judge the works of God as
+wisely as Socrates judged those of Heraclitus in these words: What I have
+understood thereof pleases me; I think that the rest would please me no
+less if I understood it.
+
+147. Here is another particular reason for the disorder apparent in that
+which concerns man. It is that God, in giving him intelligence, has
+presented him with an image of the Divinity. He leaves him to himself, in a
+sense, in his small department, _ut Spartam quam nactus est ornet_. He
+enters there only in a secret way, for he supplies being, force, life,
+reason, without showing himself. It is there that free will plays its game:
+and God makes game (so to speak) of these little Gods that he has thought
+good to produce, as we make game of children who follow pursuits which we
+secretly encourage or hinder according as it pleases us. Thus man is there
+like a little god in his own world or _Microcosm_, which he governs   [216]
+after his own fashion: he sometimes performs wonders therein, and his art
+often imitates nature.
+
+  _Jupiter in parvo cum cerneret aethera vitro,_
+    _Risit et ad Superos talia dicta dedit:_
+  _Huccine mortalis progressa potentia, Divi?_
+    _Jam meus in fragili luditur orbe labor._
+  _Jura poli rerumque fidem legesque Deorum_
+    _Cuncta Syracusius transtulit arte Senex._
+  _Quid falso insontem tonitru Salmonea miror?_
+    _Aemula Naturae est parva reperta manus._
+
+But he also commits great errors, because he abandons himself to the
+passions, and because God abandons him to his own way. God punishes him
+also for such errors, now like a father or tutor, training or chastising
+children, now like a just judge, punishing those who forsake him: and evil
+comes to pass most frequently when these intelligences or their small
+worlds come into collision. Man finds himself the worse for this, in
+proportion to his fault; but God, by a wonderful art, turns all the errors
+of these little worlds to the greater adornment of his great world. It is
+as in those devices of perspective, where certain beautiful designs look
+like mere confusion until one restores them to the right angle of vision or
+one views them by means of a certain glass or mirror. It is by placing and
+using them properly that one makes them serve as adornment for a room. Thus
+the apparent deformities of our little worlds combine to become beauties in
+the great world, and have nothing in them which is opposed to the oneness
+of an infinitely perfect universal principle: on the contrary, they
+increase our wonder at the wisdom of him who makes evil serve the greater
+good.
+
+148. M. Bayle continues: 'that man is wicked and miserable; that there are
+everywhere prisons and hospitals; that history is simply a collection of
+the crimes and calamities of the human race.' I think that there is
+exaggeration in that: there is incomparably more good than evil in the life
+of men, as there are incomparably more houses than prisons. With regard to
+virtue and vice, a certain mediocrity prevails. Machiavelli has already
+observed that there are few very wicked and very good men, and that this
+causes the failure of many great enterprises. I find it a great fault in
+historians that they keep their mind on the evil more than on the     [217]
+good. The chief end of history, as also of poetry, should be to teach
+prudence and virtue by examples, and then to display vice in such a way as
+to create aversion to it and to prompt men to avoid it, or serve towards
+that end.
+
+149. M. Bayle avows: 'that one finds everywhere both moral good and
+physical good, some examples of virtue, some examples of happiness, and
+that this is what makes the difficulty. For if there were only wicked and
+unhappy people', he says, 'there would be no need to resort to the
+hypothesis of the two principles.' I wonder that this admirable man could
+have evinced so great an inclination towards this opinion of the two
+principles; and I am surprised at his not having taken into account that
+this romance of human life, which makes the universal history of the human
+race, lay fully devised in the divine understanding, with innumerable
+others, and that the will of God only decreed its existence because this
+sequence of events was to be most in keeping with the rest of things, to
+bring forth the best result. And these apparent faults in the whole world,
+these spots on a Sun whereof ours is but a ray, rather enhance its beauty
+than diminish it, contributing towards that end by obtaining a greater
+good. There are in truth two principles, but they are both in God, to wit,
+his understanding and his will. The understanding furnishes the principle
+of evil, without being sullied by it, without being evil; it represents
+natures as they exist in the eternal verities; it contains within it the
+reason wherefore evil is permitted: but the will tends only towards good.
+Let us add a third principle, namely power; it precedes even understanding
+and will, but it operates as the one displays it and as the other requires
+it.
+
+150. Some (like Campanella) have called these three perfections of God the
+three primordialities. Many have even believed that there was therein a
+secret connexion with the Holy Trinity: that power relates to the Father,
+that is, to the source of Divinity, wisdom to the Eternal Word, which is
+called _logos_ by the most sublime of the Evangelists, and will or Love to
+the Holy Spirit. Well-nigh all the expressions or comparisons derived from
+the nature of the intelligent substance tend that way.
+
+151. It seems to me that if M. Bayle had taken into account what I have
+just said of the principles of things, he would have answered his own
+questions, or at the least he would not have continued to ask, as he does
+in these which follow: 'If man is the work of a single principle      [218]
+supremely good, supremely holy, supremely powerful, can he be subject to
+diseases, to cold, heat, hunger, thirst, pain, grief? Can he have so many
+evil tendencies? Can he commit so many crimes? Can supreme goodness produce
+an unhappy creature? Shall not supreme power, united to an infinite
+goodness, shower blessings upon its work, and shall it not banish all that
+might offend or grieve?' Prudentius in his _Hamartigenia_ presented the
+same difficulty:
+
+  _Si non vult Deus esse malum, cur non vetat? inquit._
+  _Non refert auctor fuerit, factorve malorum._
+  _Anne opera in vitium sceleris pulcherrima verti,_
+  _Cum possit prohibere, sinat; quod si velit omnes_
+  _Innocuos agere Omnipotens, ne sancta voluntas_
+  _Degeneret, facto nec se manus inquinet ullo?_
+  _Condidit ergo malum Dominus, quod spectat ab alto,_
+  _Et patitur fierique probat, tanquam ipse crearit._
+  _Ipse creavit enim, quod si discludere possit,_
+  _Non abolet, longoque sinit grassarier usu._
+
+But I have already answered that sufficiently. Man is himself the source of
+his evils: just as he is, he was in the divine idea. God, prompted by
+essential reasons of wisdom, decreed that he should pass into existence
+just as he is. M. Bayle would perchance have perceived this origin of evil
+in the form in which I demonstrate it here, if he had herein combined the
+wisdom of God with his power, his goodness and his holiness. I will add, in
+passing, that his _holiness_ is nothing other than the highest degree of
+goodness, just as the crime which is its opposite is the worst of all evil.
+
+152. M. Bayle places the Greek philosopher Melissus, champion of the
+oneness of the first principle (and perhaps even of the oneness of
+substance) in conflict with Zoroaster, as with the first originator of
+duality. Zoroaster admits that the hypothesis of Melissus is more
+consistent with order and _a priori_ reasons, but he denies its conformity
+with experience and _a posteriori_ reasons. 'I surpass you', he said, 'in
+the explanation of phenomena, which is the principal mark of a good
+system.' But, in my opinion, it is not a very good explanation of a
+phenomenon to assign to it an _ad hoc_ principle: to evil, a _principium
+maleficum_, to cold, a _primum frigidum_; there is nothing so easy and
+nothing so dull. It is well-nigh as if someone were to say that the   [219]
+Peripatetics surpass the new mathematicians in the explanation of the
+phenomena of the stars, by giving them _ad hoc_ intelligences to guide
+them. According to that, it is quite easy to conceive why the planets make
+their way with such precision; whereas there is need of much geometry and
+reflexion to understand how from the gravity of the planets, which bears
+them towards the sun, combined with some whirlwind which carries them
+along, or with their own motive force, can spring the elliptic movement of
+Kepler, which satisfies appearances so well. A man incapable of relishing
+deep speculations will at first applaud the Peripatetics and will treat our
+mathematicians as dreamers. Some old Galenist will do the same with regard
+to the faculties of the Schoolmen: he will admit a chylific, a chymific and
+a sanguific, and he will assign one of these _ad hoc_ to each operation; he
+will think he has worked wonders, and will laugh at what he will call the
+chimeras of the moderns, who claim to explain through mechanical structure
+what passes in the body of an animal.
+
+153. The explanation of the cause of evil by a particular principle, _per
+principium maleficum_, is of the same nature. Evil needs no such
+explanation, any more than do cold and darkness: there is neither _primum
+frigidum_ nor principle of darkness. Evil itself comes only from privation;
+the positive enters therein only by concomitance, as the active enters by
+concomitance into cold. We see that water in freezing is capable of
+breaking a gun-barrel wherein it is confined; and yet cold is a certain
+privation of force, it only comes from the diminution of a movement which
+separates the particles of fluids. When this separating motion becomes
+weakened in the water by the cold, the particles of compressed air
+concealed in the water collect; and, becoming larger, they become more
+capable of acting outwards through their buoyancy. The resistance which the
+surfaces of the proportions of air meet in the water, and which opposes the
+force exerted by these portions towards dilation, is far less, and
+consequently the effect of the air greater, in large air-bubbles than in
+small, even though these small bubbles combined should form as great a mass
+as the large. For the resistances, that is, the surfaces, increase by the
+_square_, and the forces, that is, the contents or the volumes of the
+spheres of compressed air, increase by the _cube_, of their diameters. Thus
+it is _by accident_ that privation involves action and force. I have
+already shown how privation is enough to cause error and malice, and  [220]
+how God is prompted to permit them, despite that there be no malignity in
+him. Evil comes from privation; the positive and action spring from it by
+accident, as force springs from cold.
+
+154. The statement that M. Bayle attributes to the Paulicians, p. 2323, is
+not conclusive, to wit, that free will must come from two principles, to
+the end that it may have power to turn towards good and towards evil: for,
+being simple in itself, it should rather have come from a neutral principle
+if this argument held good. But free will tends towards good, and if it
+meets with evil it is by accident, for the reason that this evil is
+concealed beneath the good, and masked, as it were. These words which Ovid
+ascribes to Medea,
+
+      _Video meliora proboque,_
+  _Deteriora sequor_,
+
+imply that the morally good is mastered by the agreeably good, which makes
+more impression on souls when they are disturbed by the passions.
+
+155. Furthermore, M. Bayle himself supplies Melissus with a good answer;
+but a little later he disputes it. Here are his words, p. 2025: 'If
+Melissus consults the notions of order, he will answer that man was not
+wicked when God made him; he will say that man received from God a happy
+state, but that not having followed the light of conscience, which in
+accordance with the intention of its author should have guided him along
+the path of virtue, he has become wicked, and has deserved that God the
+supremely good should make him feel the effects of his anger. It is
+therefore not God who is the cause of moral evil: but he is the cause of
+physical evil, that is, of the punishment of moral evil. And this
+punishment, far from being incompatible with the supremely good principle,
+of necessity emanates from that one of its attributes, I mean its justice,
+which is not less essential to it than its goodness. This answer, the most
+reasonable that Melissus can give, is fundamentally good and sound, but it
+may be disputed by something more specious and more dazzling. For indeed
+Zoroaster objects that the infinitely good principle ought to have created
+man not only without actual evil, but also without the inclination towards
+evil; that God, having foreseen sin with all its consequences, ought to
+have prevented it; that he ought to have impelled man to moral good, and
+not to have allowed him any force for tending towards crime.' That is quite
+easy to say, but it is not practicable if one follows the principles  [221]
+of order: it could not have been accomplished without perpetual miracles.
+Ignorance, error and malice follow one another naturally in animals made as
+we are: should this species, then, have been missing in the universe? I
+have no doubt but that it is too important there, despite all its
+weaknesses, for God to have consented to its abolition.
+
+156. M. Bayle, in the article entitled 'Paulicians' inserted by him in his
+_Dictionary_, follows up the pronouncements he made in the article on the
+Manichaeans. According to him (p. 2330, lit. H) the orthodox seem to admit
+two first principles, in making the devil the originator of sin. M. Becker,
+a former minister of Amsterdam, author of the book entitled _The World
+Bewitched_, has made use of this idea in order to demonstrate that one
+should not assign such power and authority to the Devil as would allow of
+his comparison with God. Therein he is right: but he pushes the conclusions
+too far. And the author of the book entitled [Greek: Apokatastasis Pantôn]
+believes that if the Devil had never been vanquished and despoiled, if he
+had always kept his prey, if the title of invincible had belonged to him,
+that would have done injury to the glory of God. But it is a poor advantage
+to keep those whom one has led astray in order to share their punishment
+for ever. And as for the cause of evil, it is true that the Devil is the
+author of sin. But the origin of sin comes from farther away, its source is
+in the original imperfection of creatures: that renders them capable of
+sinning, and there are circumstances in the sequence of things which cause
+this power to evince itself in action.
+
+157. The devils were angels like the rest before their fall, and it is
+thought that their leader was one of the chief among angels; but Scripture
+is not explicit enough on that point. The passage of the Apocalypse that
+speaks of the struggle with the Dragon, as of a vision, leaves much in
+doubt, and does not sufficiently develop a subject which by the other
+sacred writers is hardly mentioned. It is not in place here to enter into
+this discussion, and one must still admit that the common opinion agrees
+best with the sacred text. M. Bayle examines some replies of St. Basil, of
+Lactantius and others on the origin of evil. As, however, they are
+concerned with physical evil, I postpone discussion thereof, and I will
+proceed with the examination of the difficulties over the moral cause of
+moral evil, which arise in several passages of the works of our gifted
+author.
+
+                                                                      [222]
+158. He disputes the _permission_ of this evil, he would wish one to admit
+that God _wills_ it. He quotes these words of Calvin (on Genesis, ch. 3):
+'The ears of some are offended when one says that God willed it. But I ask
+you, what else is the permission of him who is entitled to forbid, or
+rather who has the thing in his own hands, but an act of will?' M. Bayle
+explains these words of Calvin, and those which precede them, as if he
+admitted that God willed the fall of Adam, not in so far as it was a crime,
+but under some other conception that is unknown to us. He quotes casuists
+who are somewhat lax, who say that a son can desire the death of his
+father, not in so far as it is an evil for himself but in so far as it is a
+good for his heirs _(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 147, p.
+850). It seems to me that Calvin only says that God willed man's fall for
+some reason unknown to us. In the main, when it is a question of a decisive
+will, that is, of a decree, these distinctions are useless: one wills the
+action with all its qualities, if it is true that one wills it. But when it
+is a crime, God can only will the permission of it: the crime is neither an
+end nor a means, it is only a _conditio sine qua non_; thus it is not the
+object of a direct will, as I have already demonstrated above. God cannot
+prevent it without acting against what he owes to himself, without doing
+something that would be worse than the crime of man, without violating the
+rule of the best; and that would be to destroy divinity, as I have already
+observed. God is therefore bound by a moral necessity, which is in himself,
+to permit moral evil in creatures. There is precisely the case wherein the
+will of a wise mind is only permissive. I have already said this: he is
+bound to permit the crime of others when he cannot prevent it without
+himself failing in that which he owes to himself.
+
+159. 'But among all these infinite combinations', says M. Bayle (p. 853),
+'it pleased God to choose one wherein Adam was to sin, and by his decree he
+made it, in preference to all the others, the plan that should come to
+pass.' Very good; that is speaking my language; so long as one applies it
+to the combinations which compose the whole universe. 'You will therefore
+never make us understand', he adds, 'how God did not will that Eve and Adam
+should sin, since he rejected all the combinations wherein they would not
+have sinned.' But the thing is in general very easy to understand, from all
+that I have just said. This combination that makes the whole universe is
+the best; God therefore could not refrain from choosing it without    [223]
+incurring a lapse, and rather than incur such, a thing altogether
+inappropriate to him, he permits the lapse or the sin of man which is
+involved in this combination.
+
+160. M. Jacquelot, with other able men, does not differ in opinion from me,
+when for example he says, p. 186 of his treatise on the _Conformity of
+Faith with Reason_: 'Those who are puzzled by these difficulties seem to be
+too limited in their outlook, and to wish to reduce all God's designs to
+their own interests. When God formed the universe, his whole prospect was
+himself and his own glory, so that if we had knowledge of all creatures, of
+their diverse combinations and of their different relations, we should
+understand without difficulty that the universe corresponds perfectly to
+the infinite wisdom of the Almighty.' He says elsewhere (p. 232):
+'Supposing the impossible, that God could not prevent the wrong use of free
+will without destroying it, it will be agreed that since his wisdom and his
+glory determined him to form free creatures this powerful reason must have
+prevailed over the grievous consequences which their freedom might have.' I
+have endeavoured to develop this still further through _the reason of the
+best and the moral necessity_ which led God to make this choice, despite
+the sin of some creatures which is involved therein. I think that I have
+cut down to the root of the difficulty; nevertheless I am well pleased, for
+the sake of throwing more light on the matter, to apply my principle of
+solution to the peculiar difficulties of M. Bayle.
+
+161. Here is one, set forth in these terms (ch. 148, p. 856): 'Would it in
+a prince be a mark of his kindness: 1. To give to a hundred messengers as
+much money as is needed for a journey of two hundred leagues? 2. To promise
+a recompense to all those who should finish the journey without having
+borrowed anything, and to threaten with imprisonment all those whom their
+money should not have sufficed? 3. To make choice of a hundred persons, of
+whom he would know for certain that there were but two who should earn the
+recompense, the ninety-eight others being destined to find on the way
+either a mistress or a gamester or some other thing which would make them
+incur expenses, and which he would himself have been at pains to dispose in
+certain places along their path? 4. To imprison actually ninety-eight of
+these messengers on the moment of their return? Is it not abundantly
+evident that he would have no kindness for them, and that on the contrary
+he would intend for them, not the proposed recompense, but prison?    [224]
+They would deserve it, certainly; but he who had wished them to deserve it
+and placed them in the sure way towards deserving it, should he be worthy
+of being called kind, on the pretext that he had recompensed the two
+others?' It would doubtless not be on that account that he earned the title
+of 'kind'. Yet other circumstances may contribute, which would avail to
+render him worthy of praise for having employed this artifice in order to
+know those people, and to make trial of them; just as Gideon made use of
+some extraordinary means of choosing the most valiant and the least
+squeamish among his soldiers. And even if the prince were to know already
+the disposition of all these messengers, may he not put them to this test
+in order to make them known also to the others? Even though these reasons
+be not applicable to God, they make it clear, nevertheless, that an action
+like that of this prince may appear preposterous when it is detached from
+the circumstances indicating its cause. All the more must one deem that God
+has acted well, and that we should see this if we fully knew of all that he
+has done.
+
+162. M. Descartes, in a letter to the Princess Elizabeth (vol. 1, letter
+10) has made use of another comparison to reconcile human freedom with the
+omnipotence of God. 'He imagines a monarch who has forbidden duels, and
+who, knowing for certain that two noblemen, if they meet, will fight, takes
+sure steps to bring about their meeting. They meet indeed, they fight:
+their disobedience of the law is an effect of their free will, they are
+punishable. What a king can do in such a case (he adds) concerning some
+free actions of his subjects, God, who has infinite foreknowledge and
+power, certainly does concerning all those of men. Before he sent us into
+this world he knew exactly what all the tendencies of our will would be: he
+has endued us therewith, he also has disposed all other things that are
+outside us, to cause such and such objects to present themselves to our
+senses at such and such a time. He knew that as a result of this our free
+will would determine us toward some particular thing, and he has willed it
+thus; but he has not for that willed to constrain our free will thereto. In
+this king one may distinguish two different degrees of will, the one
+whereby he willed that these noblemen should fight, since he brought about
+their meeting, and the other whereby he did not will it, since he forbade
+duels. Even so theologians distinguish in God an absolute and independent
+will, whereby he wills that all things be done just as they are done, [225]
+and another which is relative, and which concerns the merit or demerit of
+men, whereby he wills that his Laws be obeyed' (Descartes, letter 10 of
+vol. 1, pp. 51, 52. Compare with that the quotation made by M. Arnauld,
+vol. 2, p. 288 _et seqq_. of his _Reflexions on the System of Malebranche_,
+from Thomas Aquinas, on the antecedent and consequent will of God).
+
+163. Here is M. Bayle's reply to that (_Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, ch. 154, p. 943): 'This great philosopher is much mistaken, it
+seems to me. There would not be in this monarch any degree of will, either
+small or great, that these two noblemen should obey the law, and not fight.
+He would will entirely and solely that they should fight. That would not
+exculpate them, they would only follow their passion, they would be unaware
+that they conformed to the will of their sovereign: but he would be in
+truth the moral cause of their encounter, and he would not more entirely
+wish it supposing he were to inspire them with the desire or to give them
+the order for it. Imagine to yourself two princes each of whom wishes his
+eldest son to poison himself. One employs constraint, the other contents
+himself with secretly causing a grief that he knows will be sufficient to
+induce his son to poison himself. Will you be doubtful whether the will of
+the latter is less complete than the will of the former? M. Descartes is
+therefore assuming an unreal fact and does not at all solve the
+difficulty.'
+
+164. One must confess that M. Descartes speaks somewhat crudely of the will
+of God in regard to evil in saying not only that God knew that our free
+will would determine us toward some particular thing, but also _that he
+also wished it_, albeit he did not will to constrain the will thereto. He
+speaks no less harshly in the eighth letter of the same volume, saying that
+not the slightest thought enters into the mind of a man which God does not
+_will_, and has not willed from all eternity, to enter there. Calvin never
+said anything harsher; and all that can only be excused if it is to be
+understood of a permissive will. M. Descartes' solution amounts to the
+distinction between the will expressed in the sign and the will expressive
+of the good pleasure (_inter voluntatem signi et beneplaciti_) which the
+moderns have taken from the Schoolmen as regards the terms, but to which
+they have given a meaning not usual among the ancients. It is true that God
+may command something and yet not will that it be done, as when he
+commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son: he willed the obedience, and he did
+not will the action. But when God commands the virtuous action and    [226]
+forbids the sin, he wills indeed that which he ordains, but it is only by
+an antecedent will, as I have explained more than once.
+
+165. M. Descartes' comparison is therefore not satisfactory; but it may be
+made so. One must make some change in the facts, inventing some reason to
+oblige the prince to cause or permit the two enemies to meet. They must,
+for instance, be together in the army or in other obligatory functions, a
+circumstance the prince himself cannot hinder without endangering his
+State. For example, the absence of either of them might be responsible for
+the disappearance of innumerable persons of his party from the army or
+cause grumbling among the soldiers and give rise to some great disturbance.
+In this case, therefore, one may say that the prince does not will the
+duel: he knows of it, but he permits it notwithstanding, for he prefers
+permitting the sin of others to committing one himself. Thus this corrected
+comparison may serve, provided that one observe the difference between God
+and the prince. The prince is forced into this permission by his
+powerlessness; a more powerful monarch would have no need of all these
+considerations; but God, who has power to do all that is possible, only
+permits sin because it is absolutely impossible to anyone at all to do
+better. The prince's action is peradventure not free from sorrow and
+regret. This regret is due to his imperfection, of which he is sensible;
+therein lies displeasure. God is incapable of such a feeling and finds,
+moreover, no cause therefor; he is infinitely conscious of his own
+perfection, and it may even be said that the imperfection in creatures
+taken individually changes for him into perfection in relation to the
+whole, and that it is an added glory for the Creator. What more can one
+wish, when one possesses a boundless wisdom and when one is as powerful as
+one is wise; when one can do all and when one has the best?
+
+166. Having once understood these things, we are hardened sufficiently, so
+it seems to me, against the strongest and most spirited objections. I have
+not concealed them: but there are some we shall merely touch upon, because
+they are too odious. The Remonstrants and M. Bayle (_Reply to the Questions
+of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 152, end page 919) quote St. Augustine,
+saying, '_crudelem esse misericordiam velle aliquem miserum esse ut eius
+miserearis_': in the same sense is cited Seneca _De Benef._, L. 6, c. 36,
+37. I confess that one would have some reason to urge that against those
+who believed that God has no other cause for permitting sin than the  [227]
+design to have something wherewith to exercise punitive justice against the
+majority of men, and his mercy towards a small number of elect. But it must
+be considered that God had reasons for his permission of sin, more worthy
+of him and more profound in relation to us. Someone has dared to compare
+God's course of action with that of a Caligula, who has his edicts written
+in so small a hand and has them placarded in so high a place that it is not
+possible to read them; with that of a mother who neglects her daughter's
+honour in order to attain her own selfish ends; with that of Queen
+Catherine de Medicis, who is said to have abetted the love-affairs of her
+ladies in order to learn of the intrigues of the great; and even with that
+of Tiberius, who arranged, through the extraordinary services of the
+executioner, that the law forbidding the subjection of a virgin to capital
+punishment should no longer apply to the case of Sejanus's daughter. This
+last comparison was proposed by Peter Bertius, then an Armenian, but
+finally a member of the Roman communion. And a scandalous comparison has
+been made between God and Tiberius, which is related at length by Andreas
+Caroli in his _Memorabilia Ecclesiastica_ of the last century, as M. Bayle
+observes. Bertius used it against the Gomarists. I think that arguments of
+this kind are only valid against those who maintain that justice is an
+arbitrary thing in relation to God; or that he has a despotic power which
+can go so far as being able to condemn innocents; or, in short, that good
+is not the motive of his actions.
+
+167. At that same time an ingenious satire was composed against the
+Gomarists, entitled _Fur praedestinatus, de gepredestineerdedief_, wherein
+there is introduced a thief condemned to be hanged, who attributes to God
+all the evil he has done; who believes himself predestined to salvation
+notwithstanding his wicked actions; who imagines that this belief is
+sufficient for him, and who defeats by arguments _ad hominem_ a
+Counter-remonstrant minister called to prepare him for death: but this
+thief is finally converted by an old pastor who had been dismissed for his
+Arminianism, whom the gaoler, in pity for the criminal and for the weakness
+of the minister, had brought to him secretly. Replies were made to this
+lampoon, but replies to satires never please as much as the satires
+themselves. M. Bayle (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III,
+ch. 154, p. 938) says that this book was printed in England in the    [228]
+time of Cromwell, and he appears not to have been informed that it was only
+a translation of the much older original Flemish. He adds that Dr. George
+Kendal wrote a confutation of it at Oxford in the year 1657, under the
+title of _Fur pro Tribunali_, and that the dialogue is there inserted. This
+dialogue presupposes, contrary to the truth, that the Counter-remonstrants
+make God the cause of evil, and teach a kind of predestination in the
+Mahometan manner according to which it does not matter whether one does
+good or evil, and the assumption that one is predestined assures the fact.
+They by no means go so far. Nevertheless it is true that there are among
+them some Supralapsarians and others who find it hard to declare themselves
+in clear terms upon the justice of God and the principles of piety and
+morals in man. For they imagine despotism in God, and demand that man be
+convinced, without reason, of the absolute certainty of his election, a
+course that is liable to have dangerous consequences. But all those who
+acknowledge that God produces the best plan, having chosen it from among
+all possible ideas of the universe; that he there finds man inclined by the
+original imperfection of creatures to misuse his free will and to plunge
+into misery; that God prevents the sin and the misery in so far as the
+perfection of the universe, which is an emanation from his, may permit it:
+those, I say, show forth more clearly that God's intention is the one most
+right and holy in the world; that the creature alone is guilty, that his
+original limitation or imperfection is the source of his wickedness, that
+his evil will is the sole cause of his misery; that one cannot be destined
+to salvation without also being destined to the holiness of the children of
+God, and that all hope of election one can have can only be founded upon
+the good will infused into one's heart by the grace of God.
+
+168. _Metaphysical considerations_ also are brought up against my
+explanation of the moral cause of moral evil; but they will trouble me less
+since I have dismissed the objections derived from moral reasons, which
+were more impressive. These metaphysical considerations concern the nature
+of the _possible_ and of the _necessary_; they go against my fundamental
+assumption that God has chosen the best of all possible worlds. There are
+philosophers who have maintained that there is nothing possible except that
+which actually happens. These are those same people who thought or could
+have thought that all is necessary unconditionally. Some were of this [229]
+opinion because they admitted a brute and blind necessity in the cause of
+the existence of things: and it is these I have most reason for opposing.
+But there are others who are mistaken only because they misuse terms. They
+confuse moral necessity with metaphysical necessity: they imagine that
+since God cannot help acting for the best he is thus deprived of freedom,
+and things are endued with that necessity which philosophers and
+theologians endeavour to avoid. With these writers my dispute is only one
+of words, provided they admit in very deed that God chooses and does the
+best. But there are others who go further, they think that God could have
+done better. This is an opinion which must be rejected: for although it
+does not altogether deprive God of wisdom and goodness, as do the advocates
+of blind necessity, it sets bounds thereto, thus derogating from God's
+supreme perfection.
+
+169. The question of the _possibility of things that do not happen_ has
+already been examined by the ancients. It appears that Epicurus, to
+preserve freedom and to avoid an absolute necessity, maintained, after
+Aristotle, that contingent futurities were not susceptible of determinate
+truth. For if it was true yesterday that I should write to-day, it could
+therefore not fail to happen, it was already necessary; and, for the same
+reason, it was from all eternity. Thus all that which happens is necessary,
+and it is impossible for anything different to come to pass. But since that
+is not so it would follow, according to him, that contingent futurities
+have no determinate truth. To uphold this opinion, Epicurus went so far as
+to deny the first and the greatest principle of the truths of reason, he
+denied that every assertion was either true or false. Here is the way they
+confounded him: 'You deny that it was true yesterday that I should write
+to-day; it was therefore false.' The good man, not being able to admit this
+conclusion, was obliged to say that it was neither true nor false. After
+that, he needs no refutation, and Chrysippus might have spared himself the
+trouble he took to prove the great principle of contradictories, following
+the account by Cicero in his book _De Fato_: 'Contendit omnes nervos
+Chrysippus ut persuadeat omne [Greek: Axiôma] aut verum esse aut falsum. Ut
+enim Epicurus veretur ne si hoc concesserit, concedendum sit, fato fieri
+quaecunque fiant; si enim alterum ex aeternitate verum sit, esse id etiam
+certum; si certum, etiam necessarium; ita et necessitatem et fatum
+confirmari putat; sic Chrysippus metuit ne non, si non obtinuerit omne[230]
+quod enuncietur aut verum esse aut falsum, omnia fato fieri possint ex
+causis aeternis rerum futurarum.' M. Bayle observes (_Dictionary_, article
+'Epicurus', let. T, p. 1141) 'that neither of these two great philosophers
+[Epicurus and Chrysippus] understood that the truth of this maxim, every
+proposition is true or false, is independent of what is called _fatum_: it
+could not therefore serve as proof of the existence of the _fatum_, as
+Chrysippus maintained and as Epicurus feared. Chrysippus could not have
+conceded, without damaging his own position, that there are propositions
+which are neither true nor false. But he gained nothing by asserting the
+contrary: for, whether there be free causes or not, it is equally true that
+this proposition, The Grand Mogul will go hunting to-morrow, is true or
+false. Men rightly regarded as ridiculous this speech of Tiresias: All that
+I shall say will happen or not, for great Apollo confers on me the faculty
+of prophesying. If, assuming the impossible, there were no God, it would
+yet be certain that everything the greatest fool in the world should
+predict would happen or would not happen. That is what neither Chrysippus
+nor Epicurus has taken into consideration.' Cicero, lib. I, _De Nat.
+Deorum_, with regard to the evasions of the Epicureans expressed the sound
+opinion (as M. Bayle observes towards the end of the same page) that it
+would be much less shameful to admit that one cannot answer one's opponent,
+than to have recourse to such answers. Yet we shall see that M. Bayle
+himself confused the certain with the necessary, when he maintained that
+the choice of the best rendered things necessary.
+
+170. Let us come now to the possibility of things that do not happen, and I
+will give the very words of M. Bayle, albeit they are somewhat discursive.
+This is what he says on the matter in his _Dictionary_ (article
+'Chrysippus', let. S, p. 929): 'The celebrated dispute on things possible
+and things impossible owed its origin to the doctrine of the Stoics
+concerning fate. The question was to know whether, among the things which
+have never been and never will be, there are some possible; or whether all
+that is not, all that has never been, all that will never be, was
+impossible. A famous dialectician of the Megaric Sect, named Diodorus, gave
+a negative answer to the first of these two questions and an affirmative to
+the second; but Chrysippus vehemently opposed him. Here are two passages of
+Cicero (epist. 4, lib. 9, _Ad Familiar._): "[Greek: peri dynatôn] me scito
+[Greek: kata Diodôron krinein]. Quapropter si venturus es, scito      [231]
+necesse esse te venire. Sin autem non es, [Greek: tôn adynatôn] est te
+venire. Nunc vide utra te [Greek: krisis] magis delectet, [Greek:
+Chrysippeia] ne, an haec; quam noster Diodorus [a Stoic who for a long time
+had lived in Cicero's house] non concoquebat." This is quoted from a letter
+that Cicero wrote to Varro. He sets forth more comprehensively the whole
+state of the question, in the little book _De Fato_. I am going to quote a
+few pieces (Cic., _De Fato_, p. m. 65): "Vigila, Chrysippe, ne tuam causam,
+in qua tibi cum Diodoro valente Dialectico magna luctatio est, deseras ...
+omne ergo quod falsum dicitur in futuro, id fieri non potest. At hoc,
+Chrysippe, minime vis, maximeque tibi de hoc ipso cum Diodoro certamen est.
+Ille enim id solum fieri posse dicit, quod aut sit verum, aut futurum sit
+verum; et quicquid futurum sit, id dicit fieri necesse esse; et quicquid
+non sit futurum, id negat fieri posse. Tu etiam quae non sint futura, posse
+fieri dicis, ut frangi hanc gemmam, etiamsi id nunquam futurum sit: neque
+necesse fuisse Cypselum regnare Corinthi, quamquam id millesimo ante anno
+Apollinis Oraculo editum esset.... Placet Diodoro, id solum fieri posse,
+quod aut verum sit, aut verum futurum sit: qui locus attingit hanc
+quaestionem, nihil fieri, quod non necesse fuerit; et quicquid fieri
+possit, id aut esse jam, aut futurum esse: nec magis commutari ex veris in
+falsa ea posse quae futura sunt, quam ea quae facta sunt: sed in factis
+immutabilitatem apparere; in futuris quibusdam, quia non apparent, ne
+inesse quidem videri: ut in eo qui mortifero morbo urgeatur, verum sit, hic
+morietur hoc morbo: at hoc idem si vere dicatur in eo, in quo tanta vis
+morbi non appareat, nihilominus futurum sit. Ita fit ut commutatio ex vero
+in falsum, ne in futuro quidem ulla fieri possit." Cicero makes it clear
+enough that Chrysippus often found himself in difficulties in this dispute,
+and that is no matter for astonishment: for the course he had chosen was
+not bound up with his dogma of fate, and, if he had known how, or had
+dared, to reason consistently, he would readily have adopted the whole
+hypothesis of Diodorus. We have seen already that the freedom he assigned
+to the soul, and his comparison of the cylinder, did not preclude the
+possibility that in reality all the acts of the human will were unavoidable
+consequences of fate. Hence it follows that everything which does not
+happen is impossible, and that there is nothing possible but that which
+actually comes to pass. Plutarch (_De Stoicor. Repugn._, pp. 1053, 1054)
+discomfits him completely, on that point as well as on the dispute    [232]
+with Diodorus, and maintains that his opinion on possibility is altogether
+contrary to the doctrine of _fatum_. Observe that the most eminent Stoics
+had written on this matter without following the same path. Arrian (in
+_Epict._, lib. 2, c. 29, p. m. 166) named four of them, who are Chrysippus,
+Cleanthes, Archidemus and Antipater. He evinces great scorn for this
+dispute; and M. Menage need not have cited him as a writer who had spoken
+in commendation of the work of Chrysippus [Greek: peri dynatôn] ("citatur
+honorifice apud Arrianum", Menag. in _Laert._, I, 7, 341) for assuredly
+these words, "[Greek: gegraphe de kai Chrysippos thaumastôs], etc., de his
+rebus mira scripsit Chrysippus", etc., are not in that connexion a eulogy.
+That is shown by the passages immediately before and after it. Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus (_De Collocat. Verbor._, c. 17, p. m. 11) mentions two
+treatises by Chrysippus, wherein, under a title that promised something
+different, much of the logicians' territory had been explored. The work was
+entitled "[Greek: peri tês syntaxeôs tôn tou logou merôn], de partium
+orationis collocatione", and treated only of propositions true and false,
+possible and impossible, contingent and equivocal, etc., matter that our
+Schoolmen have pounded down and reduced to its essence. Take note that
+Chrysippus recognized that past things were necessarily true, which
+Cleanthes had not been willing to admit. (Arrian, _ubi supra_, p. m. 165.)
+"[Greek: Ou pan de parelêlythos alêthes anankaion esti, kathaper hoi peri
+Kleanthên pheresthai dokousi]. Non omne praeteritum ex necessitate verum
+est, ut illi qui Cleanthem sequuntur sentiunt." We have already seen (p.
+562, col. 2) that Abélard is alleged to have taught a doctrine which
+resembles that of Diodorus. I think that the Stoics pledged themselves to
+give a wider range to possible things than to future things, for the
+purpose of mitigating the odious and frightful conclusions which were drawn
+from their dogma of fatality.'
+
+It is sufficiently evident that Cicero when writing to Varro the words that
+have just been quoted (lib. 9, Ep. 4, _Ad Familiar._) had not enough
+comprehension of the effect of Diodorus's opinion, since he found it
+preferable. He presents tolerably well in his book _De Fato_ the opinions
+of those writers, but it is a pity that he has not always added the reasons
+which they employed. Plutarch in his treatise on the contradictions of the
+Stoics and M. Bayle are both surprised that Chrysippus was not of the same
+opinion as Diodorus, since he favours fatality. But Chrysippus and even his
+master Cleanthes were on that point more reasonable than is supposed. [233]
+That will be seen as we proceed. It is open to question whether the past is
+more necessary than the future. Cleanthes held the opinion that it is. The
+objection is raised that it is necessary _ex hypothesi_ for the future to
+happen, as it is necessary _ex hypothesi_ for the past to have happened.
+But there is this difference, that it is not possible to act on the past
+state, that would be a contradiction; but it is possible to produce some
+effect on the future. Yet the hypothetical necessity of both is the same:
+the one cannot be changed, the other will not be; and once that is past, it
+will not be possible for it to be changed either.
+
+171. The famous Pierre Abélard expressed an opinion resembling that of
+Diodorus in the statement that God can do only that which he does. It was
+the third of the fourteen propositions taken from his works which were
+censured at the Council of Sens. It had been taken from the third book of
+his _Introduction to Theology_, where he treats especially of the power of
+God. The reason he gave for his statement was that God can do only that
+which he wills. Now God cannot will to do anything other than that which he
+does, because, of necessity, he must will whatever is fitting. Hence it
+follows that all that which he does not, is not fitting, that he cannot
+will to do it, and consequently that he cannot do it. Abélard admits
+himself that this opinion is peculiar to him, that hardly anyone shares in
+it, that it seems contrary to the doctrine of the saints and to reason and
+derogatory to the greatness of God. It appears that this author was a
+little too much inclined to speak and to think differently from others: for
+in reality this was only a dispute about words: he was changing the use of
+terms. Power and will are different faculties, whose objects also are
+different; it is confusing them to say that God can do only that which he
+wills. On the contrary, among various possibles, he wills only that which
+he finds the best. For all possibles are regarded as objects of power, but
+actual and existing things are regarded as the objects of his decretory
+will. Abélard himself acknowledged it. He raises this objection for
+himself: a reprobate can be saved; but he can only be saved if God saves
+him. God can therefore save him, and consequently do something that he does
+not. Abélard answers that it may indeed be said that this man can be saved
+in respect of the possibility of human nature, which is capable of
+salvation: but that it may not be said that God can save him in respect of
+God himself, because it is impossible that God should do that which he[234]
+must not do. But Abélard admits that it may very well be said in a sense,
+speaking absolutely and setting aside the assumption of reprobation, that
+such an one who is reprobate can be saved, and that thus often that which
+God does not can be done. He could therefore have spoken like the rest, who
+mean nothing different when they say that God can save this man, and that
+he can do that which he does not.
+
+172. The so-called necessity of Wyclif, which was condemned by the Council
+of Constance, seems to arise simply from this same misunderstanding. I
+think that men of talent do wrong to truth and to themselves when, without
+reason, they bring into use new and displeasing expressions. In our own
+time the celebrated Mr. Hobbes supported this same opinion, that what does
+not happen is impossible. He proves it by the statement that all the
+conditions requisite for a thing that shall not exist (_omnia rei non
+futurae requisita_) are never found together, and that the thing cannot
+exist otherwise. But who does not see that that only proves a hypothetical
+impossibility? It is true that a thing cannot exist when a requisite
+condition for it is lacking. But as we claim to be able to say that the
+thing can exist although it does not exist, we claim in the same way to be
+able to say that the requisite conditions can exist although they do not
+exist. Thus Mr. Hobbes's argument leaves the matter where it is. The
+opinion which was held concerning Mr. Hobbes, that he taught an absolute
+necessity of all things, brought upon him much discredit, and would have
+done him harm even had it been his only error.
+
+173. Spinoza went further: he appears to have explicitly taught a blind
+necessity, having denied to the Author of Things understanding and will,
+and assuming that good and perfection relate to us only, and not to him. It
+is true that Spinoza's opinion on this subject is somewhat obscure: for he
+grants God thought, after having divested him of understanding,
+_cogitationem, non intellectum concedit Deo_. There are even passages where
+he relents on the question of necessity. Nevertheless, as far as one can
+understand him, he acknowledges no goodness in God, properly speaking, and
+he teaches that all things exist through the necessity of the divine
+nature, without any act of choice by God. We will not waste time here in
+refuting an opinion so bad, and indeed so inexplicable. My own opinion is
+founded on the nature of the possibles, that is, of things that imply [235]
+no contradiction. I do not think that a Spinozist will say that all the
+romances one can imagine exist actually now, or have existed, or will still
+exist in some place in the universe. Yet one cannot deny that romances such
+as those of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, or as _Octavia_, are possible. Let us
+therefore bring up against him these words of M. Bayle, which please me
+well, on page 390, 'It is to-day', he says, 'a great embarrassment for the
+Spinozists to see that, according to their hypothesis, it was as impossible
+from all eternity that Spinoza, for instance, should not die at The Hague,
+as it is impossible for two and two to make six. They are well aware that
+it is a necessary conclusion from their doctrine, and a conclusion which
+disheartens, affrights, and stirs the mind to revolt, because of the
+absurdity it involves, diametrically opposed to common sense. They are not
+well pleased that one should know they are subverting a maxim so universal
+and so evident as this one: All that which implies contradiction is
+impossible, and all that which implies no contradiction is possible.'
+
+174. One may say of M. Bayle, 'ubi bene, nemo melius', although one cannot
+say of him what was said of Origen, 'ubi male, nemo pejus'. I will only add
+that what has just been indicated as a maxim is in fact the definition of
+the _possible_ and the _impossible_. M. Bayle, however, adds here towards
+the end a remark which somewhat spoils his eminently reasonable statement.
+'Now what contradiction would there be if Spinoza had died in Leyden? Would
+Nature then have been less perfect, less wise, less powerful?' He confuses
+here what is impossible because it implies contradiction with what cannot
+happen because it is not meet to be chosen. It is true that there would
+have been no contradiction in the supposition that Spinoza died in Leyden
+and not at The Hague; there would have been nothing so possible: the matter
+was therefore indifferent in respect of the power of God. But one must not
+suppose that any event, however small it be, can be regarded as indifferent
+in respect of his wisdom and his goodness. Jesus Christ has said divinely
+well that everything is numbered, even to the hairs of our head. Thus the
+wisdom of God did not permit that this event whereof M. Bayle speaks should
+happen otherwise than it happened, not as if by itself it would have been
+more deserving of choice, but on account of its connexion with that entire
+sequence of the universe which deserved to be given preference. To say that
+what has already happened was of no interest to the wisdom of God, and[236]
+thence to infer that it is therefore not necessary, is to make a false
+assumption and argue incorrectly to a true conclusion. It is confusing what
+is necessary by moral necessity, that is, according to the principle of
+Wisdom and Goodness, with what is so by metaphysical and brute necessity,
+which occurs when the contrary implies contradiction. Spinoza, moreover,
+sought a metaphysical necessity in events. He did not think that God was
+determined by his goodness and by his perfection (which this author treated
+as chimeras in relation to the universe), but by the necessity of his
+nature; just as the semicircle is bound to enclose only right angles,
+without either knowing or willing this. For Euclid demonstrated that all
+angles enclosed between two straight lines drawn from the extremities of
+the diameter towards a point on the circumference of the circle are of
+necessity right angles, and that the contrary implies contradiction.
+
+175. There are people who have gone to the other extreme: under the pretext
+of freeing the divine nature from the yoke of necessity they wished to
+regard it as altogether indifferent, with an indifference of equipoise.
+They did not take into account that just as metaphysical necessity is
+preposterous in relation to God's actions _ad extra_, so moral necessity is
+worthy of him. It is a happy necessity which obliges wisdom to do good,
+whereas indifference with regard to good and evil would indicate a lack of
+goodness or of wisdom. And besides, the indifference which would keep the
+will in a perfect equipoise would itself be a chimera, as has been already
+shown: it would offend against the great principle of the determinant
+reason.
+
+176. Those who believe that God established good and evil by an arbitrary
+decree are adopting that strange idea of mere indifference, and other
+absurdities still stranger. They deprive God of the designation _good_: for
+what cause could one have to praise him for what he does, if in doing
+something quite different he would have done equally well? And I have very
+often been surprised that divers Supralapsarian theologians, as for
+instance Samuel Rutherford, a Professor of Theology in Scotland, who wrote
+when the controversies with the Remonstrants were at their height, could
+have been deluded by so strange an idea. Rutherford (in his _Exercitationes
+Apologeticae pro Gratia_) says positively that nothing is unjust or morally
+bad in God's eyes before he has forbidden it: thus without this prohibition
+it would be a matter of indifference whether one murdered or saved a  [237]
+man, loved God or hated him, praised or blasphemed him. Nothing is so
+unreasonable as that. One may teach that God established good and evil by a
+positive law, or one may assert that there was something good and just
+before his decree, but that he is not required to conform to it, and that
+nothing prevents him from acting unjustly and from perhaps condemning
+innocence: but it all comes to the same thing, offering almost equal
+dishonour to God. For if justice was established arbitrarily and without
+any cause, if God came upon it by a kind of hazard, as when one draws lots,
+his goodness and his wisdom are not manifested in it, and there is nothing
+at all to attach him to it. If it is by a purely arbitrary decree, without
+any reason, that he has established or created what we call justice and
+goodness, then he can annul them or change their nature. Thus one would
+have no reason to assume that he will observe them always, as it would be
+possible to say he will observe them on the assumption that they are
+founded on reasons. The same would hold good more or less if his justice
+were different from ours, if (for example) it were written in his code that
+it is just to make the innocent eternally unhappy. According to these
+principles also, nothing would compel God to keep his word or would assure
+us of its fulfilment. For why should the law of justice, which states that
+reasonable promises must be kept, be more inviolable for him than any other
+laws?
+
+177. All these three dogmas, albeit a little different from one another,
+namely, (1) that the nature of justice is arbitrary, (2) that it is fixed,
+but it is not certain that God will observe it, and finally (3) that the
+justice we know is not that which he observes, destroy the confidence in
+God that gives us tranquillity, and the love of God that makes our
+happiness. There is nothing to prevent such a God from behaving as a tyrant
+and an enemy of honest folk, and from taking pleasure in that which we call
+evil. Why should he not, then, just as well be the evil principle of the
+Manichaeans as the single good principle of the orthodox? At least he would
+be neutral and, as it were, suspended between the two, or even sometimes
+the one and sometimes the other. That would be as if someone were to say
+that Oromasdes and Arimanius reign in turns, according to which of the two
+is the stronger or the more adroit. It is like the saying of a certain
+Moghul woman. She, so it seems, having heard it said that formerly under
+Genghis Khan and his successors her nation had had dominion over most [238]
+of the North and East, told the Muscovites recently, when M. Isbrand went
+to China on behalf of the Czar, through the country of those Tartars, that
+the god of the Moghuls had been driven from Heaven, but that one day he
+would take his own place again. The true God is always the same: natural
+religion itself demands that he be essentially as good and wise as he is
+powerful. It is scarcely more contrary to reason and piety to say that God
+acts without cognition, than to maintain that he has cognition which does
+not find the eternal rules of goodness and of justice among its objects, or
+again to say that he has a will such as heeds not these rules.
+
+178. Some theologians who have written of God's right over creatures appear
+to have conceded to him an unrestricted right, an arbitrary and despotic
+power. They thought that would be placing divinity on the most exalted
+level that may be imagined for it, and that it would abase the creature
+before the Creator to such an extent that the Creator is bound by no laws
+of any kind with respect to the creature. There are passages from Twiss,
+Rutherford and some other Supralapsarians which imply that God cannot sin
+whatever he may do, because he is subject to no law. M. Bayle himself
+considers that this doctrine is monstrous and contrary to the holiness of
+God (_Dictionary_, v. 'Paulicians', p. 2332 _in initio_); but I suppose
+that the intention of some of these writers was less bad than it seems to
+be. Apparently they meant by the term right, [Greek: anypeuthynian], a
+state wherein one is responsible to none for one's actions. But they will
+not have denied that God owes to himself what goodness and justice demand
+of him. On that matter one may see M. Amyraut's _Apology for Calvin_: it is
+true that Calvin appears orthodox on this subject, and that he is by no
+means one of the extreme Supralapsarians.
+
+179. Thus, when M. Bayle says somewhere that St. Paul extricates himself
+from predestination only through the consideration of God's absolute right,
+and the incomprehensibility of his ways, it is implied that, if one
+understood them, one would find them consistent with justice, God not being
+able to use his power otherwise. St. Paul himself says that it is a
+_depth_, but a depth of wisdom (_altitudo sapientiae_), and _justice_ is
+included in _the goodness of the All-wise_. I find that M. Bayle speaks
+very well elsewhere on the application of our notions of goodness to the
+actions of God (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 81, p. 139):
+'One must not assert here', he says, 'that the goodness of the        [239]
+infinite Being is not subject to the same rules as the goodness of the
+creature. For if there is in God an attribute that can be called goodness,
+the marks of goodness in general must apply to him. Now when we reduce
+goodness to the most general abstraction, we find therein the will to do
+good. Divide and subdivide into as many kinds as you shall please this
+general goodness, into infinite goodness, finite goodness, kingly goodness,
+goodness of a father, goodness of a husband, goodness of a master, you will
+find in each, as an inseparable attribute, the will to do good.'
+
+180. I find also that M. Bayle combats admirably the opinion of those who
+assert that goodness and justice depend solely upon the arbitrary choice of
+God; who suppose, moreover, that if God had been determined by the goodness
+of things themselves to act, he would be entirely subjected to necessity in
+his actions, a state incompatible with freedom. That is confusing
+metaphysical necessity with moral necessity. Here is what M. Bayle says in
+objection to this error (_Reply_, ch. 89, p. 203): 'The consequence of this
+doctrine will be, that before God resolved upon creating the world he saw
+nothing better in virtue than in vice, and that his ideas did not show him
+that virtue was more worthy of his love than vice. That leaves no
+distinction between natural right and positive right; there will no longer
+be anything unalterable or inevitable in morals; it will have been just as
+possible for God to command people to be vicious as to command them to be
+virtuous; and one will have no certainty that the moral laws will not one
+day be abrogated, as the ceremonial laws of the Jews were. This, in a word,
+leads us straight to the belief that God was the free author, not only of
+goodness and of virtue, but also of truth and of the essence of things.
+That is what certain of the Cartesians assert, and I confess that their
+opinion (see the Continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, p. 554)
+might be of some avail in certain circumstances. Yet it is open to dispute
+for so many reasons, and subject to consequences so troublesome (see
+chapter 152 of the same Continuation) that there are scarcely any extremes
+it were not better to suffer rather than plunge into that one. It opens the
+door to the most exaggerated Pyrrhonism: for it leads to the assertion that
+this proposition, three and three make six, is only true where and during
+the time when it pleases God; that it is perhaps false in some parts of the
+universe; and that perhaps it will be so among men in the coming year.[240]
+All that depends on the free will of God could have been limited to certain
+places and certain times, like the Judaic ceremonies. This conclusion will
+be extended to all the laws of the Decalogue, if the actions they command
+are in their nature divested of all goodness to the same degree as the
+actions they forbid.'
+
+181. To say that God, having resolved to create man just as he is, could
+not but have required of him piety, sobriety, justice and chastity, because
+it is impossible that the disorders capable of overthrowing or disturbing
+his work can please him, that is to revert in effect to the common opinion.
+Virtues are virtues only because they serve perfection or prevent the
+imperfection of those who are virtuous, or even of those who have to do
+with them. And they have that power by their nature and by the nature of
+rational creatures, before God decrees to create them. To hold a different
+opinion would be as if someone were to say that the rules of proportion and
+harmony are arbitrary with regard to musicians because they occur in music
+only when one has resolved to sing or to play some instrument. But that is
+exactly what is meant by being essential to good music: for those rules
+belong to it already in the ideal state, even when none yet thinks of
+singing, since it is known that they must of necessity belong to it as soon
+as one shall sing. In the same way virtues belong to the ideal state of the
+rational creature before God decrees to create it; and it is for that very
+reason we maintain that virtues are good by their nature.
+
+182. M. Bayle has inserted a special chapter in his Continuation of _Divers
+Thoughts on the Comet_ (it is chapter 152) where he shows 'that the
+Christian Doctors teach that there are things which are just antecedently
+to God's decrees'. Some theologians of the Augsburg Confession censured
+some of the Reformed who appeared to be of a different opinion; and this
+error was regarded as if it were a consequence of the absolute decree,
+which doctrine seems to exempt the will of God from any kind of reason,
+_ubi stat pro ratione voluntas_. But, as I have observed already on various
+occasions, Calvin himself acknowledged that the decrees of God are in
+conformity with justice and wisdom, although the reasons that might prove
+this conformity in detail are unknown to us. Thus, according to him, the
+rules of goodness and of justice are anterior to the decrees of God. M.
+Bayle, in the same place, quotes a passage from the celebrated M. Turretin
+which draws a distinction between natural divine laws and positive    [241]
+divine laws. Moral laws are of the first kind and ceremonial of the second.
+Samuel Desmarests, a celebrated theologian formerly at Groningen, and Herr
+Strinesius, who is still at Frankfort on the Oder, advocated this same
+distinction; and I think that it is the opinion most widely accepted even
+among the Reformed. Thomas Aquinas and all the Thomists were of the same
+opinion, with the bulk of the Schoolmen and the theologians of the Roman
+Church. The Casuists also held to that idea: I count Grotius among the most
+eminent of them, and he was followed in this point by his commentators.
+Herr Pufendorf appeared to be of a different opinion, which he insisted on
+maintaining in the face of censure from some theologians; but he need not
+be taken into account, not having advanced far enough in subjects of this
+kind. He makes a vigorous protest against the absolute decree, in his
+_Fecialis divinus_, and yet he approves what is worst in the opinions of
+the champions of this decree, and without which this decree (as others of
+the Reformed explain) becomes endurable. Aristotle was very orthodox on
+this matter of justice, and the Schoolmen followed him: they distinguish,
+just as Cicero and the Jurists do, between perpetual right, which is
+binding on all and everywhere, and positive right, which is only for
+certain times and certain peoples. I once read with enjoyment the
+_Euthyphro_ of Plato, who makes Socrates uphold the truth on that point,
+and M. Bayle has called attention to the same passage.
+
+183. M. Bayle himself upholds this truth with considerable force in a
+certain passage, which it will be well to quote here in its entirety, long
+as it is (vol. II of the Continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_,
+ch. 152, p. 771 _seqq._): 'According to the teaching of countless writers
+of importance', he says, 'there is in nature and in the essence of certain
+things a moral good or evil that precedes the divine decree. They prove
+this doctrine principally through the frightful consequences that attend
+the opposite dogma. Thus from the proposition that to do wrong to no man
+would be a good action, not in itself but by an arbitrary dispensation of
+God's will, it would follow that God could have given to man a law directly
+opposed at all points to the commandments of the Decalogue. That is
+horrifying. But here is a more direct proof, one derived from metaphysics.
+One thing is certain, that the existence of God is not an effect of his
+will. He exists not because he wills his existence, but through the   [242]
+necessity of his infinite nature. His power and his knowledge exist through
+the same necessity. He is all-powerful, he knows all things, not because he
+wills it thus, but because these are attributes necessarily identified with
+him. The dominion of his will relates only to the exercise of his power, he
+gives effect outside himself only to that which he wills, and he leaves all
+the rest in the state of mere possibility. Thence it comes that this
+dominion extends only over the existence of creatures, and not over their
+essential being. God was able to create matter, a man, a circle, or leave
+them in nothingness, but he was not able to produce them without giving
+them their essential properties. He had of necessity to make man a rational
+animal and to give the round shape to a circle, since, according to his
+eternal ideas, independent of the free decrees of his will, the essence of
+man lay in the properties of being animal and rational, and since the
+essence of the circle lay in having a circumference equally distant from
+the centre as to all its parts. This is what has caused the Christian
+philosophers to acknowledge that the essences of things are eternal, and
+that there are propositions of eternal truth; consequently that the
+essences of things and the truth of the first principles are immutable.
+That is to be understood not only of theoretical but also of practical
+first principles, and of all the propositions that contain the true
+definition of creatures. These essences and these truths emanate from the
+same necessity of nature as the knowledge of God. Since therefore it is by
+the nature of things that God exists, that he is all-powerful, and that he
+has perfect knowledge of all things, it is also by the nature of things
+that matter, the triangle, man and certain actions of man, etc., have such
+and such properties essentially. God saw from all eternity and in all
+necessity the essential relations of numbers, and the identity of the
+subject and predicate in the propositions that contain the essence of each
+thing. He saw likewise that the term just is included in these
+propositions: to esteem what is estimable, be grateful to one's benefactor,
+fulfil the conditions of a contract, and so on, with many others relating
+to morals. One is therefore justified in saying that the precepts of
+natural law assume the reasonableness and justice of that which is
+enjoined, and that it would be man's duty to practise what they contain
+even though God should have been so indulgent as to ordain nothing in that
+respect. Pray observe that in going back with our visionary thoughts to
+that ideal moment when God has yet decreed nothing, we find in the    [243]
+ideas of God the principles of morals under terms that imply an obligation.
+We understand these maxims as certain, and derived from the eternal and
+immutable order: it beseems the rational creature to conform to reason; a
+rational creature conforming to reason is to be commended, but not
+conforming thereto is blameworthy. You would not dare to deny that these
+truths impose upon man a duty in relation to all acts which are in
+conformity with strict reason, such as these: one must esteem all that is
+estimable; render good for good; do wrong to no man; honour one's father;
+render to every man that which is his due, etc. Now since by the very
+nature of things, and before the divine laws, the truths of morality impose
+upon man certain duties, Thomas Aquinas and Grotius were justified in
+saying that if there were no God we should nevertheless be obliged to
+conform to natural law. Others have said that even supposing all rational
+beings in existence were to perish, true propositions would remain true.
+Cajetan maintained that if he remained alone in the universe, all other
+things without any exception having been destroyed, the knowledge that he
+had of the nature of a rose would nevertheless subsist.'
+
+184. The late Jacob Thomasius, a celebrated Professor at Leipzig, made the
+apt observation in his elucidations of the philosophic rules of Daniel
+Stahl, a Jena professor, that it is not advisable to go altogether beyond
+God, and that one must not say, with some Scotists, that the eternal
+verities would exist even though there were no understanding, not even that
+of God. For it is, in my judgement, the divine understanding which gives
+reality to the eternal verities, albeit God's will have no part therein.
+All reality must be founded on something existent. It is true that an
+atheist may be a geometrician: but if there were no God, geometry would
+have no object. And without God, not only would there be nothing existent,
+but there would be nothing possible. That, however, does not hinder those
+who do not see the connexion of all things one with another and with God
+from being able to understand certain sciences, without knowing their first
+source, which is in God. Aristotle, although he also scarcely knew that
+source, nevertheless said something of the same kind which was very
+apposite. He acknowledged that the principles of individual forms of
+knowledge depend on a superior knowledge which gives the reason for them;
+and this superior knowledge must have being, and consequently God, the[244]
+source of being, for its object. Herr Dreier of Königsberg has aptly
+observed that the true metaphysics which Aristotle sought, and which he
+called [Greek: tên zêtoumenên], his _desideratum_, was theology.
+
+185. Yet the same M. Bayle, who says so much that is admirable in order to
+prove that the rules of goodness and justice, and the eternal verities in
+general, exist by their nature, and not by an arbitrary choice of God, has
+spoken very hesitatingly about them in another passage (Continuation of
+_Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, vol. II, ch. 114, towards the end). After
+having given an account of the opinion of M. Descartes and a section of his
+followers, who maintain that God is the free cause of truths and of
+essences, he adds (p. 554): 'I have done all that I could to gain true
+understanding of this dogma and to find the solution of the difficulties
+surrounding it. I confess to you quite simply that I still cannot properly
+fathom it. That does not discourage me; I suppose, as other philosophers in
+other cases have supposed, that time will unfold the meaning of this noble
+paradox. I wish that Father Malebranche had thought fit to defend it, but
+he took other measures.' Is it possible that the enjoyment of doubt can
+have such influence upon a gifted man as to make him wish and hope for the
+power to believe that two contradictories never exist together for the sole
+reason that God forbade them to, and, moreover, that God could have issued
+them an order to ensure that they always walked together? There is indeed a
+noble paradox! Father Malebranche showed great wisdom in taking other
+measures.
+
+186. I cannot even imagine that M. Descartes can have been quite seriously
+of this opinion, although he had adherents who found this easy to believe,
+and would in all simplicity follow him where he only made pretence to go.
+It was apparently one of his tricks, one of his philosophic feints: he
+prepared for himself some loophole, as when for instance he discovered a
+trick for denying the movement of the earth, while he was a Copernican in
+the strictest sense. I suspect that he had in mind here another
+extraordinary manner of speaking, of his own invention, which was to say
+that affirmations and negations, and acts of inner judgement in general,
+are operations of the will. Through this artifice the eternal verities,
+which until the time of Descartes had been named an object of the divine
+understanding, suddenly became an object of God's will. Now the acts of his
+will are free, therefore God is the free cause of the verities. That  [245]
+is the outcome of the matter. _Spectatum admissi._ A slight change in the
+meaning of terms has caused all this commotion. But if the affirmations of
+necessary truths were actions of the will of the most perfect mind, these
+actions would be anything but free, for there is nothing to choose. It
+seems that M. Descartes did not declare himself sufficiently on the nature
+of freedom, and that his conception of it was somewhat unusual: for he
+extended it so far that he even held the affirmations of necessary truths
+to be free in God. That was preserving only the name of freedom.
+
+187. M. Bayle, who with others conceives this to be a freedom of
+indifference, that God had had to establish (for instance) the truths of
+numbers, and to ordain that three times three made nine, whereas he could
+have commanded them to make ten, imagines in this strange opinion,
+supposing it were possible to defend it, some kind of advantage gained
+against the Stratonists. Strato was one of the leaders of the School of
+Aristotle, and the successor of Theophrastus; he maintained (according to
+Cicero's account) that this world had been formed such as it is by Nature
+or by a necessary cause devoid of cognition. I admit that that might be so,
+if God had so preformed matter as to cause such an effect by the laws of
+motion alone. But without God there would not even have been any reason for
+existence, and still less for any particular existence of things: thus
+Strato's system is not to be feared.
+
+188. Nevertheless M. Bayle is in difficulties over this: he will not admit
+plastic natures devoid of cognition, which Mr. Cudworth and others had
+introduced, for fear that the modern Stratonists, that is, the Spinozists,
+take advantage of it. This has involved him in disputes with M. le Clerc.
+Under the influence of this error, that a non-intelligent cause can produce
+nothing where contrivance appears, he is far from conceding to me that
+_preformation_ which produces naturally the organs of animals, and _the
+system of a harmony pre-established by God_ in bodies, to make them respond
+in accordance with their own laws to the thoughts and the wills of souls.
+But it ought to have been taken into account that this non-intelligent
+cause, which produces such beautiful things in the grains and seeds of
+plants and animals, and effects the actions of bodies as the will ordains
+them, was formed by the hand of God: and God is infinitely more skilful
+than a watchmaker, who himself makes machines and automata that are   [246]
+capable of producing as wonderful effects as if they possessed
+intelligence.
+
+189. Now to come to M. Bayle's apprehensions concerning the Stratonists, in
+case one should admit truths that are not dependent upon the will of God:
+he seems to fear lest they may take advantage against us of the perfect
+regularity of the eternal verities. Since this regularity springs only from
+the nature and necessity of things, without being directed by any
+cognition, M. Bayle fears that one might with Strato thence infer that the
+world also could have become regular through a blind necessity. But it is
+easy to answer that. In the region of the eternal verities are found all
+the possibles, and consequently the regular as well as the irregular: there
+must be a reason accounting for the preference for order and regularity,
+and this reason can only be found in understanding. Moreover these very
+truths can have no existence without an understanding to take cognizance of
+them; for they would not exist if there were no divine understanding
+wherein they are realized, so to speak. Hence Strato does not attain his
+end, which is to exclude cognition from that which enters into the origin
+of things.
+
+190. The difficulty that M. Bayle has imagined in connexion with Strato
+seems a little too subtle and far-fetched. That is termed: _timere, ubi non
+est timor_. He makes another difficulty, which has just as slight a
+foundation, namely, that God would be subjected to a kind of _fatum_. Here
+are his words (p. 555): 'If they are propositions of eternal truth, which
+are such by their nature and not by God's institution, if they are not true
+by a free decree of his will, but if on the contrary he has recognized them
+as true of necessity, because such was their nature, there is a kind of
+_fatum_ to which he is subjected; there is an absolutely insurmountable
+natural necessity. Thence comes also the result that the divine
+understanding in the infinity of its ideas has always and at the outset hit
+upon their perfect conformity with their objects, without the guidance of
+any cognition; for it would be a contradiction to say that any exemplary
+cause had served as a plan for the acts of God's understanding. One would
+never that way find eternal ideas or any first intelligence. One must say,
+then, that a nature which exists of necessity always finds its way, without
+any need for it to be shown. How then shall we overcome the obstinacy of a
+Stratonist?'
+
+191. But again it is easy to answer. This so-called _fatum_, which    [247]
+binds even the Divinity, is nothing but God's own nature, his own
+understanding, which furnishes the rules for his wisdom and his goodness;
+it is a happy necessity, without which he would be neither good nor wise.
+Is it to be desired that God should not be bound to be perfect and happy?
+Is our condition, which renders us liable to fail, worth envying? And
+should we not be well pleased to exchange it for sinlessness, if that
+depended upon us? One must be indeed weary of life to desire the freedom to
+destroy oneself and to pity the Divinity for not having that freedom. M.
+Bayle himself reasons thus elsewhere against those who laud to the skies an
+extravagant freedom which they assume in the will, when they would make the
+will independent of reason.
+
+192. Moreover, M. Bayle wonders 'that the divine understanding in the
+infinity of its ideas always and at the outset hits upon their perfect
+conformity with their objects, without the guidance of any cognition'. This
+objection is null and void. Every distinct idea is, through its
+distinctness, in conformity with its object, and in God there are distinct
+ideas only. At first, moreover, the object exists nowhere; but when it
+comes into existence, it will be formed according to this idea. Besides, M.
+Bayle knows very well that the divine understanding has no need of time for
+seeing the connexion of things. All trains of reasoning are in God in a
+transcendent form, and they preserve an order amongst them in his
+understanding, as well as in ours: but with him it is only an order and a
+_priority of nature_, whereas with us there is a _priority of time_. It is
+therefore not to be wondered at that he who penetrates all things at one
+stroke should always strike true at the outset; and it must not be said
+that he succeeds without the guidance of any cognition. On the contrary, it
+is because his knowledge is perfect that his voluntary actions are also
+perfect.
+
+193. Up to now I have shown that the Will of God is not independent of the
+rules of Wisdom, although indeed it is a matter for surprise that one
+should have been constrained to argue about it, and to do battle for a
+truth so great and so well established. But it is hardly less surprising
+that there should be people who believe that God only half observes these
+rules, and does not choose the best, although his wisdom causes him to
+recognize it; and, in a word, that there should be writers who hold that
+God could have done better. That is more or less the error of the famous
+Alfonso, King of Castile, who was elected King of the Romans by       [248]
+certain Electors, and originated the astronomical tables that bear his
+name. This prince is reported to have said that if God in making the world
+had consulted him he would have given God good advice. Apparently the
+Ptolemaic system, which prevailed at that time, was displeasing to him. He
+believed therefore that something better planned could have been made, and
+he was right. But if he had known the system of Copernicus, with the
+discoveries of Kepler, now extended by knowledge of the gravity of the
+planets, he would indeed have confessed that the contrivance of the true
+system is marvellous. We see, therefore, that here the question concerned
+the more or less only; Alfonso maintained that better could have been done,
+and his opinion was censured by everyone.
+
+194. Yet philosophers and theologians dare to support dogmatically such a
+belief; and I have many times wondered that gifted and pious persons should
+have been capable of setting bounds to the goodness and the perfection of
+God. For to assert that he knows what is best, that he can do it and that
+he does it not, is to avow that it rested with his will only to make the
+world better than it is; but that is what one calls lacking goodness. It is
+acting against that axiom already quoted: _Minus bonum habet rationem
+mali_. If some adduce experience to prove that God could have done better,
+they set themselves up as ridiculous critics of his works. To such will be
+given the answer given to all those who criticize God's course of action,
+and who from this same assumption, that is, the alleged defects of the
+world, would infer that there is an evil God, or at least a God neutral
+between good and evil. And if we hold the same opinion as King Alfonso, we
+shall, I say, receive this answer: You have known the world only since the
+day before yesterday, you see scarce farther than your nose, and you carp
+at the world. Wait until you know more of the world and consider therein
+especially the parts which present a complete whole (as do organic bodies);
+and you will find there a contrivance and a beauty transcending all
+imagination. Let us thence draw conclusions as to the wisdom and the
+goodness of the author of things, even in things that we know not. We find
+in the universe some things which are not pleasing to us; but let us be
+aware that it is not made for us alone. It is nevertheless made for us if
+we are wise: it will serve us if we use it for our service; we shall be
+happy in it if we wish to be.
+
+                                                                      [249]
+195. Someone will say that it is impossible to produce the best, because
+there is no perfect creature, and that it is always possible to produce one
+which would be more perfect. I answer that what can be said of a creature
+or of a particular substance, which can always be surpassed by another, is
+not to be applied to the universe, which, since it must extend through all
+future eternity, is an infinity. Moreover, there is an infinite number of
+creatures in the smallest particle of matter, because of the actual
+division of the _continuum_ to infinity. And infinity, that is to say, the
+accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly speaking,
+not a whole any more than the infinite number itself, whereof one cannot
+say whether it is even or uneven. That is just what serves to confute those
+who make of the world a God, or who think of God as the Soul of the world;
+for the world or the universe cannot be regarded as an animal or as a
+substance.
+
+196. It is therefore not a question of a creature, but of the universe; and
+the adversary will be obliged to maintain that one possible universe may be
+better than the other, to infinity; but there he would be mistaken, and it
+is that which he cannot prove. If this opinion were true, it would follow
+that God had not produced any universe at all: for he is incapable of
+acting without reason, and that would be even acting against reason. It is
+as if one were to suppose that God had decreed to make a material sphere,
+with no reason for making it of any particular size. This decree would be
+useless, it would carry with it that which would prevent its effect. It
+would be quite another matter if God decreed to draw from a given point one
+straight line to another given straight line, without any determination of
+the angle, either in the decree or in its circumstances. For in this case
+the determination would spring from the nature of the thing, the line would
+be perpendicular, and the angle would be right, since that is all that is
+determined and distinguishable. It is thus one must think of the creation
+of the best of all possible universes, all the more since God not only
+decrees to create a universe, but decrees also to create the best of all.
+For God decrees nothing without knowledge, and he makes no separate
+decrees, which would be nothing but antecedent acts of will: and these we
+have sufficiently explained, distinguishing them from genuine decrees.
+
+197. M. Diroys, whom I knew in Rome, theologian to Cardinal d'Estrées,
+wrote a book entitled _Proofs and Assumptions in Favour of_ _the      [250]
+Christian Religion_, published in Paris in the year 1683. M. Bayle (_Reply
+to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 165, p. 1058) recounts
+this objection brought up by M. Diroys: 'There is one more difficulty', he
+says, 'which it is no less important to meet than those given earlier,
+since it causes more trouble to those who judge goods and evils by
+considerations founded on the purest and most lofty maxims. This is that
+God being the supreme wisdom and goodness, it seems to them that he ought
+to do all things as wise and virtuous persons would wish them to be done,
+following the rules of wisdom and of goodness which God has imprinted in
+them, and as they would be obliged themselves to do these things if they
+depended upon them. Thus, seeing that the affairs of the world do not go so
+well as, in their opinion, they might go, and as they would go if they
+interfered themselves, they conclude that God, who is infinitely better and
+wiser than they, or rather wisdom and goodness itself, does not concern
+himself with these affairs.'
+
+198. M. Diroys makes some apt remarks concerning this, which I will not
+repeat, since I have sufficiently answered the objection in more than one
+passage, and that has been the chief end of all my discourse. But he makes
+one assertion with which I cannot agree. He claims that the objection
+proves too much. One must again quote his own words with M. Bayle, p. 1059:
+'If it does not behove the supreme Wisdom and Goodness to fail to do what
+is best and most perfect, it follows that all Beings are eternally,
+immutably and essentially as perfect and as good as they can be, since
+nothing can change except by passing either from a state less good to a
+better, or from a better to a less good. Now that cannot happen if it does
+not behove God to fail to do that which is best and most perfect, when he
+can do it. It will therefore be necessary that all beings be eternally and
+essentially filled with a knowledge and a virtue as perfect as God can give
+them. Now all that which is eternally and essentially as perfect as God can
+make it proceeds essentially from him; in a word, is eternally and
+essentially good as he is, and consequently it is God, as he is. That is
+the bearing of this maxim, that it is repugnant to supreme justice and
+goodness not to make things as good and perfect as they can be. For it is
+essential to essential wisdom and goodness to banish all that is repugnant
+to it altogether. One must therefore assert as a primary truth concerning
+the conduct of God in relation to creatures that there is nothing repugnant
+to this goodness and this wisdom in making things less perfect than   [251]
+they could be, or in permitting the goods that it has produced either
+completely to cease to be or to change and deteriorate. For it causes no
+offence to God that there should be other Beings than he, that is beings
+who can be not what they are, and do not what they do or do what they do
+not.'
+
+199. M. Bayle calls this answer paltry, but I find his counter-objection
+involved. M. Bayle will have those who are for the two principles to take
+their stand chiefly on the assumption of the supreme freedom of God: for if
+he were compelled to produce all that which he can, he would produce also
+sins and sorrows. Thus the Dualists could from the existence of evil
+conclude nothing contrary to the oneness of the principle, if this
+principle were as much inclined to evil as to good. There M. Bayle carries
+the notion of freedom too far: for even though God be supremely free, it
+does not follow that he maintains an indifference of equipoise: and even
+though he be inclined to act, it does not follow that he is compelled by
+this inclination to produce all that which he can. He will produce only
+that which he wills, for his inclination prompts him to good. I admit the
+supreme freedom of God, but I do not confuse it with indifference of
+equipoise, as if he could act without reason. M. Diroys therefore imagines
+that the Dualists, in their insistence that the single good principle
+produce no evil, ask too much; for by the same reason, according to M.
+Diroys, they ought also to ask that he should produce the greatest good,
+the less good being a kind of evil. I hold that the Dualists are wrong in
+respect of the first point, and that they would be right in respect of the
+second, where M. Diroys blames them without cause; or rather that one can
+reconcile the evil, or the less good, in some parts with the best in the
+whole. If the Dualists demanded that God should do the best, they would not
+be demanding too much. They are mistaken rather in claiming that the best
+in the whole should be free from evil in the parts, and that therefore what
+God has made is not the best.
+
+200. But M. Diroys maintains that if God always produces the best he will
+produce other Gods; otherwise each substance that he produced would not be
+the best nor the most perfect. But he is mistaken, through not taking into
+account the order and connexion of things. If each substance taken
+separately were perfect, all would be alike; which is neither fitting nor
+possible. If they were Gods, it would not have been possible to       [252]
+produce them. The best system of things will therefore not contain Gods; it
+will always be a system of bodies (that is, things arranged according to
+time and place) and of souls which represent and are aware of bodies, and
+in accordance with which bodies are in great measure directed. So, as the
+design of a building may be the best of all in respect of its purpose, of
+expense and of circumstances; and as an arrangement of some figured
+representations of bodies which is given to you may be the best that one
+can find, it is easy to imagine likewise that a structure of the universe
+may be the best of all, without becoming a god. The connexion and order of
+things brings it about that the body of every animal and of every plant is
+composed of other animals and of other plants, or of other living and
+organic beings; consequently there is subordination, and one body, one
+substance serves the other: thus their perfection cannot be equal.
+
+201. M. Bayle thinks (p. 1063) that M. Diroys has confused two different
+propositions. According to the one, God must do all things as wise and
+virtuous persons would wish that they should be done, by the rules of
+wisdom and of goodness that God has imprinted in them, and as they would be
+obliged themselves to do them if those things depended upon them. The other
+is that it is not consistent with supreme wisdom and goodness to fail to do
+what is best and most perfect. M. Diroys (in M. Bayle's opinion) sets up
+the first proposition as an objection for himself, and replies to the
+second. But therein he is justified, as it seems to me. For these two
+propositions are connected, the second is a result of the first: to do less
+good than one could is to be lacking in wisdom or in goodness. To be the
+best, and to be desired by those who are most virtuous and wise, comes to
+the same thing. And it may be said that, if we could understand the
+structure and the economy of the universe, we should find that it is made
+and directed as the wisest and most virtuous could wish it, since God
+cannot fail to do thus. This necessity nevertheless is only of a moral
+nature: and I admit that if God were forced by a metaphysical necessity to
+produce that which he makes, he would produce all the possibles, or
+nothing; and in this sense M. Bayle's conclusion would be fully correct.
+But as all the possibles are not compatible together in one and the same
+world-sequence, for that very reason all the possibles cannot be produced,
+and it must be said that God is not forced, metaphysically speaking,  [253]
+into the creation of this world. One may say that as soon as God has
+decreed to create something there is a struggle between all the possibles,
+all of them laying claim to existence, and that those which, being united,
+produce most reality, most perfection, most significance carry the day. It
+is true that all this struggle can only be ideal, that is to say, it can
+only be a conflict of reasons in the most perfect understanding, which
+cannot fail to act in the most perfect way, and consequently to choose the
+best. Yet God is bound by a moral necessity, to make things in such a
+manner that there can be nothing better: otherwise not only would others
+have cause to criticize what he makes, but, more than that, he would not
+himself be satisfied with his work, he would blame himself for its
+imperfection; and that conflicts with the supreme felicity of the divine
+nature. This perpetual sense of his own fault or imperfection would be to
+him an inevitable source of grief, as M. Bayle says on another occasion
+(p.953).
+
+202. M. Diroys' argument contains a false assumption, in his statement that
+nothing can change except by passing from a state less good to a better or
+from a better to a less good; and that thus, if God makes the best, what he
+has produced cannot be changed: it would be an eternal substance, a god.
+But I do not see why a thing cannot change its kind in relation to good or
+evil, without changing its degree. In the transition from enjoyment of
+music to enjoyment of painting, or _vice versa_ from the pleasure of the
+eyes to that of the ears, the degree of enjoyment may remain the same, the
+latter gaining no advantage over the former save that of novelty. If the
+quadrature of the circle should come to pass or (what is the same thing)
+the circulature of the square, that is, if the circle were changed into a
+square of the same size, or the square into a circle, it would be difficult
+to say, on the whole, without having regard to some special use, whether
+one would have gained or lost. Thus the best may be changed into another
+which neither yields to it nor surpasses it: but there will always be an
+order among them, and that the best order possible. Taking the whole
+sequence of things, the best has no equal; but one part of the sequence may
+be equalled by another part of the same sequence. Besides it might be said
+that the whole sequence of things to infinity may be the best possible,
+although what exists all through the universe in each portion of time be
+not the best. It might be therefore that the universe became even     [254]
+better and better, if the nature of things were such that it was not
+permitted to attain to the best all at once. But these are problems of
+which it is hard for us to judge.
+
+203. M. Bayle says (p. 1064) that the question whether God could have made
+things more perfect than he made them is also very difficult, and that the
+reasons for and against are very strong. But it is, so it seems to me, as
+if one were to question whether God's actions are consistent with the most
+perfect wisdom and the greatest goodness. It is a very strange thing, that
+by changing the terms a little one throws doubt upon what is, if properly
+understood, as clear as anything can be. The reasons to the contrary have
+no force, being founded only on the semblance of defects; and M. Bayle's
+objection, which tends to prove that the law of the best would impose upon
+God a true metaphysical necessity, is only an illusion that springs from
+the misuse of terms. M. Bayle formerly held a different opinion, when he
+commended that of Father Malebranche, which was akin to mine on this
+subject. But M. Arnauld having written in opposition to Father Malebranche,
+M. Bayle altered his opinion; and I suppose that his tendency towards
+doubt, which increased in him with the years, was conducive to that result.
+M. Arnauld was doubtless a great man, and his authority has great weight:
+he made sundry good observations in his writings against Father
+Malebranche, but he was not justified in contesting those of his statements
+that were akin to mine on the rule of the best.
+
+204. The excellent author of _The Search for Truth_, having passed from
+philosophy to theology, published finally an admirable treatise on Nature
+and Grace. Here he showed in his way (as M. Bayle explained in his _Divers
+Thoughts on the Comet_, ch. 234) that the events which spring from the
+enforcement of general laws are not the object of a particular will of God.
+It is true that when one wills a thing one wills also in a sense everything
+that is necessarily attached to it, and in consequence God cannot will
+general laws without also willing in a sense all the particular effects
+that must of necessity be derived from them. But it is always true that
+these particular events are not willed for their own sake, and that is what
+is meant by the expression that they are not willed by a _particular_ and
+direct _will_. There is no doubt that when God resolved to act outside
+himself, he made choice of a manner of action which should be worthy  [255]
+of the supremely perfect Being, that is, which should be infinitely simple
+and uniform, but yet of an infinite productivity. One may even suppose that
+this manner of action by _general acts of will_ appeared to him
+preferable--although there must thence result some superfluous events (and
+even bad if they are taken separately, that is my own addition)--to another
+manner more composed and more regular; such is Father Malebranche's
+opinion. Nothing is more appropriate than this assumption (according to the
+opinion of M. Bayle, when he wrote his _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_) to
+solve a thousand difficulties which are brought up against divine
+providence: 'To ask God', he says, 'why he has made things which serve to
+render men more wicked, that would be to ask why God has carried out his
+plan (which can only be of infinite beauty) by the simplest and most
+uniform methods, and why, by a complexity of decrees that would unceasingly
+cut across one another, he has not prevented the wrong use of man's free
+will.' He adds 'that miracles being particular acts of will must have an
+end worthy of God'.
+
+205. On these foundations he makes some good reflexions (ch. 231)
+concerning the injustice of those who complain of the prosperity of the
+wicked. 'I shall have no scruples', he says, 'about saying that all those
+who are surprised at the prosperity of the wicked have pondered very little
+upon the nature of God, and that they have reduced the obligations of a
+cause which directs all things, to the scope of a providence altogether
+subordinate; and that is small-minded. What then! Should God, after having
+made free causes and necessary causes, in a mixture infinitely well fitted
+to show forth the wonders of his infinite wisdom, have established laws
+consistent with the nature of free causes, but so lacking in firmness that
+the slightest trouble that came upon a man would overthrow them entirely,
+to the ruin of human freedom? A mere city governor will become an object of
+ridicule if he changes his regulations and orders as often as someone is
+pleased to murmur against him. And shall God, whose laws concern a good so
+universal that all of the world that is visible to us perchance enters into
+it as no more than a trifling accessary, be bound to depart from his laws,
+because they to-day displease the one and to-morrow the other? Or again
+because a superstitious person, deeming wrongly that a monstrosity presages
+something deadly, proceeds from his error to a criminal sacrifice? Or
+because a good soul, who yet does not value virtue highly enough to   [256]
+believe that to have none is punishment enough in itself, is shocked that a
+wicked man should become rich and enjoy vigorous health? Can one form any
+falser notions of a universal providence? Everyone agrees that this law of
+nature, the strong prevails over the weak, has been very wisely laid down,
+and that it would be absurd to maintain that when a stone falls on a
+fragile vase which is the delight of its owner, God should depart from this
+law in order to spare that owner vexation. Should one then not confess that
+it is just as absurd to maintain that God must depart from the same law to
+prevent a wicked man from growing rich at the expense of a good man? The
+more the wicked man sets himself above the promptings of conscience and of
+honour, the more does he exceed the good man in strength, so that if he
+comes to grips with the good man he must, according to the course of
+nature, ruin him. If, moreover, they are both engaged in the business of
+finance, the wicked man must, according to the same course of nature, grow
+richer than the good man, just as a fierce fire consumes more wood than a
+fire of straw. Those who would wish sickness for a wicked man are sometimes
+as unfair as those who would wish that a stone falling on a glass should
+not break it: for his organs being arranged as they are, neither the food
+that he takes nor the air that he breathes can, according to natural laws,
+be detrimental to his health. Therefore those who complain about his health
+complain of God's failure to violate the laws which he has established. And
+in this they are all the more unfair because, through combinations and
+concatenations which were in the power of God alone, it happens often
+enough that the course of nature brings about the punishment of sin.'
+
+206. It is a thousand pities that M. Bayle so soon quitted the way he had
+so auspiciously begun, of reasoning on behalf of providence: for his work
+would have been fruitful, and in saying fine things he would have said good
+things as well. I agree with Father Malebranche that God does things in the
+way most worthy of him. But I go a little further than he, with regard to
+'general and particular acts of will'. As God can do nothing without
+reasons, even when he acts miraculously, it follows that he has no will
+about individual events but what results from some general truth or will.
+Thus I would say that God never has a _particular will_ such as this Father
+implies, that is to say, _a particular primitive will_.
+
+                                                                      [257]
+207. I think even that miracles have nothing to distinguish them from other
+events in this regard: for reasons of an order superior to that of Nature
+prompt God to perform them. Thus I would not say, with this Father, that
+God departs from general laws whenever order requires it: he departs from
+one law only for another law more applicable, and what order requires
+cannot fail to be in conformity with the rule of order, which is one of the
+general laws. The distinguishing mark of miracles (taken in the strictest
+sense) is that they cannot be accounted for by the natures of created
+things. That is why, should God make a general law causing bodies to be
+attracted the one to the other, he could only achieve its operation by
+perpetual miracles. And likewise, if God willed that the organs of human
+bodies should conform to the will of the soul, according to the _system of
+occasional causes_, this law also would come into operation only through
+perpetual miracles.
+
+208. Thus one must suppose that, among the general rules which are not
+absolutely necessary, God chooses those which are the most natural, which
+it is easiest to explain, and which also are of greatest service for the
+explanation of other things. That is doubtless the conclusion most
+excellent and most pleasing; and even though the System of Pre-established
+Harmony were not necessary otherwise, because it banishes superfluous
+miracles, God would have chosen it as being the most harmonious. The ways
+of God are those most simple and uniform: for he chooses rules that least
+restrict one another. They are also the most _productive_ in proportion to
+the _simplicity of ways and means_. It is as if one said that a certain
+house was the best that could have been constructed at a certain cost. One
+may, indeed, reduce these two conditions, simplicity and productivity, to a
+single advantage, which is to produce as much perfection as is possible:
+thus Father Malebranche's system in this point amounts to the same as mine.
+Even if the effect were assumed to be greater, but the process less simple,
+I think one might say that, when all is said and done, the effect itself
+would be less great, taking into account not only the final effect but also
+the mediate effect. For the wisest mind so acts, as far as it is possible,
+that the _means_ are also in a sense _ends_, that is, they are desirable
+not only on account of what they do, but on account of what they are. The
+more intricate processes take up too much ground, too much space, too much
+place, too much time that might have been better employed.
+
+                                                                      [258]
+209. Now since everything resolves itself into this greatest perfection, we
+return to my law of the best. For perfection includes not only the _moral
+good_ and the _physical good_ of intelligent creatures, but also the good
+which is purely _metaphysical_, and concerns also creatures devoid of
+reason. It follows that the evil that is in rational creatures happens only
+by concomitance, not by antecedent will but by a consequent will, as being
+involved in the best possible plan; and the metaphysical good which
+includes everything makes it necessary sometimes to admit physical evil and
+moral evil, as I have already explained more than once. It so happens that
+the ancient Stoics were not far removed from this system. M. Bayle remarked
+upon this himself in his _Dictionary_ in the article on 'Chrysippus', rem.
+T. It is of importance to give his own words, in order sometimes to face
+him with his own objections and to bring him back to the fine sentiments
+that he had formerly pronounced: 'Chrysippus', he says (p. 930), 'in his
+work on Providence examined amongst other questions this one: Did the
+nature of things, or the providence that made the world and the human kind,
+make also the diseases to which men are subject? He answers that the chief
+design of Nature was not to make them sickly, that would not be in keeping
+with the cause of all good; but Nature, in preparing and producing many
+great things excellently ordered and of great usefulness, found that some
+drawbacks came as a result, and thus these were not in conformity with the
+original design and purpose; they came about as a sequel to the work, they
+existed only as consequences. For the formation of the human body,
+Chrysippus said, the finest idea as well as the very utility of the work
+demanded that the head should be composed of a tissue of thin, fine bones;
+but because of that it was bound to have the disadvantage of not being able
+to resist blows. Nature made health, and at the same time it was necessary
+by a kind of concomitance that the source of diseases should be opened up.
+The same thing applies with regard to virtue; the direct action of Nature,
+which brought it forth, produced by a counter stroke the brood of vices. I
+have not translated literally, for which reason I give here the actual
+Latin of Aulus Gellius, for the benefit of those who understand that
+language (Aul. Gellius, lib. 6, cap. 1): "Idem Chrysippus in eod. lib.
+(quarto, [Greek: peri pronoias]) tractat consideratque, dignumque esse id
+quaeri putat, [Greek: ei hai tôn anthrôpôn nosoi kata physin gignontai]. Id
+est, naturane ipsa rerum, vel providentia quae compagem hanc mundi et [259]
+genus hominum fecit, morbos quoque et debilitates et aegritudines corporum,
+quas patiuntur homines, fecerit. Existimat autem non fuisse hoc principale
+naturae consilium, ut faceret homines morbis obnoxios. Nunquam enim hoc
+convenisse naturae auctori parentique rerum omnium bonarum. Sed quum multa,
+inquit, atque magna gigneret, pareretque aptissima et utilissima, alia
+quoque simul agnata sunt incommoda iis ipsis, quae faciebat, cohaerentia:
+eaque non per naturam, sed per sequelas quasdam necessarias facta dicit,
+quod ipse appellat [Greek: kata parakolouthêsin]. Sicut, inquit, quum
+corpora hominum natura fingeret, ratio subtilior et utilitas ipsa operis
+postulavit ut tenuissimis minutisque ossiculis caput compingeret. Sed hanc
+utilitatem rei majoris alia quaedam incommoditas extrinsecus consecuta est,
+ut fieret caput tenuiter munitum et ictibus offensionibusque parvis
+fragile. Proinde morbi quoque et aegritudines partae sunt, dum salus
+paritur. Sic Hercle, inquit, dum virtus hominibus per consilium naturae
+gignitur, vitia ibidem per affinitatem contrariam nata sunt." I do not
+think that a pagan could have said anything more reasonable, considering
+his ignorance of the first man's fall, the knowledge of which has only
+reached us through revelation, and which indeed is the true cause of our
+miseries. If we had sundry like extracts from the works of Chrysippus, or
+rather if we had his works, we should have a more favourable idea than we
+have of the beauty of his genius.'
+
+210. Let us now see the reverse of the medal in the altered M. Bayle. After
+having quoted in his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III,
+ch. 155, p. 962) these words of M. Jacquelot, which are much to my liking:
+'To change the order of the universe is something of infinitely greater
+consequence than the prosperity of a good man,' he adds: 'This thought has
+something dazzling about it: Father Malebranche has placed it in the best
+possible light; and he has persuaded some of his readers that a system
+which is simple and very productive is more consistent with God's wisdom
+than a system more composite and less productive in proportion, but more
+capable of averting irregularities. M. Bayle was one of those who believed
+that Father Malebranche in that way gave a wonderful solution.' (It is M.
+Bayle himself speaking.) 'But it is almost impossible to be satisfied with
+it after having read M. Arnauld's books against this system, and after
+having contemplated the vast and boundless idea of the supremely      [260]
+perfect Being. This idea shows us that nothing is easier for God than to
+follow a plan which is simple, productive, regular and opportune for all
+creatures simultaneously.'
+
+211. While I was in France I showed to M. Arnauld a dialogue I had composed
+in Latin on the cause of evil and the justice of God; it was not only
+before his disputes with Father Malebranche, but even before the book on
+_The Search for Truth_ appeared. That principle which I uphold here, namely
+that sin had been permitted because it had been involved in the best plan
+for the universe, was already applied there; and M. Arnauld did not seem to
+be startled by it. But the slight contentions which he has since had with
+Father Malebranche have given him cause to examine this subject with closer
+attention, and to be more severe in his judgement thereof. Yet I am not
+altogether pleased with M. Bayle's manner of expression here on this
+subject, and I am not of the opinion 'that a more composite and less
+productive plan might be more capable of averting irregularities'. Rules
+are the expression of general will: the more one observes rules, the more
+regularity there is; simplicity and productivity are the aim of rules. I
+shall be met with the objection that a uniform system will be free from
+irregularities. I answer that it would be an irregularity to be too
+uniform, that would offend against the rules of harmony. _Et citharoedus
+Ridetur chorda qui semper oberrat eadem_. I believe therefore that God can
+follow a simple, productive, regular plan; but I do not believe that the
+best and the most regular is always opportune for all creatures
+simultaneously; and I judge _a posteriori_, for the plan chosen by God is
+not so. I have, however, also shown this _a priori_ in examples taken from
+mathematics, and I will presently give another here. An Origenist who
+maintains that all rational creatures become happy in the end will be still
+easier to satisfy. He will say, in imitation of St. Paul's saying about the
+sufferings of this life, that those which are finite are not worthy to be
+compared with eternal bliss.
+
+212. What is deceptive in this subject, as I have already observed, is that
+one feels an inclination to believe that what is the best in the whole is
+also the best possible in each part. One reasons thus in geometry, when it
+is a question _de maximis et minimis_. If the road from A to B that one
+proposes to take is the shortest possible, and if this road passes by C,
+then the road from A to C, part of the first, must also be the shortest
+possible. But the inference from _quantity_ to _quality_ is not always[261]
+right, any more than that which is drawn from equals to similars. For
+_equals_ are those whose quantity is the same, and _similars_ are those not
+differing according to qualities. The late Herr Sturm, a famous
+mathematician in Altorf, while in Holland in his youth published there a
+small book under the title of _Euclides Catholicus_. Here he endeavoured to
+give exact and general rules in subjects not mathematical, being encouraged
+in the task by the late Herr Erhard Weigel, who had been his tutor. In this
+book he transfers to similars what Euclid had said of equals, and he
+formulates this axiom: _Si similibus addas similia, tota sunt similia_. But
+so many limitations were necessary to justify this new rule, that it would
+have been better, in my opinion, to enounce it at the outset with a
+reservation, by saying, _Si similibus similia addas similiter, tota sunt
+similia_. Moreover, geometricians often require _non tantum similia, sed et
+similiter posita_.
+
+213. This difference between quantity and quality appears also in our case.
+The part of the shortest way between two extreme points is also the
+shortest way between the extreme points of this part; but the part of the
+best Whole is not of necessity the best that one could have made of this
+part. For the part of a beautiful thing is not always beautiful, since it
+can be extracted from the whole, or marked out within the whole, in an
+irregular manner. If goodness and beauty always lay in something absolute
+and uniform, such as extension, matter, gold, water, and other bodies
+assumed to be homogeneous or similar, one must say that the part of the
+good and the beautiful would be beautiful and good like the whole, since it
+would always have resemblance to the whole: but this is not the case in
+things that have mutual relations. An example taken from geometry will be
+appropriate to explain my idea.
+
+214. There is a kind of geometry which Herr Jung of Hamburg, one of the
+most admirable men of his time, called 'empiric'. It makes use of
+conclusive experiments and proves various propositions of Euclid, but
+especially those which concern the equality of two figures, by cutting the
+one in pieces, and putting the pieces together again to make the other. In
+this manner, by cutting carefully in parts the squares on the two sides of
+the right-angled triangle, and arranging these parts carefully, one makes
+from them the square on the hypotenuse; that is demonstrating empirically
+the 47th proposition of the first book of Euclid. Now supposing that some
+of these pieces taken from the two smaller squares are lost, something[262]
+will be lacking in the large square that is to be formed from them; and
+this defective combination, far from pleasing, will be disagreeably ugly.
+If then the pieces that remained, composing the faulty combination, were
+taken separately without any regard to the large square to whose formation
+they ought to contribute, one would group them together quite differently
+to make a tolerably good combination. But as soon as the lost pieces are
+retrieved and the gap in the faulty combination is filled, there will ensue
+a beautiful and regular thing, the complete large square: this perfect
+combination will be far more beautiful than the tolerably good combination
+which had been made from the pieces one had not mislaid alone. The perfect
+combination corresponds to the universe in its entirety, and the faulty
+combination that is a part of the perfect one corresponds to some part of
+the universe, where we find defects which the Author of things has allowed,
+because otherwise, if he had wished to re-shape this faulty part and make
+thereof a tolerably good combination, the whole would not then have been so
+beautiful. For the parts of the faulty combination, grouped better to make
+a tolerably good combination, could not have been used properly to form the
+whole and perfect combination. Thomas Aquinas had an inkling of these
+things when he said: _ad prudentem gubernatorem pertinet, negligere aliquem
+defectum bonitatis in parte, ut faciat augmentum bonitatis in toto_ (Thom.,
+_Contra Gentiles_, lib. 2, c. 71). Thomas Gatacre, in his Notes on the book
+of Marcus Aurelius (lib. 5, cap. 8, with M. Bayle), cites also passages
+from authors who say that the evil of the parts is often the good of the
+whole.
+
+215. Let us return to M. Bayle's illustrations. He imagines a prince (p.
+963) who is having a city built, and who, in bad taste, aims rather at airs
+of magnificence therein, and a bold and unusual style of architecture, than
+at the provision of conveniences of all kinds for the inhabitants. But if
+this prince has true magnanimity he will prefer the convenient to the
+magnificent architecture. That is M. Bayle's judgement. I consider,
+however, that there are cases where one will justifiably prefer beauty of
+construction in a palace to the convenience of a few domestics. But I admit
+that the construction would be bad, however beautiful it might be, if it
+were a cause of diseases to the inhabitants; provided it was possible to
+make one that would be better, taking into account beauty, convenience and
+health all together. It may be, indeed, that one cannot have all these[263]
+advantages at once. Thus, supposing one wished to build on the northern and
+more bracing side of the mountain, if the castle were then bound to be of
+an unendurable construction, one would prefer to make it face southward.
+
+216. M. Bayle raises the further objection, that it is true that our
+legislators can never invent regulations such as are convenient for all
+individuals, 'Nulla lex satis commoda omnibus est; id modo quaeritur, si
+majori parti et in summam prodest. (Cato apud Livium, L. 34, circa init.)'
+But the reason is that the limited condition of their knowledge compels
+them to cling to laws which, when all is taken into account, are more
+advantageous than harmful. Nothing of all that can apply to God, who is as
+infinite in power and understanding as in goodness and true greatness. I
+answer that since God chooses the best possible, one cannot tax him with
+any limitation of his perfections; and in the universe not only does the
+good exceed the evil, but also the evil serves to augment the good.
+
+217. He observes also that the Stoics derived a blasphemy from this
+principle, saying that evils must be endured with patience, or that they
+were necessary, not only to the well-being and completeness of the
+universe, but also to the felicity, perfection and conservation of God, who
+directs it. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius gave expression to that in the
+eighth chapter of the fifth book of his _Meditations_. 'Duplici ratione',
+he says, 'diligas oportet, quidquid evenerit tibi; altera quod tibi natum
+et tibi coordinatum et ad te quodammodo affectum est; altera quod universi
+gubernatori prosperitatis et consummationis atque adeo permansionis ipsius
+procurandae ([Greek: tês euodias kai tês synteleias kai tês symmonês
+autês]) ex parte causa est.' This precept is not the most reasonable of
+those stated by that great emperor. A _diligas oportet_ ([Greek: stergein
+chrê]) is of no avail; a thing does not become pleasing just because it is
+necessary, and because it is destined for or attached to someone: and what
+for me would be an evil would not cease to be such because it would be my
+master's good, unless this good reflected back on me. One good thing among
+others in the universe is that the general good becomes in reality the
+individual good of those who love the Author of all good. But the principal
+error of this emperor and of the Stoics was their assumption that the good
+of the universe must please God himself, because they imagined God as the
+soul of the world. This error has nothing in common with my dogma,    [264]
+according to which God is _Intelligentia extramundana_, as Martianus
+Capella calls him, or rather _supramundana_. Further, he acts to do good,
+and not to receive it. _Melius est dare quam accipere_; his bliss is ever
+perfect and can receive no increase, either from within or from without.
+
+218. I come now to the principal objection M. Bayle, after M. Arnauld,
+brings up against me. It is complicated: they maintain that God would be
+under compulsion, that he would act of necessity, if he were bound to
+create the best; or at least that he would have been lacking in power if he
+could not have found a better expedient for excluding sins and other evils.
+That is in effect denying that this universe is the best, and that God is
+bound to insist upon the best. I have met this objection adequately in more
+than one passage: I have proved that God cannot fail to produce the best;
+and from that assumption it follows that the evils we experience could not
+have been reasonably excluded from the universe, since they are there. Let
+us see, however, what these two excellent men bring up, or rather let us
+see what M. Bayle's objection is, for he professes to have profited by the
+arguments of M. Arnauld.
+
+219. 'Would it be possible', he says, _Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 158, p. 890, 'that a nature whose goodness,
+holiness, wisdom, knowledge and power are infinite, who loves virtue
+supremely, and hates vice supremely, as our clear and distinct idea of him
+shows us, and as well-nigh every page of Scripture assures us, could have
+found in virtue no means fitting and suited for his ends? Would it be
+possible that vice alone had offered him this means? One would have thought
+on the contrary that nothing beseemed this nature more than to establish
+virtue in his work to the exclusion of all vice.' M. Bayle here exaggerates
+things. I agree that some vice was connected with the best plan of the
+universe, but I do not agree with him that God could not find in virtue any
+means suited for his ends. This objection would have been valid if there
+were no virtue, if vice took its place everywhere. He will say it suffices
+that vice prevails and that virtue is trifling in comparison. But I am far
+from agreeing with him there, and I think that in reality, properly
+speaking, there is incomparably more moral good than moral evil in rational
+creatures; and of these we have knowledge of but few.
+
+220. This evil is not even so great in men as it is declared to be. It[265]
+is only people of a malicious disposition or those who have become somewhat
+misanthropic through misfortunes, like Lucian's Timon, who find wickedness
+everywhere, and who poison the best actions by the interpretations they
+give to them. I speak of those who do it in all seriousness, to draw thence
+evil conclusions, by which their conduct is tainted; for there are some who
+only do it to show off their own acumen. People have found that fault in
+Tacitus, and that again is the criticism M. Descartes (in one of his
+letters) makes of Mr. Hobbes's book _De Cive_, of which only a few copies
+had at that time been printed for distribution among friends, but to which
+some notes by the author were added in the second edition which we have.
+For although M. Descartes acknowledges that this book is by a man of
+talent, he observes therein some very dangerous principles and maxims, in
+the assumption there made that all men are wicked, or the provision of them
+with motives for being so. The late Herr Jacob Thomasius said in his
+admirable _Tables of Practical Philosophy_ that the [Greek: prôton
+pseudos], the primary cause of errors in this book by Mr. Hobbes, was that
+he took _statum legalem pro naturali_, that is to say that the corrupt
+state served him as a gauge and rule, whereas it is the state most
+befitting human nature which Aristotle had had in view. For according to
+Aristotle, that is termed _natural_ which conforms most closely to the
+perfection of the nature of the thing; but Mr. Hobbes applies the term
+_natural state_ to that which has least art, perhaps not taking into
+account that human nature in its perfection carries art with it. But the
+question of name, that is to say, of what may be called natural, would not
+be of great importance were it not that Aristotle and Hobbes fastened upon
+it the notion of natural right, each one following his own signification. I
+have said here already that I found in the book on the Falsity of human
+Virtues the same defect as M. Descartes found in Mr. Hobbes's _De Cive_.
+
+221. But even if we assume that vice exceeds virtue in the human kind, as
+it is assumed the number of the damned exceeds that of the elect, it by no
+means follows that vice and misery exceed virtue and happiness in the
+universe: one should rather believe the opposite, because the City of God
+must be the most perfect of all possible states, since it was formed and is
+perpetually governed by the greatest and best of all Monarchs. This answer
+confirms the observation I made earlier, when speaking of the conformity of
+faith with reason, namely, that one of the greatest sources of fallacy[266]
+in the objections is the confusion of the apparent with the real. And here
+by the apparent I mean not simply such as would result from an exact
+discussion of facts, but that which has been derived from the small extent
+of our experiences. It would be senseless to try to bring up appearances so
+imperfect, and having such slight foundation, in opposition to the proofs
+of reason and the revelations of faith.
+
+222. Finally, I have already observed that love of virtue and hatred of
+vice, which tend in an undefined way to bring virtue into existence and to
+prevent the existence of vice, are only antecedent acts of will, such as is
+the will to bring about the happiness of all men and to save them from
+misery. These acts of antecedent will make up only a portion of all the
+antecedent will of God taken together, whose result forms the consequent
+will, or the decree to create the best. Through this decree it is that love
+for virtue and for the happiness of rational creatures, which is undefined
+in itself and goes as far as is possible, receives some slight limitations,
+on account of the heed that must be paid to good in general. Thus one must
+understand that God loves virtue supremely and hates vice supremely, and
+that nevertheless some vice is to be permitted.
+
+223. M. Arnauld and M. Bayle appear to maintain that this method of
+explaining things and of establishing a best among all the plans for the
+universe, one such as may not be surpassed by any other, sets a limit to
+God's power. 'Have you considered', says M. Arnauld to Father Malebranche
+(in his _Reflexions on the New System of Nature and Grace_, vol. II, p.
+385), 'that in making such assumptions you take it upon yourself to subvert
+the first article of the creed, whereby we make profession of believing in
+God the Father Almighty?' He had said already (p. 362): 'Can one maintain,
+without trying to blind oneself, that a course of action which could not
+fail to have this grievous result, namely, that the majority of men perish,
+bears the stamp of God's goodness more than a different course of action,
+which would have caused, if God had followed it, the salvation of all men?'
+And, as M. Jacquelot does not differ from the principles I have just laid
+down, M. Bayle raises like objections in his case (_Reply to the Questions
+of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 151, p. 900): 'If one adopts such
+explanations', he says, 'one sees oneself constrained to renounce the most
+obvious notions on the nature of the supremely perfect Being. These teach
+us that all things not implying contradiction are possible for him,   [267]
+that consequently it is possible for him to save people whom he does not
+save: for what contradiction would result supposing the number of the elect
+were greater than it is? They teach us besides that, since he is supremely
+happy, he has no will which he cannot carry out. How, then, shall we
+understand that he wills to save all men and that he cannot do so? We
+sought some light to help us out of the perplexities we feel in comparing
+the idea of God with the state of the human kind, and lo! we are given
+elucidations that cast us into darkness more dense.'
+
+224. All these obstacles vanish before the exposition I have just given. I
+agree with M. Bayle's principle, and it is also mine, that everything
+implying no contradiction is possible. But as for me, holding as I do that
+God did the best that was possible, or that he could not have done better
+than he has done, deeming also that to pass any other judgement upon his
+work in its entirety would be to wrong his goodness or his wisdom, I must
+say that to make something which surpasses in goodness the best itself,
+that indeed would imply contradiction. That would be as if someone
+maintained that God could draw from one point to another a line shorter
+than the straight line, and accused those who deny this of subverting the
+article of faith whereby we believe in God the Father Almighty.
+
+225. The infinity of possibles, however great it may be, is no greater than
+that of the wisdom of God, who knows all possibles. One may even say that
+if this wisdom does not exceed the possibles extensively, since the objects
+of the understanding cannot go beyond the possible, which in a sense is
+alone intelligible, it exceeds them intensively, by reason of the
+infinitely infinite combinations it makes thereof, and its many
+deliberations concerning them. The wisdom of God, not content with
+embracing all the possibles, penetrates them, compares them, weighs them
+one against the other, to estimate their degrees of perfection or
+imperfection, the strong and the weak, the good and the evil. It goes even
+beyond the finite combinations, it makes of them an infinity of infinites,
+that is to say, an infinity of possible sequences of the universe, each of
+which contains an infinity of creatures. By this means the divine Wisdom
+distributes all the possibles it had already contemplated separately, into
+so many universal systems which it further compares the one with the other.
+The result of all these comparisons and deliberations is the choice of the
+best from among all these possible systems, which wisdom makes in     [268]
+order to satisfy goodness completely; and such is precisely the plan of the
+universe as it is. Moreover, all these operations of the divine
+understanding, although they have among them an order and a priority of
+nature, always take place together, no priority of time existing among
+them.
+
+226. The careful consideration of these things will, I hope, induce a
+different idea of the greatness of the divine perfections, and especially
+of the wisdom and goodness of God, from any that can exist in the minds of
+those who make God act at random, without cause or reason. And I do not see
+how they could avoid falling into an opinion so strange, unless they
+acknowledged that there are reasons for God's choice, and that these
+reasons are derived from his goodness: whence it follows of necessity that
+what was chosen had the advantage of goodness over what was not chosen, and
+consequently that it is the best of all the possibles. The best cannot be
+surpassed in goodness, and it is no restriction of the power of God to say
+that he cannot do the impossible. Is it possible, said M. Bayle, that there
+is no better plan than that one which God carried out? One answers that it
+is very possible and indeed necessary, namely that there is none: otherwise
+God would have preferred it.
+
+227. It seems to me that I have proved sufficiently that among all the
+possible plans of the universe there is one better than all the rest, and
+that God has not failed to choose it. But M. Bayle claims to infer thence
+that God is therefore not free. This is how he speaks on that question
+(_ubi supra_, ch. 151, p. 899): 'I thought to argue with a man who assumed
+as I do that the goodness and the power of God are infinite, as well as his
+wisdom; and now I see that in reality this man assumes that God's goodness
+and power are enclosed within rather narrow bounds.' As to that, the
+objection has already been met: I set no bounds to God's power, since I
+recognize that it extends _ad maximum, ad omnia_, to all that implies no
+contradiction; and I set none to his goodness, since it attains to the
+best, _ad optimum_. But M. Bayle goes on: 'There is therefore no freedom in
+God; he is compelled by his wisdom to create, and then to create precisely
+such a work, and finally to create it precisely in such ways. These are
+three servitudes which form a more than Stoic _fatum_, and which render
+impossible all that is not within their sphere. It seems that, according to
+this system, God could have said, even before shaping his decrees: I  [269]
+cannot save such and such a man, nor condemn such and such another, _quippe
+vetor fatis_, my wisdom permits it not.'
+
+228. I answer that it is goodness which prompts God to create with the
+purpose of communicating himself; and this same goodness combined with
+wisdom prompts him to create the best: a best that includes the whole
+sequence, the effect and the process. It prompts him thereto without
+compelling him, for it does not render impossible that which it does not
+cause him to choose. To call that _fatum_ is taking it in a good sense,
+which is not contrary to freedom: _fatum_ comes from _fari_, to speak, to
+pronounce; it signifies a judgement, a decree of God, the award of his
+wisdom. To say that one cannot do a thing, simply because one does not will
+it, is to misuse terms. The wise mind wills only the good: is it then a
+servitude when the will acts in accordance with wisdom? And can one be less
+a slave than to act by one's own choice in accordance with the most perfect
+reason? Aristotle used to say that that man is in a natural servitude
+(_natura servus_) who lacks guidance, who has need of being directed.
+Slavery comes from without, it leads to that which offends, and especially
+to that which offends with reason: the force of others and our own passions
+enslave us. God is never moved by anything outside himself, nor is he
+subject to inward passions, and he is never led to that which can cause him
+offence. It appears, therefore, that M. Bayle gives odious names to the
+best things in the world, and turns our ideas upside-down, applying the
+term slavery to the state of the greatest and most perfect freedom.
+
+229. He had also said not long before (ch. 151, p. 891): 'If virtue, or any
+other good at all, had been as appropriate as vice for the Creator's ends,
+vice would not have been given preference; it must therefore have been the
+only means that the Creator could have used; it was therefore employed
+purely of necessity. As therefore he loves his glory, not with a freedom of
+indifference, but by necessity, he must by necessity love all the means
+without which he could not manifest his glory. Now if vice, as vice, was
+the only means of attaining to this end, it will follow that God of
+necessity loves vice as vice, a thought which can only inspire us with
+horror; and he has revealed quite the contrary to us.' He observes at the
+same time that certain doctors among the Supralapsarians (like Rutherford,
+for example) denied that God wills sin as sin, whilst they admitted   [270]
+that he wills sin permissively in so far as it is punishable and
+pardonable. But he urges in objection, that an action is only punishable
+and pardonable in so far as it is vicious.
+
+230. M. Bayle makes a false assumption in these words that we have just
+read, and draws from them false conclusions. It is not true that God loves
+his glory by necessity, if thereby it is understood that he is led by
+necessity to acquire his glory through his creatures. For if that were so,
+he would acquire his glory always and everywhere. The decree to create is
+free: God is prompted to all good; the good, and even the best, inclines
+him to act; but it does not compel him, for his choice creates no
+impossibility in that which is distinct from the best; it causes no
+implication of contradiction in that which God refrains from doing. There
+is therefore in God a freedom that is exempt not only from constraint but
+also from necessity. I mean this in respect of metaphysical necessity; for
+it is a moral necessity that the wisest should be bound to choose the best.
+It is the same with the means which God chooses to attain his glory. And as
+for vice, it has been shown in preceding pages that it is not an object of
+God's decree as _means_, but as _conditio sine qua non_, and that for that
+reason alone it is permitted. One is even less justified in saying that
+vice is _the only means_; it would be at most one of the means, but one of
+the least among innumerable others.
+
+231. 'Another frightful consequence,' M. Bayle goes on, 'the fatality of
+all things, ensues: God will not have been free to arrange events in a
+different way, since the means he chose to show forth his glory was the
+only means befitting his wisdom.' This so-called fatality or necessity is
+only moral, as I have just shown: it does not affect freedom; on the
+contrary, it assumes the best use thereof; it does not render impossible
+the objects set aside by God's choice. 'What, then, will become', he adds,
+'of man's free will? Will there not have been necessity and fatality for
+Adam to sin? For if he had not sinned, he would have overthrown the sole
+plan that God had of necessity created.' That is again a misuse of terms.
+Adam sinning freely was seen of God among the ideas of the possibles, and
+God decreed to admit him into existence as he saw him. This decree does not
+change the nature of the objects: it does not render necessary that which
+was contingent in itself, or impossible that which was possible.
+
+                                                                      [271]
+232. M. Bayle goes on (p. 892): 'The subtle Scotus asserts with much
+discernment that if God had no freedom of indifference no creature could
+have this kind of freedom.' I agree provided it is not meant as an
+indifference of equipoise, where there is no reason inclining more to one
+side than the other. M. Bayle acknowledges (farther on in chapter 168, p.
+1111) that what is termed indifference does not exclude prevenient
+inclinations and pleasures. It suffices therefore that there be no
+metaphysical necessity in the action which is termed free, that is to say,
+it suffices that a choice be made between several courses possible.
+
+233. He goes on again in the said chapter 157, p. 893: 'If God is not
+determined to create the world by a free motion of his goodness, but by the
+interests of his glory, which he loves by necessity, and which is the only
+thing he loves, for it is not different from his substance; and if the love
+that he has for himself has compelled him to show forth his glory through
+the most fitting means, and if the fall of man was this same means, it is
+evident that this fall happened entirely by necessity and that the
+obedience of Eve and Adam to God's commands was impossible.' Still the same
+error. The love that God bears to himself is essential to him, but the love
+for his glory, or the will to acquire his glory, is not so by any means:
+the love he has for himself did not impel him by necessity to actions
+without; they were free; and since there were possible plans whereby the
+first parents should not sin, their sin was therefore not necessary.
+Finally, I say in effect what M. Bayle acknowledges here, 'that God
+resolved to create the world by a free motion of his goodness'; and I add
+that this same motion prompted him to the best.
+
+234. The same answer holds good against this statement of M. Bayle's (ch.
+165, p. 1071): 'The means most appropriate for attaining an end is of
+necessity one alone' (that is very well said, at least for the cases where
+God has chosen). 'Therefore if God was prompted irresistibly to employ this
+means, he employed it by necessity.' (He was certainly prompted thereto, he
+was determined, or rather he determined himself thereto: but that which is
+certain is not always necessary, or altogether irresistible; the thing
+might have gone otherwise, but that did not happen, and with good reason.
+God chose between different courses all possible: thus, metaphysically
+speaking, he could have chosen or done what was not the best; but he could
+not morally speaking have done so. Let us make use of a comparison    [272]
+from geometry. The best way from one point to another (leaving out of
+account obstacles and other considerations accidental to the medium) is one
+alone: it is that one which passes by the shortest line, which is the
+straight line. Yet there are innumerable ways from one point to another.
+There is therefore no necessity which binds me to go by the straight line;
+but as soon as I choose the best, I am determined to go that way, although
+this is only a moral necessity in the wise. That is why the following
+conclusions fail.) 'Therefore he could only do that which he did. Therefore
+that which has not happened or will never happen is absolutely impossible.'
+(These conclusions fail, I say: for since there are many things which have
+never happened and never will happen, and which nevertheless are clearly
+conceivable, and imply no contradiction, how can one say they are
+altogether impossible? M. Bayle has refuted that himself in a passage
+opposing the Spinozists, which I have already quoted here, and he has
+frequently acknowledged that there is nothing impossible except that which
+implies contradiction: now he changes style and terminology.) 'Therefore
+Adam's perseverance in innocence was always impossible; therefore his fall
+was altogether inevitable, and even antecedently to God's decree, for it
+implied contradiction that God should be able to will a thing opposed to
+his wisdom: it is, after all, the same thing to say, that it is impossible
+for God, as to say, God could do it, if he so willed, but he cannot will
+it.' (It is misusing terms in a sense to say here: one can will, one will
+will; 'can' here concerns the actions that one does will. Nevertheless it
+implies no contradiction that God should will--directly or permissively--a
+thing not implying contradiction, and in this sense it is permitted to say
+that God can will it.)
+
+235. In a word, when one speaks of the _possibility_ of a thing it is not a
+question of the causes that can bring about or prevent its actual
+existence: otherwise one would change the nature of the terms, and render
+useless the distinction between the possible and the actual. This Abelard
+did, and Wyclif appears to have done after him, in consequence of which
+they fell needlessly into unsuitable and disagreeable expressions. That is
+why, when one asks if a thing is possible or necessary, and brings in the
+consideration of what God wills or chooses, one alters the issue. For God
+chooses among the possibles, and for that very reason he chooses      [273]
+freely, and is not compelled; there would be neither choice nor freedom if
+there were but one course possible.
+
+236. One must also answer M. Bayle's syllogisms, so as to neglect none of
+the objections of a man so gifted: they occur in Chapter 151 of his _Reply
+to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, pp. 900, 901).
+
+FIRST SYLLOGISM
+
+'God can will nothing that is opposed to the necessary love which he has
+for his wisdom.
+
+'Now the salvation of all men is opposed to the necessary love which God
+has for his wisdom.
+
+'Therefore God cannot will the salvation of all men.'
+
+The major is self-evident, for one can do nothing whereof the opposite is
+necessary. But the minor cannot be accepted, for, albeit God loves his
+wisdom of necessity, the actions whereto his wisdom prompts him cannot but
+be free, and the objects whereto his wisdom does not prompt him do not
+cease to be possible. Moreover, his wisdom has prompted him to will the
+salvation of all men, but not by a consequent and decretory will. Yet this
+consequent will, being only a result of free antecedent acts of will,
+cannot fail to be free also.
+
+SECOND SYLLOGISM
+
+'The work most worthy of God's wisdom involves amongst other things the sin
+of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of men.
+
+'Now God wills of necessity the work most worthy of his wisdom.
+
+'He wills therefore of necessity the work that involves amongst other
+things the sin of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of
+men.'
+
+The major holds good, but the minor I deny. The decrees of God are always
+free, even though God be always prompted thereto by reasons which lie in
+the intention towards good: for to be morally compelled by wisdom, to be
+bound by the consideration of good, is to be free; it is not compulsion in
+the metaphysical sense. And metaphysical necessity alone, as I have
+observed so many times, is opposed to freedom.
+
+238. I shall not examine the syllogisms that M. Bayle urges in objection in
+the following chapter (Ch. 152), against the system of the Supralapsarians,
+and particularly against the oration made by Theodore de Bèze at the  [274]
+Conference of Montbéliard in the year 1586. This conference also only
+served to increase the acrimony of the parties. 'God created the World to
+his glory: his glory is not known (according to Bèze), if his mercy and his
+justice are not declared; for this cause simply by his grace he decreed for
+some men life eternal, and for others by a just judgement eternal
+damnation. Mercy presupposes misery, justice presupposes guilt.' (He might
+have added that misery also supposes guilt.) 'Nevertheless God being good,
+indeed goodness itself, he created man good and righteous, but unstable,
+and capable of sinning of his own free will. Man did not fall at random or
+rashly, or through causes ordained by some other God, as the Manichaeans
+hold, but by the providence of God; in such a way notwithstanding, that God
+was not involved in the fault, inasmuch as man was not constrained to sin.'
+
+239. This system is not of the best conceived: it is not well fitted to
+show forth the wisdom, the goodness and the justice of God; and happily it
+is almost abandoned to-day. If there were not other more profound reasons
+capable of inducing God to permit guilt, the source of misery, there would
+be neither guilt nor misery in the world, for the reasons alleged here do
+not suffice. He would declare his mercy better in preventing misery, and he
+would declare his justice better in preventing guilt, in advancing virtue,
+in recompensing it. Besides, one does not see how he who not only causes a
+man to be capable of falling, but who so disposes circumstances that they
+contribute towards causing his fall, is not culpable, if there are no other
+reasons compelling him thereto. But when one considers that God, altogether
+good and wise, must have produced all the virtue, goodness, happiness
+whereof the best plan of the universe is capable, and that often an evil in
+some parts may serve the greater good of the whole, one readily concludes
+that God may have given room for unhappiness, and even permitted guilt, as
+he has done, without deserving to be blamed. It is the only remedy that
+supplies what all systems lack, however they arrange the decrees. These
+thoughts have already been favoured by St. Augustine, and one may say of
+Eve what the poet said of the hand of Mucius Scaevola:
+
+  _Si non errasset, fecerat illa minus_.
+
+240. I find that the famous English prelate who wrote an ingenious book on
+the origin of evil, some passages of which were disputed by M. Bayle  [275]
+in the second volume of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, while
+disagreeing with some of the opinions that I have upheld here and appearing
+to resort sometimes to a despotic power, as if the will of God did not
+follow the rules of wisdom in relation to good or evil, but decreed
+arbitrarily that such and such a thing must be considered good or evil; and
+as if even the will of the creature, in so far as it is free, did not
+choose because the object appears good to him, but by a purely arbitrary
+determination, independent of the representation of the object; this
+bishop, I say, in other passages nevertheless says things which seem more
+in favour of my doctrine than of what appears contrary thereto in his own.
+He says that what an infinitely wise and free cause has chosen is better
+than what it has not chosen. Is not that recognizing that goodness is the
+object and the reason of his choice? In this sense one will here aptly say:
+
+  _Sic placuit superis; quaerere plura, nefas_.
+
+                                                                      [276]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PART THREE
+
+241. Now at last I have disposed of the cause of moral evil; _physical
+evil_, that is, sorrows, sufferings, miseries, will be less troublesome to
+explain, since these are results of moral evil. _Poena est malum passionis,
+quod infligitur ob malum actionis_, according to Grotius. One suffers
+because one has acted; one suffers evil because one does evil.
+
+    _Nostrorum causa malorum_
+  _Nos sumus_.
+
+It is true that one often suffers through the evil actions of others; but
+when one has no part in the offence one must look upon it as a certainty
+that these sufferings prepare for us a greater happiness. The question of
+_physical evil_, that is, of the origin of sufferings, has difficulties in
+common with that of the origin of _metaphysical evil_, examples whereof are
+furnished by the monstrosities and other apparent irregularities of the
+universe. But one must believe that even sufferings and monstrosities are
+part of order; and it is well to bear in mind not only that it was better
+to admit these defects and these monstrosities than to violate general
+laws, as Father Malebranche sometimes argues, but also that these very
+monstrosities are in the rules, and are in conformity with general acts of
+will, though we be not capable of discerning this conformity. It is   [277]
+just as sometimes there are appearances of irregularity in mathematics
+which issue finally in a great order when one has finally got to the bottom
+of them: that is why I have already in this work observed that according to
+my principles all individual events, without exception, are consequences of
+general acts of will.
+
+242. It should be no cause for astonishment that I endeavour to elucidate
+these things by comparisons taken from pure mathematics, where everything
+proceeds in order, and where it is possible to fathom them by a close
+contemplation which grants us an enjoyment, so to speak, of the vision of
+the ideas of God. One may propose a succession or series of numbers
+perfectly irregular to all appearance, where the numbers increase and
+diminish variably without the emergence of any order; and yet he who knows
+the key to the formula, and who understands the origin and the structure of
+this succession of numbers, will be able to give a rule which, being
+properly understood, will show that the series is perfectly regular, and
+that it even has excellent properties. One may make this still more evident
+in lines. A line may have twists and turns, ups and downs, points of
+reflexion and points of inflexion, interruptions and other variations, so
+that one sees neither rhyme nor reason therein, especially when taking into
+account only a portion of the line; and yet it may be that one can give its
+equation and construction, wherein a geometrician would find the reason and
+the fittingness of all these so-called irregularities. That is how we must
+look upon the irregularities constituted by monstrosities and other
+so-called defects in the universe.
+
+243. In this sense one may apply that fine adage of St. Bernard (Ep. 276,
+Ad Eugen., III): 'Ordinatissimum est, minus interdum ordinate fieri
+aliquid.' It belongs to the great order that there should be some small
+disorder. One may even say that this small disorder is apparent only in the
+whole, and it is not even apparent when one considers the happiness of
+those who walk in the ways of order.
+
+244. When I mention monstrosities I include numerous other apparent defects
+besides. We are acquainted with hardly anything but the surface of our
+globe; we scarce penetrate into its interior beyond a few hundred fathoms.
+That which we find in this crust of the globe appears to be the effect of
+some great upheavals. It seems that this globe was once on fire, and that
+the rocks forming the base of this crust of the earth are scoria remaining
+from a great fusion. In their entrails are found metal and mineral    [278]
+products, which closely resemble those emanating from our furnaces: and the
+entire sea may be a kind of _oleum per deliquium_, just as tartaric oil
+forms in a damp place. For when the earth's surface cooled after the great
+conflagration the moisture that the fire had driven into the air fell back
+upon the earth, washed its surface and dissolved and absorbed the solid
+salt that was left in the cinders, finally filling up this great cavity in
+the surface of our globe, to form the ocean filled with salt water.
+
+245. But, after the fire, one must conclude that earth and water made
+ravages no less. It may be that the crust formed by the cooling, having
+below it great cavities, fell in, so that we live only on ruins, as among
+others Thomas Burnet, Chaplain to the late King of Great Britain, aptly
+observed. Sundry deluges and inundations have left deposits, whereof traces
+and remains are found which show that the sea was in places that to-day are
+most remote from it. But these upheavals ceased at last, and the globe
+assumed the shape that we see. Moses hints at these changes in few words:
+the separation of light from darkness indicates the melting caused by the
+fire; and the separation of the moist from the dry marks the effects of
+inundations. But who does not see that these disorders have served to bring
+things to the point where they now are, that we owe to them our riches and
+our comforts, and that through their agency this globe became fit for
+cultivation by us. These disorders passed into order. The disorders, real
+or apparent, that we see from afar are sunspots and comets; but we do not
+know what uses they supply, nor the rules prevailing therein. Time was when
+the planets were held to be wandering stars: now their motion is found to
+be regular. Peradventure it is the same with the comets: posterity will
+know.
+
+246. One does not include among the disorders inequality of conditions, and
+M. Jacquelot is justified in asking those who would have everything equally
+perfect, why rocks are not crowned with leaves and flowers? why ants are
+not peacocks? And if there must needs be equality everywhere, the poor man
+would serve notice of appeal against the rich, the servant against the
+master. The pipes of an organ must not be of equal size. M. Bayle will say
+that there is a difference between a privation of good and a disorder;
+between a disorder in inanimate things, which is purely metaphysical, and a
+disorder in rational creatures, which is composed of crime and        [279]
+sufferings. He is right in making a distinction between them, and I am
+right in combining them. God does not neglect inanimate things: they do not
+feel, but God feels for them. He does not neglect animals: they have not
+intelligence, but God has it for them. He would reproach himself for the
+slightest actual defect there were in the universe, even though it were
+perceived of none.
+
+247. It seems M. Bayle does not approve any comparison between the
+disorders which may exist in inanimate things and those which trouble the
+peace and happiness of rational creatures; nor would he agree to our
+justifying the permission of vice on the pretext of the care that must be
+taken to avoid disturbing the laws of motion. One might thence conclude,
+according to him (posthumous Reply to M. Jacquelot, p. 183), 'that God
+created the world only to display his infinite skill in architecture and
+mechanics, whilst his property of goodness and love of virtue took no part
+in the construction of this great work. This God would pride himself only
+on skill; he would prefer to let the whole human kind perish rather than
+suffer some atoms to go faster or more slowly than general laws require.'
+M. Bayle would not have made this antithesis if he had been informed on the
+system of general harmony which I assume, which states that the realm of
+efficient causes and that of final causes are parallel to each other; that
+God has no less the quality of the best monarch than that of the greatest
+architect; that matter is so disposed that the laws of motion serve as the
+best guidance for spirits; and that consequently it will prove that he has
+attained the utmost good possible, provided one reckon the metaphysical,
+physical and moral goods together.
+
+248. But (M. Bayle will say) God having power to avert innumerable evils by
+one small miracle, why did he not employ it? He gives so much extraordinary
+help to fallen men; but slight help of such a kind given to Eve would have
+prevented her fall and rendered the temptation of the serpent ineffective.
+I have sufficiently met objections of this sort with this general answer,
+that God ought not to make choice of another universe since he has chosen
+the best, and has only made use of the miracles necessary thereto. I had
+answered M. Bayle that miracles change the natural order of the universe.
+He replies, that that is an illusion, and that the miracle of the wedding
+at Cana (for instance) made no change in the air of the room, except that
+instead of receiving into its pores some corpuscles of water, it      [280]
+received corpuscles of wine. But one must bear in mind that once the best
+plan of things has been chosen nothing can be changed therein.
+
+249. As for miracles (concerning which I have already said something in
+this work), they are perhaps not all of one and the same kind: there are
+many, to all appearances, which God brings about through the ministry of
+invisible substances, such as the angels, as Father Malebranche also
+believes. These angels or these substances act according to the ordinary
+laws of their nature, being combined with bodies more rarefied and more
+vigorous than those we have at our command. And such miracles are only so
+by comparison, and in relation to us; just as our works would be considered
+miraculous amongst animals if they were capable of remarking upon them. The
+changing of water into wine might be a miracle of this kind. But the
+Creation, the Incarnation and some other actions of God exceed all the
+power of creatures and are truly miracles, or indeed Mysteries. If,
+nevertheless, the changing of water into wine at Cana was a miracle of the
+highest kind, God would have thereby changed the whole course of the
+universe, because of the connexion of bodies; or else he would have been
+bound to prevent this connexion miraculously also, and cause the bodies not
+concerned in the miracle to act as if no miracle had happened. After the
+miracle was over, it would have been necessary to restore all things in
+those very bodies concerned to the state they would have reached without
+the miracle: whereafter all would have returned to its original course.
+Thus this miracle demanded more than at first appears.
+
+250. As for physical evil in creatures, to wit their sufferings, M. Bayle
+contends vigorously against those who endeavour to justify by means of
+particular reasons the course of action pursued by God in regard to this.
+Here I set aside the sufferings of animals, and I see that M. Bayle insists
+chiefly on those of men, perhaps because he thinks that brute beasts have
+no feeling. It is on account of the injustice there would be in the
+sufferings of beasts that divers Cartesians wished to prove that they are
+only machines, _quoniam sub Deo justo nemo innocens miser est_: it is
+impossible that an innocent creature should be unhappy under such a master
+as God. The principle is good, but I do not think it warrants the inference
+that beasts have no feeling, because I think that, properly speaking,
+perception is not sufficient to cause misery if it is not accompanied [281]
+by reflexion. It is the same with happiness: without reflexion there is
+none.
+
+  _O fortunatos nimium, sua qui bona norint!_
+
+One cannot reasonably doubt the existence of pain among animals; but it
+seems as if their pleasures and their pains are not so keen as they are in
+man: for animals, since they do not reflect, are susceptible neither to the
+grief that accompanies pain, nor to the joy that accompanies pleasure. Men
+are sometimes in a state approaching that of the beasts, when they act
+almost on instinct alone and simply on the impressions made by the
+experience of the senses: and, in this state, their pleasures and their
+pains are very slight.
+
+251. But let us pass from the beasts and return to rational creatures. It
+is with regard to them that M. Bayle discusses this question: whether there
+is more physical evil than physical good in the world? (_Reply to the
+Questions of a Provincial_, vol. II, ch. 75.) To settle it aright, one must
+explain wherein these goods and evils lie. We are agreed that physical evil
+is simply displeasure and under that heading I include pain, grief, and
+every other kind of discomfort. But does physical good lie solely in
+pleasure? M. Bayle appears to be of this opinion; but I consider that it
+lies also in a middle state, such as that of health. One is well enough
+when one has no ill; it is a degree of wisdom to have no folly:
+
+      _Sapientia prima est,_
+  _Stultitia caruisse_.
+
+In the same way one is worthy of praise when one cannot with justice be
+blamed:
+
+  _Si non culpabor, sat mihi laudis erit_.
+
+That being the case, all the sensations not unpleasing to us, all the
+exercises of our powers that do not incommode us, and whose prevention
+would incommode us, are physical goods, even when they cause us no
+pleasure; for privation of them is a physical evil. Besides we only
+perceive the good of health, and other like goods, when we are deprived of
+them. On those terms I would dare to maintain that even in this life goods
+exceed evils, that our comforts exceed our discomforts, and that M.
+Descartes was justified in writing (vol. I, Letter 9) 'that natural reason
+teaches us that we have more goods than evils in this life'.
+
+                                                                      [282]
+252. It must be added that pleasures enjoyed too often and to excess would
+be a very great evil. There are some which Hippocrates compared to the
+falling sickness, and Scioppius doubtless only made pretence of envying the
+sparrows in order to be agreeably playful in a learned and far from playful
+work. Highly seasoned foods are injurious to health and impair the niceness
+of a delicate sense; and in general bodily pleasures are a kind of
+expenditure of the spirit, though they be made good in some better than in
+others.
+
+253. As proof, however, that the evil exceeds the good is quoted the
+instance of M. de la Motte le Vayer (Letter 134), who would not have been
+willing to return to the world, supposing he had had to play the same part
+as providence had already assigned to him. But I have already said that I
+think one would accept the proposal of him who could re-knot the thread of
+Fate if a new part were promised to us, even though it should not be better
+than the first. Thus from M. de la Motte le Vayer's saying it does not
+follow that he would not have wished for the part he had already played,
+provided it had been new, as M. Bayle seems to take it.
+
+254. The pleasures of the mind are the purest, and of greatest service in
+making joy endure. Cardan, when already an old man, was so content with his
+state that he protested solemnly that he would not exchange it for the
+state of the richest of young men who at the same time was ignorant. M. de
+la Motte le Vayer quotes the saying himself without criticizing it.
+Knowledge has doubtless charms which cannot be conceived by those who have
+not tasted them. I do not mean a mere knowledge of facts without that of
+reasons, but knowledge like that of Cardan, who with all his faults was a
+great man, and would have been incomparable without those faults.
+
+  _Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas!_
+  _Ille metus omnes et inexorabile fatum_
+  _Subjecit pedibus._
+
+It is no small thing to be content with God and with the universe, not to
+fear what destiny has in store for us, nor to complain of what befalls us.
+Acquaintance with true principles gives us this advantage, quite other than
+that the Stoics and the Epicureans derived from their philosophy. There is
+as much difference between true morality and theirs as there is       [283]
+between joy and patience: for their tranquillity was founded only on
+necessity, while ours must rest upon the perfection and beauty of things,
+upon our own happiness.
+
+255. What, then, shall we say of bodily sufferings? May they not be
+sufficiently acute to disturb the sage's tranquillity? Aristotle assents;
+the Stoics were of a different opinion, and even the Epicureans likewise.
+M. Descartes revived the doctrine of these philosophers; he says in the
+letter just quoted: 'that even amid the worst misfortunes and the most
+overwhelming sufferings one may always be content, if only one knows how to
+exercise reason'. M. Bayle says concerning this (_Reply to the Questions of
+a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 157, p. 991) 'that it is saying nothing, that
+it is prescribing for us a remedy whose preparation hardly anyone
+understands'. I hold that the thing is not impossible, and that men could
+attain it by dint of meditation and practice. For apart from the true
+martyrs and those who have been aided in wonderful wise from on high, there
+have been counterfeits who imitated them. That Spanish slave who killed the
+Carthaginian governor in order to avenge his master and who evinced great
+joy in his deed, even in the greatest tortures, may shame the philosophers.
+Why should not one go as far as he? One may say of an advantage, as of a
+disadvantage:
+
+  _Cuivis potest accidere, quod cuiquam potest_.
+
+256. But even to-day entire tribes, such as the Hurons, the Iroquois, the
+Galibis and other peoples of America teach us a great lesson on this
+matter: one cannot read without astonishment of the intrepidity and
+well-nigh insensibility wherewith they brave their enemies, who roast them
+over a slow fire and eat them by slices. If such people could retain their
+physical superiority and their courage, and combine them with our
+acquirements, they would surpass us in every way,
+
+  _Extat ut in mediis turris aprica casis_.
+
+They would be, in comparison with us, as a giant to a dwarf, a mountain to
+a hill:
+
+  _Quantus Eryx, et quantus Athos, gaudetque nivali_
+  _Vertice se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras._
+
+                                                                      [284]
+257. All that which is effected by a wonderful vigour of body and mind in
+these savages, who persist obstinately in the strangest point of honour,
+might be acquired in our case by training, by well-seasoned mortifications,
+by an overmastering joy founded on reason, by great practice in preserving
+a certain presence of mind in the midst of the distractions and impressions
+most liable to disturb it. Something of this kind is related of the ancient
+Assassins, subjects and pupils of the Old Man or rather the Seigneur
+(_Senior_) of the Mountain. Such a school (for a better purpose) would be
+good for missionaries who would wish to return to Japan. The Gymnosophists
+of the ancient Indians had perhaps something resembling this, and that
+Calanus, who provided for Alexander the Great the spectacle of his burning
+alive, had doubtless been encouraged by the great examples of his masters
+and trained by great sufferings not to fear pain. The wives of these same
+Indians, who even to-day ask to be burned with the bodies of their
+husbands, seem still to keep something of the courage of those ancient
+philosophers of their country. I do not expect that there should
+straightway be founded a religious order whose purpose would be to exalt
+man to that high pitch of perfection: such people would be too much above
+the rest, and too formidable for the authorities. As it rarely happens that
+people are exposed to extremes where such great strength of mind would be
+needed, one will scarce think of providing for it at the expense of our
+usual comforts, albeit incomparably more would be gained than lost thereby.
+
+258. Nevertheless the very fact that one has no need of that great remedy
+is a proof that the good already exceeds the evil. Euripides also said:
+
+  [Greek: pleiô ta chrêsta tôn kakôn einai brotois].
+  _Mala nostra longe judico vinci a bonis._
+
+Homer and divers other poets were of another mind, and men in general agree
+with them. The reason for this is that the evil arouses our attention
+rather than the good: but this same reason proves that the evil is more
+rare. One must therefore not credit the petulant expressions of Pliny, who
+would have it that Nature is a stepmother, and who maintains that man is
+the most unhappy and most vain of all creatures. These two epithets do not
+agree: one is not so very unhappy, when one is full of oneself. It is [285]
+true that men hold human nature only too much in contempt, apparently
+because they see no other creatures capable of arousing their emulation;
+but they have all too much self-esteem, and individually are but too easily
+satisfied. I therefore agree with Meric Casaubon, who in his notes on the
+Xenophanes of Diogenes Laertius praises exceedingly the admirable
+sentiments of Euripides, going so far as to credit him with having said
+things _quae spirant_ [Greek: theopneuston] _pectus_. Seneca (Lib. 4, c. 5,
+_De Benefic._) speaks eloquently of the blessings Nature has heaped upon
+us. M. Bayle in his _Dictionary_, article 'Xenophanes', brings up sundry
+authorities against this, and among others that of the poet Diphilus in the
+Collections of Stobaeus, whose Greek might be thus expressed in Latin:
+
+  _Fortuna cyathis bibere nos datis jubens,_
+  _Infundit uno terna pro bono mala._
+
+259. M. Bayle believes that if it were a question only of the evil of
+guilt, or of moral evil among men, the case would soon be terminated to the
+advantage of Pliny, and Euripides would lose his action. To that I am not
+opposed; our vices doubtless exceed our virtues, and this is the effect of
+original sin. It is nevertheless true that also on that point men in
+general exaggerate things, and that even some theologians disparage man so
+much that they wrong the providence of the Author of mankind. That is why I
+am not in favour of those who thought to do great honour to our religion by
+saying that the virtues of the pagans were only _splendida peccata_,
+splendid vices. It is a sally of St. Augustine's which has no foundation in
+holy Scripture, and which offends reason. But here we are only discussing a
+physical good and evil, and one must compare in detail the prosperities and
+the adversities of this life. M. Bayle would wish almost to set aside the
+consideration of health; he likens it to the rarefied bodies, which are
+scarcely felt, like air, for example; but he likens pain to the bodies that
+have much density and much weight in slight volume. But pain itself makes
+us aware of the importance of health when we are bereft of it. I have
+already observed that excess of physical pleasures would be a real evil,
+and the matter ought not to be otherwise; it is too important for the
+spirit to be free. Lactantius (_Divin. Instit._, lib. 3, cap. 18) had said
+that men are so squeamish that they complain of the slightest ill, as if it
+swallowed up all the goods they have enjoyed. M. Bayle says, concerning
+this, that the very fact that men have this feeling warrants the      [286]
+judgement that they are in evil case, since it is feeling which measures
+the extent of good or evil. But I answer that present feeling is anything
+rather than the true measure of good and evil past and future. I grant that
+one is in evil case while one makes these peevish reflexions; but that does
+not exclude a previous state of well-being, nor imply that, everything
+reckoned in and all allowance made, the good does not exceed the evil.
+
+260. I do not wonder that the pagans, dissatisfied with their gods, made
+complaints against Prometheus and Epimetheus for having forged so weak an
+animal as man. Nor do I wonder that they acclaimed the fable of old
+Silenus, foster-father of Bacchus, who was seized by King Midas, and as the
+price of his deliverance taught him that ostensibly fine maxim that the
+first and the greatest of goods was not to be born, and the second, to
+depart from this life with dispatch (Cic., _Tuscul._, lib. 1). Plato
+believed that souls had been in a happier state, and many of the ancients,
+amongst others Cicero in his Consolation (according to the account of
+Lactantius), believed that for their sins they were confined in bodies as
+in a prison. They rendered thus a reason for our ills, and asserted their
+prejudices against human life: for there is no such thing as a beautiful
+prison. But quite apart from the consideration that, even according to
+these same pagans, the evils of this life would be counterbalanced and
+exceeded by the goods of past and future lives, I make bold to say that we
+shall find, upon unbiassed scrutiny of the facts, that taking all in all
+human life is in general tolerable. And adding thereto the motives of
+religion, we shall be content with the order God has set therein. Moreover,
+for a better judgement of our goods and our evils, it will be well to read
+Cardan, _De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda_, and Novarini, _De Occultis Dei
+Beneficiis_.
+
+261. M. Bayle dilates upon the misfortunes of the great, who are thought to
+be the most fortunate: the constant experience of the fair aspect of their
+condition renders them unaware of good, but greatly aware of evil. Someone
+will say: so much the worse for them; if they know not how to enjoy the
+advantages of nature and fortune, is that the fault of either? There are
+nevertheless great men possessed of more wisdom, who know how to profit by
+the favours God has shown them, who are easily consoled for their
+misfortunes, and who even turn their own faults to account. M. Bayle  [287]
+pays no heed to that: he prefers to listen to Pliny, who thinks that
+Augustus, one of the princes most favoured by fortune, experienced at least
+as much evil as good. I admit that he found great causes of trouble in his
+family and that remorse for having crushed the Republic may have tormented
+him; but I think that he was too wise to grieve over the former, and that
+Maecenas apparently made him understand that Rome had need of a master. Had
+not Augustus been converted on this point, Vergil would never have said of
+a lost soul:
+
+  _Vendidit hic auro patriam Dominumque potentem_
+  _Imposuit, fixit leges pretio atque refixit._
+
+Augustus would have thought that he and Caesar were alluded to in these
+lines, which speak of a master given to a free state. But there is every
+indication that he applied it just as little to his dominion, which he
+regarded as compatible with liberty and as a necessary remedy for public
+evils, as the princes of to-day apply to themselves the words used of the
+kings censured in M. de Cambray's _Telemachus_. Each one considers himself
+within his rights. Tacitus, an unbiassed writer, justifies Augustus in two
+words, at the beginning of his _Annals_. But Augustus was better able than
+anyone to judge of his good fortune. He appears to have died content, as
+may be inferred from a proof he gave of contentedness with his life: for in
+dying he repeated to his friends a line in Greek, which has the
+signification of that _Plaudite_ that was wont to be spoken at the
+conclusion of a well-acted play. Suetonius quotes it:
+
+  [Greek: Dote kroton kai pantes hymeis meta charas ktypêsate.]
+
+262. But even though there should have fallen to the lot of the human kind
+more evil than good, it is enough where God is concerned that there is
+incomparably more good than evil in the universe. Rabbi Maimonides (whose
+merit is not sufficiently recognized in the statement that he is the first
+of the Rabbis to have ceased talking nonsense) also gave wise judgement on
+this question of the predominance of good over evil in the world. Here is
+what he says in his _Doctor Perplexorum_ (cap. 12, p. 3): 'There arise
+often in the hearts of ill-instructed persons thoughts which persuade them
+there is more evil than good in the world: and one often finds in the poems
+and songs of the pagans that it is as it were a miracle when something good
+comes to pass, whereas evils are usual and constant. This error has   [288]
+taken hold not of the common herd only, those very persons who wish to be
+considered wise have been beguiled thereby. A celebrated writer named
+Alrasi, in his _Sepher Elohuth_, or Theosophy, amongst other absurdities
+has stated that there are more evils than goods, and that upon comparison
+of the recreations and the pleasures man enjoys in times of tranquillity
+with the pains, the torments, the troubles, faults, cares, griefs and
+afflictions whereby he is overwhelmed our life would prove to be a great
+evil, and an actual penalty inflicted upon us to punish us.' Maimonides
+adds that the cause of their extravagant error is their supposition that
+Nature was made for them only, and that they hold of no account what is
+separate from their person; whence they infer that when something
+unpleasing to them occurs all goes ill in the universe.
+
+263. M. Bayle says that this observation of Maimonides is not to the point,
+because the question is whether among men evil exceeds good. But, upon
+consideration of the Rabbi's words, I find that the question he formulates
+is general, and that he wished to refute those who decide it on one
+particular motive derived from the evils of the human race, as if all had
+been made for man; and it seems as though the author whom he refutes spoke
+also of good and evil in general. Maimonides is right in saying that if one
+took into account the littleness of man in relation to the universe one
+would comprehend clearly that the predominance of evil, even though it
+prevailed among men, need not on that account occur among the angels, nor
+among the heavenly bodies, nor among the elements and inanimate compounds,
+nor among many kinds of animals. I have shown elsewhere that in supposing
+that the number of the damned exceeds that of the saved (a supposition
+which is nevertheless not altogether certain) one might admit that there is
+more evil than good in respect of the human kind known to us. But I pointed
+out that that neither precludes the existence of incomparably more good
+than evil, both moral and physical, in rational creatures in general, nor
+prevents the city of God, which contains all creatures, from being the most
+perfect state. So also on consideration of the metaphysical good and evil
+which is in all substances, whether endowed with or devoid of intelligence,
+and which taken in such scope would include physical good and moral good,
+one must say that the universe, such as it actually is, must be the best of
+all systems.
+
+                                                                      [289]
+264. Moreover, M. Bayle will not have it that our transgression should have
+anything to do with the consideration of our sufferings. He is right when
+it is simply a matter of appraising these sufferings; but the case is not
+the same when one asks whether they should be ascribed to God, this indeed
+being the principal cause of M. Bayle's difficulties when he places reason
+or experience in opposition to religion. I know that he is wont to say that
+it is of no avail to resort to our free will, since his objections tend
+also to prove that the misuse of free will must no less be laid to the
+account of God, who has permitted it and who has co-operated therein. He
+states it as a maxim that for one difficulty more or less one must not
+abandon a system. This he advances especially in favour of the methods of
+the strict and the dogma of the Supralapsarians. For he supposes that one
+can subscribe to their opinion, although he leaves all the difficulties in
+their entirety, because the other systems, albeit they put an end to some
+of the difficulties, cannot meet them all. I hold that the true system I
+have expounded satisfies all. Nevertheless, even were that not so, I
+confess that I cannot relish this maxim of M. Bayle's, and I should prefer
+a system which would remove a great portion of the difficulties, to one
+which would meet none of them. And the consideration of the wickedness of
+men, which brings upon them well-nigh all their misfortunes, shows at least
+that they have no right to complain. No justice need trouble itself over
+the origin of a scoundrel's wickedness when it is only a question of
+punishing him: it is quite another matter when it is a question of
+prevention. One knows well that disposition, upbringing, conversation, and
+often chance itself, have much share in that origin: is the man any the
+less deserving of punishment?
+
+265. I confess that there still remains another difficulty. If God is not
+bound to account to the wicked for their wickedness, it seems as if he owes
+to himself, and to those who honour him and love him, justification for his
+course of action with regard to the permission of vice and crime. But God
+has already given that satisfaction, as far as it is needed here on earth:
+by granting us the light of reason he has bestowed upon us the means
+whereby we may meet all difficulties. I hope that I have made it plain in
+this discourse, and have elucidated the matter in the preceding portion of
+these Essays, almost as far as it can be done through general arguments.
+Thereafter, the permission of sin being justified, the other evils    [290]
+that are a consequence thereof present no further difficulty. Thus also I
+am justified in restricting myself here to the evil of guilt to account for
+the evil of punishment, as Holy Scripture does, and likewise well-nigh all
+the Fathers of the Church and the Preachers. And, to the end that none may
+say that is only good _per la predica_, it is enough to consider that,
+after the solutions I have given, nothing must seem more right or more
+exact than this method. For God, having found already among things
+possible, before his actual decrees, man misusing his freedom and bringing
+upon himself his misfortune, yet could not avoid admitting him into
+existence, because the general plan required this. Wherefore it will no
+longer be necessary to say with M. Jurieu that one must dogmatize like St.
+Augustine and preach like Pelagius.
+
+266. This method, deriving the evil of punishment from the evil of guilt,
+cannot be open to censure, and serves especially to account for the
+greatest physical evil, which is damnation. Ernst Sonner, sometime
+Professor of Philosophy at Altorf (a university established in the
+territory of the free city of Nuremberg), who was considered an excellent
+Aristotelian, but was finally recognized as being secretly a Socinian, had
+composed a little discourse entitled: _Demonstration against the Eternity
+of Punishment_. It was founded on this somewhat trite principle, that there
+is no proportion between an infinite punishment and a finite guilt. It was
+conveyed to me, printed (so it seemed) in Holland; and I replied that there
+was one thing to be considered which had escaped the late Herr Sonner:
+namely that it was enough to say that the duration of the guilt caused the
+duration of the penalty. Since the damned remained wicked they could not be
+withdrawn from their misery; and thus one need not, in order to justify the
+continuation of their sufferings, assume that sin has become of infinite
+weight through the infinite nature of the object offended, who is God. This
+thesis I had not explored enough to pass judgement thereon. I know that the
+general opinion of the Schoolmen, according to the Master of the Sentences,
+is that in the other life there is neither merit nor demerit; but I do not
+think that, taken literally, it can pass for an article of faith. Herr
+Fecht, a famous theologian at Rostock, well refuted that in his book on
+_The State of the Damned_. It is quite wrong, he says (§ 59); God cannot
+change his nature; justice is essential to him; death has closed the door
+of grace, but not that of justice.
+
+                                                                      [291]
+267. I have observed that sundry able theologians have accounted for the
+duration of the pains of the damned as I have just done. Johann Gerhard, a
+famous theologian of the Augsburg Confession (in _Locis Theol._, loco de
+Inferno, § 60), brings forward amongst other arguments that the damned have
+still an evil will and lack the grace that could render it good. Zacharias
+Ursinus, a theologian of Heidelberg, who follows Calvin, having formulated
+this question (in his treatise _De Fide_) why sin merits an eternal
+punishment, advances first the common reason, that the person offended is
+infinite, and then also this second reason, _quod non cessante peccato non
+potest cessare poena_. And the Jesuit Father Drexler says in his book
+entitled _Nicetas, or Incontinence Overcome_ (book 2, ch. 11, § 9): 'Nec
+mirum damnatos semper torqueri, continue blasphemant, et sic quasi semper
+peccant, semper ergo plectuntur.' He declares and approves the same reason
+in his work on _Eternity_ (book 2, ch. 15) saying: 'Sunt qui dicant, nec
+displicet responsum: scelerati in locis infernis semper peccant, ideo
+semper puniuntur.' And he indicates thereby that this opinion is very
+common among learned men in the Roman Church. He alleges, it is true,
+another more subtle reason, derived from Pope Gregory the Great (lib. 4,
+Dial. c. 44), that the damned are punished eternally because God foresaw by
+a kind of _mediate knowledge_ that they would always have sinned if they
+had always lived upon earth. But it is a hypothesis very much open to
+question. Herr Fecht quotes also various eminent Protestant theologians for
+Herr Gerhard's opinion, although he mentions also some who think
+differently.
+
+268. M. Bayle himself in various places has supplied me with passages from
+two able theologians of his party, which have some reference to these
+statements of mine. M. Jurieu in his book on the _Unity of the Church_, in
+opposition to that written by M. Nicole on the same subject, gives the
+opinion (p. 379) 'that reason tells us that a creature which cannot cease
+to be criminal can also not cease to be miserable'. M. Jacquelot in his
+book on _The Conformity of Faith with Reason_ (p. 220) is of opinion 'that
+the damned must remain eternally deprived of the glory of the blessed, and
+that this deprivation might well be the origin and the cause of all their
+pains, through the reflexions these unhappy creatures make upon their
+crimes which have deprived them of an eternal bliss. One knows what burning
+regrets, what pain envy causes to those who see themselves deprived of a
+good, of a notable honour which had been offered to them, and which   [292]
+they rejected, especially when they see others invested with it.' This
+position is a little different from that of M. Jurieu, but both agree in
+this sentiment, that the damned are themselves the cause of the
+continuation of their torments. M. le Clerc's Origenist does not entirely
+differ from this opinion when he says in the _Select Library_ (vol. 7, p.
+341): 'God, who foresaw that man would fall, does not condemn him on that
+account, but only because, although he has the power to recover himself, he
+yet does not do so, that is, he freely retains his evil ways to the end of
+his life.' If he carries this reasoning on beyond this life, he will
+ascribe the continuation of the pains of the wicked to the continuation of
+their guilt.
+
+269. M. Bayle says (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 175, p.
+1188) 'that this dogma of the Origenist is heretical, in that it teaches
+that damnation is not founded simply on sin, but on voluntary impenitence':
+but is not this voluntary impenitence a continuation of sin? I would not
+simply say, however, that it is because man, having the power to recover
+himself, does not; and would wish to add that it is because man does not
+take advantage of the succour of grace to aid him to recover himself. But
+after this life, though one assume that the succour ceases, there is always
+in the man who sins, even when he is damned, a freedom which renders him
+culpable, and a power, albeit remote, of recovering himself, even though it
+should never pass into action. And there is no reason why one may not say
+that this degree of freedom, exempt from necessity, but not exempt from
+certainty, remains in the damned as well as in the blessed. Moreover, the
+damned have no need of a succour that is needed in this life, for they know
+only too well what one must believe here.
+
+270. The illustrious prelate of the Anglican Church who published recently
+a book on the origin of evil, concerning which M. Bayle made some
+observations in the second volume of his _Reply_, speaks with much subtlety
+about the pains of the damned. This prelate's opinion is presented
+(according to the author of the _Nouvelles de la République des Lettres_,
+June 1703) as if he made 'of the damned just so many madmen who will feel
+their miseries acutely, but who will nevertheless congratulate themselves
+on their own behaviour, and who will rather choose to be, and to be that
+which they are, than not to be at all. They will love their state, unhappy
+as it will be, even as angry people, lovers, the ambitious, the       [293]
+envious take pleasure in the very things that only augment their misery.
+Furthermore the ungodly will have so accustomed their mind to wrong
+judgements that they will henceforth never make any other kind, and will
+perpetually pass from one error into another. They will not be able to
+refrain from desiring perpetually things whose enjoyment will be denied
+them, and, being deprived of which, they will fall into inconceivable
+despair, while experience can never make them wiser for the future. For by
+their own fault they will have altogether corrupted their understanding,
+and will have rendered it incapable of passing a sound judgement on any
+matter.'
+
+271. The ancients already imagined that the Devil dwells remote from God
+voluntarily, in the midst of his torments, and that he is unwilling to
+redeem himself by an act of submission. They invented a tale that an
+anchorite in a vision received a promise from God that he would receive
+into grace the Prince of the bad angels if he would acknowledge his fault;
+but that the devil rebuffed this mediator in a strange manner. At the
+least, the theologians usually agree that the devils and the damned hate
+God and blaspheme him; and such a state cannot but be followed by
+continuation of misery. Concerning that, one may read the learned treatise
+of Herr Fecht on the _State of the Damned_.
+
+272. There were times when the belief was held that it was not impossible
+for a lost soul to be delivered. The story told of Pope Gregory the Great
+is well known, how by his prayers he had withdrawn from hell the soul of
+the Emperor Trajan, whose goodness was so renowned that to new emperors the
+wish was offered that they should surpass Augustus in good fortune and
+Trajan in goodness. It was this that won for the latter the pity of the
+Holy Father. God acceded to his prayers (it is said), but he forbade him to
+make the like prayers in future. According to this fable, the prayers of
+St. Gregory had the force of the remedies of Aesculapius, who recalled
+Hippolytus from Hades; and, if he had continued to make such prayers, God
+would have waxed wroth, like Jupiter in Vergil:
+
+  _At pater omnipotens aliquem indignatus ab umbris_
+  _Mortalem infernis ad lumina surgere vitae,_
+  _Ipse repertorem medicinae talis et artis_
+  _Fulmine Phoebigenam Stygias detrusit ad undas._
+
+                                                                      [294]
+Godescalc, a monk of the ninth century, who set at variance the theologians
+of his day, and even those of our day, maintained that the reprobate should
+pray God to render their pains more bearable; but one is never justified in
+believing oneself reprobate so long as one is alive. The passage in the
+Mass for the dead is more reasonable: it asks for the abatement of the
+torments of the damned, and, according to the hypothesis that I have just
+stated, one must wish for them _meliorem mentem_. Origen having applied the
+passage from Psalm lxxvii, verse 10: God will not forget to be gracious,
+neither will he shut up his loving-kindness in displeasure, St. Augustine
+replies _(Enchirid._, c. 112) that it is possible that the pains of the
+damned last eternally, and that they may nevertheless be mitigated. If the
+text implied that, the abatement would, as regards its duration, go on to
+infinity; and yet that abatement would, as regards its extent, have a _non
+plus ultra_. Even so there are asymptote figures in geometry where an
+infinite length makes only a finite progress in breadth. If the parable of
+the wicked rich man represented the state of a definitely lost soul, the
+hypothesis which makes these souls so mad and so wicked would be
+groundless. But the charity towards his brothers attributed to him in the
+parable does not seem to be consistent with that degree of wickedness which
+is ascribed to the damned. St. Gregory the Great (IX _Mor._, 39) thinks
+that the rich man was afraid lest their damnation should increase his: but
+it seems as though this fear is not sufficiently consistent with the
+disposition of a perfectly wicked will. Bonaventura, on the Master of the
+Sentences, says that the wicked rich man would have desired to see everyone
+damned; but since that was not to be, he desired the salvation of his
+brothers rather than that of the rest. This reply is by no means sound. On
+the contrary, the mission of Lazarus that he desired would have served to
+save many people; and he who takes so much pleasure in the damnation of
+others that he desires it for everyone will perhaps desire that damnation
+for some more than others; but, generally speaking, he will have no
+inclination to gain salvation for anyone. However that may be, one must
+admit that all this detail is problematical, God having revealed to us all
+that is needed to put us in fear of the greatest of misfortunes, and not
+what is needed for our understanding thereof.
+
+273. Now since it is henceforth permitted to have recourse to the misuse of
+free will, and to evil will, in order to account for other evils,     [295]
+since the divine permission of this misuse is plainly enough justified, the
+ordinary system of the theologians meets with justification at the same
+time. Now we can seek with confidence _the origin of evil in the freedom of
+creatures_. The first wickedness is well known to us, it is that of the
+Devil and his angels: the Devil sinneth from the beginning, and for this
+purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of
+the Devil (1 John iii. 8). The Devil is the father of wickedness, he was a
+murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth (John viii. 44).
+And therefore God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to
+Hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto
+judgement (2 Pet. ii. 4). And the angels which kept not their own
+habitation, he hath reserved in _eternal_ (that is to say everlasting)
+chains under darkness unto the judgement of the great day (Jude i. 6).
+Whence it is easy to observe that one of these two letters must have been
+seen by the author of the other.
+
+274. It seems as if the author of the Apocalypse wished to throw light upon
+what the other canonical writers had left obscure: he gives us an account
+of a battle that took place in Heaven. Michael and his angels fought
+against the Dragon, and the Dragon fought and his angels. 'But they
+prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the
+great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan,
+which deceiveth the whole world: and he was cast out into the earth, and
+his angels were cast out with him' (Rev. xii. 7, 8, 9). For although this
+account is placed after the flight of the woman into the wilderness, and it
+may have been intended to indicate thereby some revulsion favourable to the
+Church, it appears as though the author's design was to show simultaneously
+the old fall of the first enemy and a new fall of a new enemy.
+
+275. Lying or wickedness springs from the Devil's own nature, [Greek: ek
+tôn idiôn] from his will, because it was written in the book of the eternal
+verities, which contains the things possible before any decree of God, that
+this creature would freely turn toward evil if it were created. It is the
+same with Eve and Adam; they sinned freely, albeit the Devil tempted them.
+God gives the wicked over to a reprobate mind (Rom. i. 28), abandoning them
+to themselves and denying them a grace which he owes them not, and indeed
+ought to deny to them.
+
+276. It is said in the Scriptures that God hardeneth (Exod. iv. 21 and[296]
+vii. 3; Isa. lxiii. 17); that God sendeth a lying spirit (1 Kings xxii.
+23); strong delusion that they should believe a lie (2 Thess. ii. 11); that
+he deceived the prophet (Ezek. xiv. 9); that he commanded Shimei to curse
+(2 Sam xvi. 10); that the children of Eli hearkened not unto the voice of
+their father, because the Lord would slay them (1 Sam. ii. 25); that the
+Lord took away Job's substance, even although that was done through the
+malice of brigands (Job i. 21); that he raised up Pharaoh, to show his
+power in him (Exod. ix. 19; Rom. ix. 17) that he is like a potter who
+maketh a vessel unto dishonour (Rom. ix. 21); that he hideth the truth from
+the wise and prudent (Matt. xi. 25); that he speaketh in parables unto them
+that are without, that seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing
+they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they might be converted,
+and their sins might be forgiven them (Mark iv. 12; Luke viii. 10); that
+Jesus was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God
+(Acts ii. 23); that Pontius Pilate and Herod with the Gentiles and the
+people of Israel did that which the hand and the counsel of God had
+determined before to be done (Acts iv. 27, 28); that it was of the Lord to
+harden the hearts of the enemy, that they should come against Israel in
+battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no
+favour (Joshua xi. 20); that the Lord mingled a perverse spirit in the
+midst of Egypt, and caused it to err in all its works, like a drunken man
+(Isa. xix. 14); that Rehoboam hearkened not unto the word of the people,
+for the cause was from the Lord (1 Kings xii. 15); that he turned the
+hearts of the Egyptians to hate his people (Ps. cv. 25). But all these and
+other like expressions suggest only that the things God has done are used
+as occasion for ignorance, error, malice and evil deeds, and contribute
+thereto, God indeed foreseeing this, and intending to use it for his ends,
+since superior reasons of perfect wisdom have determined him to permit
+these evils, and even to co-operate therein. 'Sed non sineret bonus fieri
+male, nisi omnipotens etiam de malo posset facere bene', in St. Augustine's
+words. But this has been expounded more fully in the preceding part.
+
+277. God made man in his image (Gen. i. 26); he made him upright (Eccles.
+vii. 29). But also he made him free. Man has behaved badly, he has fallen;
+but there remains still a certain freedom after the fall. Moses said as
+from God: 'I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I
+have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore   [297]
+choose life' (Deut. xxx. 19). 'Thus saith the Lord: Behold, I set before
+you the way of life, and the way of death' (Jer. xxi. 8). He has left man
+in the power of his counsel, giving him his ordinances and his
+commandments. 'If thou wilt, thou shalt keep the commandments' (or they
+shall keep thee). 'He hath set before thee fire and water, to stretch forth
+thine hand to whichever thou wilt' (Sirach xv. 14, 15, 16). Fallen and
+unregenerate man is under the domination of sin and of Satan, because it
+pleases him so to be; he is a voluntary slave through his evil lust. Thus
+it is that free will and will in bondage are one and the same thing.
+
+278. 'Let no man say, I am tempted of God'; 'but every man is tempted, when
+he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed' (Jas. i. 13, 14). And Satan
+contributes thereto. He 'blindeth the minds of them which believe not' (2
+Cor. iv. 4). But man is delivered up to the Devil by his covetous desire:
+the pleasure he finds in evil is the bait that hooks him. Plato has said so
+already, and Cicero repeats it: 'Plato voluptatem dicebat escam malorum.'
+Grace sets over against it a greater pleasure, as St. Augustine observed.
+All _pleasure_ is a feeling of some perfection; one _loves_ an object in
+proportion as one feels its perfections; nothing surpasses the divine
+perfections. Whence it follows that charity and love of God give the
+greatest pleasure that can be conceived, in that proportion in which one is
+penetrated by these feelings, which are not common among men, busied and
+taken up as men are with the objects that are concerned with their
+passions.
+
+279. Now as our corruption is not altogether invincible and as we do not
+necessarily sin even when we are under the bondage of sin, it must likewise
+be said that we are not aided invincibly; and, however efficacious divine
+grace may be, there is justification for saying that one can resist it. But
+when it indeed proves victorious, it is certain and infallible beforehand
+that one will yield to its allurements, whether it have its strength of
+itself or whether it find a way to triumph through the congruity of
+circumstances. Thus one must always distinguish between the infallible and
+the necessary.
+
+280. The system of those who call themselves Disciples of St. Augustine is
+not far removed from this, provided one exclude certain obnoxious things,
+whether in the expressions or in the dogmas themselves. In the
+_expressions_ I find that it is principally the use of terms like     [298]
+'necessary' or 'contingent', 'possible' or 'impossible', which sometimes
+gives a handle and causes much ado. That is why, as Herr Löscher the
+younger aptly observed in a learned dissertation on the _Paroxysms of the
+Absolute Decree_, Luther desired, in his book _On the Will in Bondage_, to
+find a word more fitting for that which he wished to express than the word
+necessity. Speaking generally, it appears more reasonable and more fitting
+to say that obedience to God's precepts is always _possible_, even for the
+unregenerate; that the grace of God is always _resistible_, even in those
+most holy, and that _freedom_ is exempt not only from _constraint_ but also
+from _necessity_, although it be never without infallible _certainty_ or
+without inclining _determination_.
+
+281. Nevertheless there is on the other hand a sense wherein it would be
+permitted to say, in certain conjunctures, that the _power_ to do good is
+often lacking, even in the just; that sins are often _necessary_, even in
+the regenerate; that it is _impossible_ sometimes for one not to sin; that
+grace is _irresistible_; that freedom is not exempt from _necessity_. But
+these expressions are less exact and less pleasing in the circumstances
+that prevail about us to-day. They are also in general more open to misuse;
+and moreover they savour somewhat of the speech of the people, where terms
+are employed with great latitude. There are, however, circumstances which
+render them acceptable and even serviceable. It is the case that sacred and
+orthodox writers, and even the holy Scriptures, have made use of
+expressions on both sides, and no real contradiction has arisen, any more
+than between St. Paul and St. James, or any error on either side that might
+be attributable to the ambiguity of the terms. One is so well accustomed to
+these various ways of speaking that often one is put to it to say precisely
+which sense is the more ordinary and the more natural, and even that more
+intended by the author (_quis sensus magis naturalis, obvius, intentus_).
+For the same writer has different aims in different passages, and the same
+ways of speaking are more or less accepted or acceptable before or after
+the decision of some great man or of some authority that one respects and
+follows. As a result of this one may well authorize or ban, as opportunity
+arises and at certain times, certain expressions; but it makes no
+difference to the sense, or to the content of faith, if sufficient
+explanations of the terms are not added.
+
+282. It is therefore only necessary to understand fully some distinctions,
+such as that I have very often urged between the necessary and the    [299]
+certain, and between metaphysical necessity and moral necessity. It is the
+same with possibility and impossibility, since the event whose opposite is
+possible is contingent, even as that whose opposite is impossible is
+necessary. A distinction is rightly drawn also between a proximate potency
+and a remote potency; and, according to these different senses, one says
+now that a thing may be and now that it may not be. It may be said in a
+certain sense that it is necessary that the blessed should not sin; that
+the devils and the damned should sin; that God himself should choose the
+best; that man should follow the course which after all attracts him most.
+But this necessity is not opposed to contingency; it is not of the kind
+called logical, geometrical or metaphysical, whose opposite implies
+contradiction. M. Nicole has made use somewhere of a comparison which is
+not amiss. It is considered impossible that a wise and serious magistrate,
+who has not taken leave of his senses, should publicly commit some
+outrageous action, as it would be, for instance, to run about the streets
+naked in order to make people laugh. It is the same, in a sense, with the
+blessed; they are still less capable of sinning, and the necessity that
+forbids them to sin is of the same kind. Finally I also hold that 'will' is
+a term as equivocal as potency and necessity. For I have already observed
+that those who employ this axiom, that one does not fail to do what one
+wills when one can, and who thence infer that God therefore does not will
+the salvation of all, imply a _decretory will_. Only in that sense can one
+support this proposition, that wisdom never wills what it knows to be among
+the things that shall not happen. On the other hand, one may say, taking
+will in a sense more general and more in conformity with customary use,
+that the wise will is _inclined_ antecedently to all good, although it
+_decrees_ finally to do that which is most fitting. Thus one would be very
+wrong to deny to God the serious and strong inclination to save all men,
+which Holy Scripture attributes to him; or even to attribute to him an
+original distaste which diverts him from the salvation of a number of
+persons, _odium antecedaneum_. One should rather maintain that the wise
+mind tends towards all good, as good, in proportion to his knowledge and
+his power, but that he only produces the best that can be achieved. Those
+who admit that, and yet deny to God the antecedent will to save all men,
+are wrong only in their misuse of the term, provided that they acknowledge,
+besides, that God gives to all help sufficient to enable them to win  [300]
+salvation if only they have the will to avail themselves thereof.
+
+283. In the _dogmas_ themselves held by the Disciples of St. Augustine I
+cannot approve the damnation of unregenerate children, nor in general
+damnation resulting from original sin alone. Nor can I believe that God
+condemns those who are without the necessary light. One may believe, with
+many theologians, that men receive more aid than we are aware of, were it
+only when they are at the point of death. It does not appear necessary
+either that all those who are saved should always be saved through a grace
+efficacious of itself, independently of circumstances. Also I consider it
+unnecessary to say that all the virtues of the pagans were false or that
+all their actions were sins; though it be true that what does not spring
+from faith, or from the uprightness of the soul before God, is infected
+with sin, at least virtually. Finally I hold that God cannot act as if at
+random by an absolutely absolute decree, or by a will independent of
+reasonable motives. And I am persuaded that he is always actuated, in the
+dispensation of his grace, by reasons wherein the nature of the objects
+participates. Otherwise he would not act in accordance with wisdom. I grant
+nevertheless that these reasons are not of necessity bound up with the good
+or the less evil natural qualities of men, as if God gave his grace only
+according to these good qualities. Yet I hold, as I have explained already
+here, that these qualities are taken into consideration like all the other
+circumstances, since nothing can be neglected in the designs of supreme
+wisdom.
+
+284. Save for these points, and some few others, where St. Augustine
+appears obscure or even repellent, it seems as though one can conform to
+his system. He states that from the substance of God only a God can
+proceed, and that thus the creature is derived from nothingness (Augustine
+_De Lib. Arb._, lib. 1, c. 2). That is what makes the creature imperfect,
+faulty and corruptible (_De Genesi ad Lit._, c. 15, _Contra Epistolam
+Manichaei_, c. 36). Evil comes not from nature, but from evil will
+(Augustine, in the whole book _On the Nature of Good_). God can command
+nothing that would be impossible. 'Firmissime creditur Deum justum et bonum
+impossibilia non potuisse praecipere' (_Lib. de Nat. et Grat._, c. 43, p.
+69). Nemo peccat in eo, quod caveri non potest (lib. 3, _De Lib. Arb._, c.
+16, 17, _lib._ 1 _Retract._ c. 11, 13, 15). Under a just God, none can be
+unhappy who deserves not so to be, 'neque sub Deo justo miser esse    [301]
+quisquam, nisi mereatur, potest' (lib. 1, c. 39). Free will cannot carry
+out God's commands without the aid of grace (_Ep. ad Hilar.
+Caesaraugustan._). We know that grace is not given according to deserts
+(Ep. 106, 107, 120). Man in the state of innocence had the aid necessary to
+enable him to do good if he wished; but the wish depended on free will,
+'habebat adjutorium, per quod posset, et sine quo non vellet, sed non
+adjutorium quo vellet' (_Lib. de Corrept._, c. 11 et c. 10, 12). God let
+angels and men try what they could do by their free will, and after that
+what his grace and his justice could achieve (ibid., c. 10, 11, 12). Sin
+turned man away from God, to turn him towards creatures (lib. 1, qu. 2, _Ad
+Simplicium_). To take pleasure in sinning is the freedom of a slave
+(_Enchirid._, c. 103). 'Liberum arbitrium usque adeo in peccatore non
+periit, ut per illud peccent maxime omnes, qui cum delectatione peccant'
+(lib. 1, _Ad Bonifac._, c. 2, 3).
+
+285. God said to Moses: 'I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and
+will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy' (Exod. xxxiii. 19). 'So then it
+is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
+sheweth mercy' (Rom. ix. 15, 16). That does not prevent all those who have
+good will, and who persevere therein, from being saved. But God gives them
+the willing and the doing. 'Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have
+mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth' (Rom. ix. 18). And yet the same
+Apostle says that God willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the
+knowledge of the truth; which I would not interpret in accordance with some
+passages of St. Augustine, as if it signified that no men are saved except
+those whose salvation he wills, or as if he would save _non singulos
+generum, sed genera singulorum_. But I would rather say that there is none
+whose salvation he willeth not, in so far as this is permitted by greater
+reasons. For these bring it about that God only saves those who accept the
+faith he has offered to them and who surrender themselves thereto by the
+grace he has given them, in accordance with what was consistent with the
+plan of his works in its entirety, than which none can be better conceived.
+
+286. As for predestination to salvation, it includes also, according to St.
+Augustine, the ordinance of the means that shall lead to salvation.
+'Praedestinatio sanctorum nihil aliud est, quam praescientia et praeparatio
+beneficiorum Dei, quibus certissime liberantur quicunque liberantur' (_Lib.
+de Persev._, c. 14). He does not then understand it there as an       [302]
+absolute decree; he maintains that there is a grace which is not rejected
+by any hardened heart, because it is given in order to remove especially
+the hardness of hearts (_Lib. de Praedest._, c. 8; _Lib. de Grat._, c. 13,
+14). I do not find, however, that St. Augustine conveys sufficiently that
+this grace, which subdues the heart, is always efficacious of itself. And
+one might perhaps have asserted without offence to him that the same degree
+of inward grace is victorious in the one, where it is aided by outward
+circumstances, but not in the other.
+
+287. Will is proportionate to the sense we have of the good, and follows
+the sense which prevails. 'Si utrumque tantundem diligimus, nihil horum
+dabimus. Item: Quod amplius nos delectat, secundum id operemur necesse est'
+(in c. 5, _Ad Gal._). I have explained already how, despite all that, we
+have indeed a great power over our will. St. Augustine takes it somewhat
+differently, and in a way that does not go far, when he says that nothing
+is so much within our power as the action of our will. And he gives a
+reason which is almost tautological: for (he says) this action is ready at
+the moment when we will. 'Nihil tam in nostra potestate est, quam ipsa
+voluntas, ea enim mox ut volumus praesto est' (lib. 3, _De Lib. Arb._, c.
+3; lib. 5, _De Civ. Dei_, c. 10). But that only means that we will when we
+will, and not that we will that which we wish to will. There is more reason
+for saying with him: '_aut voluntas non est, aut libera dicenda est_' (d.
+1, 3, c. 3); and that what inclines the will towards good infallibly, or
+certainly, does not prevent it from being free. 'Perquam absurdum est, ut
+ideo dicamus non pertinere ad voluntatem [libertatem] nostram, quod beati
+esse volumus, quia id omnino nolle non possumus, nescio qua bona
+constrictione naturae. Nec dicere audemus ideo Deum non voluntatem
+[libertatem], sed necessitatem habere justitiae, quia non potest velle
+peccare. Certe Deus ipse numquid quia peccare non potest, ideo liberum
+arbitrium habere negandus est?' (_De Nat. et Grat._, c. 46, 47, 48, 49). He
+also says aptly, that God gives the first good impulse, but that afterwards
+man acts also. 'Aguntur ut agant, non ut ipsi nihil agant' (_De Corrept._,
+c. 2).
+
+288. I have proved that free will is the proximate cause of the evil of
+guilt, and consequently of the evil of punishment; although it is true that
+the original imperfection of creatures, which is already presented in the
+eternal ideas, is the first and most remote cause. M. Bayle           [303]
+nevertheless always disputes this use of the notion of free will; he will
+not have the cause of evil ascribed to it. One must listen to his
+objections, but first it will be well to throw further light on the nature
+of freedom. I have shown that freedom, according to the definition required
+in the schools of theology, consists in intelligence, which involves a
+clear knowledge of the object of deliberation, in spontaneity, whereby we
+determine, and in contingency, that is, in the exclusion of logical or
+metaphysical necessity. Intelligence is, as it were, the soul of freedom,
+and the rest is as its body and foundation. The free substance is
+self-determining and that according to the motive of good perceived by the
+understanding, which inclines it without compelling it: and all the
+conditions of freedom are comprised in these few words. It is nevertheless
+well to point out that the imperfection present in our knowledge and our
+spontaneity, and the infallible determination that is involved in our
+contingency, destroy neither freedom nor contingency.
+
+289. Our knowledge is of two kinds, distinct or confused. Distinct
+knowledge, or _intelligence_, occurs in the actual use of reason; but the
+senses supply us with confused thoughts. And we may say that we are immune
+from bondage in so far as we act with a distinct knowledge, but that we are
+the slaves of passion in so far as our perceptions are confused. In this
+sense we have not all the freedom of spirit that were to be desired, and we
+may say with St. Augustine that being subject to sin we have the freedom of
+a slave. Yet a slave, slave as he is, nevertheless has freedom to choose
+according to the state wherein he is, although more often than not he is
+under the stern necessity of choosing between two evils, because a superior
+force prevents him from attaining the goods whereto he aspires. That which
+in a slave is effected by bonds and constraint in us is effected by
+passions, whose violence is sweet, but none the less pernicious. In truth
+we will only that which pleases us: but unhappily what pleases us now is
+often a real evil, which would displease us if we had the eyes of the
+understanding open. Nevertheless that evil state of the slave, which is
+also our own, does not prevent us, any more than him, from making a free
+choice of that which pleases us most, in the state to which we are reduced,
+in proportion to our present strength and knowledge.
+
+290. As for spontaneity, it belongs to us in so far as we have within us
+the source of our actions, as Aristotle rightly conceived. The        [304]
+impressions of external things often, indeed, divert us from our path, and
+it was commonly believed that, at least in this respect, some of the
+sources of our actions were outside ourselves. I admit that one is bound to
+speak thus, adapting oneself to the popular mode of expression, as one may,
+in a certain sense, without doing violence to truth. But when it is a
+question of expressing oneself accurately I maintain that our spontaneity
+suffers no exception and that external things have no physical influence
+upon us, I mean in the strictly philosophical sense.
+
+291. For better understanding of this point, one must know that true
+spontaneity is common to us and all simple substances, and that in the
+intelligent or free substance this becomes a mastery over its actions. That
+cannot be better explained than by the System of Pre-established Harmony,
+which I indeed propounded some years ago. There I pointed out that by
+nature every simple substance has perception, and that its individuality
+consists in the perpetual law which brings about the sequence of
+perceptions that are assigned to it, springing naturally from one another,
+to represent the body that is allotted to it, and through its
+instrumentality the entire universe, in accordance with the point of view
+proper to this simple substance and without its needing to receive any
+physical influence from the body. Even so the body also for its part adapts
+itself to the wishes of the soul by its own laws, and consequently only
+obeys it according to the promptings of these laws. Whence it follows that
+the soul has in itself a perfect spontaneity, so that it depends only upon
+God and upon itself in its actions.
+
+292. As this system was not known formerly, other ways were sought for
+emerging from this labyrinth, and the Cartesians themselves were in
+difficulties over the subject of free will. They were no longer satisfied
+by the 'faculties' of the Schoolmen, and they considered that all the
+actions of the soul appear to be determined by what comes from without,
+according to the impressions of the senses, and that, ultimately, all is
+controlled in the universe by the providence of God. Thence arose naturally
+the objection that there is therefore no freedom. To that M. Descartes
+replied that we are assured of God's providence by reason; but that we are
+likewise assured of our freedom by experience thereof within ourselves; and
+that we must believe in both, even though we see not how it is possible to
+reconcile them.
+
+                                                                      [305]
+293. That was cutting the Gordian knot, and answering the conclusion of an
+argument not by refuting it but by opposing thereto a contrary argument.
+Which procedure does not conform to the laws for philosophical disputes.
+Notwithstanding, most of the Cartesians contented themselves with this,
+albeit the inward experience they adduce does not prove their assertion, as
+M. Bayle has clearly shown. M. Regis (_Philos._, vol. 1, Metaph., book 2,
+part 2, c. 22) thus paraphrases M. Descartes' doctrine: 'Most
+philosophers', he says, 'have fallen into error. Some, not being able to
+understand the relation existing between free actions and the providence of
+God, have denied that God was the first efficient cause of free will: but
+that is sacrilegious. The others, not being able to apprehend the relation
+between God's efficacy and free actions, have denied that man was endowed
+with freedom: and that is a blasphemy. The mean to be found between these
+two extremes is to say' (id. ibid., p. 485) 'that, even though we were not
+able to understand all the relations existing between freedom and God's
+providence, we should nevertheless be bound to acknowledge that we are free
+and dependent upon God. For both these truths are equally known, the one
+through experience, and the other through reason; and prudence forbids one
+to abandon truths whereof one is assured, under the pretext that one cannot
+apprehend all the relations existing between them and other truths well
+known.'
+
+294. M. Bayle here remarks pertinently in the margin, 'that these
+expressions of M. Regis fail to point out that we are aware of relations
+between man's actions and God's providence, such as appear to us to be
+incompatible with our freedom.' He adds that these expressions are
+over-circumspect, weakening the statement of the problem. 'Authors assume',
+he says, 'that the difficulty arises solely from our lack of enlightenment;
+whereas they ought to say that it arises in the main from the enlightenment
+which we have, and cannot reconcile' (in M. Bayle's opinion) 'with our
+Mysteries.' That is exactly what I said at the beginning of this work, that
+if the Mysteries were irreconcilable with reason, and if there were
+unanswerable objections, far from finding the mystery incomprehensible, we
+should comprehend that it was false. It is true that here there is no
+question of a mystery, but only of natural religion.
+
+295. This is how M. Bayle combats those inward experiences, whereon   [306]
+the Cartesians make freedom rest: but he begins by reflexions with which I
+cannot agree. 'Those who do not make profound examination', he says
+(_Dictionary_, art. 'Helen.', lit. [Greek: TD]), 'of that which passes
+within them easily persuade themselves that they are free, and that, if
+their will prompts them to evil, it is their fault, it is through a choice
+whereof they are the masters. Those who judge otherwise are persons who
+have studied with care the springs and the circumstances of their actions,
+and who have thought over the progress of their soul's impulses. Those
+persons usually have doubts about their free will, and even come to
+persuade themselves that their reason and mind are slaves, without power to
+resist the force that carries them along where they would not go. It was
+principally persons of this kind who ascribed to the gods the cause of
+their evil deeds.'
+
+296. These words remind me of those of Chancellor Bacon, who says that a
+little philosophy inclineth us away from God, but that depth in philosophy
+bringeth men's minds about to him. It is the same with those who reflect
+upon their actions: it appears to them at first that all we do is only
+impulsion from others, and that all we apprehend comes from without through
+the senses, and is traced upon the void of our mind _tanquam in tabula
+rasa_. But more profound meditation shows us that all (even perceptions and
+passions) comes to us from our own inner being, with complete spontaneity.
+
+297. Yet M. Bayle cites poets who pretend to exonerate men by laying the
+blame upon the gods. Medea in Ovid speaks thus:
+
+      _Frustra, Medea, repugnas,_
+  _Nescio quid Deus obstat, ait._
+
+And a little later Ovid makes her add:
+
+  _Sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque Cupido,_
+  _Mens aliud suadet; video meliora proboque,_
+  _Deteriora sequor_.
+
+But one could set against that a passage from Vergil, who makes Nisus say
+with far more reason:
+
+  _Di ne hunc ardorem mentibus addunt,_
+  _Euryale, an sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido?_
+
+298. Herr Wittich seems to have thought that in reality our independence is
+only apparent. For in his _Diss. de providentia Dei actuali_ (n. 61)  [307]
+he makes free will consist in our being inclined towards the objects that
+present themselves to our soul for affirmation or denial, love or hate, in
+such a way that we _do not feel_ we are being determined by any outward
+force. He adds that it is when God himself causes our volitions that we act
+with most freedom; and that the more efficacious and powerful God's action
+is upon us, the more we are masters of our actions. 'Quia enim Deus
+operatur ipsum velle, quo efficacius operatur, eo magis volumus; quod
+autem, cum volumus, facimus, id maxime habemus in nostra potestate.' It is
+true that when God causes a volition in us he causes a free action. But it
+seems to me that the question here is not of the universal cause or of that
+production of our will which is proper to it in so far as it is a created
+effect, whose positive elements are actually created continually through
+God's co-operation, like all other absolute reality of things. We are
+concerned here with the reasons for willing, and the means God uses when he
+gives us a good will or permits us to have an evil will. It is always we
+who produce it, good or evil, for it is our action: but there are always
+reasons that make us act, without impairing either our spontaneity or our
+freedom. Grace does no more than give impressions which are conducive to
+making will operate through fitting motives, such as would be an attention,
+_a dic cur hic_, a prevenient pleasure. And it is quite evident that that
+does not interfere with freedom, any more than could a friend who gives
+counsel and furnishes motives. Thus Herr Wittich has not supplied an answer
+to the question, any more than M. Bayle, and recourse to God is of no avail
+here.
+
+299. But let me give another much more reasonable passage from the same M.
+Bayle, where he disputes with greater force the so-called lively sense of
+freedom, which according to the Cartesians is a proof of freedom. His words
+are indeed full of wit, and worthy of consideration, and occur in the
+_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, ch. 140, p. 761
+_seqq._). Here they are: 'By the clear and distinct sense we have of our
+existence we do not discern whether we exist through ourselves or derive
+our being from another. We discern that only by reflexion, that is, through
+meditation upon our powerlessness in the matter of conserving ourselves as
+much as we would, and of freeing ourselves from dependence upon the beings
+that surround us, etc. It is indeed certain that the pagans (the same must
+be said of the Socinians, since they deny the creation) never attained[308]
+to the knowledge of that true dogma that we were created from nothing, and
+that we are derived from nothingness at every moment of our continuance.
+They therefore thought erroneously that all substances in the universe
+exist of themselves and can never be reduced to nothing, and that thus they
+depend upon no other thing save in respect of their modifications, which
+are liable to be destroyed by the action of an external cause. Does not
+this error spring from the fact that we are unconscious of the creative
+action which conserves us, and that we are only conscious of our existence?
+That we are conscious of it, I say, in such a way that we should for ever
+remain ignorant of the cause of our being if other knowledge did not aid
+us? Let us say also, that the clear and distinct sense we have of the acts
+of our will cannot make us discern whether we give them ourselves to
+ourselves or receive them from that same cause which gives us existence. We
+must have recourse to reflexion or to meditation in order to effect this
+discrimination. Now I assert that one can never by purely philosophical
+meditations arrive at an established certainty that we are the efficient
+cause of our volitions: for every person who makes due investigation will
+recognize clearly, that if we were only passive subjects with regard to
+will we should have the same sensations of experience as we have when we
+think that we are free. Assume, for the sake of argument, that God so
+ordered the laws of the union between soul and body that all the modalities
+of the soul, without a single exception, are of necessity linked together
+with the interposition of the modalities of the brain. You will then
+understand that nothing will happen to us except that of which we are
+conscious: there will be in our soul the same sequence of thoughts from the
+perception of objects of the senses, which is its first step, up to the
+most definite volitions, which are its final step. There will be in this
+sequence the consciousness of ideas, that of affirmations, that of
+irresolutions, that of velleities and that of volitions. For whether the
+act of willing be impressed upon us by an external cause or we bring it
+about ourselves, it will be equally true that we will, and that we feel
+that we will. Moreover, as this external cause can blend as much pleasure
+as it will with the volition which it impresses upon us, we shall be able
+to feel at times that the acts of our will please us infinitely, and that
+they lead us according to the bent of our strongest inclinations. We shall
+feel no constraint; you know the maxim: _voluntas non potest cogi_. Do[309]
+you not clearly understand that a weather-vane, always having communicated
+to it simultaneously (in such a way, however, that priority of nature or,
+if one will, a real momentary priority, should attach to the desire for
+motion) movement towards a certain point on the horizon, and the wish to
+turn in that direction, would be persuaded that it moved of itself to
+fulfil the desires which it conceived? I assume that it would not know that
+there were winds, or that an external cause changed everything
+simultaneously, both its situation and its desires. That is the state we
+are in by our nature: we know not whether an invisible cause makes us pass
+sufficiently from one thought to another. It is therefore natural that men
+are persuaded that they determine their own acts. But it remains to be
+discovered whether they are mistaken in that, as in countless other things
+they affirm by a kind of instinct and without having made use of
+philosophic meditation. Since therefore there are two hypotheses as to what
+takes place in man: the one that he is only a passive subject, the other
+that he has active virtues, one cannot in reason prefer the second to the
+first, so long as one can only adduce proofs of feeling. For we should feel
+with an equal force that we wish this or that, whether all our volitions
+were imprinted upon our soul by an exterior and invisible cause, or we
+formed them ourselves.'
+
+300. There are here excellent arguments, which are valid against the usual
+systems; but they fail in respect of the System of Pre-established Harmony,
+which takes us further than we were able to go formerly. M. Bayle asserts,
+for instance, 'that by purely philosophical meditations one can never
+attain to an established certainty that we are the efficient cause of our
+volitions'. But this is a point which I do not concede to him: for the
+establishment of this system demonstrates beyond a doubt that in the course
+of nature each substance is the sole cause of all its actions, and that it
+is free of all physical influence from every other substance, save the
+customary co-operation of God. And this system shows that our spontaneity
+is real, and not only apparent, as Herr Wittich believed it to be. M. Bayle
+asserts also on the same reasons (ch. 170, p. 1132) that if there were a
+_fatum Astrologicum_ this would not destroy freedom; and I would concede
+that to him, if freedom consisted only in an apparent spontaneity.
+
+301. The spontaneity of our actions can therefore no longer be questioned;
+and Aristotle has defined it well, saying that an action is           [310]
+_spontaneous_ when its source is in him who acts. 'Spontaneum est, cujus
+principium est in agente.' Thus it is that our actions and our wills depend
+entirely upon us. It is true that we are not directly the masters of our
+will, although we be its cause; for we do not choose volitions, as we
+choose our actions by our volitions. Yet we have a certain power also over
+our will, because we can contribute indirectly towards willing another time
+that which we would fain will now, as I have here already shown: that,
+however, is no _velleity_, properly speaking. There also we have a mastery,
+individual and even perceptible, over our actions and our wills, resulting
+from a combination of spontaneity with intelligence.
+
+302. Up to this point I have expounded the two conditions of freedom
+mentioned by Aristotle, that is, _spontaneity_ and _intelligence_, which
+are found united in us in deliberation, whereas beasts lack the second
+condition. But the Schoolmen demand yet a third, which they call
+_indifference_. And indeed one must admit it, if indifference signifies as
+much as 'contingency'; for I have already said here that freedom must
+exclude an absolute and metaphysical or logical necessity. But, as I have
+declared more than once, this indifference, this contingency, this
+non-necessity, if I may venture so to speak, which is a characteristic
+attribute of freedom, does not prevent one from having stronger
+inclinations towards the course one chooses; nor does it by any means
+require that one be absolutely and equally indifferent towards the two
+opposing courses.
+
+303. I therefore admit indifference only in the one sense, implying the
+same as contingency, or non-necessity. But, as I have declared more than
+once, I do not admit an indifference of equipoise, and I do not think that
+one ever chooses when one is absolutely indifferent. Such a choice would
+be, as it were, mere chance, without determining reason, whether apparent
+or hidden. But such a chance, such an absolute and actual fortuity, is a
+chimera which never occurs in nature. All wise men are agreed that chance
+is only an apparent thing, like fortune: only ignorance of causes gives
+rise to it. But if there were such a vague indifference, or rather if we
+were to choose without having anything to prompt us to the choice, chance
+would then be something actual, resembling what, according to Epicurus,
+took place in that little deviation of the atoms, occurring without cause
+or reason. Epicurus had introduced it in order to evade necessity, and[311]
+Cicero with good reason ridiculed it.
+
+304. This deviation had a final cause in the mind of Epicurus, his aim
+being to free us from fate; but it can have no efficient cause in the
+nature of things, it is one of the most impossible of chimeras. M. Bayle
+himself refutes it admirably, as we shall see presently. And yet it is
+surprising that he appears to admit elsewhere himself something of like
+nature with this supposed deviation: here is what he says, when speaking of
+Buridan's ass (_Dictionary_, art. 'Buridan', lit. 13): 'Those who advocate
+free will properly so called admit in man a power of determining, either to
+the right hand or the left, even when the motives are perfectly uniform on
+the side of each of the two opposing objects. For they maintain that our
+soul can say, without having any reason other than that of using its
+freedom: "I prefer this to that, although I see nothing more worthy of my
+choice in the one than the other".'
+
+305. All those who admit a free will properly so called will not for that
+reason concede to M. Bayle this determination springing from an
+indeterminate cause. St. Augustine and the Thomists believe that all is
+determined. And one sees that their opponents resort also to the
+circumstances which contribute to our choice. Experience by no means
+approves the chimera of an indifference of equipoise; and one can employ
+here the argument that M. Bayle himself employed against the Cartesians'
+manner of proving freedom by the lively sense of our independence. For
+although I do not always see the reason for an inclination which makes me
+choose between two apparently uniform courses, there will always be some
+impression, however imperceptible, that determines us. The mere desire to
+make use of one's freedom has no effect of specifying, or determining us to
+the choice of one course or the other.
+
+306. M. Bayle goes on: 'There are at the very least two ways whereby man
+can extricate himself from the snares of equipoise. One, which I have
+already mentioned, is for a man to flatter himself with the pleasing fancy
+that he is master in his own house, and that he does not depend upon
+objects.' This way is blocked: for all that one might wish to play master
+in one's own house, that has no determining effect, nor does it favour one
+course more than the other. M. Bayle goes on: 'He would make this Act: I
+will prefer this to that, because it pleases me to behave thus.' But  [312]
+these words, 'because it pleases me', 'because such is my pleasure', imply
+already a leaning towards 'the object that pleases'.
+
+307. There is therefore no justification for continuing thus: 'And so that
+which determined him would not be taken from the object; the motive would
+be derived only from the ideas men have of their own perfections, or of
+their natural faculties. The other way is that of the lot or chance: the
+short straw would decide.' This way has an outlet, but it does not reach
+the goal: it would alter the issue, for in such a case it is not man who
+decides. Or again if one maintains that it is still the man who decides by
+lot, man himself is no longer in equipoise, because the lot is not, and the
+man has attached himself to it. There are always reasons in Nature which
+cause that which happens by chance or through the lot. I am somewhat
+surprised that a mind so shrewd as M. Bayle's could have allowed itself to
+be so misled on this point. I have set out elsewhere the true rejoinder to
+the Buridan sophism: it is that the case of perfect equipoise is
+impossible, since the universe can never be halved, so as to make all
+impressions equivalent on both sides.
+
+308. Let us see what M. Bayle himself says elsewhere against the chimerical
+or absolutely undefined indifference. Cicero had said (in his book _De
+Fato_) that Carneades had found something more subtle than the deviation of
+atoms, attributing the cause of a so-called absolutely undefined
+indifference to the voluntary motions of souls, because these motions have
+no need of an external cause, coming as they do from our nature. But M.
+Bayle (_Dictionary_, art. 'Epicurus', p. 1143) aptly replies that all that
+which springs from the nature of a thing is determined: thus determination
+always remains, and Carneades' evasion is of no avail.
+
+309. He shows elsewhere (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 90,
+l. 2, p. 229) 'that a freedom far removed from this so-called equipoise is
+incomparably more beneficial. I mean', he says, 'a freedom such as may
+always follow the judgements of the mind, and such as cannot resist objects
+clearly recognized as good. I know of no people who do not agree that truth
+clearly recognized necessitates' (determines rather, unless one speak of a
+moral necessity) 'the assent of the soul; experience teaches us that. In
+the schools they teach constantly that as the true is the object of   [313]
+the understanding, so the good is the object of the will. So likewise they
+teach that as the understanding can never affirm anything save that which
+is shown to it under the semblance of truth, the will can never love
+anything which to it does not appear to be good. One never believes the
+false as such, and one never loves evil as evil. There is in the
+understanding a natural determination towards the true in general, and
+towards each individual truth clearly recognized. There is in the will a
+natural determination towards good in general; whence many philosophers
+conclude that from the moment when individual goods are clearly recognized
+by us we are of necessity compelled to love them. The understanding
+suspends its actions only when its objects show themselves obscurely, so
+that there is cause for doubt as to whether they are false or true. That
+leads many persons to the conclusion that the will remains in equipoise
+only when the soul is uncertain whether the object presented to it is a
+good with regard to it; but that also, the moment the soul decides in the
+affirmative, it of necessity clings to that object until other judgements
+of the mind determine it otherwise. Those who expound freedom in this
+fashion think to find therein plentiful enough material for merit or
+demerit. For they assume that these judgements of the mind proceed from a
+free attention of the soul in examining the objects, comparing them
+together, and discriminating between them. I must not forget that there are
+very learned men' (such as Bellarmine, lib. 3, _De Gratia et Libero
+Arbitrio_, c. 8, et 9, and Cameron, in _Responsione ad Epistolam Viri
+Docti, id est Episcopii_) 'who maintain with very cogent reasons that the
+will always of necessity follows the last practical act of the
+understanding.'
+
+310. One must make some observations on this discourse. A very clear
+recognition of the best _determines_ the will; but it does not necessitate
+it, properly speaking. One must always distinguish between the necessary
+and the certain or infallible, as I have already observed more than once,
+and distinguish metaphysical necessity from moral necessity. I think also
+that it is only God's will which always follows the judgements of the
+understanding: all intelligent creatures are subject to some passions, or
+to perceptions at least, that are not composed entirely of what I call
+_adequate ideas_. And although in the blessed these passions always tend
+towards the true good, by virtue of the laws of Nature and the system of
+things pre-established in relation to them, yet this does not always  [314]
+happen in such a way that they have a perfect knowledge of that good. It is
+the same with them as with us, who do not always understand the reason for
+our instincts. The angels and the blessed are created beings, even as we
+are, in whom there is always some confused perception mingled with distinct
+knowledge. Suarez said something similar concerning them. He thinks
+(_Treatise on Prayer_, book I, ch. 11) that God has so ordered things
+beforehand that their prayers, when they are made with a full will, always
+succeed: that is an example of a pre-established harmony. As for us, in
+addition to the judgement of the understanding, of which we have an express
+knowledge, there are mingled therewith confused perceptions of the senses,
+and these beget passions and even imperceptible inclinations, of which we
+are not always aware. These movements often thwart the judgement of the
+practical understanding.
+
+311. As for the parallel between the relation of the understanding to the
+true and that of the will to the good, one must know that a clear and
+distinct perception of a truth contains within it actually the affirmation
+of this truth: thus the understanding is necessitated in that direction.
+But whatever perception one may have of the good, the effort to act in
+accordance with the judgement, which in my opinion forms the essence of the
+will, is distinct from it. Thus, since there is need of time to raise this
+effort to its climax, it may be suspended, and even changed, by a new
+perception or inclination which passes athwart it, which diverts the mind
+from it, and which even causes it sometimes to make a contrary judgement.
+Hence it comes that our soul has so many means of resisting the truth which
+it knows, and that the passage from mind to heart is so long. Especially is
+this so when the understanding to a great extent proceeds only by faint
+_thoughts_, which have only slight power to affect, as I have explained
+elsewhere. Thus the connexion between judgement and will is not so
+necessary as one might think.
+
+312. M. Bayle goes on to say, with truth (p. 221): 'Indeed, it cannot be a
+fault in man's soul that it has no freedom of indifference as regards good
+in general. It would be rather a disorder, an inordinate imperfection, if
+one could say truthfully: It is all one to me whether I am happy or
+unhappy; I have no more determination to love the good than to hate it; I
+can do both equally. Now if it is a praiseworthy and advantageous quality
+to be determinate as regards good in general, it cannot be a fault if [315]
+one is necessitated as regards each individual good recognized plainly as
+for our good. It seems even as though it were a necessary conclusion, that
+if the soul has no freedom of indifference as regards good in general, it
+also has none in respect of particular goods which after due examination it
+judges to be goods in relation to it. What should we think of a soul which,
+having formed that judgement, had, and prided itself on having, the power
+not to love these goods, and even to hate them, and which said: I recognize
+clearly that these are goods for me, I have all the enlightenment necessary
+on that point; nevertheless I will not love them, I will hate them; my
+decision is made, I act upon it; it is not that any reason' (that is, any
+other reason than that which is founded upon 'Such is my good pleasure')
+'urges me thereto, but it pleases me so to behave: what should we think, I
+say, of such a soul? Should we not find it more imperfect and more unhappy
+than if it had not this freedom of indifference?
+
+313. 'Not only does the doctrine that subjects the will to the final acts
+of the understanding give a more favourable idea of the state of the soul,
+but it shows also that it is easier to lead man to happiness along that
+road than along the road of indifference. It will suffice to enlighten his
+mind upon his true interests, and straightway his will will comply with the
+judgements that reason shall have pronounced. But if he has a freedom
+independent of reason and of the quality of objects clearly recognized, he
+will be the most intractable of all animals, and it will never be possible
+to rely upon making him choose the right course. All the counsels, all the
+arguments in the world may prove unavailing; you will give him
+explanations, you will convince his mind, and yet his will will play the
+haughty madam and remain motionless as a rock. Vergil, _Aen_., lib. 6, v.
+470:
+
+  _Non magis incepto vultum sermone movetur,_
+  _Quam si dura silex, aut stet Marpesia cautes_.
+
+A caprice, an empty whim will make her stiffen against reasons of all
+kinds; it will not please her to love her clearly recognized good, it will
+please her to hate it. Do you consider such a faculty, sir, to be the
+richest present God can have made to man, and the sole instrument of our
+happiness? Is it not rather an obstacle to our felicity? Is there cause for
+boasting in being able to say: "I have scorned all the judgements of  [316]
+my reason, and I have followed an altogether different path, simply from
+considerations of my own good pleasure?" With what regrets would one not be
+torn, in that case, if the determination made had an ill result? Such a
+freedom would therefore be more harmful than profitable to men, because the
+understanding would not present all the goodness of the objects clearly
+enough to deprive the will of the power of rejection. It would be therefore
+infinitely better for man to be always of necessity determined by the
+judgement of the understanding, than to permit the will to suspend its
+action. For by this means it would achieve its aim with greater ease and
+certainty.'
+
+314. Upon this discourse I make the further observation, that it is very
+true that a freedom of indifference, undefined and without any determining
+reason, would be as harmful, and even objectionable, as it is impracticable
+and chimerical. The man who wished to behave thus, or at the least appear
+to be acting without due cause, would most certainly be looked upon as
+irrational. But it is very true also that the thing is impossible, when it
+is taken strictly in accordance with the assumption. As soon as one tries
+to give an example of it one misses one's aim and stumbles upon the case of
+a man who, while he does not come to a decision without cause, does so
+rather under the influence of inclination or passion than of judgement. As
+soon as one says: 'I scorn the judgements of my reason simply from
+considerations of my own good pleasure, it pleases me to behave thus', it
+is as if one were to say: I prefer my inclination to my interest, my
+pleasure to my profit.
+
+315. Even so some capricious man, fancying that it is ignominious for him
+to follow the advice of his friends or his servants, might prefer the
+satisfaction of contradicting them to the profit he could derive from their
+counsel. It may happen, however, that in a matter of small moment a wise
+man acts irregularly and against his own interest in order to thwart
+another who tries to restrain him or direct him, or that he may disconcert
+those who watch his steps. It is even well at times to imitate Brutus by
+concealing one's wit, and even to feign madness, as David did before the
+King of the Philistines.
+
+316. M. Bayle admirably supplements his remarks with the object of showing
+that to act against the judgement of the understanding would be a great
+imperfection. He observes (p. 225) that, even according to the        [317]
+Molinists, 'the understanding which does its DUTY well indicates that which
+is THE BEST'. He introduces God (ch. 91, p. 227) saying to our first
+parents in the Garden of Eden: 'I have given you my knowledge, the faculty
+of judging things, and full power to dispose your wills. I shall give you
+instructions and orders; but the free will that I have bestowed upon you is
+of such a nature that you have equal power (according to circumstances) to
+obey me and to disobey me. You will be tempted: if you make a good use of
+your freedom you will be happy; and if you use it ill you will be unhappy.
+It is for you to see if you wish to ask of me, as a new grace, either that
+I permit you to abuse your freedom when you shall make resolve to do so, or
+that I prevent you from doing so. Consider carefully, I give you four and
+twenty hours. Do you not clearly understand' (adds M. Bayle) 'that their
+reason, which had not yet been obscured by sin, would have made them
+conclude that they must ask God, as the crowning point of the favours
+wherewith he had honoured them, not to permit them to destroy themselves by
+an ill use of their powers? And must one not admit that if Adam, through
+wrongly making it a point of honour to order his own goings, had refused a
+divine direction that would have safeguarded his happiness, he would have
+been the prototype of all such as Phaeton and Icarus? He would have been
+well-nigh as ungodly as the Ajax of Sophocles, who wished to conquer
+without the aid of the gods, and who said that the most craven would put
+their enemies to flight with such aid.'
+
+317. M. Bayle also shows (ch. 80) that one congratulates oneself no less,
+or even takes more credit to oneself, for having been aided from above,
+than for owing one's happiness to one's own choice. And if one does well
+through having preferred a tumultuous instinct, which arose suddenly, to
+reasons maturely considered, one feels an extraordinary joy in this; for
+one assumes that either God, or our Guardian Angel, or something or other
+which one pictures to oneself under the vague name of _good luck_ has
+impelled us thereto. Indeed, Sulla and Caesar boasted more of their good
+luck than of their prudence. The pagans, and particularly the poets (Homer
+especially), determined their heroes' acts by divine promptings. The hero
+of the _Aeneid_ proceeds only under the direction of a God. It was very
+great praise offered to the Emperors if one said that they were victorious
+both through their troops and through their gods whom they lent to    [318]
+their generals: 'Te copias, te consilium et tuos praebente Divos,' said
+Horace. The generals fought under the auspices of the Emperors, as if
+trusting to the Emperor's good luck, for subordinate officers had no rights
+regarding the auspices. One takes credit to oneself for being a favourite
+of heaven, one rates oneself more highly for the possession of good fortune
+than of talent. There are no people that think themselves more fortunate
+than the mystics, who imagine that they keep still while God acts within
+them.
+
+318. 'On the other hand', M. Bayle adds (ch. 83), 'a Stoic philosopher, who
+attaches to everything an inevitable necessity, is as susceptible as
+another man to the pleasure of having chosen well. And every man of sense
+will find that, far from taking pleasure in the thought of having
+deliberated long and finally chosen the most honourable course, one feels
+incredible satisfaction in persuading oneself that one is so firmly rooted
+in the love of virtue that without the slightest resistance one would repel
+a temptation. A man to whom is suggested the doing of a deed contrary to
+his duty, his honour and his conscience, who answers forthwith that he is
+incapable of such a crime, and who is certainly not capable of it, is far
+more contented with himself than if he asked for time to consider it, and
+were for some hours in a state of indecision as to which course to take.
+One is on many occasions regretful over not being able to make up one's
+mind between two courses, and one would be well pleased that the counsel of
+a good friend, or some succour from above, should impel us to make a good
+choice.' All that demonstrates for us the advantage a determinate judgement
+has over that vague indifference which leaves us in uncertainty. But indeed
+I have proved sufficiently that only ignorance or passion has power to keep
+us in doubt, and have thus given the reason why God is never in doubt. The
+nearer one comes to him, the more perfect is freedom, and the more it is
+determined by the good and by reason. The character of Cato, of whom
+Velleius said that it was impossible for him to perform a dishonourable
+action, will always be preferred to that of a man who is capable of
+wavering.
+
+319. I have been well pleased to present and to support these arguments of
+M. Bayle against vague indifference, as much for the elucidation of the
+subject as to confront him with himself, and to demonstrate that he ought
+therefore not to complain of the alleged necessity imposed upon God,  [319]
+of choosing the best way that is possible. For either God will act through
+a vague indifference and at random, or again he will act on caprice or
+through some other passion, or finally he must act through a prevailing
+inclination of reason which prompts him to the best. But passions, which
+come from the confused perception of an apparent good, cannot occur in God;
+and vague indifference is something chimerical. It is therefore only the
+strongest reason that can regulate God's choice. It is an imperfection in
+our freedom that makes us capable of choosing evil instead of good, a
+greater evil instead of the lesser evil, the lesser good instead of the
+greater good. That arises from the appearances of good and evil, which
+deceive us; whereas God is always prompted to the true and the greatest
+good, that is, to the absolutely true good, which he cannot fail to know.
+
+320. This false idea of freedom, conceived by those who, not content with
+exempting it, I do not say from constraint, but from necessity itself,
+would also exempt it from certainty and determination, that is, from reason
+and perfection, nevertheless pleased some Schoolmen, people who often
+become entangled in their own subtleties, and take the straw of terms for
+the grain of things. They assume some chimerical notion, whence they think
+to derive some use, and which they endeavour to maintain by quibblings.
+Complete indifference is of this nature: to concede it to the will is to
+grant it a privilege of the kind that some Cartesians and some mystics find
+in the divine nature, of being able to do the impossible, to produce
+absurdities, to cause two contradictory propositions to be true
+simultaneously. To claim that a determination comes from a complete
+indifference absolutely indeterminate is to claim that it comes naturally
+from nothing. Let it be assumed that God does not give this determination:
+it has accordingly no fountainhead in the soul, nor in the body, nor in
+circumstances, since all is assumed to be indeterminate; and yet there it
+is, appearing and existing without preparation, nothing making ready for
+it, no angel, not even God himself, being able to see or to show how it
+exists. That would be not only the emergence of something from nothing, but
+its emergence thence _of itself_. This doctrine introduces something as
+preposterous as the theory already mentioned, of the deviation of atoms,
+whereby Epicurus asserted that one of these small bodies, going in a
+straight line, would turn aside all at once from its path, without any[320]
+reason, simply because the will so commands. Take note moreover that he
+resorted to that only to justify this alleged freedom of complete
+indifference, a chimerical notion which appears to be of very ancient
+origin; and one may with good reason say: _Chimaera Chimaeram parit_.
+
+321. This is the way Signor Marchetti has expressed it in his admirable
+translation of Lucretius into Italian verse, which has not yet been
+published (Book 2):
+
+  _Mà ch'i principii poi non corran punto_
+  _Della lor dritta via, chi veder puote?_
+  _Sì finalmente ogni lor moto sempre_
+  _Insieme s'aggruppa, e dall' antico_
+  _Sempre con ordin certo il nuovo nasce;_
+  _Ne tracciando i primi semi, fanno_
+  _Di moto un tal principio, il qual poi rompa_
+  _I decreti del fato, acciò non segua_
+  _L'una causa dell' altra in infinito;_
+  _Onde han questa, dich' io_, del fato sciolta
+  Libera voluntà, _per cui ciascuno_
+  _Va dove più l'agrada? I moti ancora_
+  _Si declinan sovente, e non in tempo_
+  _Certo, ne certa region, mà solo_
+  _Quando e dove commanda il nostro arbitrio;_
+  _Poiche senz' alcun dubbio à queste cose_
+  _Dà sol principio il voler proprio, e quindi_
+  _Van poi scorrendo per le membra i moti._
+
+It is comical that a man like Epicurus, after having discarded the gods and
+all incorporeal substances, could have supposed that the will, which he
+himself takes as composed of atoms, could have had control over the atoms,
+and diverted them from their path, without its being possible for one to
+say how.
+
+322. Carneades, not going so far back as to the atoms, claimed to find at
+once in the soul of man the reason for the so-called vague indifference,
+assuming as reason for the thing just that for which Epicurus sought a
+reason. Carneades gained nothing thereby, except that he more easily
+deceived careless people, in transferring the absurdity from one subject,
+where it is somewhat too evident, to another subject where it is easier to
+confuse matters, that is to say, from the body to the soul. For most
+philosophers had not very distinct notions of the nature of the soul. [321]
+Epicurus, who composed it of atoms, was at least right in seeking the
+origin of its determination in that which he believed to be the origin of
+the soul itself. That is why Cicero and M. Bayle were wrong to find so much
+fault with him, and to be indulgent towards, and even praise, Carneades,
+who is no less irrational. I do not understand how M. Bayle, who was so
+clear-sighted, was thus satisfied by a disguised absurdity, even to the
+extent of calling it the greatest effort the human mind can make on this
+matter. It is as if the soul, which is the seat of reason, were more
+capable than the body of acting without being determined by some reason or
+cause, internal or external; or as if the great principle which states that
+nothing comes to pass without cause only related to the body.
+
+323. It is true that the Form or the Soul has this advantage over matter,
+that it is the source of action, having within itself the principle of
+motion or of change, in a word, [Greek: to autokinêton], as Plato calls it;
+whereas matter is simply passive, and has need of being impelled to act,
+_agitur, ut agat_. But if the soul is active of itself (as it indeed is),
+for that very reason it is not of itself absolutely indifferent to the
+action, like matter, and it must find in itself a ground of determination.
+According to the System of Pre-established Harmony the soul finds in
+itself, and in its ideal nature anterior to existence, the reasons for its
+determinations, adjusted to all that shall surround it. That way it was
+determined from all eternity in its state of mere possibility to act
+freely, as it does, when it attains to existence.
+
+324. M. Bayle himself remarks aptly that freedom of indifference (such as
+must be admitted) does not exclude inclinations and does not demand
+equipoise. He demonstrates amply enough (_Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, ch. 139, p. 748 _seqq_.) that the soul may be compared to a
+balance, where reasons and inclinations take the place of weights.
+According to him, one can explain what passes in our resolutions by the
+hypothesis that the will of man is like a balance which is at rest when the
+weights of its two pans are equal, and which always inclines either to one
+side or the other according to which of the pans is the more heavily laden.
+A new reason makes a heavier weight, a new idea shines more brightly than
+the old; the fear of a heavy penalty prevails over some pleasure; when two
+passions dispute the ground, it is always the stronger which gains the
+mastery, unless the other be assisted by reason or by some other      [322]
+contributing passion. When one flings away merchandise in order to save
+oneself, the action, which the Schoolmen call mixed, is voluntary and free;
+and yet love of life indubitably prevails over love of possessions. Grief
+arises from remembrance of lost possessions, and one has all the greater
+difficulty in making one's resolve, the nearer the approach to even weight
+in the opposing reasons, as also we see that the balance is determined more
+promptly when there is a great difference between the weights.
+
+325. Nevertheless, as very often there are divers courses to choose from,
+one might, instead of the balance, compare the soul with a force which puts
+forth effort on various sides simultaneously, but which acts only at the
+spot where action is easiest or there is least resistance. For instance,
+air if it is compressed too firmly in a glass vessel will break it in order
+to escape. It puts forth effort at every part, but finally flings itself
+upon the weakest. Thus do the inclinations of the soul extend over all the
+goods that present themselves: they are antecedent acts of will; but the
+consequent will, which is their result, is determined in the direction of
+that which touches most closely.
+
+326. This ascendancy of inclinations, however, does not prevent man from
+being master in his own domain, provided that he knows how to make use of
+his power. His dominion is that of reason: he has only to prepare himself
+in good time to resist the passions, and he will be capable of checking the
+vehemence of the most furious. Let us assume that Augustus, about to give
+orders for putting to death Fabius Maximus, acts, as is his wont, upon the
+advice a philosopher had given him, to recite the Greek alphabet before
+doing anything in the first heat of his anger: this reflexion will be
+capable of saving the life of Fabius and the glory of Augustus. But without
+some fortunate reflexion, which one owes sometimes to a special divine
+mercy, or without some skill acquired beforehand, like that of Augustus,
+calculated to make us reflect fittingly as to time and place, passion will
+prevail over reason. The driver is master over the horses if he controls
+them as he should, and as he can; but there are occasions when he becomes
+negligent, and then for a time he will have to let go the reins:
+
+  _Fertur equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas_.
+
+327. One must admit that there is always within us enough power over  [323]
+our will, but we do not always bethink ourselves of employing it. That
+shows, as I have observed more than once, that the power of the soul over
+its inclinations is a control which can only be exercised in an _indirect_
+manner, almost as Bellarmine would have had the Popes exercise rights over
+the temporal power of kings. In truth, the external actions that do not
+exceed our powers depend absolutely upon our will; but our volitions depend
+upon our will only through certain artful twists which give us means of
+suspending our resolutions, or of changing them. We are masters in our own
+house, not as God is in the world, he having but to speak, but as a wise
+prince is in his dominions or as a good father of a family is in his home.
+M. Bayle sometimes takes the matter differently, as though we must have, in
+order to boast of a free will, an absolute power over ourselves,
+independent of reasons and of means. But even God has not such a power, and
+must not have in this sense, in relation to his will: he cannot change his
+nature, nor act otherwise than according to method; and how could man
+transform himself all of a sudden? I have already said God's dominion, the
+dominion of wisdom, is that of reason. It is only God, however, who always
+wills what is most to be desired, and consequently he has no need of the
+power to change his will. 328. If the soul is mistress in its own house
+(says M. Bayle, p. 753) it has only to will, and straightway that vexation
+and pain which is attendant upon victory over the passions will vanish
+away. For this effect it would suffice, in his opinion, to give oneself
+indifference to the objects of the passions (p. 758). Why, then, do men not
+give themselves this indifference (he says), if they are masters in their
+own house? But this objection is exactly as if I were to ask why a father
+of a family does not give himself gold when he has need thereof? He can
+acquire some, but through skill, and not, as in the age of the fairies, or
+of King Midas, through a mere command of the will or by his touch. It would
+not suffice to be master in one's own house; one must be master of all
+things in order to give oneself all that one wishes; for one does not find
+everything in one's own house. Working thus upon oneself, one must do as in
+working upon something else; one must have knowledge of the constitution
+and the qualities of one's object, and adapt one's operations thereto. It
+is therefore not in a moment and by a mere act of the will that one
+corrects oneself, and that one acquires a better will.
+
+                                                                      [324]
+329. Nevertheless it is well to observe that the vexations and pains
+attendant upon victory over the passions in some people turn into pleasure,
+through the great satisfaction they find in the lively sense of the force
+of their mind, and of the divine grace. Ascetics and true mystics can speak
+of this from experience; and even a true philosopher can say something
+thereof. One can attain to that happy state, and it is one of the principal
+means the soul can use to strengthen its dominion.
+
+330. If the Scotists and the Molinists appear to favour vague indifference
+(appear, I say, for I doubt whether they do so in reality, once they have
+learnt to know it), the Thomists and the disciples of Augustine are for
+predetermination. For one must have either the one or the other. Thomas
+Aquinas is a writer who is accustomed to reason on sound principles, and
+the subtle Scotus, seeking to contradict him, often obscures matters
+instead of throwing light upon them. The Thomists as a general rule follow
+their master, and do not admit that the soul makes its resolve without the
+existence of some predetermination which contributes thereto. But the
+predetermination of the new Thomists is not perhaps exactly that which one
+needs. Durand de Saint-Pourçain, who often enough formed a party of his
+own, and who opposed the idea of the special co-operation of God, was
+nevertheless in favour of a certain predetermination. He believed that God
+saw in the state of the soul, and of its surroundings, the reason for his
+determinations.
+
+331. The ancient Stoics were in that almost of the same opinion as the
+Thomists. They were at the same time in favour of determination and against
+necessity, although they have been accused of attaching necessity to
+everything. Cicero says in his book _De Fato_ that Democritus, Heraclitus,
+Empedocles and Aristotle believed that fate implied necessity; that others
+were opposed to that (he means perhaps Epicurus and the Academicians); and
+that Chrysippus sought a middle course. I think that Cicero is mistaken as
+regards Aristotle, who fully recognized contingency and freedom, and went
+even too far, saying (inadvertently, as I think) that propositions on
+contingent futurities had no determinate truth; on which point he was
+justifiably abandoned by most of the Schoolmen. Even Cleanthes, the teacher
+of Chrysippus, although he upheld the determinate truth of future events,
+denied their necessity. Had the Schoolmen, so fully convinced of this [325]
+determination of contingent futurities (as were for instance the Fathers of
+Coimbra, authors of a famous Course of Philosophy), seen the connexion
+between things in the form wherein the System of General Harmony proclaims
+it, they would have judged that one cannot admit preliminary certainty, or
+determination of futurition, without admitting a predetermination of the
+thing in its causes and in its reasons.
+
+332. Cicero has endeavoured to expound for us the middle course taken by
+Chrysippus; but Justus Lipsius observed, in his _Stoic Philosophy_, that
+the passage from Cicero was mutilated, and that Aulus Gellius has preserved
+for us the whole argument of the Stoic philosopher (_Noct. Att._, lib. 6,
+c. 2). Here it is in epitome. Fate is the inevitable and eternal connexion
+of all events. Against this is urged in objection, that it follows that the
+acts of the will would be necessary, and that criminals, being coerced into
+evil, should not be punished. Chrysippus answers that evil springs from the
+original constitution of souls, which forms part of the destined sequence;
+that souls which are of a good natural disposition offer stronger
+resistance to the impressions of external causes; but that those whose
+natural defects had not been corrected by discipline allowed themselves to
+be perverted. Next he distinguishes (according to Cicero) between principal
+causes and accessary causes, and uses the comparison of a cylinder, whose
+rotatory force and speed or ease in motion comes chiefly from its shape,
+whereas it would be retarded by any roughness in formation. Nevertheless it
+has need of impulsion, even as the soul needs to be acted upon by the
+objects of the senses, and receives this impression according to its own
+constitution.
+
+333. Cicero considers that Chrysippus becomes so confused that, whether he
+will or no, he confirms the necessity of fate. M. Bayle is almost of the
+same opinion (_Dictionary_, art. 'Chrysippus', lit. H). He says that this
+philosopher does not get out of the bog, since the cylinder is regular or
+uneven according to what the craftsman has made it; and thus God,
+providence, fate will be the causes of evil in such a way as to render it
+necessary. Justus Lipsius answers that, according to the Stoics, evil came
+from matter. That is (to my mind) as if he had said that the stone on which
+the craftsman worked was sometimes too rough and too irregular to produce a
+good cylinder. M. Bayle cites against Chrysippus the fragments of Onomaus
+and Diogenianus that Eusebius has preserved for us in the _Praeparatio[326]
+Evangelica_ (lib. 6, c. 7, 8); and above all he relies upon Plutarch's
+refutation in his book against the Stoics, quoted art. 'Paulicians', lit.
+G. But this refutation does not amount to very much. Plutarch maintains
+that it would be better to deny power to God than to impute to him the
+permission of evils; and he will not admit that evil may serve a greater
+good. I have already shown, on the contrary, that God cannot but be
+all-powerful, even though he can do no better than produce the best, which
+includes the permission of evil. Moreover, I have pointed out repeatedly
+that what is to the disadvantage of a part taken separately may serve the
+perfection of the whole.
+
+334. Chrysippus had already made an observation to this effect, not only in
+his fourth book on Providence, as given by Aulus Gellius (lib. 6, c. 1)
+where he asserts that evil serves to bring the good to notice (a reason
+which is not sufficient here), but still better when he applies the
+comparison of a stage play, in his second book on Nature (as Plutarch
+quotes it himself). There he says that there are sometimes portions in a
+comedy which are of no worth in themselves and which nevertheless lend
+grace to the whole poem. He calls these portions epigrams or inscriptions.
+We have not enough acquaintance with the nature of the ancient comedy for
+full understanding of this passage from Chrysippus; but since Plutarch
+assents to the fact, there is reason to believe that this comparison was
+not a poor one. Plutarch replies in the first place that the world is not
+like a play to provide entertainment. But that is a poor answer: the
+comparison lies in this point alone, that one bad part may make the whole
+better. He replies secondly that this bad passage is only a small part of
+the comedy, whereas human life swarms with evils. This reply is of no value
+either: for he ought to have taken into account that what we know is also a
+very small part of the universe.
+
+335. But let us return to the cylinder of Chrysippus. He is right in saying
+that vice springs from the original constitution of some minds. He was met
+with the objection that God formed them, and he could only reply by
+pointing to the imperfection of matter, which did not permit God to do
+better. This reply is of no value, for matter in itself is indifferent to
+all forms, and God made it. Evil springs rather from the _Forms_ themselves
+in their detached state, that is, from the ideas that God has not produced
+by an act of his will, any more than he thus produced numbers and     [327]
+figures, and all possible essences which one must regard as eternal and
+necessary; for they are in the ideal region of the possibles, that is, in
+the divine understanding. God is therefore not the author of essences in so
+far as they are only possibilities. But there is nothing actual to which he
+has not decreed and given existence; and he has permitted evil because it
+is involved in the best plan existing in the region of possibles, a plan
+which supreme wisdom could not fail to choose. This notion satisfies at
+once the wisdom, the power and the goodness of God, and yet leaves a way
+open for the entrance of evil. God gives perfection to creatures in so far
+as it is possible in the universe. One gives a turn to the cylinder, but
+any roughness in its shape restricts the swiftness of its motion. This
+comparison made by Chrysippus does not greatly differ from mine, which was
+taken from a laden boat that is carried along by the river current, its
+pace becoming slower as the load grows heavier. These comparisons tend
+towards the same end; and that shows that if we were sufficiently informed
+concerning the opinions of ancient philosophers, we should find therein
+more reason than is supposed.
+
+336. M. Bayle himself commends the passage from Chrysippus (art.
+'Chrysippus', lit. T) that Aulus Gellius quotes in the same place, where
+this philosopher maintains that evil has come _by concomitance._ That also
+is made clear by my system. For I have demonstrated that the evil which God
+permitted was not an object of his will, as an end or a means, but simply
+as a condition, since it had to be involved in the best. Yet one must
+confess that the cylinder of Chrysippus does not answer the objection of
+necessity. He ought to have added, in the first place, that it is by the
+free choice of God that some of the possibles exist; secondly, that
+rational creatures act freely also, in accordance with their original
+nature, which existed already in the eternal ideas; and lastly, that the
+motive power of good inclines the will without compelling it.
+
+337. The advantage of freedom which is in the creature without doubt exists
+to an eminent degree in God. That must be understood in so far as it is
+genuinely an advantage and in so far as it presupposes no imperfection. For
+to be able to make a mistake and go astray is a disadvantage, and to have
+control over the passions is in truth an advantage, but one that
+presupposes an imperfection, namely passion itself, of which God is   [328]
+incapable. Scotus was justified in saying that if God were not free and
+exempt from necessity, no creature would be so. But God is incapable of
+being indeterminate in anything whatsoever: he cannot be ignorant, he
+cannot doubt, he cannot suspend his judgement; his will is always decided,
+and it can only be decided by the best. God can never have a primitive
+particular will, that is, independent of laws or general acts of will; such
+a thing would be unreasonable. He cannot determine upon Adam, Peter, Judas
+or any individual without the existence of a reason for this determination;
+and this reason leads of necessity to some general enunciation. The wise
+mind always acts _according to principles_; always _according to rules_,
+and never _according to exceptions_, save when the rules come into
+collision through opposing tendencies, where the strongest carries the day:
+or else, either they will stop one another or some third course will emerge
+as a result. In all these cases one rule serves as an exception to the
+other, and there are never any _original exceptions_ with one who always
+acts in a regular way.
+
+338. If there are people who believe that election and reprobation are
+accomplished on God's part by a despotic absolute power, not only without
+any apparent reason but actually without any reason, even a concealed one,
+they maintain an opinion that destroys alike the nature of things and the
+divine perfections. Such an _absolutely absolute decree_ (so to speak)
+would be without doubt insupportable. But Luther and Calvin were far from
+such a belief: the former hopes that the life to come will make us
+comprehend the just reasons of God's choice; and the latter protests
+explicitly that these reasons are just and holy, although they be unknown
+to us. I have already in that connexion quoted Calvin's treatise on
+predestination, and here are the actual words: 'God before the fall of Adam
+had reflected upon what he had to do, and that for causes concealed from
+us.... It is evident therefore that he had just causes for the reprobation
+of some of mankind, but causes to us UNKNOWN.'
+
+339. This truth, that all God does is reasonable and cannot be better done,
+strikes at the outset every man of good sense, and extorts, so to speak,
+his approbation. And yet the most subtle of philosophers have a fatal
+propensity for offending sometimes without observing it, during the course
+and in the heat of disputes, against the first principles of good sense,
+when these are shrouded in terms that disguise them. We have here     [329]
+already seen how the excellent M. Bayle, with all his shrewdness, has
+nevertheless combated this principle which I have just indicated, and which
+is a sure consequence of the supreme perfection of God. He thought to
+defend in that way the cause of God and to exempt him from an imaginary
+necessity, by leaving him the freedom to choose from among various goods
+the least. I have already spoken of M. Diroys and others who have also been
+deluded by this strange opinion, one that is far too commonly accepted.
+Those who uphold it do not observe that it implies a wish to preserve for,
+or rather bestow upon, God a false freedom, which is the freedom to act
+unreasonably. That is rendering his works subject to correction, and making
+it impossible for us to say or even to hope that anything reasonable can be
+said upon the permission of evil.
+
+340. This error has much impaired M. Bayle's arguments, and has barred his
+way of escape from many perplexities. That appears again in relation to the
+laws of the realm of Nature: he believes them to be arbitrary and
+indifferent, and he objects that God could better have attained his end in
+the realm of grace if he had not clung to these laws, if he had more often
+dispensed with their observance, or even if he had made others. He believed
+this especially with regard to the law of the union between the soul and
+the body. For he is persuaded, with the modern Cartesians, that the ideas
+of the perceptible qualities that God gives (according to them) to the
+soul, occasioned by movements of the body, have nothing representing these
+movements or resembling them. Accordingly it was a purely arbitrary act on
+God's part to give us the ideas of heat, cold, light and other qualities
+which we experience, rather than to give us quite different ideas
+occasioned in the same way. I have often wondered that people so talented
+should have been capable of relishing notions so unphilosophic and so
+contrary to the fundamental maxims of reason. For nothing gives clearer
+indication of the imperfection of a philosophy than the necessity
+experienced by the philosopher to confess that something comes to pass, in
+accordance with his system, for which there is no reason. That applies to
+the idea of Epicurus on the deviation of atoms. Whether it be God or Nature
+that operates, the operation will always have its reasons. In the
+operations of Nature, these reasons will depend either upon necessary
+truths or upon the laws that God has found the most reasonable; and in the
+operations of God, they will depend upon the choice of the supreme    [330]
+reason which causes them to act.
+
+341. M. Regis, a famous Cartesian, had asserted in his 'Metaphysics' (part
+2, book 2, c. 29) that the faculties God has given to men are the most
+excellent that they were capable of in conformity with the general order of
+nature. 'Considering only', he says, 'the power of God and the nature of
+man by themselves, it is very easy to conceive that God could have made man
+more perfect: but if one will consider man, not in himself and separately
+from all other creatures, but as a member of the universe and a portion
+which is subject to the general laws of motions, one will be bound to
+acknowledge that man is as perfect as he could have been.' He adds 'that we
+cannot conceive that God could have employed any other means more
+appropriate than pain for the conservation of our bodies'. M. Regis is
+right in a general way in saying that God cannot do better than he has done
+in relation to all. And although there be apparently in some places in the
+universe rational animals more perfect than man, one may say that God was
+right to create every kind of species, some more perfect than others. It is
+perhaps not impossible that there be somewhere a species of animals much
+resembling man and more perfect than we are. It may be even that the human
+race will attain in time to a greater perfection than that which we can now
+envisage. Thus the laws of motions do not prevent man from being more
+perfect: but the place God has assigned to man in space and in time limits
+the perfections he was able to receive.
+
+342. I also doubt, with M. Bayle, whether pain be necessary in order to
+warn men of peril. But this writer goes too far (_Reply to the Questions of
+a Provincial_, vol. II, ch. 77, p. 104): he seems to think that a feeling
+of pleasure could have the same effect, and that, in order to prevent a
+child from going too near the fire, God could give him ideas of pleasure in
+proportion to the distance he kept from it. This expedient does not appear
+very practicable with regard to all evils, unless a miracle were involved.
+It is more natural that what if it were too near would cause an evil should
+cause some foreboding of evil when it is a little less near. Yet I admit
+that it is possible such a foreboding will be something less than pain, and
+usually this is the case. Thus it indeed appears that pain is not necessary
+for causing one to shun present peril; it is wont rather to serve as a
+penalty for having actually plunged into evil, and a warning against  [331]
+further lapse. There are also many painful evils the avoidance whereof
+rests not with us. As a dissolution of the continuity of our body is a
+consequence of many accidents that may happen to us, it was natural that
+this imperfection of the body should be represented by some sense of
+imperfection in the soul. Nevertheless I would not guarantee that there
+were no animals in the universe whose structure was cunning enough to cause
+a sense of indifference as accompaniment to this dissolution of continuity,
+as for instance when a gangrenous limb is cut off; or even a sense of
+pleasure, as if one were only scratching oneself. For the imperfection that
+attends the dissolution of the body might lead to the sense of a greater
+perfection, which was suspended or checked by the continuity which is now
+broken: and in this respect the body would be as it were a prison.
+
+343. There is also nothing to preclude the existence in the universe of
+animals resembling that one which Cyrano de Bergerac encountered in the
+sun. The body of this animal being a sort of fluid composed of innumerable
+small animals, that were capable of ranging themselves in accordance with
+the desires of the great animal, by this means it transformed itself in a
+moment, just as it pleased; and the dissolution of continuity caused it no
+more hurt than the stroke of an oar can cause to the sea. But, after all,
+these animals are not men, they are not in our globe or in our present
+century; and God's plan ensured that there should not be lacking here on
+earth a rational animal clothed in flesh and bones, whose structure
+involves susceptibility to pain.
+
+344. But M. Bayle further opposes this on another principle, one which I
+have already mentioned. It seems that he thinks the ideas which the soul
+conceives in relation to the feelings of the body are arbitrary. Thus God
+might have caused the dissolution of continuity to give us pleasure. He
+even maintains that the laws of motion are entirely arbitrary. 'I would
+wish to know', he says (vol. III, ch. 166, p. 1080), 'whether God
+established by an act of his freedom of indifference general laws on the
+communication of movements, and the particular laws on the union of the
+human soul with an organic body? In this case, he could have established
+quite different laws, and adopted a system whose results involved neither
+moral evil nor physical evil. But if the answer is given that God was
+constrained by supreme wisdom to establish the laws that he has
+established, there we have neither more nor less than the _Fatum_ of  [332]
+the Stoics. Wisdom will have marked out a way for God, the abandonment
+whereof will have been as impossible to him as his own self-destruction.'
+This objection has been sufficiently overthrown: it is only a moral
+necessity; and it is always a happy necessity to be bound to act in
+accordance with the rules of perfect wisdom.
+
+345. Moreover, it appears to me that the reason for the belief held by many
+that the laws of motion are arbitrary comes from the fact that few people
+have properly examined them. It is known now that M. Descartes was much
+mistaken in his statement of them. I have proved conclusively that
+conservation of the same quantity of motion cannot occur, but I consider
+that the same quantity of force is conserved, whether absolute or directive
+and respective, whether total or partial. My principles, which carry this
+subject as far as it can go, have not yet been published in full; but I
+have communicated them to friends competent to judge of them, who have
+approved them, and have converted some other persons of acknowledged
+erudition and ability. I discovered at the same time that the laws of
+motion actually existing in Nature, and confirmed by experiments, are not
+in reality absolutely demonstrable, as a geometrical proposition would be;
+but neither is it necessary that they be so. They do not spring entirely
+from the principle of necessity, but rather from the principle of
+perfection and order; they are an effect of the choice and the wisdom of
+God. I can demonstrate these laws in divers ways, but must always assume
+something that is not of an absolutely geometrical necessity. Thus these
+admirable laws are wonderful evidence of an intelligent and free being, as
+opposed to the system of absolute and brute necessity, advocated by Strato
+or Spinoza.
+
+346. I have found that one may account for these laws by assuming that the
+effect is always equal in force to its cause, or, which amounts to the same
+thing, that the same force is conserved always: but this axiom of higher
+philosophy cannot be demonstrated geometrically. One may again apply other
+principles of like nature, for instance the principle that action is always
+equal to reaction, one which assumes in things a distaste for external
+change, and cannot be derived either from extension or impenetrability; and
+that other principle, that a simple movement has the same properties as
+those which might belong to a compound movement such as would produce [333]
+the same phenomena of locomotion. These assumptions are very plausible, and
+are successful as an explanation of the laws of motion: nothing is so
+appropriate, all the more since they are in accord with each other. But
+there is to be found in them no absolute necessity, such as may compel us
+to admit them, in the way one is compelled to admit the rules of logic, of
+arithmetic and geometry.
+
+347. It seems, when one considers the indifference of matter to motion and
+to rest, that the largest body at rest could be carried along without any
+resistance by the smallest body in motion, in which case there would be
+action without reaction and an effect greater than its cause. There is also
+no necessity to say of the motion of a ball which runs freely on an even,
+horizontal plane, with a certain degree of speed, termed A, that this
+motion must have the properties of that motion which it would have if it
+were going with lesser speed in a boat, itself moving in the same direction
+with the residue of the speed, to ensure that the ball, seen from the bank,
+advance with the same degree A. For, although the same appearance of speed
+and of direction results through this medium of the boat, it is not because
+it is the same thing. Nevertheless it happens that the effects of the
+collision of the balls in the boat, the motion in each one separately
+combined with that of the boat giving the appearance of that which goes on
+outside the boat, also give the appearance of the effects that these same
+balls colliding would have outside the boat. All that is admirable, but one
+does not see its absolute necessity. A movement on the two sides of the
+right-angled triangle composes a movement on the hypotenuse; but it does
+not follow that a ball moving on the hypotenuse must produce the effect of
+two balls of its own size moving on the two sides: yet that is true.
+Nothing is so appropriate as this result, and God has chosen the laws that
+produce it: but one sees no geometrical necessity therein. Yet it is this
+very lack of necessity which enhances the beauty of the laws that God has
+chosen, wherein divers admirable axioms exist in conjunction, and it is
+impossible for one to say which of them is the primary.
+
+348. I have also shown that therein is observed that excellent law of
+continuity, which I have perhaps been the first to state, and which is a
+kind of touchstone whose test the rules of M. Descartes, of Father Fabry,
+Father Pardies, Father de Malebranche and others cannot pass. In virtue of
+this law, one must be able to regard rest as a movement vanishing     [334]
+after having continually diminished, and likewise equality as an inequality
+that vanishes also, as would happen through the continual diminution of the
+greater of two unequal bodies, while the smaller retains its size. As a
+consequence of this consideration, the general rule for unequal bodies, or
+bodies in motion, must apply also to equal bodies or to bodies one of which
+is at rest, as to a particular case of the rule. This does result in the
+true laws of motion, and does not result in certain laws invented by M.
+Descartes and by some other men of talent, which already on that score
+alone prove to be ill-concerted, so that one may predict that experiment
+will not favour them.
+
+349. These considerations make it plain that the laws of Nature regulating
+movements are neither entirely necessary nor entirely arbitrary. The middle
+course to be taken is that they are a choice of the most perfect wisdom.
+And this great example of the laws of motion shows with the utmost clarity
+how much difference there is between these three cases, to wit, firstly _an
+absolute necessity_, metaphysical or geometrical, which may be called
+blind, and which does not depend upon any but efficient causes; in the
+second place, _a moral necessity_, which comes from the free choice of
+wisdom in relation to final causes; and finally in the third place,
+_something absolutely arbitrary_, depending upon an indifference of
+equipoise, which is imagined, but which cannot exist, where there is no
+sufficient reason either in the efficient or in the final cause.
+Consequently one must conclude how mistaken it is to confuse either that
+which is absolutely necessary with that which is determined by the reason
+of the best, or the freedom that is determined by reason with a vague
+indifference.
+
+350. This also settles M. Bayle's difficulty, for he fears that, if God is
+always determinate, Nature could dispense with him and bring about that
+same effect which is attributed to him, through the necessity of the order
+of things. That would be true if the laws of motion for instance, and all
+the rest, had their source in a geometrical necessity of efficient causes;
+but in the last analysis one is obliged to resort to something depending
+upon final causes and upon what is fitting. This also utterly destroys the
+most plausible reasoning of the Naturalists. Dr. Johann Joachim Becher, a
+German physician, well known for his books on chemistry, had composed a
+prayer which looked like getting him into trouble. It began: 'O sancta[335]
+mater natura, aeterne rerum ordo'. And it ended by saying that this Nature
+must forgive him his errors, since she herself was their cause. But the
+nature of things, if taken as without intelligence and without choice, has
+in it nothing sufficiently determinant. Herr Becher did not sufficiently
+take into account that the Author of things (_natura naturans_) must be
+good and wise, and that we can be evil without complicity on his part in
+our acts of wickedness. When a wicked man exists, God must have found in
+the region of possibles the idea of such a man forming part of that
+sequence of things, the choice of which was demanded by the greatest
+perfection of the universe, and in which errors and sins are not only
+punished but even repaired to greater advantage, so that they contribute to
+the greatest good.
+
+351. M. Bayle, however, has extended the free choice of God a little too
+far. Speaking of the Peripatetic Strato (_Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 180, p. 1239), who asserted that everything had
+been brought forth by the necessity of a nature devoid of intelligence, he
+maintains that this philosopher, on being asked why a tree has not the
+power to form bones and veins, might have asked in his turn: Why has matter
+precisely three dimensions? why should not two have sufficed for it? why
+has it not four? 'If one had answered that there can be neither more nor
+less than three dimensions he would have demanded the cause of this
+impossibility.' These words lead one to believe that M. Bayle suspected
+that the number of the dimensions of matter depended upon God's choice,
+even as it depended upon him to cause or not to cause trees to produce
+animals. Indeed, how do we know whether there are not planetary globes or
+earths situated in some more remote place in the universe where the fable
+of the Barnacle-geese of Scotland (birds that were said to be born of
+trees) proves true, and even whether there are not countries where one
+could say:
+
+  _... populos umbrosa creavit_
+  _Fraxinus, et foeta viridis puer excidit alno?_
+
+But with the dimensions of matter it is not thus: the ternary number is
+determined for it not by the reason of the best, but by a geometrical
+necessity, because the geometricians have been able to prove that there are
+only three straight lines perpendicular to one another which can intersect
+at one and the same point. Nothing more appropriate could have been   [336]
+chosen to show the difference there is between the moral necessity that
+accounts for the choice of wisdom and the brute necessity of Strato and the
+adherents of Spinoza, who deny to God understanding and will, than a
+consideration of the difference existing between the reason for the laws of
+motion and the reason for the ternary number of the dimensions: for the
+first lies in the choice of the best and the second in a geometrical and
+blind necessity.
+
+352. Having spoken of the laws of bodies, that is, of the rules of motion,
+let us come to the laws of the union between body and soul, where M. Bayle
+believes that he finds again some vague indifference, something absolutely
+arbitrary. Here is the way he speaks of it in his _Reply_ (vol. II, ch. 84,
+p. 163): 'It is a puzzling question whether bodies have some natural
+property of doing harm or good to man's soul. If one answers yes, one
+plunges into an insane labyrinth: for, as man's soul is an immaterial
+substance, one will be bound to say that the local movement of certain
+bodies is an efficient cause of the thoughts in a mind, a statement
+contrary to the most obvious notions that philosophy imparts to us. If one
+answers no, one will be constrained to admit that the influence of our
+organs upon our thoughts depends neither upon the internal qualities of
+matter, nor upon the laws of motion, but upon an _arbitrary institution_ of
+the creator. One must then admit that it depended altogether upon God's
+freedom to combine particular thoughts of our soul with particular
+modifications of our body, even when he had once established all the laws
+for the action of bodies one upon another. Whence it results that there is
+in the universe no portion of matter which by its proximity can harm us,
+save when God wills it; and consequently, that the earth is as capable as
+any other place of being the abode of the happy man.... In short it is
+evident that there is no need, in order to prevent the wrong choices of
+freedom, to transport man outside the earth. God could do on earth with
+regard to all the acts of the will what he does in respect of the good
+works of the predestined when he settles their outcome, whether by
+efficacious or by sufficient grace: and that grace, without in any way
+impairing freedom, is always followed by the assent of the soul. It would
+be as easy for him on earth as in heaven to bring about the determination
+of our souls to a good choice.'
+
+353. I agree with M. Bayle that God could have so ordered bodies and  [337]
+souls on this globe of earth, whether by ways of nature or by extraordinary
+graces, that it would have been a perpetual paradise and a foretaste of the
+celestial state of the blessed. There is no reason why there should not be
+worlds happier than ours; but God had good reasons for willing that ours
+should be such as it is. Nevertheless, in order to prove that a better
+state would have been possible here, M. Bayle had no need to resort to the
+system of occasional causes: it abounds in miracles and in hypotheses for
+which their very originators confess there is no justification; and these
+are two defects such as will most of all estrange a system from true
+philosophy. It is a cause for surprise, in the first place, that M. Bayle
+did not bethink himself of the System of Pre-established Harmony which he
+had examined before, and which for this matter was so opportune. But as in
+this system all is connected and harmonious, all following from reasons and
+nothing being left incomplete or exposed to the rash discretion of perfect
+indifference, it seems that it was not pleasing to M. Bayle: for he was
+here somewhat biassed in favour of such indifference, which,
+notwithstanding, he contested so strongly on other occasions. He was much
+given to passing from one extreme to the other, not with an ill intention
+or against his own conviction, but because there was as yet nothing settled
+in his mind on the question concerned. He contented himself with whatever
+suited him for frustrating the opponent he had in mind, his aim being only
+to perplex philosophers, and show the weakness of our reason; and never, in
+my opinion, did either Arcesilaus or Carneades argue for and against with
+more eloquence and more wit. But, after all, one must not doubt for the
+sake of doubting: doubts must serve us as a gangway to the truth. That is
+what I often said to the late Abbé Foucher, a few specimens of whose work
+prove that he designed to do with regard to the Academicians what Lipsius
+and Scioppius had done for the Stoics, and M. Gassendi for Epicurus, and
+what M. Dacier has so well begun for Plato. It must not be possible for us
+to offer true philosophers such a reproach as that implied in the
+celebrated Casaubon's answer to those who, in showing him the hall of the
+Sorbonne, told him that debate had been carried on there for some
+centuries. What conclusions have been reached? he said to them.
+
+354. M. Bayle goes on (p. 166): 'It is true that since the laws of motion
+were instituted in such forms as we see now in the world, it is an
+inevitable necessity that a hammer striking a nut should break it, and[338]
+that a stone falling on a man's foot should cause some bruise or some
+derangement of its parts. But that is all that can follow the action of
+this stone upon the human body. If you want it in addition to cause a
+feeling of pain, then one must assume the institution of a code other than
+that one which regulates the action and reaction of bodies one upon
+another; one must, I say, have recourse to the particular system of the
+laws of union between the soul and certain bodies. Now as this system is
+not of necessity connected with the other, the indifference of God does not
+cease in relation to the one immediately upon his choice of the other. He
+therefore combined these two systems with a complete freedom, like two
+things which did not follow naturally the one from the other. Thus it is by
+an arbitrary institution he has ordained that wounds in the body should
+cause pain in the soul which is united to this body. It therefore only
+rested with him to have chosen another system of union between soul and
+body: he was therefore able to choose one in accordance wherewith wounds
+only evoke the idea of the remedy and an intense but agreeable desire to
+apply it. He was able to arrange that all bodies which were on the point of
+breaking a man's head or piercing his heart should evoke a lively sense of
+danger, and that this sense should cause the body to remove itself promptly
+out of reach of the blow. All that would have come to pass without
+miracles, since there would have been general laws on this subject. The
+system which we know by experience teaches us that the determination of the
+movement of certain bodies changes in pursuance of our desires. It was
+therefore possible for a combination to be effected between our desires and
+the movement of certain bodies, whereby the nutritive juices were so
+modified that the good arrangement of our organs was never affected.'
+
+355. It is evident that M. Bayle believes that everything accomplished
+through general laws is accomplished without miracles. But I have shown
+sufficiently that if the law is not founded on reasons and does not serve
+to explain the event through the nature of things, it can only be put into
+execution by a miracle. If, for example, God had ordained that bodies must
+have a circular motion, he would have needed perpetual miracles, or the
+ministry of angels, to put this order into execution: for that is contrary
+to the nature of motion, whereby the body naturally abandons the circular
+line to continue in the tangent straight line if nothing holds it     [339]
+back. Therefore it is not enough for God to ordain simply that a wound
+should excite an agreeable sensation: natural means must be found for that
+purpose. The real means whereby God causes the soul to be conscious of what
+happens in the body have their origin in the nature of the soul, which
+represents the bodies, and is so made beforehand that the representations
+which are to spring up one from another within it, by a natural sequence of
+thoughts, correspond to the changes in the body.
+
+356. The representation has a natural relation to that which is to be
+represented. If God should have the round shape of a body represented by
+the idea of a square, that would be an unsuitable representation: for there
+would be angles or projections in the representation, while all would be
+even and smooth in the original. The representation often suppresses
+something in the objects when it is imperfect; but it can add nothing: that
+would render it, not more than perfect, but false. Moreover, the
+suppression is never complete in our perceptions, and there is in the
+representation, confused as it is, more than we see there. Thus there is
+reason for supposing that the ideas of heat, cold, colours, etc., also only
+represent the small movements carried out in the organs, when one is
+conscious of these qualities, although the multiplicity and the diminutive
+character of these movements prevents their clear representation. Almost in
+the same way it happens that we do not distinguish the blue and the yellow
+which play their part in the representation as well as in the composition
+of the green, when the microscope shows that what appears to be green is
+composed of yellow and blue parts.
+
+357. It is true that the same thing may be represented in different ways;
+but there must always be an exact relation between the representation and
+the thing, and consequently between the different representations of one
+and the same thing. The projections in perspective of the conic sections of
+the circle show that one and the same circle may be represented by an
+ellipse, a parabola and a hyperbola, and even by another circle, a straight
+line and a point. Nothing appears so different nor so dissimilar as these
+figures; and yet there is an exact relation between each point and every
+other point. Thus one must allow that each soul represents the universe to
+itself according to its point of view, and through a relation which is
+peculiar to it; but a perfect harmony always subsists therein. God, if he
+wished to effect representation of the dissolution of continuity of   [340]
+the body by an agreeable sensation in the soul, would not have neglected to
+ensure that this very dissolution should serve some perfection in the body,
+by giving it some new relief, as when one is freed of some burden or loosed
+from some bond. But organic bodies of such kinds, although possible, do not
+exist upon our globe, which doubtless lacks innumerable inventions that God
+may have put to use elsewhere. Nevertheless it is enough that, due
+allowance being made for the place our world holds in the universe, nothing
+can be done for it better than what God does. He makes the best possible
+use of the laws of nature which he has established and (as M. Regis also
+acknowledged in the same passage) 'the laws that God has established in
+nature are the most excellent it is possible to conceive'.
+
+358. I will add to that the remark from the _Journal des Savants_ of the
+16th March 1705, which M. Bayle has inserted in chapter 162 of the _Reply
+to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, p. 1030). The matter in
+question is the extract from a very ingenious modern book on the Origin of
+Evil, to which I have already referred here. It is stated: 'that the
+general solution in respect of physical evil which this book gives is that
+the universe must be regarded as a work composed of various pieces which
+form a whole; that, according to the laws established in nature, some parts
+cannot be better unless others become worse, whence would result a system
+less perfect as a whole. This principle', the writer goes on, 'is good; but
+if nothing is added to it, it does not appear sufficient. Why has God
+established laws that give rise to so many difficulties? philosophers who
+are somewhat precise will say. Could he not have established others of a
+kind not subject to any defects? And to cut the matter short, how comes it
+that he has prescribed laws for himself? Why does he not act without
+general laws, in accordance with all his power and all his goodness? The
+writer has not carried the difficulty as far as that. By disentangling his
+ideas one might indeed possibly find means of solving the difficulty, but
+there is no development of the subject in his work.'
+
+359. I suppose that the gifted author of this extract, when he thought the
+difficulty could be solved, had in mind something akin to my principles on
+this matter. If he had vouchsafed to declare himself in this passage, he
+would to all appearance have replied, like M. Regis, that the laws God
+established were the most excellent that could be established. He would
+have acknowledged, at the same time, that God could not have refrained[341]
+from establishing laws and following rules, because laws and rules are what
+makes order and beauty; that to act without rules would be to act without
+reason; and that because God _called into action all his goodness_ the
+exercise of his omnipotence was consistent with the laws of wisdom, to
+secure as much good as was possible of attainment. Finally, he would have
+said, the existence of certain particular disadvantages which strike us is
+a sure indication that the best plan did not permit of their avoidance, and
+that they assist in the achievement of the total good, an argument
+wherewith M. Bayle in more than one place expresses agreement.
+
+360. Now that I have proved sufficiently that everything comes to pass
+according to determinate reasons, there cannot be any more difficulty over
+these principles of God's foreknowledge. Although these determinations do
+not compel, they cannot but be certain, and they foreshadow what shall
+happen. It is true that God sees all at once the whole sequence of this
+universe, when he chooses it, and that thus he has no need of the connexion
+of effects and causes in order to foresee these effects. But since his
+wisdom causes him to choose a sequence in perfect connexion, he cannot but
+see one part of the sequence in the other. It is one of the rules of my
+system of general harmony, _that the present is big with the future_, and
+that he who sees all sees in that which is that which shall be. What is
+more, I have proved conclusively that God sees in each portion of the
+universe the whole universe, owing to the perfect connexion of things. He
+is infinitely more discerning than Pythagoras, who judged the height of
+Hercules by the size of his footprint. There must therefore be no doubt
+that effects follow their causes determinately, in spite of contingency and
+even of freedom, which nevertheless exist together with certainty or
+determination.
+
+361. Durand de Saint-Pourçain, among others, has indicated this clearly in
+saying that contingent futurities are seen determinately in their causes,
+and that God, who knows all, seeing all that shall have power to tempt or
+repel the will, will see therein the course it shall take. I could cite
+many other authors who have said the same thing, and reason does not allow
+the possibility of thinking otherwise. M. Jacquelot implies also
+(_Conformity of Faith with Reason_, p. 318 _et seqq._), as M. Bayle
+observes (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 142, p.
+796), that the dispositions of the human heart and those of circumstances
+acquaint God unerringly with the choice that man shall make. M. Bayle [342]
+adds that some Molinists say the same, and refers us to those who are
+quoted in the _Suavis Concordia_ of Pierre de S. Joseph, the Feuillant (pp.
+579, 580).
+
+362. Those who have confused this determination with necessity have
+fabricated monsters in order to fight them. To avoid a reasonable thing
+which they had disguised under a hideous shape, they have fallen into great
+absurdities. For fear of being obliged to admit an imaginary necessity, or
+at least one different from that in question, they have admitted something
+which happens without the existence of any cause or reason for it. This
+amounts to the same as the absurd deviation of atoms, which according to
+Epicurus happened without any cause. Cicero, in his book on Divination, saw
+clearly that if the cause could produce an effect towards which it was
+entirely indifferent there would be a true chance, a genuine luck, an
+actual fortuitous case, that is, one which would be so not merely in
+relation to us and our ignorance, according to which one may say:
+
+                                _Sed Te_
+  _Nos facimus, Fortuna, Deam, caeloque locamus,_
+
+but even in relation to God and to the nature of things. Consequently it
+would be impossible to foresee events by judging of the future by the past.
+He adds fittingly in the same passage: 'Qui potest provideri, quicquam
+futurum esse, quod neque causam habet ullam, neque notam cur futurum sit?'
+and soon after: 'Nihil est tam contrarium rationi et constantiae, quam
+fortuna; ut mihi ne in Deum quidem cadere videatur, ut sciat quid casu et
+fortuito futurum sit. Si enim scit, certe illud eveniet: sin certe eveniet,
+nulla fortuna est.' If the future is certain, there is no such thing as
+luck. But he wrongly adds: 'Est autum fortuna; rerum igitur fortuitarum
+nulla praesensio est.' There is luck, therefore future events cannot be
+foreseen. He ought rather to have concluded that, events being
+predetermined and foreseen, there is no luck. But he was then speaking
+against the Stoics, in the character of an Academician.
+
+363. The Stoics already derived from the decrees of God the prevision of
+events. For, as Cicero says in the same book: 'Sequitur porro nihil Deos
+ignorare, quod omnia ab iis sint constituta.' And, according to my system,
+God, having seen the possible world that he desired to create, foresaw[343]
+everything therein. Thus one may say that the _divine knowledge of vision
+differs from the knowledge of simple intelligence_ only in that it adds to
+the latter the acquaintance with the actual decree to choose this sequence
+of things which simple intelligence had already presented, but only as
+possible; and this decree now makes the present universe.
+
+364. Thus the Socinians cannot be excused for denying to God the certain
+knowledge of future events, and above all of the future resolves of a free
+creature. For even though they had supposed that there is a freedom of
+complete indifference, so that the will can choose without cause, and that
+thus this effect could not be seen in its cause (which is a great
+absurdity), they ought always to take into account that God was able to
+foresee this event in the idea of the possible world that he resolved to
+create. But the idea which they have of God is unworthy of the Author of
+things, and is not commensurate with the skill and wit which the writers of
+this party often display in certain particular discussions. The author of
+the _Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism_ was not altogether mistaken
+in saying that the God of the Socinians would be ignorant and powerless,
+like the God of Epicurus, every day confounded by events and living from
+one day to the next, if he only knows by conjecture what the will of men is
+to be.
+
+365. The whole difficulty here has therefore only come from a wrong idea of
+contingency and of freedom, which was thought to have need of a complete
+indifference or equipoise, an imaginary thing, of which neither a notion
+nor an example exists, nor ever can exist. Apparently M. Descartes had been
+imbued with the idea in his youth, at the College of la Flèche. That caused
+him to say (part I of his _Principles_, art. 41): 'Our thought is finite,
+and the knowledge and omnipotence of God, whereby he has not only known
+from all eternity everything that is, or that can be, but also has willed
+it, is infinite. Thus we have enough intelligence to recognize clearly and
+distinctly that this power and this knowledge are in God; but we have not
+enough so to comprehend their extent that we can know how they leave the
+actions of men entirely free and indeterminate.' The continuation has
+already been quoted above. 'Entirely free', that is right; but one spoils
+everything by adding 'entirely indeterminate'. One has no need of infinite
+knowledge in order to see that the foreknowledge and the providence of God
+allow freedom to our actions, since God has foreseen those actions in [344]
+his ideas, just as they are, that is, free. Laurentius Valla indeed, in his
+_Dialogue against Boethius_ (which I will presently quote in epitome) ably
+undertakes to reconcile freedom with foreknowledge, but does not venture to
+hope that he can reconcile it with providence. Yet there is no more
+difficulty in the one than the other, because the decree to give existence
+to this action no more changes its nature than does one's mere
+consciousness thereof. But there is no knowledge, however infinite it be,
+which can reconcile the knowledge and providence of God with actions of an
+indeterminate cause, that is to say, with a chimerical and impossible
+being. The actions of the will are determined in two ways, by the
+foreknowledge or providence of God, and also by the dispositions of the
+particular immediate cause, which lie in the inclinations of the soul. M.
+Descartes followed the Thomists on this point; but he wrote with his usual
+circumspection, so as not to come into conflict with some other
+theologians.
+
+366. M. Bayle relates (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III,
+ch. 142, p. 804) that Father Gibieuf of the Oratory published a Latin
+treatise on the freedom of God and of the creature, in the year 1639; that
+he was met with protests, and was shown a collection of seventy
+contradictions taken from the first book of his work; and that, twenty
+years after, Father Annat, Confessor to the King of France, reproached him
+in his book _De Incoacta Libertate_ (ed. Rome, 1654, in 4to.), for the
+silence he still maintained. Who would not think (adds M. Bayle), after the
+uproar of the _de Auxiliis_ Congregations, that the Thomists taught things
+touching the nature of free will which were entirely opposed to the opinion
+of the Jesuits? When, however, one considers the passages that Father Annat
+quoted from the works of the Thomists (in a pamphlet entitled: _Jansenius a
+Thomistis, gratiae per se ipsam efficacis defensoribus, condemnatus_,
+printed in Paris in the year 1654 in 4to.) one can in reality only see
+verbal controversies between the two sects. The grace efficacious of
+itself, according to the one side, leaves to free will quite as much power
+of resistance as the congruent grace of the others. M. Bayle thinks one can
+say almost as much of Jansenius himself. He was (so he says) an able man,
+of a methodical mind and of great assiduity. He worked for twenty-two years
+at his _Augustinus_. One of his aims was to refute the Jesuits on the dogma
+of free will; yet no decision has yet been reached as to whether he rejects
+or adopts freedom of indifference. From his work innumerable passages [345]
+are quoted for and against this opinion, as Father Annat has himself shown
+in the work that has just been mentioned, _De Incoacta Libertate_. So easy
+is it to render this subject obscure, as M. Bayle says at the conclusion of
+this discourse. As for Father Gibieuf, it must be admitted that he often
+alters the meaning of his terms, and that consequently he does not answer
+the question in the main, albeit he often writes with good sense.
+
+367. Indeed, confusion springs, more often than not, from ambiguity in
+terms, and from one's failure to take trouble over gaining clear ideas
+about them. That gives rise to these eternal, and usually mistaken,
+contentions on necessity and contingency, on the possible and the
+impossible. But provided that it is understood that necessity and
+possibility, taken metaphysically and strictly, depend solely upon this
+question, whether the object in itself or that which is opposed to it
+implies contradiction or not; and that one takes into account that
+contingency is consistent with the inclinations, or reasons which
+contribute towards causing determination by the will; provided also that
+one knows how to distinguish clearly between necessity and determination or
+certainty, between metaphysical necessity, which admits of no choice,
+presenting only one single object as possible, and moral necessity, which
+constrains the wisest to choose the best; finally, provided that one is rid
+of the chimera of complete indifference, which can only be found in the
+books of philosophers, and on paper (for they cannot even conceive the
+notion in their heads, or prove its reality by an example in things) one
+will easily escape from a labyrinth whose unhappy Daedalus was the human
+mind. That labyrinth has caused infinite confusion, as much with the
+ancients as with those of later times, even so far as to lead men into the
+absurd error of the Lazy Sophism, which closely resembles fate after the
+Turkish fashion. I do not wonder if in reality the Thomists and the
+Jesuits, and even the Molinists and the Jansenists, agree together on this
+matter more than is supposed. A Thomist and even a wise Jansenist will
+content himself with certain determination, without going on to necessity:
+and if someone goes so far, the error mayhap will lie only in the word. A
+wise Molinist will be content with an indifference opposed to necessity,
+but such as shall not exclude prevalent inclinations.
+
+368. These difficulties, however, have greatly impressed M. Bayle, who[346]
+was more inclined to dwell on them than to solve them, although he might
+perhaps have had better success than anyone if he had thought fit to turn
+his mind in that direction. Here is what he says of them in his
+_Dictionary_, art. 'Jansenius', lit. G, p. 1626: 'Someone has said that the
+subject of Grace is an ocean which has neither shore nor bottom. Perhaps he
+would have spoken more correctly if he had compared it to the Strait of
+Messina, where one is always in danger of striking one reef while
+endeavouring to avoid another.
+
+  _Dextrum Scylla latus, laevum implacata Charybdis_
+  _Obsidet._
+
+Everything comes back in the end to this: Did Adam sin freely? If you
+answer yes, then you will be told, his fall was not foreseen. If you answer
+no, then you will be told, he is not guilty. You may write a hundred
+volumes against the one or the other of these conclusions, and yet you will
+confess, either that the infallible prevision of a contingent event is a
+mystery impossible to conceive, or that the way in which a creature which
+acts without freedom sins nevertheless is altogether incomprehensible.'
+
+369. Either I am greatly mistaken or these two alleged
+incomprehensibilities are ended altogether by my solutions. Would to God it
+were as easy to answer the question how to cure fevers, and how to avoid
+the perils of two chronic sicknesses that may originate, the one from not
+curing the fever, the other from curing it wrongly. When one asserts that a
+free event cannot be foreseen, one is confusing freedom with
+indetermination, or with indifference that is complete and in equipoise;
+and when one maintains that the lack of freedom would prevent man from
+being guilty, one means a freedom exempt, not from determination or from
+certainty, but from necessity and from constraint. This shows that the
+dilemma is not well expressed, and that there is a wide passage between the
+two perilous reefs. One will reply, therefore, that Adam sinned freely, and
+that God saw him sinning in the possible state of Adam, which became actual
+in accordance with the decree of the divine permission. It is true that
+Adam was determined to sin in consequence of certain prevailing
+inclinations: but this determination destroys neither contingency nor
+freedom. Moreover, the certain determination to sin which exists in man
+does not deprive him of the power to avoid sinning (speaking generally) or,
+since he does sin, prevent him from being guilty and deserving        [347]
+punishment. This is more especially so since the punishment may be of
+service to him or others, to contribute towards determining them another
+time not to sin. There is besides punitive justice, which goes beyond
+compensation and amendment, and wherein also there is nothing liable to be
+shaken by the certain determination of the contingent resolutions of the
+will. It may be said, on the contrary, that the penalties and rewards would
+be to some extent unavailing, and would fail in one of their aims, that of
+amendment, if they could not contribute towards determining the will to do
+better another time.
+
+370. M. Bayle continues: 'Where freedom is concerned there are only two
+courses to take: one is to say that all the causes distinct from the soul,
+and co-operating with it, leave it the power to act or not to act; the
+other is to say that they so determine it to act that it cannot forbear to
+do so. The first course is that taken by the Molinists, the other is that
+of the Thomists and Jansenists and the Protestants of the Geneva
+Confession. Yet the Thomists have clamorously maintained that they were not
+Jansenists; and the latter have maintained with equal warmth that where
+freedom was concerned they were not Calvinists. On the other hand, the
+Molinists have maintained that St. Augustine did not teach Jansenism. Thus
+the one side not wishing to admit that they were in conformity with people
+who were considered heretics, and the other side not wishing to admit that
+they were in opposition to a learned saint whose opinions were always
+considered orthodox, have both performed a hundred feats of contortion,
+etc.'
+
+371. The two courses which M. Bayle distinguishes here do not exclude a
+third course, according to which the determination of the soul does not
+come solely from the co-operation of all the causes distinct from the soul,
+but also from the state of the soul itself and its inclinations which
+mingle with the impressions of the senses, strengthening or weakening them.
+Now all the internal and external causes taken together bring it about that
+the soul is determined certainly, but not of necessity: for no
+contradiction would be implied if the soul were to be determined
+differently, it being possible for the will to be inclined, but not
+possible for it to be compelled by necessity. I will not venture upon a
+discussion of the difference existing between the Jansenists and the
+Reformed on this matter. They are not perhaps always fully in accord  [348]
+with themselves as regards things, or as regards expressions, on a matter
+where one often loses one's way in bewildering subtleties. Father Theophile
+Raynaud, in his book entitled _Calvinismus Religio Bestiarum_, wished to
+strike at the Dominicans, without naming them. On the other hand, those who
+professed to be followers of St. Augustine reproached the Molinists with
+Pelagianism or at the least semi-Pelagianism. Things were carried to excess
+at times by both sides, whether in their defence of a vague indifference
+and the granting of too much to man, or in their teaching _determinationem
+ad unum secundum qualitatem actus licet non quoad ejus substantiam_, that
+is to say, a determination to evil in the non-regenerate, as if they did
+nothing but sin. After all, I think one must not reproach any but the
+adherents of Hobbes and Spinoza with destroying freedom and contingency;
+for they think that that which happens is alone possible, and must happen
+by a brute geometrical necessity. Hobbes made everything material and
+subjected it to mathematical laws alone; Spinoza also divested God of
+intelligence and choice, leaving him a blind power, whence all emanates of
+necessity. The theologians of the two Protestant parties are equally
+zealous in refuting an unendurable necessity. Although those who follow the
+Synod of Dordrecht teach sometimes that it suffices for freedom to be
+exempt from constraint, it seems that the necessity they leave in it is
+only hypothetical, or rather that which is more appropriately termed
+certainty and infallibility. Thus it results that very often the
+difficulties only lie in the terms. I say as much with regard to the
+Jansenists, although I do not wish to make excuse for those people in
+everything.
+
+372. With the Hebrew Cabalists, _Malcuth_ or the Kingdom, the last of the
+Sephiroth, signified that God controls everything irresistibly, but gently
+and without violence, so that man thinks he is following his own will while
+he carries out God's. They said that Adam's sin had been _truncatio Malcuth
+a caeteris plantis_, that is to say, that Adam had cut back the last of the
+Sephiroth, by making a dominion for himself within God's dominion, and by
+assuming for himself a freedom independent of God, but that his fall had
+taught him that he could not subsist of himself, and that men must needs be
+redeemed by the Messiah. This doctrine may receive a good interpretation.
+But Spinoza, who was versed in the Cabala of the writers of his race, and
+who says (_Tractatus Politicus_, c. 2, n. 6) that men, conceiving of
+freedom as they do, establish a dominion within God's dominion, has   [349]
+gone too far. The dominion of God is with Spinoza nothing but the dominion
+of necessity, and of a blind necessity (as with Strato), whereby everything
+emanates from the divine nature, while no choice is left to God, and man's
+choice does not exempt him from necessity. He adds that men, in order to
+establish what is termed _Imperium in Imperio_, supposed that their soul
+was a direct creation of God, something which could not be produced by
+natural causes, furthermore that it had an absolute power of determination,
+a state of things contrary to experience. Spinoza is right in opposing an
+absolute power of determination, that is, one without any grounds; it does
+not belong even to God. But he is wrong in thinking that a soul, that a
+simple substance, can be produced naturally. It seems, indeed, that the
+soul to him was only a transient modification; and when he pretends to make
+it lasting, and even perpetual, he substitutes for it the idea of the body,
+which is purely a notion and not a real and actual thing.
+
+373. The story M. Bayle relates of Johan Bredenburg, a citizen of Rotterdam
+(_Dictionary_, art. 'Spinoza', lit. H, p. 2774) is curious. He published a
+book against Spinoza, entitled: _Enervatio Tractatus Theologico-politici,
+una cum demonstratione geometrico ordine disposita, Naturam non esse Deum,
+cujus effati contrario praedictus Tractatus unice innititur_. One was
+surprised to see that a man who did not follow the profession of letters,
+and who had but slight education (having written his book in Flemish, and
+had it translated into Latin), had been able to penetrate with such
+subtlety all the principles of Spinoza, and succeed in overthrowing them,
+after having reduced them by a candid analysis to a state wherein they
+could appear in their full force. I have been told (adds M. Bayle) that
+this writer after copious reflexion upon his answer, and upon the principle
+of his opponent, finally found that this principle could be reduced to the
+form of a demonstration. He undertook therefore to prove that there is no
+cause of all things other than a nature which exists necessarily, and which
+acts according to an immutable, inevitable and irrevocable necessity. He
+examined the whole system of the geometricians, and after having
+constructed his demonstration he scrutinized it from every imaginable
+angle, he endeavoured to find its weak spot and was never able to discover
+any means of destroying it, or even of weakening it. That caused him real
+distress: he groaned over it and begged the most talented of his      [350]
+friends to help him in searching out the defects of this demonstration. For
+all that, he was not well pleased that copies of the book were made. Franz
+Cuper, a Socinian (who had written _Arcana Atheismi Revelata_ against
+Spinoza, Rotterdam, 1676, in 4to.), having obtained a copy, published it
+just as it was, that is, in Flemish, with some reflexions, and accused the
+author of being an atheist. The accused made his defence in the same
+tongue. Orobio, a very able Jewish physician (that one who was refuted by
+M. Limbourg, and who replied, so I have heard say, in a work posthumously
+circulated, but unpublished), brought out a book opposing Bredenburg's
+demonstration, entitled: _Certamen Philosophicum Propugnatae Veritatis
+Divinae ac Naturalis, adversus J.B. principia, Amsterdam_, 1684. M. Aubert
+de Versé also wrote in opposition to him the same year under the name of
+Latinus Serbattus Sartensis. Bredenburg protested that he was convinced of
+free will and of religion, and that he wished he might be shown a
+possibility of refuting his own demonstration.
+
+374. I would desire to see this alleged demonstration, and to know whether
+it tended to prove that primitive Nature, which produces all, acts without
+choice and without knowledge. In this case, I admit that his proof was
+Spinozistic and dangerous. But if he meant perhaps that the divine nature
+is determined toward that which it produces, by its choice and through the
+motive of the best, there was no need for him to grieve about this
+so-called immutable, inevitable, irrevocable necessity. It is only moral,
+it is a happy necessity; and instead of destroying religion it shows divine
+perfection to the best advantage.
+
+375. I take this opportunity to add that M. Bayle quotes (p. 2773) the
+opinion of those who believe that the book entitled _Lucii Antistii
+Constantis de Jure Ecclesiasticorum Liber Singularis_, published in 1665,
+is by Spinoza. But I have reason for doubting this, despite that M.
+Colerus, who has passed on to me an account he wrote of the life of that
+famous Jew, is also of that opinion. The initial letters L.A.C. lead me to
+believe that the author of this book was M. de la Cour or Van den Hoof,
+famous for works on the _Interest of Holland, Political Equipoise_, and
+numerous other books that he published (some of them under the signature
+V.D.H.) attacking the power of the Governor of Holland, which was at that
+time considered a danger to the Republic; for the memory of Prince William
+the Second's attempt upon the city of Amsterdam was still quite fresh.[351]
+Most of the ecclesiastics of Holland were on the side of this prince's son,
+who was then a minor, and they suspected M. de Witt and what was called the
+Lowenstein faction of favouring the Arminians, the Cartesians, and other
+sects that were feared still more, endeavouring to rouse the populace
+against them, and not without success, as the event proved. It was thus
+very natural that M. de la Cour should publish this book. It is true that
+people seldom keep to the happy mean in works published to further party
+interests. I will say in passing that a French version of the _Interest of
+Holland_ by M. de la Cour has just been published, under the deceptive
+title of _Mémoires de M. le Grand-Pensionnaire de Witt_; as if the thoughts
+of a private individual, who was, to be sure, of de Witt's party, and a man
+of talent, but who had not enough acquaintance with public affairs or
+enough ability to write as that great Minister of State might have written,
+could pass for the production of one of the first men of his time.
+
+376. I saw M. de la Cour as well as Spinoza on my return from France by way
+of England and Holland, and I learnt from them a few good anecdotes on the
+affairs of that time. M. Bayle says, p. 2770, that Spinoza studied Latin
+under a physician named Franz van den Ende. He tells at the same time, on
+the authority of Sebastian Kortholt (who refers to it in the preface to the
+second edition of the book by his late father, _De Tribus Impostoribus,
+Herberto L. B. de Cherbury, Hobbio et Spinoza_) that a girl instructed
+Spinoza in Latin, and that she afterwards married M. Kerkering, who was her
+pupil at the same time as Spinoza. In connexion with that I note that this
+young lady was a daughter of M. van den Ende, and that she assisted her
+father in the work of teaching. Van den Ende, who was also called A.
+Finibus, later went to Paris, and there kept a boarding-school in the
+Faubourg St. Antoine. He was considered excellent as an instructor, and he
+told me, when I called upon him there, that he would wager that his
+audiences would always pay attention to his words. He had with him as well
+at that time a young girl who also spoke Latin, and worked upon geometrical
+demonstrations. He had insinuated himself into M. Arnauld's good graces,
+and the Jesuits began to be jealous of his reputation. But he disappeared
+shortly afterwards, having been mixed up in the Chevalier de Rohan's
+conspiracy.
+
+377. I think I have sufficiently proved that neither the foreknowledge nor
+the providence of God can impair either his justice or his goodness,  [352]
+or our freedom. There remains only the difficulty arising from God's
+co-operation with the actions of the creature, which seems to concern more
+closely both his goodness, in relation to our evil actions, and our
+freedom, in relation to good actions as well as to others. M. Bayle has
+brought out this also with his usual acuteness. I will endeavour to throw
+light upon the difficulties he puts forward, and then I shall be in a
+position to conclude this work. I have already proved that the co-operation
+of God consists in giving us continually all that is real in us and in our
+actions, in so far as it involves perfection; but that all that is limited
+and imperfect therein is a consequence of the previous limitations which
+are originally in the creature. Since, moreover, every action of the
+creature is a change of its modifications, it is obvious that action arises
+in the creature in relation to the limitations or negations which it has
+within itself, and which are diversified by this change.
+
+378. I have already pointed out more than once in this work that evil is a
+consequence of privation, and I think that I have explained that
+intelligibly enough. St. Augustine has already put forward this idea, and
+St. Basil said something of the same kind in his _Hexaëmeron_, Homil. 2,
+'that vice is not a living and animate substance, but an affection of the
+soul contrary to virtue, which arises from one's abandoning the good; and
+there is therefore no need to look for an original evil'. M. Bayle, quoting
+this passage in his _Dictionary_ (art. 'Paulicians', lit. D, p. 2325)
+commends a remark by Herr Pfanner (whom he calls a German theologian, but
+he is a jurist by profession, Counsellor to the Dukes of Saxony), who
+censures St. Basil for not being willing to admit that God is the author of
+physical evil. Doubtless God is its author, when the moral evil is assumed
+to be already in existence; but speaking generally, one might assert that
+God permitted physical evil by implication, in permitting moral evil which
+is its source. It appears that the Stoics knew also how slender is the
+entity of evil. These words of Epictetus are an indication: 'Sicut
+aberrandi causa meta non ponitur, sic nec natura mali in mundo existit.'
+
+379. There was therefore no need to have recourse to a principle of evil,
+as St. Basil aptly observes. Nor is it necessary either to seek the origin
+of evil in matter. Those who believed that there was a chaos before God
+laid his hand upon it sought therein the source of disorder. It was an
+opinion which Plato introduced into his _Timaeus_. Aristotle found fault
+with him for that (in his third book on Heaven, ch. 2) because,       [353]
+according to this doctrine, disorder would be original and natural, and
+order would have been introduced against nature. This Anaxagoras avoided by
+making matter remain at rest until it was stirred by God; and Aristotle in
+the same passage commends him for it. According to Plutarch (_De Iside et
+Osiride_, and _Tr. de Animae Procreatione ex Timaeo_) Plato recognized in
+matter a certain maleficent soul or force, rebellious against God: it was
+an actual blemish, an obstacle to God's plans. The Stoics also believed
+that matter was the source of defects, as Justus Lipsius showed in the
+first book of the Physiology of the Stoics.
+
+380. Aristotle was right in rejecting chaos: but it is not always easy to
+disentangle the conceptions of Plato, and such a task would be still less
+easy in respect of some ancient authors whose works are lost. Kepler, one
+of the most excellent of modern mathematicians, recognized a species of
+imperfection in matter, even when there is no irregular motion: he calls it
+its 'natural inertia', which gives it a resistance to motion, whereby a
+greater mass receives less speed from one and the same force. There is
+soundness in this observation, and I have used it to advantage in this
+work, in order to have a comparison such as should illustrate how the
+original imperfection of the creatures sets bounds to the action of the
+Creator, which tends towards good. But as matter is itself of God's
+creation, it only furnishes a comparison and an example, and cannot be the
+very source of evil and of imperfection. I have already shown that this
+source lies in the forms or ideas of the possibles, for it must be eternal,
+and matter is not so. Now since God made all positive reality that is not
+eternal, he would have made the source of evil, if that did not rather lie
+in the possibility of things or forms, that which alone God did not make,
+since he is not the author of his own understanding.
+
+381. Yet even though the source of evil lies in the possible forms,
+anterior to the acts of God's will, it is nevertheless true that God
+co-operates in evil in the actual performance of introducing these forms
+into matter: and this is what causes the difficulty in question here.
+Durand de Saint-Pourçain, Cardinal Aureolus, Nicolas Taurel, Father Louis
+de Dole, M. Bernier and some others, speaking of this co-operation, would
+have it only general, for fear of impairing the freedom of man and the
+holiness of God. They seem to maintain that God, having given to creatures
+the power to act, contents himself with conserving this power. On the [354]
+other hand, M. Bayle, according to some modern writers, carries the
+cooperation of God too far: he seems to fear lest the creature be not
+sufficiently dependent upon God. He goes so far as to deny action to
+creatures; he does not even acknowledge any real distinction between
+accident and substance.
+
+382. He places great reliance especially on that doctrine accepted of the
+Schoolmen, that conservation is a continued creation. The conclusion to be
+drawn from this doctrine would seem to be that the creature never exists,
+that it is ever newborn and ever dying, like time, movement and other
+transient beings. Plato believed this of material and tangible things,
+saying that they are in a perpetual flux, _semper fluunt, nunquam sunt_.
+But of immaterial substances he judged quite differently, regarding them
+alone as real: nor was he in that altogether mistaken. Yet continued
+creation applies to all creatures without distinction. Sundry good
+philosophers have been opposed to this dogma, and M. Bayle tells that David
+de Rodon, a philosopher renowned among those of the French who have adhered
+to Geneva, deliberately refuted it. The Arminians also do not approve of
+it; they are not much in favour of these metaphysical subtleties. I will
+say nothing of the Socinians, who relish them even less.
+
+383. For a proper enquiry as to _whether conservation is a continued
+creation,_ it would be necessary to consider the reasons whereon this dogma
+is founded. The Cartesians, after the example of their master, employ in
+order to prove it a principle which is not conclusive enough. They say that
+'the moments of time having no necessary connexion with one another, it
+does not follow that because I am at this moment I shall exist at the
+moment which shall follow, if the same cause which gives me being for this
+moment does not also give it to me for the instant following.' The author
+of the _Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism_ has made use of this
+argument, and M. Bayle (perhaps the author of this same _Reflexion_) quotes
+it (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 141, p. 771).
+One may answer that in fact it does not follow _of necessity_ that, because
+I am, I shall be; but this follows _naturally_, nevertheless, that is, of
+itself, _per se_, if nothing prevents it. It is the distinction that can be
+drawn between the essential and the natural. For the same movement endures
+naturally unless some new cause prevents it or changes it, because the
+reason which makes it cease at this instant, if it is no new reason,  [355]
+would have already made it cease sooner.
+
+384. The late Herr Erhard Weigel, a celebrated mathematician and
+philosopher at Jena, well known for his _Analysis Euclidea_, his
+mathematical philosophy, some neat mechanical inventions, and finally the
+trouble he took to induce the Protestant princes of the Empire to undertake
+the last reform of the Almanac, whose success, notwithstanding, he did not
+witness; Herr Weigel, I say, communicated to his friends a certain
+demonstration of the existence of God, which indeed amounted to this idea
+of continued creation. As he was wont to draw parallels between reckoning
+and reasoning--witness his Arithmetical Ethics (_rechenschaftliche
+Sittenlehre_)--he said that the foundation of the demonstration was this
+beginning of the Pythagorean Table, _once one is one_. These repeated
+unities were the moments of the existence of things, each one of them
+depending upon God, who resuscitates, as it were, all things outside
+himself at each moment: falling away as they do at each moment, they must
+ever have one who shall resuscitate them, and that cannot be any other than
+God. But there would be need of a more exact proof if that is to be called
+a demonstration. It would be necessary to prove that the creature always
+emerges from nothingness and relapses thither forthwith. In particular it
+must be shown that the privilege of enduring more than a moment by its
+nature belongs to the necessary being alone. The difficulties on the
+composition of the _continuum_ enter also into this matter. This dogma
+appears to resolve time into moments, whereas others regard moments and
+points as mere modalities of the _continuum_, that is, as extremities of
+the parts that can be assigned to it, and not as constituent parts. But
+this is not the place for entering into that labyrinth.
+
+385. What can be said for certain on the present subject is that the
+creature depends continually upon divine operation, and that it depends
+upon that no less after the time of its beginning than when it first
+begins. This dependence implies that it would not continue to exist if God
+did not continue to act; in short, that this action of God is free. For if
+it were a necessary emanation, like that of the properties of the circle,
+which issue from its essence, it must then be said that God in the
+beginning produced the creature by necessity; or else it must be shown how,
+in creating it once, he imposed upon himself the necessity of conserving
+it. Now there is no reason why this conserving action should not be   [356]
+called production, and even creation, if one will: for the dependence being
+as great afterwards as at the beginning, the extrinsic designation of being
+new or not does not change the nature of that action.
+
+386. Let us then admit in such a sense that conservation is a continued
+creation, and let us see what M. Bayle seems to infer thence (p. 771) after
+the author of the _Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism_, in opposition
+to M. Jurieu. 'It seems to me', this writer says, 'that one must conclude
+that God does all, and that in all creation there are no first or second or
+even occasional causes, as can be easily proved. At this moment when I
+speak, I am such as I am, with all my circumstances, with such thought,
+such action, whether I sit or stand, that if God creates me in this moment
+such as I am, as one must of necessity say in this system, he creates me
+with such thought, such action, such movement and such determination. One
+cannot say that God creates me in the first place, and that once I am
+created he produces with me my movements and my determinations. That is
+indefensible for two reasons. The first is, that when God creates me or
+conserves me at this instant, he does not conserve me as a being without
+form, like a species, or another of the Universals of Logic. I am an
+individual; he creates me and conserves me as such, and as being all that I
+am in this instant, with all my attendant circumstances. The second reason
+is that if God creates me in this instant, and one says that afterwards he
+produces with me my actions, it will be necessary to imagine another
+instant for action: for before acting one must exist. Now that would be two
+instants where we only assume one. It is therefore certain in this
+hypothesis that creatures have neither more connexion nor more relation
+with their actions than they had with their production at the first moment
+of the first creation.' The author of this _Reflexion_ draws thence very
+harsh conclusions which one can picture to oneself; and he testifies at the
+end that one would be deeply indebted to any man that should teach those
+who approve this system how to extricate themselves from these frightful
+absurdities.
+
+387. M. Bayle carries this still further. 'You know', he says (p. 775),
+'that it is demonstrated in the Scholastic writings' (he cites Arriaga,
+_Disp_. 9, Phys., sect. 6 et praesertim, sub-sect. 3) 'that the creature
+cannot be either the total cause or the partial cause of its conservation:
+for if it were, it would exist before existing, which is              [357]
+contradictory. You know that the argument proceeds like this: that which
+conserves itself acts; now that which acts exists, and nothing can act
+before it has attained complete existence; therefore, if a creature
+conserved itself, it would act before being. This argument is not founded
+upon probabilities, but upon the first principles of Metaphysics, _non
+entis nulla sunt accidentia, operari sequitur esse_, axioms as clear as
+daylight. Let us go further. If creatures co-operated with God (here is
+meant an active cooperation, and not co-operation by a passive instrument)
+to conserve themselves they would act before being: that has been
+demonstrated. Now if they co-operated with God for the production of any
+other thing, they would also act before being; it is therefore as
+impossible for them to co-operate with God for the production of any other
+thing (such as local movement, an affirmation, volition, entities actually
+distinct from their substance, so it is asserted) as for their own
+conservation. Since their conservation is a continued creation, and since
+all human creatures in the world must confess that they cannot co-operate
+with God at the first moment of their existence, either to produce
+themselves or to give themselves any modality, since that would be to act
+before being (observe that Thomas Aquinas and sundry other Schoolmen teach
+that if the angels had sinned at the first moment of their creation God
+would be the author of the sin: see the Feuillant Pierre de St. Joseph, p.
+318, _et seqq_., of the _Suavis Concordia Humanae Libertatis_; it is a sign
+that they acknowledge that at the first instant the creature cannot act in
+anything whatsoever), it follows manifestly that they cannot co-operate
+with God in any one of the subsequent moments, either to produce themselves
+or to produce any other thing. If they could co-operate therein at the
+second moment of their existence, nothing would prevent their being able to
+cooperate at the first moment.'
+
+388. This is the way it will be necessary to answer these arguments. Let us
+assume that the creature is produced anew at each instant; let us grant
+also that the instant excludes all priority of time, being indivisible; but
+let us point out that it does not exclude priority of nature, or what is
+called anteriority _in signo rationis,_ and that this is sufficient. The
+production, or action whereby God produces, is anterior by nature to the
+existence of the creature that is produced; the creature taken in itself,
+with its nature and its necessary properties, is anterior to its accidental
+affections and to its actions; and yet all these things are in being  [358]
+in the same moment. God produces the creature in conformity with the
+exigency of the preceding instants, according to the laws of his wisdom;
+and the creature operates in conformity with that nature which God conveys
+to it in creating it always. The limitations and imperfections arise
+therein through the nature of the subject, which sets bounds to God's
+production; this is the consequence of the original imperfection of
+creatures. Vice and crime, on the other hand, arise there through the free
+inward operation of the creature, in so far as this can occur within the
+instant, repetition afterwards rendering it discernible.
+
+389. This anteriority of nature is a commonplace in philosophy: thus one
+says that the decrees of God have an order among themselves. When one
+ascribes to God (and rightly so) understanding of the arguments and
+conclusions of creatures, in such sort that all their demonstrations and
+syllogisms are known to him, and are found in him in a transcendent way,
+one sees that there is in the propositions or truths a natural order; but
+there is no order of time or interval, to cause him to advance in knowledge
+and pass from the premisses to the conclusion.
+
+390. I find in the arguments that have just been quoted nothing which these
+reflexions fail to satisfy. When God produces the thing he produces it as
+an individual and not as a universal of logic (I admit); but he produces
+its essence before its accidents, its nature before its operations,
+following the priority of their nature, and _in signo anteriore rationis_.
+Thus one sees how the creature can be the true cause of the sin, while
+conservation by God does not prevent the sin; God disposes in accordance
+with the preceding state of the same creature, in order to follow the laws
+of his wisdom notwithstanding the sin, which in the first place will be
+produced by the creature. But it is true that God would not in the
+beginning have created the soul in a state wherein it would have sinned
+from the first moment, as the Schoolmen have justly observed: for there is
+nothing in the laws of his wisdom that could have induced him so to do.
+
+391. This law of wisdom brings it about also that God reproduces the same
+substance, the same soul. Such was the answer that could have been given by
+the Abbé whom M. Bayle introduces in his _Dictionary_ (art. 'Pyrrhon.' lit.
+B, p. 2432). This wisdom effects the connexion of things. I concede
+therefore that the creature does not co-operate with God to conserve  [359]
+himself (in the sense in which I have just explained conservation). But I
+see nothing to prevent the creature's co-operation with God for the
+production of any other thing: and especially might this concern its inward
+operation, as in the case of a thought or a volition, things really
+distinct from the substance.
+
+392. But there I am once more at grips with M. Bayle. He maintains that
+there are no such accidents distinct from the substance. 'The reasons', he
+says, 'which our modern philosophers have employed to demonstrate that the
+accidents are not beings in reality distinct from the substance are not
+mere difficulties; they are arguments which overwhelm one, and which cannot
+be refuted. Take the trouble', he adds, 'to look for them in the writings
+of Father Maignan, or Father Malebranche or M. Calli' (Professor of
+Philosophy at Caen) 'or in the _Accidentia profligata_ of Father Saguens,
+disciple of Father Maignan, the extract from which is to be found in the
+_Nouvelles de la République des Lettres_, June 1702. Or if you wish one
+author only to suffice you, choose Dom François Lami, a Benedictine monk,
+and one of the strongest Cartesians to be found in France. You will find
+among his _Philosophical Letters_, printed at Trévoux in 1703, that one
+wherein by the geometricians' method he demonstrates "that God is the sole
+true cause of all that which is real." I would wish to see all these books;
+and as for this last proposition, it may be true in a very good sense: God
+is the one principal cause of pure and absolute realities, or of
+perfections. _Causae secundae agunt in virtute primae._ But when one
+comprises limitations and privations under the term realities one may say
+that the second causes co-operate in the production of that which is
+limited; otherwise God would be the cause of sin, and even the sole cause.
+
+393. It is well to beware, moreover, lest in confusing substances with
+accidents, in depriving created substances of action, one fall into
+Spinozism, which is an exaggerated Cartesianism. That which does not act
+does not merit the name of substance. If the accidents are not distinct
+from the substances; if the created substance is a successive being, like
+movement; if it does not endure beyond a moment, and does not remain the
+same (during some stated portion of time) any more than its accidents; if
+it does not operate any more than a mathematical figure or a number: why
+shall one not say, with Spinoza, that God is the only substance, and  [360]
+that creatures are only accidents or modifications? Hitherto it has been
+supposed that the substance remains, and that the accidents change; and I
+think one ought still to abide by this ancient doctrine, for the arguments
+I remember having read do not prove the contrary, and prove more than is
+needed.
+
+394. 'One of the absurdities', says M. Bayle (p. 779), 'that arise from the
+so-called distinction which is alleged to exist between substances and
+their accidents is that creatures, if they produce the accidents, would
+possess a power of creation and annihilation. Accordingly one could not
+perform the slightest action without creating an innumerable number of real
+beings, and without reducing to nothingness an endless multitude of them.
+Merely by moving the tongue to cry out or to eat, one creates as many
+accidents as there are movements of the parts of the tongue, and one
+destroys as many accidents as there are parts of that which one eats, which
+lose their form, which become chyle, blood, etc.' This argument is only a
+kind of bugbear. What harm would be done, supposing that an infinity of
+movements, an infinity of figures spring up and disappear at every moment
+in the universe, and even in each part of the universe? It can be
+demonstrated, moreover, that that must be so.
+
+395. As for the so-called creation of the accidents, who does not see that
+one needs no creative power in order to change place or shape, to form a
+square or a column, or some other parade-ground figure, by the movement of
+the soldiers who are drilling; or again to fashion a statue by removing a
+few pieces from a block of marble; or to make some figure in relief, by
+changing, decreasing or increasing a piece of wax? The production of
+modifications has never been called _creation_, and it is an abuse of terms
+to scare the world thus. God produces substances from nothing, and the
+substances produce accidents by the changes of their limits.
+
+396. As for the souls or substantial forms, M. Bayle is right in adding:
+'that there is nothing more inconvenient for those who admit substantial
+forms than the objection which is made that they could not be produced save
+by an actual creation, and that the Schoolmen are pitiable in their
+endeavours to answer this.' But there is nothing more convenient for me and
+for my system than this same objection. For I maintain that all the Souls,
+Entelechies or primitive forces, substantial forms, simple substances, or
+Monads, whatever name one may apply to them, can neither spring up    [361]
+naturally nor perish. And the qualities or derivative forces, or what are
+called accidental forms, I take to be modifications of the primitive
+Entelechy, even as shapes are modifications of matter. That is why these
+modifications are perpetually changing, while the simple substance remains.
+
+397. I have shown already (part I, 86 _seqq._) that souls cannot spring up
+naturally, or be derived from one another, and that it is necessary that
+ours either be created or be pre-existent. I have even pointed out a
+certain middle way between a creation and an entire pre-existence. I find
+it appropriate to say that the soul preexisting in the seeds from the
+beginning of things was only sentient, but that it was elevated to the
+superior degree, which is that of reason, when the man to whom this soul
+should belong was conceived, and when the organic body, always accompanying
+this soul from the beginning, but under many changes, was determined for
+forming the human body. I considered also that one might attribute this
+elevation of the sentient soul (which makes it reach a more sublime degree
+of being, namely reason) to the extraordinary operation of God.
+Nevertheless it will be well to add that I would dispense with miracles in
+the generating of man, as in that of the other animals. It will be possible
+to explain that, if one imagines that in this great number of souls and of
+animals, or at least of living organic bodies which are in the seeds, those
+souls alone which are destined to attain one day to human nature contain
+the reason that shall appear therein one day, and the organic bodies of
+these souls alone are preformed and predisposed to assume one day the human
+shape, while the other small animals or seminal living beings, in which no
+such thing is pre-established, are essentially different from them and
+possessed only of an inferior nature. This production is a kind of
+_traduction_, but more manageable than that kind which is commonly taught:
+it does not derive the soul from a soul, but only the animate from an
+animate, and it avoids the repeated miracles of a new creation, which would
+cause a new and pure soul to enter a body that must corrupt it.
+
+398. I am, however, of the same opinion as Father Malebranche, that, in
+general, creation properly understood is not so difficult to admit as might
+be supposed, and that it is in a sense involved in the notion of the
+dependence of creatures. 'How stupid and ridiculous are the Philosophers!'
+(he exclaims, in his _Christian Meditations_, 9, No. 3). 'They assume that
+Creation is impossible, because they cannot conceive how God's power  [362]
+is great enough to make something from nothing. But can they any better
+conceive how the power of God is capable of stirring a straw?' He adds,
+again with great truth (No. 5), 'If matter were uncreate, God could not
+move it or form anything from it. For God cannot move matter, or arrange it
+wisely, if he does not know it. Now God cannot know it, if he does not give
+it being: he can derive his knowledge only from himself. Nothing can act on
+him or enlighten him.'
+
+399. M. Bayle, not content with saying that we are created continually,
+insists also on this other doctrine which he would fain derive thence: that
+our soul cannot act. This is the way he speaks on that matter (ch. 141, p.
+765): 'He has too much acquaintance with Cartesianism' (it is of an able
+opponent he is speaking) 'not to know with what force it has been
+maintained in our day that there is no creature capable of producing
+motion, and that our soul is a purely passive subject in relation to
+sensations and ideas, and feelings of pain and of pleasure, etc. If this
+has not been carried as far as the volitions, that is on account of the
+existence of revealed truths; otherwise the acts of the will would have
+been found as passive as those of the understanding. The same reasons which
+prove that our soul does not form our ideas, and does not stir our organs,
+would prove also that it cannot form our acts of love and our volitions,
+etc' He might add: our vicious actions, our crimes.
+
+400. The force of these proofs, which he praises, must not be so great as
+he thinks, for if it were they would prove too much. They would make God
+the author of sin. I admit that the soul cannot stir the organs by a
+physical influence; for I think that the body must have been so formed
+beforehand that it would do in time and place that which responds to the
+volitions of the soul, although it be true nevertheless that the soul is
+the principle of the operation. But if it be said that the soul does not
+produce its thoughts, its sensations, its feelings of pain and of pleasure,
+that is something for which I see no reason. In my system every simple
+substance (that is, every true substance) must be the true immediate cause
+of all its actions and inward passions; and, speaking strictly in a
+metaphysical sense, it has none other than those which it produces. Those
+who hold a different opinion, and who make God the sole agent, are
+needlessly becoming involved in expressions whence they will only with
+difficulty extricate themselves without offence against religion;     [363]
+moreover, they unquestionably offend against reason.
+
+401. Here is, however, the foundation of M. Bayle's argument. He says that
+we do not do that of which we know not the way it is done. But it is a
+principle which I do not concede to him. Let us listen to his dissertation
+(p. 767 seqq.): 'It is an astonishing thing that almost all philosophers
+(with the exception of those who expounded Aristotle, and who admitted a
+universal intelligence distinct from our soul, and cause of our
+perceptions: see in the _Historical and Critical Dictionary_, Note E of the
+article "Averroes") have shared the popular belief that we form our ideas
+actively. Yet where is the man who knows not on the one hand that he is in
+absolute ignorance as to how ideas are made, and on the other hand, that he
+could not sew two stitches if he were ignorant of how to sew? Is the sewing
+of two stitches in itself a work more difficult than the painting in one's
+mind of a rose, the very first time one's eyes rest upon it, and although
+one has never learnt this kind of painting? Does it not appear on the
+contrary that this mental portrait is in itself a work more difficult than
+tracing on canvas the shape of a flower, a thing we cannot do without
+having learnt it? We are all convinced that a key would be of no use to us
+for opening a chest if we were ignorant as to how to use the key, and yet
+we imagine that our soul is the efficient cause of the movement of our
+arms, despite that it knows neither where the nerves are which must be used
+for this movement, nor whence to obtain the animal spirits that are to flow
+into these nerves. We have the experience every day that the ideas we would
+fain recall do not come, and that they appear of themselves when we are no
+longer thinking of them. If that does not prevent us from thinking that we
+are their efficient cause, what reliance shall one place on the proof of
+feeling, which to M. Jacquelot appears so conclusive? Does our authority
+over our ideas more often fall short than our authority over our volitions?
+If we were to count up carefully, we should find in the course of our life
+more velleities than volitions, that is, more evidences of the servitude of
+our will than of its dominion. How many times does one and the same man not
+experience an inability to do a certain act of will (for example, an act of
+love for a man who had just injured him; an act of scorn for a fine sonnet
+that he had composed; an act of hatred for a mistress; an act of approval
+of an absurd epigram. Take note that I speak only of inward acts,     [364]
+expressed by an "I will", such as "I will scorn", "approve", etc.) even if
+there were a hundred pistoles to be gained forthwith, and he ardently
+desired to gain these hundred pistoles, and he were fired with the ambition
+to convince himself by an experimental proof that he is master in his own
+domain?
+
+402. 'To put together in few words the whole force of what I have just said
+to you, I will observe that it is evident to all those who go deeply into
+things, that the true efficient cause of an effect must know the effect,
+and be aware also of the way in which it must be produced. That is not
+necessary when one is only the instrument of the cause, or only the passive
+subject of its action; but one cannot conceive of it as not necessary to a
+true agent. Now if we examine ourselves well we shall be strongly
+convinced, (1) that, independently of experience, our soul is just as
+little aware of what a volition is as of what an idea is; (2) that after a
+long experience it is no more fully aware of how volitions are formed than
+it was before having willed anything. What is one to conclude from that,
+save that the soul cannot be the efficient cause of its volitions, any more
+than of its ideas, and of the motion of the spirits which cause our arms to
+move? (Take note that no pretence is made of deciding the point here
+absolutely, it is only being considered in relation to the principles of
+the objection.)'
+
+403. That is indeed a strange way of reasoning! What necessity is there for
+one always to be aware how that which is done is done? Are salts, metals,
+plants, animals and a thousand other animate or inanimate bodies aware how
+that which they do is done, and need they be aware? Must a drop of oil or
+of fat understand geometry in order to become round on the surface of
+water? Sewing stitches is another matter: one acts for an end, one must be
+aware of the means. But we do not form our ideas because we will to do so,
+they form themselves within us, they form themselves through us, not in
+consequence of our will, but in accordance with our nature and that of
+things. The foetus forms itself in the animal, and a thousand other wonders
+of nature are produced by a certain _instinct_ that God has placed there,
+that is by virtue of _divine preformation_, which has made these admirable
+automata, adapted to produce mechanically such beautiful effects. Even so
+it is easy to believe that the soul is a spiritual automaton still more
+admirable, and that it is through divine preformation that it produces
+these beautiful ideas, wherein our will has no part and to which our  [365]
+art cannot attain. The operation of spiritual automata, that is of souls,
+is not mechanical, but it contains in the highest degree all that is
+beautiful in mechanism. The movements which are developed in bodies are
+concentrated in the soul by representation as in an ideal world, which
+expresses the laws of the actual world and their consequences, but with
+this difference from the perfect ideal world which is in God, that most of
+the perceptions in the other substances are only confused. For it is plain
+that every simple substance embraces the whole universe in its confused
+perceptions or sensations, and that the succession of these perceptions is
+regulated by the particular nature of this substance, but in a manner which
+always expresses all the nature in the universe; and every present
+perception leads to a new perception, just as every movement that it
+represents leads to another movement. But it is impossible that the soul
+can know clearly its whole nature, and perceive how this innumerable number
+of small perceptions, piled up or rather concentrated together, shapes
+itself there: to that end it must needs know completely the whole universe
+which is embraced by them, that is, it must needs be a God.
+
+404. As regards _velleities_, they are only a very imperfect kind of
+conditional will. I would, if I could: _liberet si liceret_; and in the
+case of a velleity, we do not will, properly speaking, to will, but to be
+able. That explains why there are none in God; and they must not be
+confused with antecedent will. I have explained sufficiently elsewhere that
+our control over volitions can be exercised only indirectly, and that one
+would be unhappy if one were sufficiently master in one's own domain to be
+able to will without cause, without rhyme or reason. To complain of not
+having such a control would be to argue like Pliny, who carps at the power
+of God because God cannot destroy himself.
+
+405. I intended to finish here after having met (as it seems to me) all the
+objections of M. Bayle on this matter that I could find in his works. But
+remembering Laurentius Valla's _Dialogue on Free Will,_ in opposition to
+Boethius, which I have already mentioned, I thought it would be opportune
+to quote it in abstract, retaining the dialogue form, and then to continue
+from where it ends, keeping up the fiction it initiated; and that less with
+the purpose of enlivening the subject, than in order to explain myself
+towards the end of my dissertation as clearly as I can, and in a way  [366]
+most likely to be generally understood. This Dialogue of Valla and his
+books on Pleasure and the True Good make it plain that he was no less a
+philosopher than a humanist. These four books were opposed to the four
+books on the _Consolation of Philosophy_ by Boethius, and the Dialogue to
+the fifth book. A certain Spaniard named Antonio Glarea requests of him
+elucidation on the difficulty of free will, whereof little is known as it
+is worthy to be known, for upon it depend justice and injustice, punishment
+and reward in this life and in the life to come. Laurentius Valla answers
+him that we must console ourselves for an ignorance which we share with the
+whole world, just as one consoles oneself for not having the wings of
+birds.
+
+406. ANTONIO--I know that you can give me those wings, like another
+Daedalus, so that I may emerge from the prison of ignorance, and rise to
+the very region of truth, which is the homeland of souls. The books that I
+have seen have not satisfied me, not even the famous Boethius, who meets
+with general approval. I know not whether he fully understood himself what
+he says of God's understanding, and of eternity superior to time; and I ask
+for your opinion on his way of reconciling foreknowledge with freedom.
+LAURENT--I am fearful of giving offence to many people, if I confute this
+great man; yet I will give preference over this fear to the consideration I
+have for the entreaties of a friend, provided that you make me a promise.
+ANT.--What? LAUR.--It is, that when you have dined with me you do not ask
+me to give you supper, that is to say, I desire that you be content with
+the answer to the question you have put to me, and do not put a further
+question.
+
+407. ANT.--I promise you. Here is the heart of the difficulty. If God
+foresaw the treason of Judas, it was necessary that he should betray, it
+was impossible for him not to betray. There is no obligation to do the
+impossible. He therefore did not sin, he did not deserve to be punished.
+That destroys justice and religion, and the fear of God. LAUR.--God foresaw
+sin; but he did not compel man to commit it; sin is voluntary. ANT.--That
+will was necessary, since it was foreseen. LAUR.--If my knowledge does not
+cause things past or present to exist, neither will my foreknowledge cause
+future things to exist.
+
+408. ANT.--That comparison is deceptive: neither the present nor the past
+can be changed, they are already necessary; but the future, movable in
+itself, becomes fixed and necessary through foreknowledge. Let us     [367]
+pretend that a god of the heathen boasts of knowing the future: I will ask
+him if he knows which foot I shall put foremost, then I will do the
+opposite of that which he shall have foretold. LAUR.--This God knows what
+you are about to do. ANT.--How does he know it, since I will do the
+opposite of what he shall have said, and I suppose that he will say what he
+thinks? LAUR.--Your supposition is false: God will not answer you; or
+again, if he were to answer you, the veneration you would have for him
+would make you hasten to do what he had said; his prediction would be to
+you an order. But we have changed the question. We are not concerned with
+what God will foretell but with what he foresees. Let us therefore return
+to foreknowledge, and distinguish between the necessary and the certain. It
+is not impossible for what is foreseen not to happen; but it is infallibly
+sure that it will happen. I can become a Soldier or Priest, but I shall not
+become one.
+
+409. ANT.--Here I have you firmly held. The philosophers' rule maintains
+that all that which is possible can be considered as existing. But if that
+which you affirm to be possible, namely an event different from what has
+been foreseen, actually happened, God would have been mistaken. LAUR.--The
+rules of the philosophers are not oracles for me. This one in particular is
+not correct. Two contradictories are often both possible. Can they also
+both exist? But, for your further enlightenment, let us pretend that Sextus
+Tarquinius, coming to Delphi to consult the Oracle of Apollo, receives the
+answer:
+
+  _Exul inopsque cades irata pulsus ab urbe._
+  A beggared outcast of the city's rage,
+  Beside a foreign shore cut short thy age.
+
+The young man will complain: I have brought you a royal gift, O Apollo, and
+you proclaim for me a lot so unhappy? Apollo will say to him: Your gift is
+pleasing to me, and I will do that which you ask of me, I will tell you
+what will happen. I know the future, but I do not bring it about. Go make
+your complaint to Jupiter and the Parcae. Sextus would be ridiculous if he
+continued thereafter to complain about Apollo. Is not that true? ANT.--He
+will say: I thank you, O holy Apollo, for not having repaid me with
+silence, for having revealed to me the Truth. But whence comes it that
+Jupiter is so cruel towards me, that he prepares so hard a fate for an[368]
+innocent man, for a devout worshipper of the Gods? LAUR.--You innocent?
+Apollo will say. Know that you will be proud, that you will commit
+adulteries, that you will be a traitor to your country. Could Sextus reply:
+It is you who are the cause, O Apollo; you compel me to do it, by
+foreseeing it? ANT.--I admit that he would have taken leave of his senses
+if he were to make this reply. LAUR.--Therefore neither can the traitor
+Judas complain of God's foreknowledge. And there is the answer to your
+question.
+
+410. ANT.--You have satisfied me beyond my hopes, you have done what
+Boethius was not able to do: I shall be beholden to you all my life long.
+LAUR.--Yet let us carry our tale a little further. Sextus will say: No,
+Apollo, I will not do what you say. ANT.--What! the God will say, do you
+mean then that I am a liar? I repeat to you once more, you will do all that
+I have just said. LAUR.--Sextus, mayhap, would pray the Gods to alter fate,
+to give him a better heart. ANT.--He would receive the answer:
+
+  _Desine fata Deum flecti sperare precando_.
+
+He cannot cause divine foreknowledge to lie. But what then will Sextus say?
+Will he not break forth into complaints against the Gods? Will he not say?
+What? I am then not free? It is not in my power to follow virtue?
+LAUR.--Apollo will say to him perhaps: Know, my poor Sextus, that the Gods
+make each one as he is. Jupiter made the wolf ravening, the hare timid, the
+ass stupid, and the lion courageous. He gave you a soul that is wicked and
+irreclaimable; you will act in conformity with your natural disposition,
+and Jupiter will treat you as your actions shall deserve; he has sworn it
+by the Styx.
+
+411. ANT.--I confess to you, it seems to me that Apollo in excusing himself
+accuses Jupiter more than he accuses Sextus, and Sextus would answer him:
+Jupiter therefore condemns in me his own crime; it is he who is the only
+guilty one. He could have made me altogether different: but, made as I am,
+I must act as he has willed. Why then does he punish me? Could I have
+resisted his will? LAUR.--I confess that I am brought to a pause here as
+you are. I have made the Gods appear on the scene, Apollo and Jupiter, to
+make you distinguish between divine foreknowledge and providence. I have
+shown that Apollo and foreknowledge do not impair freedom; but I cannot
+satisfy you on the decrees of Jupiter's will, that is to say, on the orders
+of providence. ANT.--You have dragged me out of one abyss, and you    [369]
+plunge me back into another and greater abyss. LAUR.--Remember our
+contract: I have given you dinner, and you ask me to give you supper also.
+
+412. ANT.--Now I discover your cunning: You have caught me, this is not an
+honest contract. LAUR.--What would you have me do? I have given you wine
+and meats from my home produce, such as my small estate can provide; as for
+nectar and ambrosia, you will ask the Gods for them: that divine nurture is
+not found among men. Let us hearken to St. Paul, that chosen vessel who was
+carried even to the third heaven, who heard there unutterable words: he
+will answer you with the comparison of the potter, with the
+incomprehensibility of the ways of God, and wonder at the depth of his
+wisdom. Nevertheless it is well to observe that one does not ask why God
+foresees the thing, for that is understood, it is because it will be: but
+one asks why he ordains thus, why he hardens such an one, why he has
+compassion on another. We do not know the reasons which he may have for
+this; but _since he is very good and very wise that is enough to make us
+deem that his reasons are good_. As he is just also, it follows that his
+decrees and his operation do not destroy our freedom. Some men have sought
+some reason therein. They have said that we are made from a corrupt and
+impure mass, indeed of mud. But Adam and the Angels were made of silver and
+gold, and they sinned notwithstanding. One sometimes becomes hardened again
+after regeneration. We must therefore seek another cause for evil, and I
+doubt whether even the Angels are aware of it; yet they cease not to be
+happy and to praise God. Boethius hearkened more to the answer of
+philosophy than to that of St. Paul; that was the cause of his failure. Let
+us believe in Jesus Christ, he is the virtue and the wisdom of God: he
+teaches us that God willeth the salvation of all, that he willeth not the
+death of the sinner. Let us therefore put our trust in the divine mercy,
+and let us not by our vanity and our malice disqualify ourselves to receive
+it.
+
+413. This dialogue of Valla's is excellent, even though one must take
+exception to some points in it: but its chief defect is that it cuts the
+knot and that it seems to condemn providence under the name of Jupiter,
+making him almost the author of sin. Let us therefore carry the little
+fable still further. Sextus, quitting Apollo and Delphi, seeks out Jupiter
+at Dodona. He makes sacrifices and then he exhibits his complaints. Why
+have you condemned me, O great God, to be wicked and unhappy? Change  [370]
+my lot and my heart, or acknowledge your error. Jupiter answers him: If you
+will renounce Rome, the Parcae shall spin for you different fates, you
+shall become wise, you shall be happy. SEXTUS--Why must I renounce the hope
+of a crown? Can I not come to be a good king? JUPITER--No, Sextus; I know
+better what is needful for you. If you go to Rome, you are lost. Sextus,
+not being able to resolve upon so great a sacrifice, went forth from the
+temple, and abandoned himself to his fate. Theodorus, the High Priest, who
+had been present at the dialogue between God and Sextus, addressed these
+words to Jupiter: Your wisdom is to be revered, O great Ruler of the Gods.
+You have convinced this man of his error; he must henceforth impute his
+unhappiness to his evil will; he has not a word to say. But your faithful
+worshippers are astonished; they would fain wonder at your goodness as well
+as at your greatness: it rested with you to give him a different will.
+JUPITER--Go to my daughter Pallas, she will inform you what I was bound to
+do.
+
+414. Theodorus journeyed to Athens: he was bidden to lie down to sleep in
+the temple of the Goddess. Dreaming, he found himself transported into an
+unknown country. There stood a palace of unimaginable splendour and
+prodigious size. The Goddess Pallas appeared at the gate, surrounded by
+rays of dazzling majesty.
+
+          _Qualisque videri_
+  _Coelicolis et quanta solet._
+
+She touched the face of Theodorus with an olive-branch, which she was
+holding in her hand. And lo! he had become able to confront the divine
+radiancy of the daughter of Jupiter, and of all that she should show him.
+Jupiter who loves you (she said to him) has commended you to me to be
+instructed. You see here the palace of the fates, where I keep watch and
+ward. Here are representations not only of that which happens but also of
+all that which is possible. Jupiter, having surveyed them before the
+beginning of the existing world, classified the possibilities into worlds,
+and chose the best of all. He comes sometimes to visit these places, to
+enjoy the pleasure of recapitulating things and of renewing his own choice,
+which cannot fail to please him. I have only to speak, and we shall see a
+whole world that my father might have produced, wherein will be represented
+anything that can be asked of him; and in this way one may know also what
+would happen if any particular possibility should attain unto         [371]
+existence. And whenever the conditions are not determinate enough, there
+will be as many such worlds differing from one another as one shall wish,
+which will answer differently the same question, in as many ways as
+possible. You learnt geometry in your youth, like all well-instructed
+Greeks. You know therefore that when the conditions of a required point do
+not sufficiently determine it, and there is an infinite number of them,
+they all fall into what the geometricians call a locus, and this locus at
+least (which is often a line) will be determinate. Thus you can picture to
+yourself an ordered succession of worlds, which shall contain each and
+every one the case that is in question, and shall vary its circumstances
+and its consequences. But if you put a case that differs from the actual
+world only in one single definite thing and in its results, a certain one
+of those determinate worlds will answer you. These worlds are all here,
+that is, in ideas. I will show you some, wherein shall be found, not
+absolutely the same Sextus as you have seen (that is not possible, he
+carries with him always that which he shall be) but several Sextuses
+resembling him, possessing all that you know already of the true Sextus,
+but not all that is already in him imperceptibly, nor in consequence all
+that shall yet happen to him. You will find in one world a very happy and
+noble Sextus, in another a Sextus content with a mediocre state, a Sextus,
+indeed, of every kind and endless diversity of forms.
+
+415. Thereupon the Goddess led Theodorus into one of the halls of the
+palace: when he was within, it was no longer a hall, it was a world,
+
+  _Solemque suum, sua sidera norat_.
+
+At the command of Pallas there came within view Dodona with the temple of
+Jupiter, and Sextus issuing thence; he could be heard saying that he would
+obey the God. And lo! he goes to a city lying between two seas, resembling
+Corinth. He buys there a small garden; cultivating it, he finds a treasure;
+he becomes a rich man, enjoying affection and esteem; he dies at a great
+age, beloved of the whole city. Theodorus saw the whole life of Sextus as
+at one glance, and as in a stage presentation. There was a great volume of
+writings in this hall: Theodorus could not refrain from asking what that
+meant. It is the history of this world which we are now visiting, the
+Goddess told him; it is the book of its fates. You have seen a number [372]
+on the forehead of Sextus. Look in this book for the place which it
+indicates. Theodorus looked for it, and found there the history of Sextus
+in a form more ample than the outline he had seen. Put your finger on any
+line you please, Pallas said to him, and you will see represented actually
+in all its detail that which the line broadly indicates. He obeyed, and he
+saw coming into view all the characteristics of a portion of the life of
+that Sextus. They passed into another hall, and lo! another world, another
+Sextus. who, issuing from the temple, and having resolved to obey Jupiter,
+goes to Thrace. There he marries the daughter of the king, who had no other
+children; he succeeds him, and he is adored by his subjects. They went into
+other rooms, and always they saw new scenes.
+
+416. The halls rose in a pyramid, becoming even more beautiful as one
+mounted towards the apex, and representing more beautiful worlds. Finally
+they reached the highest one which completed the pyramid, and which was the
+most beautiful of all: for the pyramid had a beginning, but one could not
+see its end; it had an apex, but no base; it went on increasing to
+infinity. That is (as the Goddess explained) because amongst an endless
+number of possible worlds there is the best of all, else would God not have
+determined to create any; but there is not any one which has not also less
+perfect worlds below it: that is why the pyramid goes on descending to
+infinity. Theodorus, entering this highest hall, became entranced in
+ecstasy; he had to receive succour from the Goddess, a drop of a divine
+liquid placed on his tongue restored him; he was beside himself for joy. We
+are in the real true world (said the Goddess) and you are at the source of
+happiness. Behold what Jupiter makes ready for you, if you continue to
+serve him faithfully. Here is Sextus as he is, and as he will be in
+reality. He issues from the temple in a rage, he scorns the counsel of the
+Gods. You see him going to Rome, bringing confusion everywhere, violating
+the wife of his friend. There he is driven out with his father, beaten,
+unhappy. If Jupiter had placed here a Sextus happy at Corinth or King in
+Thrace, it would be no longer this world. And nevertheless he could not
+have failed to choose this world, which surpasses in perfection all the
+others, and which forms the apex of the pyramid. Else would Jupiter have
+renounced his wisdom, he would have banished me, me his daughter. You see
+that my father did not make Sextus wicked; he was so from all         [373]
+eternity, he was so always and freely. My father only granted him the
+existence which his wisdom could not refuse to the world where he is
+included: he made him pass from the region of the possible to that of the
+actual beings. The crime of Sextus serves for great things: it renders Rome
+free; thence will arise a great empire, which will show noble examples to
+mankind. But that is nothing in comparison with the worth of this whole
+world, at whose beauty you will marvel, when, after a happy passage from
+this mortal state to another and better one, the Gods shall have fitted you
+to know it.
+
+417. At this moment Theodorus wakes up, he gives thanks to the Goddess, he
+owns the justice of Jupiter. His spirit pervaded by what he has seen and
+heard, he carries on the office of High Priest, with all the zeal of a true
+servant of his God, and with all the joy whereof a mortal is capable. It
+seems to me that this continuation of the tale may elucidate the difficulty
+which Valla did not wish to treat. If Apollo has represented aright God's
+knowledge of vision (that which concerns beings in existence), I hope that
+Pallas will have not discreditably filled the role of what is called
+knowledge of simple intelligence (that which embraces all that is
+possible), wherein at last the source of things must be sought.
+
+                                                                      [377]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+APPENDICES
+
+SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some persons of discernment have wished me to make this addition. I have
+the more readily deferred to their opinion, because of the opportunity
+thereby gained for meeting certain difficulties, and for making
+observations on certain matters which were not treated in sufficient detail
+in the work itself.
+
+OBJECTION I
+
+Whoever does not choose the best course is lacking either in power, or
+knowledge, or goodness.
+
+God did not choose the best course in creating this world.
+
+Therefore God was lacking in power, or knowledge, or goodness.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the minor, that is to say, the second premiss of this syllogism, and
+the opponent proves it by this
+
+PROSYLLOGISM
+
+Whoever makes things in which there is evil, and which could have been made
+without any evil, or need not have been made at all, does not choose the
+best course.
+
+God made a world wherein there is evil; a world, I say, which could have
+been made without any evil or which need not have been made at all.
+
+                                                                      [378]
+Therefore God did not choose the best course.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I admit the minor of this prosyllogism: for one must confess that there is
+evil in this world which God has made, and that it would have been possible
+to make a world without evil or even not to create any world, since its
+creation depended upon the free will of God. But I deny the major, that is,
+the first of the two premisses of the prosyllogism, and I might content
+myself with asking for its proof. In order, however, to give a clearer
+exposition of the matter, I would justify this denial by pointing out that
+the best course is not always that one which tends towards avoiding evil,
+since it is possible that the evil may be accompanied by a greater good.
+For example, the general of an army will prefer a great victory with a
+slight wound to a state of affairs without wound and without victory. I
+have proved this in further detail in this work by pointing out, through
+instances taken from mathematics and elsewhere, that an imperfection in the
+part may be required for a greater perfection in the whole. I have followed
+therein the opinion of St. Augustine, who said a hundred times that God
+permitted evil in order to derive from it a good, that is to say, a greater
+good; and Thomas Aquinas says (in libr. 2, _Sent. Dist._ 32, qu. 1, art. 1)
+that the permission of evil tends towards the good of the universe. I have
+shown that among older writers the fall of Adam was termed _felix culpa_, a
+fortunate sin, because it had been expiated with immense benefit by the
+incarnation of the Son of God: for he gave to the universe something more
+noble than anything there would otherwise have been amongst created beings.
+For the better understanding of the matter I added, following the example
+of many good authors, that it was consistent with order and the general
+good for God to grant to certain of his creatures the opportunity to
+exercise their freedom, even when he foresaw that they would turn to evil:
+for God could easily correct the evil, and it was not fitting that in order
+to prevent sin he should always act in an extraordinary way. It will
+therefore sufficiently refute the objection to show that a world with evil
+may be better than a world without evil. But I have gone still further in
+the work, and have even shown that this universe must be indeed better than
+every other possible universe.
+
+                                                                      [379]
+OBJECTION II
+
+If there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures, there is more
+evil than good in all God's work.
+
+Now there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures.
+
+Therefore there is more evil than good in all God's work.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the major and the minor of this conditional syllogism. As for the
+major, I do not admit it because this supposed inference from the part to
+the whole, from intelligent creatures to all creatures, assumes tacitly and
+without proof that creatures devoid of reason cannot be compared or taken
+into account with those that have reason. But why might not the surplus of
+good in the non-intelligent creatures that fill the world compensate for
+and even exceed incomparably the surplus of evil in rational creatures? It
+is true that the value of the latter is greater; but by way of compensation
+the others are incomparably greater in number; and it may be that the
+proportion of number and quantity surpasses that of value and quality.
+
+The minor also I cannot admit, namely, that there is more evil than good in
+intelligent creatures. One need not even agree that there is more evil than
+good in the human kind. For it is possible, and even a very reasonable
+thing, that the glory and the perfection of the blessed may be incomparably
+greater than the misery and imperfection of the damned, and that here the
+excellence of the total good in the smaller number may exceed the total
+evil which is in the greater number. The blessed draw near to divinity
+through a divine Mediator, so far as can belong to these created beings,
+and make such progress in good as is impossible for the damned to make in
+evil, even though they should approach as nearly as may be the nature of
+demons. God is infinite, and the Devil is finite; good can and does go on
+_ad infinitum_, whereas evil has its bounds. It may be therefore, and it is
+probable, that there happens in the comparison between the blessed and the
+damned the opposite of what I said could happen in the comparison between
+the happy and the unhappy, namely that in the latter the proportion of
+degrees surpasses that of numbers, while in the comparison between
+intelligent and non-intelligent the proportion of numbers is greater than
+that of values. One is justified in assuming that a thing may be so as long
+as one does not prove that it is impossible, and indeed what is here  [380]
+put forward goes beyond assumption.
+
+But secondly, even should one admit that there is more evil than good in
+the human kind, one still has every reason for not admitting that there is
+more evil than good in all intelligent creatures. For there is an
+inconceivable number of Spirits, and perhaps of other rational creatures
+besides: and an opponent cannot prove that in the whole City of God,
+composed as much of Spirits as of rational animals without number and of
+endless different kinds, the evil exceeds the good. Although one need not,
+in order to answer an objection, prove that a thing is, when its mere
+possibility suffices, I have nevertheless shown in this present work that
+it is a result of the supreme perfection of the Sovereign of the Universe
+that the kingdom of God should be the most perfect of all states or
+governments possible, and that in consequence what little evil there is
+should be required to provide the full measure of the vast good existing
+there.
+
+OBJECTION III
+
+If it is always impossible not to sin, it is always unjust to punish.
+
+Now it is always impossible not to sin, or rather all sin is necessary.
+
+Therefore it is always unjust to punish.
+
+The minor of this is proved as follows.
+
+FIRST PROSYLLOGISM
+
+Everything predetermined is necessary.
+
+Every event is predetermined.
+
+Therefore every event (and consequently sin also) is necessary.
+
+Again this second minor is proved thus.
+
+SECOND PROSYLLOGISM
+
+That which is future, that which is foreseen, that which is involved in
+causes is predetermined.
+
+Every event is of this kind.
+
+Therefore every event is predetermined.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I admit in a certain sense the conclusion of the second prosyllogism, which
+is the minor of the first; but I shall deny the major of the first    [381]
+prosyllogism, namely that everything predetermined is necessary; taking
+'necessity', say the necessity to sin, or the impossibility of not sinning,
+or of not doing some action, in the sense relevant to the argument, that
+is, as a necessity essential and absolute, which destroys the morality of
+action and the justice of punishment. If anyone meant a different necessity
+or impossibility (that is, a necessity only moral or hypothetical, which
+will be explained presently) it is plain that we would deny him the major
+stated in the objection. We might content ourselves with this answer, and
+demand the proof of the proposition denied: but I am well pleased to
+justify my manner of procedure in the present work, in order to make the
+matter clear and to throw more light on this whole subject, by explaining
+the necessity that must be rejected and the determination that must be
+allowed. The truth is that the necessity contrary to morality, which must
+be avoided and which would render punishment unjust, is an insuperable
+necessity, which would render all opposition unavailing, even though one
+should wish with all one's heart to avoid the necessary action, and though
+one should make all possible efforts to that end. Now it is plain that this
+is not applicable to voluntary actions, since one would not do them if one
+did not so desire. Thus their prevision and predetermination is not
+absolute, but it presupposes will: if it is certain that one will do them,
+it is no less certain that one will will to do them. These voluntary
+actions and their results will not happen whatever one may do and whether
+one will them or not; but they will happen because one will do, and because
+one will will to do, that which leads to them. That is involved in
+prevision and predetermination, and forms the reason thereof. The necessity
+of such events is called conditional or hypothetical, or again necessity of
+consequence, because it presupposes the will and the other requisites. But
+the necessity which destroys morality, and renders punishment unjust and
+reward unavailing, is found in the things that will be whatever one may do
+and whatever one may will to do: in a word, it exists in that which is
+essential. This it is which is called an absolute necessity. Thus it avails
+nothing with regard to what is necessary absolutely to ordain interdicts or
+commandments, to propose penalties or prizes, to blame or to praise; it
+will come to pass no more and no less. In voluntary actions, on the
+contrary, and in what depends upon them, precepts, armed with power to[382]
+punish and to reward, very often serve, and are included in the order of
+causes that make action exist. Thus it comes about that not only pains and
+effort but also prayers are effective, God having had even these prayers in
+mind before he ordered things, and having made due allowance for them. That
+is why the precept _Ora et labora_ (Pray and work) remains intact. Thus not
+only those who (under the empty pretext of the necessity of events)
+maintain that one can spare oneself the pains demanded by affairs, but also
+those who argue against prayers, fall into that which the ancients even in
+their time called 'the Lazy Sophism'. So the predetermination of events by
+their causes is precisely what contributes to morality instead of
+destroying it, and the causes incline the will without necessitating it.
+For this reason the determination we are concerned with is not a
+necessitation. It is certain (to him who knows all) that the effect will
+follow this inclination; but this effect does not follow thence by a
+consequence which is necessary, that is, whose contrary implies
+contradiction; and it is also by such an inward inclination that the will
+is determined, without the presence of necessity. Suppose that one has the
+greatest possible passion (for example, a great thirst), you will admit
+that the soul can find some reason for resisting it, even if it were only
+that of displaying its power. Thus though one may never have complete
+indifference of equipoise, and there is always a predominance of
+inclination for the course adopted, that predominance does not render
+absolutely necessary the resolution taken.
+
+OBJECTION IV
+
+Whoever can prevent the sin of others and does not so, but rather
+contributes to it, although he be fully apprised of it, is accessary
+thereto.
+
+God can prevent the sin of intelligent creatures; but he does not so, and
+he rather contributes to it by his co-operation and by the opportunities he
+causes, although he is fully cognizant of it.
+
+Therefore, etc.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the major of this syllogism. It may be that one can prevent the sin,
+but that one ought not to do so, because one could not do so without
+committing a sin oneself, or (when God is concerned) without acting
+unreasonably. I have given instances of that, and have applied them to[383]
+God himself. It may be also that one contributes to the evil, and that one
+even opens the way to it sometimes, in doing things one is bound to do. And
+when one does one's duty, or (speaking of God) when, after full
+consideration, one does that which reason demands, one is not responsible
+for events, even when one foresees them. One does not will these evils; but
+one is willing to permit them for a greater good, which one cannot in
+reason help preferring to other considerations. This is a _consequent_
+will, resulting from acts of _antecedent_ will, in which one wills the
+good. I know that some persons, in speaking of the antecedent and
+consequent will of God, have meant by the antecedent that which wills that
+all men be saved, and by the consequent that which wills, in consequence of
+persistent sin, that there be some damned, damnation being a result of sin.
+But these are only examples of a more general notion, and one may say with
+the same reason, that God wills by his antecedent will that men sin not,
+and that by his consequent or final and decretory will (which is always
+followed by its effect) he wills to permit that they sin, this permission
+being a result of superior reasons. One has indeed justification for
+saying, in general, that the antecedent will of God tends towards the
+production of good and the prevention of evil, each taken in itself, and as
+it were detached (_particulariter et secundum quid_: Thom., I, qu. 19, art.
+6) according to the measure of the degree of each good or of each evil.
+Likewise one may say that the consequent, or final and total, divine will
+tends towards the production of as many goods as can be put together, whose
+combination thereby becomes determined, and involves also the permission of
+some evils and the exclusion of some goods, as the best possible plan of
+the universe demands. Arminius, in his _Antiperkinsus,_ explained very well
+that the will of God can be called consequent not only in relation to the
+action of the creature considered beforehand in the divine understanding,
+but also in relation to other anterior acts of divine will. But it is
+enough to consider the passage cited from Thomas Aquinas, and that from
+Scotus (I, dist. 46, qu. 11), to see that they make this distinction as I
+have made it here. Nevertheless if anyone will not suffer this use of the
+terms, let him put 'previous' in place of 'antecedent' will, and 'final' or
+'decretory' in place of 'consequent' will. For I do not wish to wrangle
+about words.
+
+                                                                      [384]
+OBJECTION V
+
+Whoever produces all that is real in a thing is its cause.
+
+God produces all that is real in sin.
+
+Therefore God is the cause of sin.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I might content myself with denying the major or the minor, because the
+term 'real' admits of interpretations capable of rendering these
+propositions false. But in order to give a better explanation I will make a
+distinction. 'Real' either signifies that which is positive only, or else
+it includes also privative beings: in the first case, I deny the major and
+I admit the minor; in the second case, I do the opposite. I might have
+confined myself to that; but I was willing to go further, in order to
+account for this distinction. I have therefore been well pleased to point
+out that every purely positive or absolute reality is a perfection, and
+that every imperfection comes from limitation, that is, from the privative:
+for to limit is to withhold extension, or the more beyond. Now God is the
+cause of all perfections, and consequently of all realities, when they are
+regarded as purely positive. But limitations or privations result from the
+original imperfection of creatures which restricts their receptivity. It is
+as with a laden boat, which the river carries along more slowly or less
+slowly in proportion to the weight that it bears: thus the speed comes from
+the river, but the retardation which restricts this speed comes from the
+load. Also I have shown in the present work how the creature, in causing
+sin, is a deficient cause; how errors and evil inclinations spring from
+privation; and how privation is efficacious accidentally. And I have
+justified the opinion of St. Augustine (lib. I, _Ad. Simpl._, qu. 2) who
+explains (for example) how God hardens the soul, not in giving it something
+evil, but because the effect of the good he imprints is restricted by the
+resistance of the soul, and by the circumstances contributing to this
+resistance, so that he does not give it all the good that would overcome
+its evil. 'Nec _(inquit)_ ab illo erogatur aliquid quo homo fit deterior,
+sed tantum quo fit melior non erogatur.' But if God had willed to do more
+here he must needs have produced either fresh natures in his creatures or
+fresh miracles to change their natures, and this the best plan did not
+allow. It is just as if the current of the river must needs be more rapid
+than its slope permits or the boats themselves be less laden, if they [385]
+had to be impelled at a greater speed. So the limitation or original
+imperfection of creatures brings it about that even the best plan of the
+universe cannot admit more good, and cannot be exempted from certain evils,
+these, however, being only of such a kind as may tend towards a greater
+good. There are some disorders in the parts which wonderfully enhance the
+beauty of the whole, just as certain dissonances, appropriately used,
+render harmony more beautiful. But that depends upon the answer which I
+have already given to the first objection.
+
+OBJECTION VI
+
+Whoever punishes those who have done as well as it was in their power to do
+is unjust.
+
+God does so.
+
+Therefore, etc.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the minor of this argument. And I believe that God always gives
+sufficient aid and grace to those who have good will, that is to say, who
+do not reject this grace by a fresh sin. Thus I do not admit the damnation
+of children dying unbaptized or outside the Church, or the damnation of
+adult persons who have acted according to the light that God has given
+them. And I believe that, _if anyone has followed the light he had_, he
+will undoubtedly receive thereof in greater measure as he has need, even as
+the late Herr Hulsemann, who was celebrated as a profound theologian at
+Leipzig, has somewhere observed; and if such a man had failed to receive
+light during his life, he would receive it at least in the hour of death.
+
+OBJECTION VII
+
+Whoever gives only to some, and not to all, the means of producing
+effectively in them good will and final saving faith has not enough
+goodness.
+
+God does so.
+
+Therefore, etc.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the major. It is true that God could overcome the greatest
+resistance of the human heart, and indeed he sometimes does so,       [386]
+whether by an inward grace or by the outward circumstances that can greatly
+influence souls; but he does not always do so. Whence comes this
+distinction, someone will say, and wherefore does his goodness appear to be
+restricted? The truth is that it would not have been in order always to act
+in an extraordinary way and to derange the connexion of things, as I have
+observed already in answering the first objection. The reasons for this
+connexion, whereby the one is placed in more favourable circumstances than
+the other, are hidden in the depths of God's wisdom: they depend upon the
+universal harmony. The best plan of the universe, which God could not fail
+to choose, required this. One concludes thus from the event itself; since
+God made the universe, it was not possible to do better. Such management,
+far from being contrary to goodness, has rather been prompted by supreme
+goodness itself. This objection with its solution might have been inferred
+from what was said with regard to the first objection; but it seemed
+advisable to touch upon it separately.
+
+OBJECTION VIII
+
+Whoever cannot fail to choose the best is not free.
+
+God cannot fail to choose the best.
+
+Therefore God is not free.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the major of this argument. Rather is it true freedom, and the most
+perfect, to be able to make the best use of one's free will, and always to
+exercise this power, without being turned aside either by outward force or
+by inward passions, whereof the one enslaves our bodies and the other our
+souls. There is nothing less servile and more befitting the highest degree
+of freedom than to be always led towards the good, and always by one's own
+inclination, without any constraint and without any displeasure. And to
+object that God therefore had need of external things is only a sophism. He
+creates them freely: but when he had set before him an end, that of
+exercising his goodness, his wisdom determined him to choose the means most
+appropriate for obtaining this end. To call that a _need_ is to take the
+term in a sense not usual, which clears it of all imperfection, somewhat as
+one does when speaking of the wrath of God.
+
+Seneca says somewhere, that God commanded only once, but that he obeys[387]
+always, because he obeys the laws that he willed to ordain for himself:
+_semel jussit, semper paret_. But he had better have said, that God always
+commands and that he is always obeyed: for in willing he always follows the
+tendency of his own nature, and all other things always follow his will.
+And as this will is always the same one cannot say that he obeys that will
+only which he formerly had. Nevertheless, although his will is always
+indefectible and always tends towards the best, the evil or the lesser good
+which he rejects will still be possible in itself. Otherwise the necessity
+of good would be geometrical (so to speak) or metaphysical, and altogether
+absolute; the contingency of things would be destroyed, and there would be
+no choice. But necessity of this kind, which does not destroy the
+possibility of the contrary, has the name by analogy only: it becomes
+effective not through the mere essence of things, but through that which is
+outside them and above them, that is, through the will of God. This
+necessity is called moral, because for the wise what is necessary and what
+is owing are equivalent things; and when it is always followed by its
+effect, as it indeed is in the perfectly wise, that is, in God, one can say
+that it is a happy necessity. The more nearly creatures approach this, the
+closer do they come to perfect felicity. Moreover, necessity of this kind
+is not the necessity one endeavours to avoid, and which destroys morality,
+reward and commendation. For that which it brings to pass does not happen
+whatever one may do and whatever one may will, but because one desires it.
+A will to which it is natural to choose well deserves most to be commended;
+and it carries with it its own reward, which is supreme happiness. And as
+this constitution of the divine nature gives an entire satisfaction to him
+who possesses it, it is also the best and the most desirable from the point
+of view of the creatures who are all dependent upon God. If the will of God
+had not as its rule the principle of the best, it would tend towards evil,
+which would be worst of all; or else it would be indifferent somehow to
+good and to evil, and guided by chance. But a will that would always drift
+along at random would scarcely be any better for the government of the
+universe than the fortuitous concourse of corpuscles, without the existence
+of divinity. And even though God should abandon himself to chance only in
+some cases, and in a certain way (as he would if he did not always tend
+entirely towards the best, and if he were capable of preferring a lesser
+good to a greater good, that is, an evil to a good, since that which  [388]
+prevents a greater good is an evil) he would be no less imperfect than the
+object of his choice. Then he would not deserve absolute trust; he would
+act without reason in such a case, and the government of the universe would
+be like certain games equally divided between reason and luck. This all
+proves that this objection which is made against the choice of the best
+perverts the notions of free and necessary, and represents the best to us
+actually as evil: but that is either malicious or absurd.
+
+                                                                      [389]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EXCURSUS ON THEODICY
+
+ 392
+
+published by the author in Mémoires de Trévoux
+
+July 1712
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_February_ 1712
+
+I said in my essays, 392, that I wished to see the demonstrations mentioned
+by M. Bayle and contained in the sixth letter printed at Trévoux in 1703.
+Father des Bosses has shown me this letter, in which the writer essays to
+demonstrate by the geometrical method that God is the sole true cause of
+all that is real. My perusal of it has confirmed me in the opinion which I
+indicated in the same passage, namely, that this proposition can be true in
+a very good sense, God being the only cause of pure and absolute realities,
+or perfections; but when one includes limitations or privations under the
+name of realities one can say that second causes co-operate in the
+production of what is limited, and that otherwise God would be the cause of
+sin, and even its sole cause. And I am somewhat inclined to think that the
+gifted author of the letter does not greatly differ in opinion from me,
+although he seems to include all modalities among the realities of which he
+declares God to be the sole cause. For in actual fact I think he will not
+admit that God is the cause and the author of sin. Indeed, he explains
+himself in a manner which seems to overthrow his thesis and to grant real
+action to creatures. For in the proof of the eighth corollary of his second
+proposition these words occur: 'The natural motion of the soul, although
+determinate in itself, is indeterminate in respect of its objects. For it
+is love of good in general. It is through the ideas of good appearing [390]
+in individual objects that this motion becomes individual and determinate
+in relation to those objects. And thus as the mind has the power of varying
+its own ideas it can also change the determinations of its love. And for
+that purpose it is not necessary that it overcome the power of God or
+oppose his action. These determinations of motion towards individual
+objects are not invincible. It is this noninvincibility which causes the
+mind to be free and capable of changing them; but after all the mind makes
+these changes only through the motion which God gives to it and conserves
+for it.' In my own style I would have said that the perfection which is in
+the action of the creature comes from God, but that the limitations to be
+found there are a consequence of the original limitation and the preceding
+limitations that occurred in the creature. Further, this is so not only in
+minds but also in all other substances, which thereby are causes
+co-operating in the change which comes to pass in themselves; for this
+determination of which the author speaks is nothing but a limitation.
+
+Now if after that one reviews all the demonstrations or corollaries of the
+letter, one will be able to admit or reject the majority of its assertions,
+in accordance with the interpretation one may make of them. If by 'reality'
+one means only perfections or positive realities, God is the only true
+cause; but if that which involves limitations is included under the
+realities, one will deny a considerable portion of the theses, and the
+author himself will have shown us the example. It is in order to render the
+matter more comprehensible that I used in the Essays the example of a laden
+boat, which, the more laden it is, is the more slowly carried along by the
+stream. There one sees clearly that the stream is the cause of what is
+positive in this motion, of the perfection, the force, the speed of the
+boat, but that the load is the cause of the restriction of this force, and
+that it brings about the retardation.
+
+It is praiseworthy in anyone to attempt to apply the geometrical method to
+metaphysical matters. But it must be admitted that hitherto success has
+seldom been attained: and M. Descartes himself, with all that very great
+skill which one cannot deny in him, never perhaps had less success than
+when he essayed to do this in one of his answers to objections. For in
+mathematics it is easier to succeed, because numbers, figures and
+calculations make good the defects concealed in words; but in metaphysics,
+where one is deprived of this aid (at least in ordinary               [391]
+argumentation), the strictness employed in the form of the argument and in
+the exact definitions of the terms must needs supply this lack. But in
+neither argument nor definition is that strictness here to be seen.
+
+The author of the letter, who undoubtedly displays much ardour and
+penetration, sometimes goes a little too far, as when he claims to prove
+that there is as much reality and force in rest as in motion, according to
+the fifth corollary of the second proposition. He asserts that the will of
+God is no less positive in rest than in motion, and that it is not less
+invincible. Be it so, but does it follow that there is as much reality and
+force in each of the two? I do not see this conclusion, and with the same
+argument one would prove that there is as much force in a strong motion as
+in a weak motion. God in willing rest wills that the body be at the place
+A, where it was immediately before, and for that it suffices that there be
+no reason to prompt God to the change. But when God wills that afterwards
+the body be at the place B, there must needs be a new reason, of such a
+kind as to determine God to will that it be in B and not in C or in any
+other place, and that it be there more or less promptly. It is upon these
+reasons, the volitions of God, that we must assess the force and the
+reality existent in things. The author speaks much of the will of God, but
+he does not speak much in this letter of the reasons which prompt God to
+will, and upon which all depends. And these reasons are taken from the
+objects.
+
+I observe first, indeed, with regard to the second corollary of the first
+proposition, that it is very true, but that it is not very well proven. The
+writer affirms that if God only ceased to will the existence of a being,
+that being would no longer exist; and here is the proof given word for
+word:
+
+'Demonstration. That which exists only by the will of God no longer exists
+once that will has ceased.' (But that is what must be proved. The writer
+endeavours to prove it by adding:) 'Remove the cause, you remove the
+effect.' (This maxim ought to have been placed among the axioms which are
+stated at the beginning. But unhappily this axiom may be reckoned among
+those rules of philosophy which are subject to many exceptions.) 'Now by
+the preceding proposition and by its first corollary no being exists save
+by the will of God. Therefore, etc.' There is ambiguity in this expression,
+that nothing exists save by the will of God. If one means that things [392]
+begin to exist only through this will, one is justified in referring to the
+preceding propositions; but if one means that the existence of things is at
+all times a consequence of the will of God, one assumes more or less what
+is in question. Therefore it was necessary to prove first that the
+existence of things depends upon the will of God, and that it is not only a
+mere effect of that will, but a dependence, in proportion to the perfection
+which things contain; and once that is assumed, they will depend upon God's
+will no less afterwards than at the beginning. That is the way I have taken
+the matter in my Essays.
+
+Nevertheless I recognize that the letter upon which I have just made
+observations is admirable and well deserving of perusal, and that it
+contains noble and true sentiments, provided it be taken in the sense I
+have just indicated. And arguments in this form may serve as an
+introduction to meditations somewhat more advanced.
+
+                                                                      [393]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM,
+NECESSITY AND CHANCE'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1. As the question of Necessity and Freedom, with other questions depending
+thereon, was at one time debated between the famous Mr. Hobbes and Dr. John
+Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, in books published by each of them, I have
+deemed it appropriate to give a clear account of them (although I have
+already mentioned them more than once); and this all the more since these
+writings of Mr. Hobbes have hitherto only appeared in English, and since
+the works of this author usually contain something good and ingenious. The
+Bishop of Derry and Mr. Hobbes, having met in Paris at the house of the
+Marquis, afterwards Duke, of Newcastle in the year 1646, entered into a
+discussion on this subject. The dispute was conducted with extreme
+restraint; but the bishop shortly afterwards sent a note to My Lord
+Newcastle, desiring him to induce Mr. Hobbes to answer it. He answered; but
+at the same time he expressed a wish that his answer should not be
+published, because he believed it possible for ill-instructed persons to
+abuse dogmas such as his, however true they might be. It so happened,
+however, that Mr. Hobbes himself passed it to a French friend, and allowed
+a young Englishman to translate it into French for the benefit of this
+friend. This young man kept a copy of the English original, and published
+it later in England without the author's knowledge. Thus the bishop was
+obliged to reply to it, and Mr. Hobbes to make a rejoinder, and to    [394]
+publish all the pieces together in a book of 348 pages printed in London in
+the year 1656, in 4to., entitled, _Questions concerning Freedom, Necessity
+and Chance, elucidated and discussed between Doctor Bramhall, Bishop of
+Derry, and Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury_. There is a later edition, of the
+year 1684, in a work entitled _Hobbes's Tripos_, where are to be found his
+book on human nature, his treatise on the body politic and his treatise on
+freedom and necessity; but the latter does not contain the bishop's reply,
+nor the author's rejoinder. Mr. Hobbes argues on this subject with his
+usual wit and subtlety; but it is a pity that in both the one and the other
+we stumble upon petty tricks, such as arise in excitement over the game.
+The bishop speaks with much vehemence and behaves somewhat arrogantly. Mr.
+Hobbes for his part is not disposed to spare the other, and manifests
+rather too much scorn for theology, and for the terminology of the
+Schoolmen, which is apparently favoured by the bishop.
+
+2. One must confess that there is something strange and indefensible in the
+opinions of Mr. Hobbes. He maintains that doctrines touching the divinity
+depend entirely upon the determination of the sovereign, and that God is no
+more the cause of the good than of the bad actions of creatures. He
+maintains that all that which God does is just, because there is none above
+him with power to punish and constrain him. Yet he speaks sometimes as if
+what is said about God were only compliments, that is to say expressions
+proper for paying him honour, but not for knowing him. He testifies also
+that it seems to him that the pains of the wicked must end in their
+destruction: this opinion closely approaches that of the Socinians, but it
+seems that Mr. Hobbes goes much further. His philosophy, which asserts that
+bodies alone are substances, hardly appears favourable to the providence of
+God and the immortality of the soul. On other subjects nevertheless he says
+very reasonable things. He shows clearly that nothing comes about by
+chance, or rather that chance only signifies the ignorance of causes that
+produce the effect, and that for each effect there must be a concurrence of
+all the sufficient conditions anterior to the event, not one of which,
+manifestly, can be lacking when the event is to follow, because they are
+conditions: the event, moreover, does not fail to follow when these
+conditions exist all together, because they are sufficient conditions. All
+which amounts to the same as I have said so many times, that everything
+comes to pass as a result of determining reasons, the knowledge       [395]
+whereof, if we had it, would make us know at the same time why the thing
+has happened and why it did not go otherwise.
+
+3. But this author's humour, which prompts him to paradoxes and makes him
+seek to contradict others, has made him draw out exaggerated and odious
+conclusions and expressions, as if everything happened through an absolute
+necessity. The Bishop of Derry, on the other hand, has aptly observed in
+the answer to article 35, page 327, that there results only a hypothetical
+necessity, such as we all grant to events in relation to the foreknowledge
+of God, while Mr. Hobbes maintains that even divine foreknowledge alone
+would be sufficient to establish an absolute necessity of events. This was
+also the opinion of Wyclif, and even of Luther, when he wrote _De Servo
+Arbitrio_; or at least they spoke so. But it is sufficiently acknowledged
+to-day that this kind of necessity which is termed hypothetical, and
+springs from foreknowledge or from other anterior reasons, has nothing in
+it to arouse one's alarm: whereas it would be quite otherwise if the thing
+were necessary of itself, in such a way that the contrary implied
+contradiction. Mr. Hobbes refuses to listen to anything about a moral
+necessity either, on the ground that everything really happens through
+physical causes. But one is nevertheless justified in making a great
+difference between the necessity which constrains the wise to do good, and
+which is termed moral, existing even in relation to God, and that blind
+necessity whereby according to Epicurus, Strato, Spinoza, and perhaps Mr.
+Hobbes, things exist without intelligence and without choice, and
+consequently without God. Indeed, there would according to them be no need
+of God, since in consequence of this necessity all would have existence
+through its own essence, just as necessarily as two and three make five.
+And this necessity is absolute, because everything it carries with it must
+happen, whatever one may do; whereas what happens by a hypothetical
+necessity happens as a result of the supposition that this or that has been
+foreseen or resolved, or done beforehand; and moral necessity contains an
+obligation imposed by reason, which is always followed by its effect in the
+wise. This kind of necessity is happy and desirable, when one is prompted
+by good reasons to act as one does; but necessity blind and absolute would
+subvert piety and morality.
+
+4. There is more reason in Mr. Hobbes's discourse when he admits that [396]
+our actions are in our power, so that we do that which we will when we have
+the power to do it, and when there is no hindrance. He asserts
+notwithstanding that our volitions themselves are not so within our power
+that we can give ourselves, without difficulty and according to our good
+pleasure, inclinations and wills which we might desire. The bishop does not
+appear to have taken notice of this reflexion, which Mr. Hobbes also does
+not develop enough. The truth is that we have some power also over our
+volitions, but obliquely, and not absolutely and indifferently. This has
+been explained in some passages of this work. Finally Mr. Hobbes shows,
+like others before him, that the certainty of events, and necessity itself,
+if there were any in the way our actions depend upon causes, would not
+prevent us from employing deliberations, exhortations, blame and praise,
+punishments and rewards: for these are of service and prompt men to produce
+actions or to refrain from them. Thus, if human actions were necessary,
+they would be so through these means. But the truth is, that since these
+actions are not necessary absolutely whatever one may do, these means
+contribute only to render the actions determinate and certain, as they are
+indeed; for their nature shows that they are not subject to an absolute
+necessity. He gives also a good enough notion of _freedom_, in so far as it
+is taken in a general sense, common to intelligent and non-intelligent
+substances: he states that a thing is deemed free when the power which it
+has is not impeded by an external thing. Thus the water that is dammed by a
+dyke has the power to spread, but not the freedom. On the other hand, it
+has not the power to rise above the dyke, although nothing would prevent it
+then from spreading, and although nothing from outside prevents it from
+rising so high. To that end it would be necessary that the water itself
+should come from a higher point or that the water-level should be raised by
+an increased flow. Thus a prisoner lacks the freedom, while a sick man
+lacks the power, to go his way.
+
+5. There is in Mr. Hobbes's preface an abstract of the disputed points,
+which I will give here, adding some expression of opinion. _On one side_
+(he says) the assertion is made, (1) 'that it is not in the present power
+of man to choose for himself the will that he should have'. That is _well_
+said, especially in relation to present will: men choose the objects
+through will, but they do not choose their present wills, which spring from
+reasons and dispositions. It is true, however, that one can seek new  [397]
+reasons for oneself, and with time give oneself new dispositions; and by
+this means one can also obtain for oneself a will which one had not and
+could not have given oneself forthwith. It is (to use the comparison Mr.
+Hobbes himself uses) as with hunger or with thirst. At the present it does
+not rest with my will to be hungry or not; but it rests with my will to eat
+or not to eat; yet, for the time to come, it rests with me to be hungry, or
+to prevent myself from being so at such and such an hour of day, by eating
+beforehand. In this way it is possible often to avoid an evil will. Even
+though Mr. Hobbes states in his reply (No. 14, p. 138) that it is the
+manner of laws to say, you must do or you must not do this, but that there
+is no law saying, you must will, or you must not will it, yet it is clear
+that he is mistaken in regard to the Law of God, which says _non
+concupisces_, thou shalt not covet; it is true that this prohibition does
+not concern the first motions, which are involuntary. It is asserted (2)
+'That hazard' (_chance_ in English, _casus_ in Latin) 'produces nothing',
+that is, that nothing is produced without cause or reason. Very _right_, I
+admit it, if one thereby intends a real hazard. For fortune and hazard are
+only appearances, which spring from ignorance of causes or from disregard
+of them. (3) 'That all events have their necessary causes.' _Wrong_: they
+have their determining causes, whereby one can account for them; but these
+are not necessary causes. The contrary might have happened, without
+implying contradiction. (4) 'That the will of God makes the necessity of
+all things.' _Wrong_: the will of God produces only contingent things,
+which could have gone differently, since time, space and matter are
+indifferent with regard to all kinds of shape and movement.
+
+6. _On the other side_ (according to Mr. Hobbes) it is asserted, (1) 'That
+man is free' (absolutely) not only 'to choose what he wills to do, but also
+to choose what he wills to will.' That is _ill_ said: one is not absolute
+master of one's will, to change it forthwith, without making use of some
+means or skill for that purpose. (2) 'When man wills a good action, the
+will of God co-operates with his, otherwise not.' That is _well_ said,
+provided one means that God does not will evil actions, although he wills
+to permit them, to prevent the occurrence of something which would be worse
+than these sins. (3) 'That the will can choose whether it wills to will or
+not.' _Wrong_, with regard to present volition. (4) 'That things happen
+without necessity by chance.' _Wrong_: what happens without necessity [398]
+does not because of that happen by chance, that is to say, without causes
+and reasons. (5) 'Notwithstanding that God may foresee that an event will
+happen, it is not necessary that it happen, since God foresees things, not
+as futurities and as in their causes, but as present.' That begins _well_,
+and finishes _ill_. One is justified in admitting the necessity of the
+consequence, but one has no reason to resort to the question how the future
+is present to God: for the necessity of the consequence does not prevent
+the event or consequent from being contingent in itself.
+
+7. Our author thinks that since the doctrine revived by Arminius had been
+favoured in England by Archbishop Laud and by the Court, and important
+ecclesiastical promotions had been only for those of that party, this
+contributed to the revolt which caused the bishop and him to meet in their
+exile in Paris at the house of Lord Newcastle, and to enter into a
+discussion. I would not approve all the measures of Archbishop Laud, who
+had merit and perhaps also good will, but who appears to have goaded the
+Presbyterians excessively. Nevertheless one may say that the revolutions,
+as much in the Low Countries as in Great Britain, in part arose from the
+extreme intolerance of the strict party. One may say also that the
+defenders of the absolute decree were at least as strict as the others,
+having oppressed their opponents in Holland with the authority of Prince
+Maurice and having fomented the revolts in England against King Charles I.
+But these are the faults of men, and not of dogmas. Their opponents do not
+spare them either, witness the severity used in Saxony against Nicolas
+Krell and the proceedings of the Jesuits against the Bishop of Ypres's
+party.
+
+8. Mr. Hobbes observes, after Aristotle, that there are two sources for
+proofs: reason and authority. As for reason, he says that he admits the
+reasons derived from the attributes of God, which he calls argumentative,
+and the notions whereof are conceivable; but he maintains that there are
+others wherein one conceives nothing, and which are only expressions by
+which we aspire to honour God. But I do not see how one can honour God by
+expressions that have no meaning. It may be that with Mr. Hobbes, as with
+Spinoza, wisdom, goodness, justice are only fictions in relation to God and
+the universe, since the prime cause, according to them, acts through the
+necessity of its power, and not by the choice of its wisdom. That is  [399]
+an opinion whose falsity I have sufficiently proved. It appears that Mr.
+Hobbes did not wish to declare himself enough, for fear of causing offence
+to people; on which point he is to be commended. It was also on that
+account, as he says himself, that he had desired that what had passed
+between the bishop and him in Paris should not be published. He adds that
+it is not good to say that an action which God does not will happens, since
+that is to say in effect that God is lacking in power. But he adds also at
+the same time that it is not good either to say the opposite, and to
+attribute to God that he wills the evil; because that is not seemly, and
+would appear to accuse God of lack of goodness. He believes, therefore,
+that in these matters telling the truth is not advisable. He would be right
+if the truth were in the paradoxical opinions that he maintains. For indeed
+it appears that according to the opinion of this writer God has no
+goodness, or rather that that which he calls God is nothing but the blind
+nature of the mass of material things, which acts according to mathematical
+laws, following an absolute necessity, as the atoms do in the system of
+Epicurus. If God were as the great are sometimes here on earth, it would
+not be fitting to utter all the truths concerning him. But God is not as a
+man, whose designs and actions often must be concealed; rather it is always
+permissible and reasonable to publish the counsels and the actions of God,
+because they are always glorious and worthy of praise. Thus it is always
+right to utter truths concerning the divinity; one need not anyhow refrain
+from fear of giving offence. And I have explained, so it seems to me, in a
+way which satisfies reason, and does not wound piety, how it is to be
+understood that God's will takes effect, and concurs with sin, without
+compromising his wisdom and his goodness.
+
+9. As to the authorities derived from Holy Scripture, Mr. Hobbes divides
+them into three kinds; some, he says, are for me, the second kind are
+neutral, and the third seem to be for my opponent. The passages which he
+thinks favourable to his opinion are those which ascribe to God the cause
+of our will. Thus Gen. xlv. 5, where Joseph says to his brethren, 'Be not
+grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me hither: for God did
+send me before you to preserve life'; and verse 8, 'it was not you that
+sent me hither, but God.' And God said (Exod. vii. 3), 'I will harden
+Pharaoh's heart.' And Moses said (Deut. ii. 30), 'But Sihon King of   [400]
+Heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the Lord thy God hardened his
+spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy
+hand.' And David said of Shimei (2 Sam. xvi. 10), 'Let him curse, because
+the Lord hath said unto him: Curse David. Who shall then say, wherefore
+hast thou done so?' And (1 Kings xii. 15), 'The King [Rehoboam] hearkened
+not unto the people; for the cause was from the Lord.' Job xii. 16: 'The
+deceived and the deceiver are his.' v. 17: 'He maketh the judges fools'; v.
+24: 'He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and
+causeth them to wander in a wilderness'; v. 25: 'He maketh them to stagger
+like a drunken man.' God said of the King of Assyria (Isa. x. 6), 'Against
+the people will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the
+prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.' And Jeremiah
+said (Jer. x. 23), 'O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself:
+it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' And God said (Ezek.
+iii. 20), 'When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and
+commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die.' And
+the Saviour said (John vi. 44), 'No man can come to me, except the Father
+which hath sent me draw him.' And St. Peter (Acts ii. 23), 'Jesus having
+been delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have
+taken.' And Acts iv. 27, 28, 'Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the
+Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do
+whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.' And St.
+Paul (Rom. ix. 16), 'It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
+runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.' And v. 18: 'Therefore hath he
+mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth'; v. 19:
+'Thou wilt say then unto me, why doth he yet find fault? For who hath
+resisted his will?'; v. 20: 'Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest
+against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast
+thou made me thus?' And 1 Cor. iv. 7: 'For who maketh thee to differ from
+another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?' And 1 Cor. xii.
+6: 'There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which
+worketh all in all.' And Eph. ii. 10: 'We are his workmanship, created in
+Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should
+walk in them.' And Phil. ii. 13: 'It is God which worketh in you both to
+will and to do of his good pleasure.' One may add to these passages all
+those which make God the author of all grace and of all good          [401]
+inclinations, and all those which say that we are as dead in sin.
+
+10. Here now are the neutral passages, according to Mr. Hobbes. These are
+those where Holy Scripture says that man has the choice to act if he wills,
+or not to act if he wills not. For example Deut. xxx. 19: 'I call heaven
+and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life
+and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and
+thy seed may live.' And Joshua xxiv. 15: 'Choose you this day whom ye will
+serve.' And God said to Gad the prophet (2 Sam. xxiv. 12), 'Go and say unto
+David: Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three things; choose thee one of
+them, that I may do it unto thee.' And Isa. vii. 16: 'Until the child shall
+know to refuse the evil and choose the good.' Finally the passages which
+Mr. Hobbes acknowledges to be apparently contrary to his opinion are all
+those where it is indicated that the will of man is not in conformity with
+that of God. Thus Isa. v. 4: 'What could have been done more to my
+vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it
+should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?' And Jer. xix. 5:
+'They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire
+for burnt offerings unto Baal; which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither
+came it into my mind.' And Hos. xiii. 9: 'O Israel, thou hast destroyed
+thyself; but in me is thine help.' And I Tim. ii. 4: 'God will have all men
+to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.' He avows that he
+could quote very many other passages, such as those which indicate that God
+willeth not iniquity, that he willeth the salvation of the sinner, and
+generally all those which declare that God commands good and forbids evil.
+
+11. Mr. Hobbes makes answer to these passages that God does not always will
+that which he commands, as for example when he commanded Abraham to
+sacrifice his son, and that God's revealed will is not always his full will
+or his decree, as when he revealed to Jonah that Nineveh would perish in
+forty days. He adds also, that when it is said that God wills the salvation
+of all, that means simply that God commands that all do that which is
+necessary for salvation; when, moreover, the Scripture says that God wills
+not sin, that means that he wills to punish it. And as for the rest, Mr.
+Hobbes ascribes it to the forms of expression used among men. But one will
+answer him that it would be to God's discredit that his revealed will [402]
+should be opposed to his real will: that what he bade Jonah say to the
+Ninevites was rather a threat than a prediction, and that thus the
+condition of impenitence was implied therein; moreover the Ninevites took
+it in this sense. One will say also, that it is quite true that God in
+commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son willed obedience, but did not will
+action, which he prevented after having obtained obedience; for that was
+not an action deserving in itself to be willed. And it is not the same in
+the case of actions where he exerts his will positively, and which are in
+fact worthy to be the object of his will. Of such are piety, charity and
+every virtuous action that God commands; of such is omission of sin, a
+thing more alien to divine perfection than any other. It is therefore
+incomparably better to explain the will of God as I have explained it in
+this work. Thus I shall say that God, by virtue of his supreme goodness,
+has in the beginning a serious inclination to produce, or to see and cause
+to be produced, all good and every laudable action, and to prevent, or to
+see and cause to fail, all evil and every bad action. But he is determined
+by this same goodness, united to an infinite wisdom, and by the very
+concourse of all the previous and particular inclinations towards each
+good, and towards the preventing of each evil, to produce the best possible
+design of things. This is his final and decretory will. And this design of
+the best being of such a nature that the good must be enhanced therein, as
+light is enhanced by shade, by some evil which is incomparably less than
+this good, God could not have excluded this evil, nor introduced certain
+goods that were excluded from this plan, without wronging his supreme
+perfection. So for that reason one must say that he permitted the sins of
+others, because otherwise he would have himself performed an action worse
+than all the sin of creatures.
+
+12. I find that the Bishop of Derry is at least justified in saying,
+article XV, in his Reply, p. 153, that the opinion of his opponents is
+contrary to piety, when they ascribe all to God's power only, and that Mr.
+Hobbes ought not to have said that honour or worship is only a sign of the
+power of him whom one honours: for one may also, and one must, acknowledge
+and honour wisdom, goodness, justice and other perfections. _Magnos facile
+laudamus, bonos libenter._ This opinion, which despoils God of all goodness
+and of all true justice, which represents him as a Tyrant, wielding an
+absolute power, independent of all right and of all equity, and       [403]
+creating millions of creatures to be eternally unhappy, and this without
+any other aim than that of displaying his power, this opinion, I say, is
+capable of rendering men very evil; and if it were accepted no other Devil
+would be needed in the world to set men at variance among themselves and
+with God; as the Serpent did in making Eve believe that God, when he
+forbade her the fruit of the tree, did not will her good. Mr. Hobbes
+endeavours to parry this thrust in his Rejoinder (p. 160) by saying that
+goodness is a part of the power of God, that is to say, the power of making
+himself worthy of love. But that is an abuse of terms by an evasion, and
+confounds things that must be kept distinct. After all, if God does not
+intend the good of intelligent creatures, if he has no other principles of
+justice than his power alone, which makes him produce either arbitrarily
+that which chance presents to him, or by necessity all that which is
+possible, without the intervention of choice founded on good, how can he
+make himself worthy of love? It is therefore the doctrine either of blind
+power or of arbitrary power, which destroys piety: for the one destroys the
+intelligent principle or the providence of God, the other attributes to him
+actions which are appropriate to the evil principle. Justice in God, says
+Mr. Hobbes (p. 161), is nothing but the power he has, which he exercises in
+distributing blessings and afflictions. This definition surprises me: it is
+not the power to distribute them, but the will to distribute them
+reasonably, that is, goodness guided by wisdom, which makes the justice of
+God. But, says he, justice is not in God as in a man, who is only just
+through the observance of laws made by his superior. Mr. Hobbes is mistaken
+also in that, as well as Herr Pufendorf, who followed him. Justice does not
+depend upon arbitrary laws of superiors, but on the eternal rules of wisdom
+and of goodness, in men as well as in God. Mr. Hobbes asserts in the same
+passage that the wisdom which is attributed to God does not lie in a
+logical consideration of the relation of means to ends, but in an
+incomprehensible attribute, attributed to an incomprehensible nature to
+honour it. It seems as if he means that it is an indescribable something
+attributed to an indescribable something, and even a chimerical quality
+given to a chimerical substance, to intimidate and to deceive the nations
+through the worship which they render to it. After all, it is difficult for
+Mr. Hobbes to have a different opinion of God and of wisdom, since he
+admits only material substances. If Mr. Hobbes were still alive, I would
+beware of ascribing to him opinions which might do him injury; but it [404]
+is difficult to exempt him from this. He may have changed his mind
+subsequently, for he attained to a great age; thus I hope that his errors
+may not have been deleterious to him. But as they might be so to others, it
+is expedient to give warnings to those who shall read the writings of one
+who otherwise is of great merit, and from whom one may profit in many ways.
+It is true that God does not reason, properly speaking, using time as we
+do, to pass from one truth to the other: but as he understands at one and
+the same time all the truths and all their connexions, he knows all the
+conclusions, and he contains in the highest degree within himself all the
+reasonings that we can develop. And just because of that his wisdom is
+perfect.
+
+                                                                      [405]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL' PUBLISHED RECENTLY
+IN LONDON
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1. It is a pity that M. Bayle should have seen only the reviews of this
+admirable work, which are to be found in the journals. If he had read it
+himself and examined it properly, he would have provided us with a good
+opportunity of throwing light on many difficulties, which spring again and
+again like the head of the hydra, in a matter where it is easy to become
+confused when one has not seen the whole system or does not take the
+trouble to reason according to a strict plan. For strictness of reasoning
+performs in subjects that transcend imagination the same function as
+figures do in geometry: there must always be something capable of fixing
+our attention and forming a connexion between our thoughts. That is why
+when this Latin book, so learned and so elegant of style, printed
+originally in London and then reprinted in Bremen, fell into my hands, I
+judged that the seriousness of the matter and the author's merit required
+an attention which readers might fairly expect of me, since we are agreed
+only in regard to half of the subject. Indeed, as the work contains five
+chapters, and the fifth with the appendix equals the rest in size, I have
+observed that the first four, where it is a question of evil in general and
+of physical evil in particular, are in harmony with my principles (save for
+a few individual passages), and that they sometimes even develop with force
+and eloquence some points I had treated but slightly because M. Bayle [406]
+had not placed emphasis upon them. But the fifth chapter, with its sections
+(of which some are equal to entire chapters) speaking of freedom and of the
+moral evil dependent upon it, is constructed upon principles opposed to
+mine, and often, indeed, to those of M. Bayle; that is, if it were possible
+to credit him with any fixed principles. For this fifth chapter tends to
+show (if that were possible) that true freedom depends upon an indifference
+of equipoise, vague, complete and absolute; so that, until the will has
+determined itself, there would be no reason for its determination, either
+in him who chooses or in the object; and one would not choose what pleases,
+but in choosing without reason one would cause what one chooses to be
+pleasing.
+
+2. This principle of choice without cause or reason, of a choice, I say,
+divested of the aim of wisdom and goodness, is regarded by many as the
+great privilege of God and of intelligent substances, and as the source of
+their freedom, their satisfaction, their morality and their good or evil.
+The fantasy of a power to declare one's independence, not only of
+inclination, but of reason itself within and of good and evil without, is
+sometimes painted in such fine colours that one might take it to be the
+most excellent thing in the world. Nevertheless it is only a hollow
+fantasy, a suppression of the reasons for the caprice of which one boasts.
+What is asserted is impossible, but if it came to pass it would be harmful.
+This fantastic character might be attributed to some Don Juan in a St.
+Peter's Feast, and a man of romantic disposition might even affect the
+outward appearances of it and persuade himself that he has it in reality.
+But in Nature there will never be any choice to which one is not prompted
+by the previous representation of good or evil, by inclinations or by
+reasons: and I have always challenged the supporters of this absolute
+indifference to show an example thereof. Nevertheless if I call fantastic
+this choice whereto one is determined by nothing, I am far from calling
+visionaries the supporters of that hypothesis, especially our gifted
+author. The Peripatetics teach some beliefs of this nature; but it would be
+the greatest injustice in the world to be ready to despise on that account
+an Occam, a Suisset, a Cesalpino, a Conringius, men who still advocated
+certain scholastic opinions which have been improved upon to-day.
+
+3. One of these opinions, revived, however, and introduced by         [407]
+degenerate scholasticism, and in the Age of Chimeras, is vague indifference
+of choice, or real chance, assumed in our souls; as if nothing gave us any
+inclination unless we perceived it distinctly, and as if an effect could be
+without causes, when these causes are imperceptible. It is much as some
+have denied the existence of insensible corpuscles because they do not see
+them. Modern philosophers have improved upon the opinions of the Schoolmen
+by showing that, according to the laws of corporeal nature, a body can only
+be set in motion by the movement of another body propelling it. Even so we
+must believe that our souls (by virtue of the laws of spiritual nature) can
+only be moved by some reason of good or evil: and this even when no
+distinct knowledge can be extracted from our mental state, on account of a
+concourse of innumerable little perceptions which make us now joyful and
+now sad, or again of some other humour, and cause us to like one thing more
+than another without its being possible to say why. Plato, Aristotle and
+even Thomas Aquinas, Durand and other Schoolmen of the sounder sort reason
+on that question like the generality of men, and as unprejudiced people
+always have reasoned. They assume that freedom lies in the use of reason
+and the inclinations, which cause the choice or rejection of objects. But
+finally some rather too subtle philosophers have extracted from their
+alembic an inexplicable notion of choice independent of anything
+whatsoever, which is said to do wonders in solving all difficulties. But
+the notion is caught up at the outset in one of the greatest difficulties,
+by offending against the grand principle of reasoning which makes us always
+assume that nothing is done without some sufficient cause or reason. As the
+Schoolmen often forgot to apply this great principle, admitting certain
+prime occult qualities, one need not wonder if this fiction of vague
+indifference met with applause amongst them, and if even most worthy men
+have been imbued therewith. Our author, who is otherwise rid of many of the
+errors of the ordinary Schoolmen, is still deluded by this fiction: but he
+is without doubt one of the most skilful of those who have supported it.
+
+              _Si Pergama dextra_
+  _Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent._
+
+He gives it the best possible turn, and only shows it on its good side. He
+knows how to strip spontaneity and reason of their advantages,        [408]
+transferring all these to vague indifference: only through this
+indifference is one active, resisting the passions, taking pleasure in
+one's choice, or being happy; it appears indeed that one would be miserable
+if some happy necessity should oblige us to choose aright. Our author had
+said admirable things on the origin and reasons of natural evils: he only
+had to apply the same principles to moral evil; indeed, he believes himself
+that moral evil becomes an evil through the physical evils that it causes
+or tends to cause. But somehow or other he thinks that it would be a
+degradation of God and men if they were to be made subject to reason; that
+thus they would all be rendered passive to it and would no longer be
+satisfied with themselves; in short that men would have nothing wherewith
+to oppose the misfortunes that come to them from without, if they had not
+within them this admirable privilege of rendering things good or tolerable
+by choosing them, and of changing all into gold by the touch of this
+wondrous faculty.
+
+4. We will examine it in closer detail presently; but it will be well to
+profit beforehand by the excellent ideas of our author on the nature of
+things and on natural evils, particularly since there are some points in
+which we shall be able to go a little further: by this means also we shall
+gain a better understanding of the whole arrangement of his system. The
+first chapter contains the principles. The writer calls substance a being
+the idea of which does not involve the existence of another. I do not know
+if there are any such among created beings, by reason of the connexion
+existing between all things; and the example of a wax torch is not the
+example of a substance, any more than that of a swarm of bees would be. But
+one may take the terms in an extended sense. He observes aptly that after
+all the changes of matter and after all the qualities of which it may be
+divested, there remain extension, mobility, divisibility and resistance. He
+explains also the nature of notions, and leaves it to be understood that
+_universals_ indicate only the resemblances which exist between
+_individuals_; that we understand by _ideas_ only that which is known
+through an immediate sensation, and that the rest is known to us only
+through relations with these ideas. But when he admits that we have no idea
+of God, of spirit, of substance, he does not appear to have observed
+sufficiently that we have immediate apperception of substance and of spirit
+in our apperception of ourselves, and that the idea of God is found in[409]
+the idea of ourselves through a suppression of the limits of our
+perfections, as extension taken in an absolute sense is comprised in the
+idea of a globe. He is right also in asserting that our simple ideas at
+least are innate, and in rejecting the _Tabula rasa_ of Aristotle and of
+Mr. Locke. But I cannot agree with him that our ideas have scarce any more
+relation to things than words uttered into the air or writings traced upon
+paper have to our ideas, and that the bearing of our sensations is
+arbitrary and _ex instituto_, like the signification of words. I have
+already indicated elsewhere why I am not in agreement with our Cartesians
+on that point.
+
+5. For the purpose of advancing to the first Cause, the author seeks a
+criterion, a distinguishing mark of truth; and he finds it in the force
+whereby our inward assertions, when they are evident, compel the
+understanding to give them its consent. It is by such a process, he says,
+that we credit the senses. He points out that the distinguishing mark in
+the Cartesian scheme, to wit, a clear and distinct perception, has need of
+a new mark to indicate what is clear and distinct, and that the congruity
+or non-congruity of ideas (or rather of terms, as one spoke formerly) may
+still be deceptive, because there are congruities real and apparent. He
+appears to recognize even that the inward force which constrains us to give
+our assent is still a matter for caution, and may come from deep-rooted
+prejudices. That is why he confesses that he who should furnish another
+criterion would have found something very advantageous to the human race. I
+have endeavoured to explain this criterion in a little _Discourse on Truth
+and Ideas_, published in 1684; and although I do not boast of having given
+therein a new discovery I hope that I have expounded things which were only
+confusedly recognized. I distinguish between truths of fact and truths of
+reason. Truths of fact can only be verified by confronting them with truths
+of reason, and by tracing them back to immediate perceptions within us,
+such as St. Augustine and M. Descartes very promptly acknowledged to be
+indubitable; that is to say, we cannot doubt that we think, nor indeed that
+we think this thing or that. But in order to judge whether our inward
+notions have any reality in things, and to pass from thoughts to objects,
+my opinion is that it is necessary to consider whether our perceptions are
+firmly connected among themselves and with others that we have had, in such
+fashion as to manifest the rules of mathematics and other truths of   [410]
+reason. In this case one must regard them as real; and I think that it is
+the only means of distinguishing them from imaginations, dreams and
+visions. Thus the truth of things outside us can be recognized only through
+the connexion of phenomena. The criterion of the truths of reason, or those
+which spring from conceptions, is found in an exact use of the rules of
+logic. As for ideas or notions, I call _real_ all those the possibility of
+which is certain; and the _definitions_ which do not mark this possibility
+are only _nominal_. Geometricians well versed in analysis are aware what
+difference there is in this respect between several properties by which
+some line or figure might be defined. Our gifted author has not gone so
+far, perhaps; one may see, however, from the account I have given of him
+already, and from what follows, that he is by no means lacking in
+profundity or reflexion.
+
+6. Thereafter he proceeds to examine whether motion, matter and space
+spring from themselves; and to that end he considers whether it is possible
+to conceive that they do not exist. He remarks upon this privilege of God,
+that as soon as it is assumed that he exists it must be admitted that he
+exists of necessity. This is a corollary to a remark which I made in the
+little discourse mentioned above, namely that as soon as one admits that
+God is possible, one must admit that he exists of necessity. Now, as soon
+as one admits that God exists, one admits that he is possible. Therefore as
+soon as one admits that God exists, one must admit that he exists of
+necessity. Now this privilege does not belong to the three things of which
+we have just spoken. The author believes also especially concerning motion,
+that it is not sufficient to say, with Mr. Hobbes, that the present
+movement comes from an anterior movement, and this one again from another,
+and so on to infinity. For, however far back you may go, you will not be
+one whit nearer to finding the reason which causes the presence of motion
+in matter. Therefore this reason must be outside the sequence; and even if
+there were an eternal motion, it would require an eternal motive power. So
+the rays of the sun, even though they were eternal with the sun, would
+nevertheless have their eternal cause in the sun. I am well pleased to
+recount these arguments of our gifted author, that it may be seen how
+important, according to him, is the principle of sufficient reason. For, if
+it is permitted to admit something for which it is acknowledged there is no
+reason, it will be easy for an atheist to overthrow this argument, by [411]
+saying that it is not necessary that there be a sufficient reason for the
+existence of motion. I will not enter into the discussion of the reality
+and the eternity of space, for fear of straying too far from our subject.
+It is enough to state that the author believes that space can be
+annihilated by the divine power, but in entirety and not in portions, and
+that we could exist alone with God even if there were neither space nor
+matter, since we do not contain within ourselves the notion of the
+existence of external things. He also puts forward the consideration that
+in the sensations of sounds, of odours and of savours the idea of space is
+not included. But whatever the opinion formed as to space, it suffices that
+there is a God, the cause of matter and of motion, and in short of all
+things. The author believes that we can reason about God, as one born blind
+would reason about light. But I hold that there is something more in us,
+for our light is a ray from God's light. After having spoken of some
+attributes of God, the author acknowledges that God acts for an end, which
+is the communication of his goodness, and that his works are ordered
+aright. Finally he concludes this chapter very properly, by saying that God
+in creating the world was at pains to give it the greatest harmony amongst
+things, the greatest comfort of beings endowed with reason, and the
+greatest compatibility in desires that an infinite power, wisdom and
+goodness combined could produce. He adds that, if some evil has remained
+notwithstanding, one must believe that these infinite divine perfections
+could not have (I would rather say ought not to have) taken it away.
+
+7. Chapter II anatomizes evil, dividing it as we do into metaphysical,
+physical and moral. Metaphysical evil consists in imperfections, physical
+evil in suffering and other like troubles, and moral evil in sin. All these
+evils exist in God's work; Lucretius thence inferred that there is no
+providence, and he denied that the world can be an effect of divinity:
+
+  _Naturam rerum divinitus esse creatam;_
+
+because there are so many faults in the nature of things,
+
+  _quoniam tanta stat praedita culpa._
+
+Others have admitted two principles, the one good, the other evil. There
+have also been people who thought the difficulty insurmountable, and among
+these our author appears to have had M. Bayle in mind. He hopes to    [412]
+show in his work that it is not a Gordian knot, which needs to be cut; and
+he says rightly that the power, the wisdom and the goodness of God would
+not be infinite and perfect in their exercise if these evils had been
+banished. He begins with the evil of imperfection in Chapter III and
+observes, as St. Augustine does, that creatures are imperfect, since they
+are derived from nothingness, whereas God producing a perfect substance
+from his own essence would have made thereof a God. This gives him occasion
+for making a little digression against the Socinians. But someone will say,
+why did not God refrain from producing things, rather than make imperfect
+things? The author answers appositely that the abundance of the goodness of
+God is the cause. He wished to communicate himself at the expense of a
+certain fastidiousness which we assume in God, imagining that imperfections
+offend him. Thus he preferred that there should be the imperfect rather
+than nothing. But one might have added that God has produced indeed the
+most perfect whole that was possible, one wherewith he had full cause for
+satisfaction, the imperfections of the parts serving a greater perfection
+in the whole. Also the observation is made soon afterwards, that certain
+things might have been made better, but not without other new and _perhaps_
+greater disadvantages. This _perhaps_ could have been omitted: for the
+author also states as a certainty, and rightly so, at the end of the
+chapter, _that it appertains to infinite goodness to choose the best_; and
+thus he was able to draw this conclusion a little earlier, that imperfect
+things will be added to those more perfect, so long as they do not preclude
+the existence of the more perfect in as great a number as possible. Thus
+bodies were created as well as spirits, since the one does not offer any
+obstacle to the other; and the creation of matter was not unworthy of the
+great God, as some heretics of old believed, attributing this work to a
+certain Demogorgon.
+
+8. Let us now proceed to physical evil, which is treated of in Chapter IV.
+Our famous author, having observed that metaphysical evil, or imperfection,
+springs from nothingness, concludes that physical evil, or discomfort,
+springs from matter, or rather from its movement; for without movement
+matter would be useless. Moreover there must be contrariety in these
+movements; otherwise, if all went together in the same direction, there
+would be neither variety nor generation. But the movements that cause [413]
+generations cause also corruptions, since from the variety of movements
+comes concussion between bodies, by which they are often dissipated and
+destroyed. The Author of Nature however, in order to render bodies more
+enduring, distributed them into _systems_, those which we know being
+composed of luminous and opaque balls, in a manner so excellent and so
+fitting for the display of that which they contain, and for arousing wonder
+thereat, that we can conceive of nothing more beautiful. But the crowning
+point of the work was the construction of animals, to the end that
+everywhere there should be creatures capable of cognition,
+
+  _Ne regio foret ulla suis animalibus orba._
+
+Our sagacious author believes that the air and even the purest aether have
+their denizens as well as the water and the earth. But supposing that there
+were places without animals, these places might have uses necessary for
+other places which are inhabited. So for example the mountains, which
+render the surface of our globe unequal and sometimes desert and barren,
+are of use for the production of rivers and of winds; and we have no cause
+to complain of sands and marshes, since there are so many places still
+remaining to be cultivated. Moreover, it must not be supposed that all is
+made for man alone: and the author is persuaded that there are not only
+pure spirits but also immortal animals of a nature akin to these spirits,
+that is, animals whose souls are united to an ethereal and incorruptible
+matter. But it is not the same with animals whose body is terrestrial,
+composed of tubes and fluids which circulate therein, and whose motion is
+terminated by the breaking of the vessels. Thence the author is led to
+believe that the immortality granted to Adam, if he had been obedient,
+would not have been an effect of his nature, but of the grace of God.
+
+9. Now it was necessary for the conservation of corruptible animals that
+they should have indications causing them to recognize a present danger,
+and giving them the inclination to avoid it. That is why what is about to
+cause a great injury must beforehand cause pain such as may force the
+animal to efforts capable of repulsing or shunning the cause of this
+discomfort, and of forestalling a greater evil. The dread of death helps
+also to cause its avoidance: for it if were not so ugly and if the
+dissolution of continuity were not so painful, very often animals would
+take no precautions against perishing, or allowing the parts of their [414]
+body to perish, and the strongest would have difficulty in subsisting for a
+whole day.
+
+God has also given hunger and thirst to animals, to compel them to feed and
+maintain themselves by replacing that which is used up and which disappears
+imperceptibly. These appetites are of use also to prompt them to work, in
+order to procure a nourishment meet for their constitution, and which may
+avail to invigorate them. It was even found necessary by the Author of
+things that one animal very often should serve as food for another. This
+hardly renders the victim more unhappy, since death caused by diseases is
+generally just as painful as a violent death, if not more so; and animals
+subject to being preyed upon by others, having neither foresight nor
+anxiety for the future, have a life no less tranquil when they are not in
+danger. It is the same with inundations, earthquakes, thunderbolts and
+other disorders, which brute beasts do not fear, and which men have
+ordinarily no cause to fear, since there are few that suffer thereby.
+
+10. The Author of Nature has compensated for these evils and others, which
+happen only seldom, with a thousand advantages that are ordinary and
+constant. Hunger and thirst augment the pleasure experienced in the taking
+of nourishment. Moderate work is an agreeable exercise of the animal's
+powers; and sleep is also agreeable in an altogether opposite way,
+restoring the forces through repose. But one of the pleasures most intense
+is that which prompts animals to propagation. God, having taken care to
+ensure that the species should be immortal, since the individual cannot be
+so here on earth, also willed that animals should have a great tenderness
+for their little ones, even to the point of endangering themselves for
+their preservation. From pain and from sensual pleasure spring fear,
+cupidity and the other passions that are ordinarily serviceable, although
+it may accidentally happen that they sometimes turn towards ill: one must
+say as much of poisons, epidemic diseases and other hurtful things, namely
+that these are indispensable consequences of a well-conceived system. As
+for ignorance and errors, it must be taken into account that the most
+perfect creatures are doubtless ignorant of much, and that knowledge is
+wont to be proportionate to needs. Nevertheless it is necessary that one be
+exposed to hazards which cannot be foreseen, and accidents of such kinds
+are inevitable. One must often be mistaken in one's judgement, because it
+is not always permitted to suspend it long enough for exact           [415]
+consideration. These disadvantages are inseparable from the system of
+things: for things must very often resemble one another in a certain
+situation, the one being taken for the other. But the inevitable errors are
+not the most usual, nor the most pernicious. Those which cause us the most
+harm are wont to arise through our fault; and consequently one would be
+wrong to make natural evils a pretext for taking one's own life, since one
+finds that those who have done so have generally been prompted to such
+action by voluntary evils.
+
+11. After all, one finds that all these evils of which we have spoken come
+accidentally from good causes; and there is reason to infer concerning all
+we do not know, from all we do know, that one could not have done away with
+them without falling into greater troubles. For the better understanding of
+this the author counsels us to picture the world as a great building. There
+must be not only apartments, halls, galleries, gardens, grottoes, but also
+the kitchen, the cellar, the poultry-yard, stables, drainage. Thus it would
+not have been proper to make only suns in the world, or to make an earth
+all of gold and of diamonds, but not habitable. If man had been all eye or
+all ear, he would not have been fitted for feeding himself. If God had made
+him without passions, he would have made him stupid; and if he had wished
+to make man free from error he would have had to deprive him of senses, or
+give him powers of sensation through some other means than organs, that is
+to say, there would not have been any man. Our learned author remarks here
+upon an idea which histories both sacred and profane appear to inculcate,
+namely that wild beasts, poisonous plants and other natures that are
+injurious to us have been armed against us by sin. But as he argues here
+only in accordance with the principles of reason he sets aside what
+Revelation can teach. He believes, however, that Adam would have been
+exempted from natural evils (if he had been obedient) only by virtue of
+divine grace and of a covenant made with God, and that Moses expressly
+indicates only about seven effects of the first sin. These effects are:
+
+1. The revocation of the gracious gift of immortality.
+
+2. The sterility of the earth, which was no longer to be fertile of itself,
+save in evil or useless herbs.
+
+3. The rude toil one must exercise in order to gain sustenance.
+
+4. The subjection of the woman to the will of the husband.
+
+                                                                      [416]
+5. The pains of childbirth.
+
+6. The enmity between man and the serpent.
+
+7. The banishment of man from the place of delight wherein God had placed
+him.
+
+But our author thinks that many of our evils spring from the necessity of
+matter, especially since the withdrawal of grace. Moreover, it seems to him
+that after our banishment immortality would be only a burden to us, and
+that it is perhaps more for our good than to punish us that the tree of
+life has become inaccessible to us. On one point or another one might have
+something to say in objection, but the body of the discourse by our author
+on the origin of evils is full of good and sound reflexions, which I have
+judged it advisable to turn to advantage. Now I must pass on to the subject
+of our controversy, that is, the explanation of the nature of freedom.
+
+12. The learned author of this work on the origin of evil, proposing to
+explain the origin of moral evil in the fifth chapter, which makes up half
+of the whole book, considers that it is altogether different from that of
+physical evil, which lies in the inevitable imperfection of creatures. For,
+as we shall see presently, it appears to him that moral evil comes rather
+from that which he calls a perfection, which the creature has in common,
+according to him, with the Creator, that is to say, in the power of
+choosing without any motive and without any final or impelling cause. It is
+a very great paradox to assert that the greatest imperfection, namely sin,
+springs from perfection itself. But it is no less a paradox to present as a
+perfection the thing which is the least reasonable in the world, the
+advantage whereof would consist in being privileged against reason. And
+that, after all, rather than pointing out the source of the evil, would be
+to contend that it has none. For if the will makes its resolve without the
+existence of anything, either in the person who chooses or in the object
+which is chosen, to prompt it to the choice, there will be neither cause
+nor reason for this election; and as moral evil consists in the wrong
+choice, that is admitting that moral evil has no source at all. Thus in the
+rules of good metaphysics there would have to be no moral evil in Nature;
+and also for the same reason there would be no moral good either, and all
+morality would be destroyed. But we must listen to our gifted author, from
+whom the subtlety of an opinion maintained by famous philosophers among the
+Schoolmen, and the adornments that he has added thereto himself by his[417]
+wit and his eloquence, have hidden the great disadvantages contained
+therein. In setting forth the position reached in the controversy, he
+divides the writers into two parties. The one sort, he says, are content to
+say that the freedom of the will is exempt from outward constraint; and the
+other sort maintain that it is also exempt from inward necessity. But this
+exposition does not suffice, unless one distinguish the necessity that is
+absolute and contrary to morality from hypothetical necessity and moral
+necessity, as I have already explained in many places.
+
+13. The first section of this chapter is to indicate the nature of choice.
+The author sets forth in the first place the opinion of those who believe
+that the will is prompted by the judgement of the understanding, or by
+anterior inclinations of the desires, to resolve upon the course that it
+adopts. But he confuses these authors with those who assert that the will
+is prompted to its resolution by an absolute necessity, and who maintain
+that the person who wills has no power over his volitions: that is, he
+confuses a Thomist with a Spinozist. He makes use of the admissions and the
+odious declarations of Mr. Hobbes and his like, to lay them to the charge
+of those who are infinitely far removed from them, and who take great care
+to refute them. He lays these things to their charge because they believe,
+as Mr. Hobbes believes, like everyone else (save for some doctors who are
+enveloped in their own subtleties), that the will is moved by the
+representation of good and evil. Thence he imputes to them the opinion that
+there is therefore no such thing as contingency, and that all is connected
+by an absolute necessity. That is a very speedy manner of reasoning; yet he
+adds also, that properly speaking there will be no evil will, since if
+there were, all one could object to therein would be the evil which it can
+cause. That, he says, is different from the common notion, since the world
+censures the wicked not because they do harm, but because they do harm
+without necessity. He holds also that the wicked would be only unfortunate
+and by no means culpable; that there would be no difference between
+physical evil and moral evil, since man himself would not be the true cause
+of an action which he could not avoid; that evil-doers would not be either
+blamed or maltreated because they deserve it, but because that action may
+serve to turn people away from evil; again, for this reason only one would
+find fault with a rogue, but not with a sick man, that reproaches and [418]
+threats can correct the one, and cannot cure the other. And further,
+according to this doctrine, chastisements would have no object save the
+prevention of future evil, without which the mere consideration of the evil
+already done would not be sufficient for punishment. Likewise gratitude
+would have as its sole aim that of procuring a fresh benefit, without which
+the mere consideration of the past benefit would not furnish a sufficient
+reason. Finally the author thinks that if this doctrine, which derives the
+resolution of the will from the representation of good and evil, were true,
+one must despair of human felicity, since it would not be in our power, and
+would depend upon things which are outside us. Now as there is no ground
+for hoping that things from outside will order themselves and agree
+together in accordance with our wishes, there will always lack something to
+us, and there will always be something too much. All these conclusions
+hold, according to him, against those also who think that the will makes
+its resolve in accordance with the final judgement of the understanding, an
+opinion which, as he considers, strips the will of its right and renders
+the soul quite passive. This accusation is also directed against countless
+serious writers, of accepted authority, who are here placed in the same
+class with Mr. Hobbes and Spinoza, and with some other discredited authors,
+whose doctrine is considered odious and insupportable. As for me, I do not
+require the will always to follow the judgement of the understanding,
+because I distinguish this judgement from the motives that spring from
+insensible perceptions and inclinations. But I hold that the will always
+follows the most advantageous representation, whether distinct or confused,
+of the good or the evil resulting from reasons, passions and inclinations,
+although it may also find motives for suspending its judgement. But it is
+always upon motives that it acts.
+
+14. It will be necessary to answer these objections to my opinion before
+proceeding to establish that of our author. The misapprehension of my
+opponents originates in their confusing a consequence which is necessary
+absolutely, whose contrary implies contradiction, with a consequence which
+is founded only upon truths of fitness, and nevertheless has its effect. To
+put it otherwise, there is a confusion between what depends upon the
+principle of contradiction, which makes necessary and indispensable truths,
+and what depends upon the principle of the sufficient reason, which   [419]
+applies also to contingent truths. I have already elsewhere stated this
+proposition, which is one of the most important in philosophy, pointing out
+that there are two great principles, namely, _that of identicals or of
+contradiction_, which states that of two contradictory enunciations the one
+is true and the other false, and _that of the sufficient reason_, which
+states that there is no true enunciation whose reason could not be seen by
+one possessing all the knowledge necessary for its complete understanding.
+Both principles must hold not only in necessary but also in contingent
+truths; and it is even necessary that that which has no sufficient reason
+should not exist. For one may say in a sense that these two principles are
+contained in the definition of the true and the false. Nevertheless, when
+in making the analysis of the truth submitted one sees it depending upon
+truths whose contrary implies contradiction, one may say that it is
+absolutely necessary. But when, while pressing the analysis to the furthest
+extent, one can never attain to such elements of the given truth, one must
+say that it is contingent, and that it originates from a prevailing reason
+which inclines without necessitating. Once that is granted, it is seen how
+we can say with sundry famous philosophers and theologians, that the
+thinking substance is prompted to its resolution by the prevailing
+representation of good or of evil, and this certainly and infallibly, but
+not necessarily, that is, by reasons which incline it without necessitating
+it. That is why contingent futurities, foreseen both in themselves and
+through their reasons, remain contingent. God was led infallibly by his
+wisdom and by his goodness to create the world through his power, and to
+give it the best possible form; but he was not led thereto of necessity,
+and the whole took place without any diminution of his perfect and supreme
+wisdom. And I do not know if it would be easy, apart from the reflexions we
+have just entertained, to untie the Gordian knot of contingency and
+freedom.
+
+15. This explanation dismisses all the objections of our gifted opponent.
+In the first place, it is seen that contingency exists together with
+freedom. Secondly, evil wills are evil not only because they do harm, but
+also because they are a source of harmful things, or of physical evils, a
+wicked spirit being, in the sphere of its activity, what the evil principle
+of the Manichaeans would be in the universe. Moreover, the author has
+observed (ch. 4, sect. 4, § 8) that divine wisdom has usually forbidden
+actions which would cause discomforts, that is to say, physical evils.[420]
+It is agreed that he who causes evil by necessity is not culpable. But
+there is neither legislator nor lawyer who by this necessity means the
+force of the considerations of good or evil, real or apparent, that have
+prompted man to do ill: else anyone stealing a great sum of money or
+killing a powerful man in order to attain to high office would be less
+deserving of punishment than one who should steal a few halfpence for a mug
+of beer or wantonly kill his neighbour's dog, since these latter were
+tempted less. But it is quite the opposite in the administration of justice
+which is authorized in the world: for the greater is the temptation to sin,
+the more does it need to be repressed by the fear of a great chastisement.
+Besides, the greater the calculation evident in the design of an evil-doer,
+the more will it be found that the wickedness has been deliberate, and the
+more readily will one decide that it is great and deserving of punishment.
+Thus a too artful fraud causes the aggravating crime called _stellionate_,
+and a cheat becomes a forger when he has the cunning to sap the very
+foundations of our security in written documents. But one will have greater
+indulgence for a great passion, because it is nearer to madness. The Romans
+punished with the utmost severity the priests of the God Apis, when these
+had prostituted the chastity of a noble lady to a knight who loved her to
+distraction, making him pass as their god; while it was found enough to
+send the lover into exile. But if someone had done evil deeds without
+apparent reason and without appearance of passion the judge would be
+tempted to take him for a madman, especially if it proved that he was given
+to committing such extravagances often: this might tend towards reduction
+of the penalty, rather than supplying the true grounds of wickedness and
+punishment. So far removed are the principles of our opponents from the
+practice of the tribunals and from the general opinion of men.
+
+16. Thirdly, the distinction between physical evil and moral evil will
+still remain, although there be this in common between them, that they have
+their reasons and causes. And why manufacture new difficulties for oneself
+concerning the origin of moral evil, since the principle followed in the
+solution of those which natural evils have raised suffices also to account
+for voluntary evils? That is to say, it suffices to show that one could not
+have prevented men from being prone to errors, without changing the   [421]
+constitution of the best of systems or without employing miracles at every
+turn. It is true that sin makes up a large portion of human wretchedness,
+and even the largest; but that does not prevent one from being able to say
+that men are wicked and deserving of punishment: else one must needs say
+that the actual sins of the non-regenerate are excusable, because they
+spring from the first cause of our wretchedness, which is original sin.
+Fourthly, to say that the soul becomes passive and that man is not the true
+cause of sin, if he is prompted to his voluntary actions by their objects,
+as our author asserts in many passages, and particularly ch. 5, sect. 1,
+sub-sect. 3, § 18, is to create for oneself new senses for terms. When the
+ancients spoke of that which is [Greek: eph' hêmin], or when we speak of
+that which depends upon us, of spontaneity, of the inward principle of our
+actions, we do not exclude the representation of external things; for these
+representations are in our souls, they are a portion of the modifications
+of this active principle which is within us. No agent is capable of acting
+without being _predisposed_ to what the action demands; and the reasons or
+inclinations derived from good or evil are the dispositions that enable the
+soul to decide between various courses. One will have it that the will is
+alone active and supreme, and one is wont to imagine it to be like a queen
+seated on her throne, whose minister of state is the understanding, while
+the passions are her courtiers or favourite ladies, who by their influence
+often prevail over the counsel of her ministers. One will have it that the
+understanding speaks only at this queen's order; that she can vacillate
+between the arguments of the minister and the suggestions of the
+favourites, even rejecting both, making them keep silence or speak, and
+giving them audience or not as seems good to her. But it is a
+personification or mythology somewhat ill-conceived. If the will is to
+judge, or take cognizance of the reasons and inclinations which the
+understanding or the senses offer it, it will need another understanding in
+itself, to understand what it is offered. The truth is that the soul, or
+the thinking substance, understands the reasons and feels the inclinations,
+and decides according to the predominance of the representations modifying
+its active force, in order to shape the action. I have no need here to
+apply my system of Pre-established Harmony, which shows our independence to
+the best advantage and frees us from the physical influence of objects. For
+what I have just said is sufficient to answer the objection. Our      [422]
+author, even though he admits with people in general this physical
+influence of objects upon us, observes nevertheless with much perspicacity
+that the body or the objects of the senses do not even give us our ideas,
+much less the active force of our soul, and that they serve only to draw
+out that which is within us. This is much in the spirit of M. Descartes'
+belief that the soul, not being able to give force to the body, gives it at
+least some direction. It is a mean between one side and the other, between
+physical influence and Pre-established Harmony.
+
+17. Fifthly, the objection is made that, according to my opinion, sin would
+neither be censured nor punished because of its deserts, but because the
+censure and the chastisement serve to prevent it another time; whereas men
+demand something more, namely, satisfaction for the crime, even though it
+should serve neither for amendment nor for example. So do men with reason
+demand that true gratitude should come from a true recognition of the past
+benefit, and not from the interested aim of extorting a fresh benefit. This
+objection contains noble and sound considerations, but it does not strike
+at me. I require a man to be virtuous, grateful, just, not only from the
+motive of interest, of hope or of fear, but also of the pleasure that he
+should find in good actions: else one has not yet reached the degree of
+virtue that one must endeavour to attain. That is what one means by saying
+that justice and virtue must be loved for their own sake; and it is also
+what I explained in justifying 'disinterested love', shortly before the
+opening of the controversy which caused so much stir. Likewise I consider
+that wickedness is all the greater when its practice becomes a pleasure, as
+when a highwayman, after having killed men because they resist, or because
+he fears their vengeance, finally grows cruel and takes pleasure in killing
+them, and even in making them suffer beforehand. Such a degree of
+wickedness is taken to be diabolical, even though the man affected with it
+finds in this execrable indulgence a stronger reason for his homicides than
+he had when he killed simply under the influence of hope or of fear. I have
+also observed in answering the difficulties of M. Bayle that, according to
+the celebrated Conringius, justice which punishes by means of _medicinal_
+penalties, so to speak, that is, in order to correct the criminal or at
+least to provide an example for others, might exist in the opinion of those
+who do away with the freedom that is exempt from necessity. True      [423]
+retributive justice, on the other hand, going beyond the medicinal, assumes
+something more, namely, intelligence and freedom in him who sins, because
+the harmony of things demands a satisfaction, or evil in the form of
+suffering, to make the mind feel its error after the voluntary active evil
+whereto it has consented. Mr. Hobbes also, who does away with freedom, has
+rejected retributive justice, as do the Socinians, drawing on themselves
+the condemnation of our theologians; although the writers of the Socinian
+party are wont to exaggerate the idea of freedom.
+
+18. Sixthly, the objection is finally made that men cannot hope for
+felicity if the will can only be actuated by the representation of good and
+evil. But this objection seems to me completely null and void, and I think
+it would be hard to guess how any tolerable interpretation was ever put
+upon it. Moreover, the line of reasoning adopted to prove it is of a most
+astounding nature: it is that our felicity depends upon external things, if
+it is true that it depends upon the representation of good or evil. It is
+therefore not in our own power, so it is said, for we have no ground for
+hoping that outward things will arrange themselves for our pleasure. This
+argument is halting from every aspect. _There is no force in the inference:
+one might grant the conclusion: the argument may be retorted upon the
+author_. Let us begin with the retort, which is easy. For are men any
+happier or more independent of the accidents of fortune upon this argument,
+or because they are credited with the advantage of choosing without reason?
+Have they less bodily suffering? Have they less tendency toward true or
+apparent goods, less fear of true or imaginary evils? Are they any less
+enslaved by sensual pleasure, by ambition, by avarice? less apprehensive?
+less envious? Yes, our gifted author will say; I will prove it by a method
+of counting or assessment. I would rather he had proved it by experience;
+but let us see this proof by counting. Suppose that by my choice, which
+enables me to give goodness-for-me to that which I choose, I give to the
+object chosen six degrees of goodness, when previously there were two
+degrees of evil in my condition; I shall become happy all at once, and with
+perfect ease, for I should have four degrees surplus, or net good.
+Doubtless that is all very well; but unfortunately it is impossible. For
+what possibility is there of giving these six degrees of goodness to the
+object? To that end we must needs have the power to change our taste, or
+the things, as we please. That would be almost as if I could say to   [424]
+lead, Thou shalt be gold, and make it so; to the pebble, Thou shalt be
+diamond; or at the least, Thou shalt look like it. Or it would be like the
+common explanation of the Mosaical passage which seems to say that the
+desert manna assumed any taste the Israelites desired to give to it. They
+only had to say to their homerful, Thou shalt be a capon, thou shalt be a
+partridge. But if I am free to give these six degrees of goodness to the
+object, am I not permitted to give it more goodness? I think that I am. But
+if that is so, why shall we not give to the object all the goodness
+conceivable? Why shall we not even go as far as twenty-four carats of
+goodness? By this means behold us completely happy, despite the accidents
+of fortune; it may blow, hail or snow, and we shall not mind: by means of
+this splendid secret we shall be always shielded against fortuitous events.
+The author agrees (in this first section of the fifth chapter, sub-sect. 3,
+§ 12) that this power overcomes all the natural appetites and cannot be
+overcome by any of them; and he regards it (§§ 20, 21, 22) as the soundest
+foundation for happiness. Indeed, since there is nothing capable of
+limiting a power so indeterminate as that of choosing without any reason,
+and of giving goodness to the object through the choice, either this
+goodness must exceed infinitely that which the natural appetites seek in
+objects, these appetites and objects being limited while this power is
+independent or at the least this goodness, given by the will to the chosen
+object, must be arbitrary and of such a kind as the will desires. For
+whence would one derive the reason for limits if the object is possible, if
+it is within reach of him who wills, and if the will can give it the
+goodness it desires to give, independently of reality and of appearances?
+It seems to me that may suffice to overthrow a hypothesis so precarious,
+which contains something of a fairy-tale kind, _optantis ista sunt, non
+invenientis_. It therefore remains only too true that this handsome fiction
+cannot render us more immune from evils. And we shall see presently that
+when men place themselves above certain desires or certain aversions they
+do so through other desires, which always have their foundation in the
+representation of good and evil. I said also 'that one might grant the
+conclusion of the argument', which states that our happiness does not
+depend absolutely upon ourselves, at least in the present state of human
+life: for who would question the fact that we are liable to meet a thousand
+accidents which human prudence cannot evade? How, for example, can I  [425]
+avoid being swallowed up, together with a town where I take up my abode, by
+an earthquake, if such is the order of things? But finally I can also deny
+the inference in the argument, which states that if the will is only
+actuated by the representation of good and evil our happiness does not
+depend upon ourselves. The inference would be valid if there were no God,
+if everything were ruled by brute causes; but God's ordinance is that for
+the attainment of happiness it suffices that one be virtuous. Thus, if the
+soul follows reason and the orders that God has given it, it is assured of
+its happiness, even though one may not find a sufficiency thereof in this
+life.
+
+19. Having thus endeavoured to point out the disadvantages of my
+hypothesis, our gifted author sets forth the advantages of his own. He
+believes that it alone is capable of saving our freedom, that all our
+felicity rests therein, that it increases our goods and lessens our evils,
+and that an agent possessing this power is so much the more complete. These
+advantages have almost all been already disproved. We have shown that for
+the securing of our freedom it is enough that the representations of goods
+and of evils, and other inward or outward dispositions, should incline us
+without constraining us. Moreover one does not see how pure indifference
+can contribute to felicity; on the contrary, the more indifferent one is,
+the more insensitive and the less capable of enjoying what is good will one
+prove to be. Besides the hypothesis proves too much. For if an indifferent
+power could give itself the consciousness of good it could also give itself
+the most perfect happiness, as has been already shown. And it is manifest
+that there is nothing which would set limits to that power, since limits
+would withdraw it from its pure indifference, whence, so our author
+alleges, it only emerges of itself, or rather wherein it has never been.
+Finally one does not see wherein the perfection of pure indifference lies:
+on the contrary, there is nothing more imperfect; it would render knowledge
+and goodness futile, and would reduce everything to chance, with no rules,
+and no measures that could be taken. There are, however, still some
+advantages adduced by our author which have not been discussed. He
+considers then that by this power alone are we the true cause to which our
+actions can be imputed, since otherwise we should be under the compulsion
+of external objects; likewise that by this power alone can one ascribe to
+oneself the merit of one's own felicity, and feel pleased with        [426]
+oneself. But the exact opposite is the case: for when one happens upon the
+action through an absolutely indifferent movement, and not as a result of
+one's good or bad qualities, is it not just as though one were to happen
+upon it blindly by chance or hazard? Why then should one boast of a good
+action, or why should one be censured for an evil one, if the thanks or
+blame redounds to fortune or hazard? I think that one is more worthy of
+praise when one owes the action to one's good qualities, and the more
+culpable in proportion as one has been impelled to it by one's evil
+qualities. To attempt to assess actions without weighing the qualities
+whence they spring is to talk at random and to put an imaginary indefinable
+something in the place of causes. Thus, if this chance or this indefinable
+something were the cause of our actions, to the exclusion of our natural or
+acquired qualities, of our inclinations, of our habits, it would not be
+possible to set one's hopes upon anything depending upon the resolve of
+others, since it would not be possible to fix something indefinite, or to
+conjecture into what roadstead the uncertain weather of an extravagant
+indifference will drive the vessel of the will.
+
+20. But setting aside advantages and disadvantages, let us see how our
+learned author will justify the hypothesis from which he promises us so
+much good. He imagines that it is only God and the free creatures who are
+active in the true sense, and that in order to be active one must be
+determined by oneself only. Now that which is determined by itself must not
+be determined by objects, and consequently the free substance, in so far as
+it is free, must be indifferent with regard to objects, and emerge from
+this indifference only by its own choice, which shall render the object
+pleasing to it. But almost all the stages of this argument have their
+stumbling-blocks. Not only the free creatures, but also all the other
+substances and natures composed of substances, are active. Beasts are not
+free, and yet all the same they have active souls, unless one assume, with
+the Cartesians, that they are mere machines. Moreover, it is not necessary
+that in order to be active one should be determined only by oneself, since
+a thing may receive direction without receiving force. So it is that the
+horse is controlled by the rider and the vessel is steered by the helm; and
+M. Descartes' belief was that our body, having force in itself, receives
+only some direction from the soul. Thus an active thing may receive from
+outside some determination or direction, capable of changing that     [427]
+direction which it would take of itself. Finally, even though an active
+substance is determined only by itself, it does not follow that it is not
+moved by objects: for it is the representation of the object within it
+which contributes towards the determination. Now the representation does
+not come from without, and consequently there is complete spontaneity.
+Objects do not act upon intelligent substances as efficient and physical
+causes, but as final and moral causes. When God acts in accordance with his
+wisdom, he is guided by the ideas of the possibles which are his objects,
+but which have no reality outside him before their actual creation. Thus
+this kind of spiritual and moral motion is not contrary to the activity of
+the substance, nor to the spontaneity of its action. Finally, even though
+free power were not determined by the objects, it can never be indifferent
+to the action when it is on the point of acting, since the action must have
+its origin in a disposition to act: otherwise one will do anything from
+anything, _quidvis ex quovis_, and there will be nothing too absurd for us
+to imagine. But this disposition will have already broken the charm of mere
+indifference, and if the soul gives itself this disposition there must
+needs be another predisposition for this act of giving it. Consequently,
+however far back one may go, one will never meet with a mere indifference
+in the soul towards the actions which it is to perform. It is true that
+these dispositions incline it without constraining it. They relate usually
+to the objects; but there are some, notwithstanding, which arise variously
+_a subjecto_ or from the soul itself, and which bring it about that one
+object is more acceptable than the other, or that the same is more
+acceptable at one time than at another.
+
+21. Our author continually assures us that his hypothesis is true, and he
+undertakes to show that this indifferent power is indeed found in God, and
+even that it must be attributed to him of necessity. For (he says) nothing
+is to God either good or bad in creatures. He has no natural appetite, to
+be satisfied by the enjoyment of anything outside him. He is therefore
+absolutely indifferent to all external things, since by them he can neither
+be helped nor hindered; and he must determine himself and create as it were
+an appetite in making his choice. And having once chosen, he will wish to
+abide by his choice, just as if he had been prompted thereto by a natural
+inclination. Thus will the divine will be the cause of goodness in beings.
+That is to say, there will be goodness in the objects, not by their   [428]
+nature, but by the will of God: whereas if that will be excluded neither
+good nor evil can exist in things. It is difficult to imagine how writers
+of merit could have been misled by so strange an opinion, for the reason
+which appears to be advanced here has not the slightest force. It seems to
+me as though an attempt is being made to justify this opinion by the
+consideration that all creatures have their whole being from God, so that
+they cannot act upon him or determine him. But this is clearly an instance
+of self-deception. When we say that an intelligent substance is actuated by
+the goodness of its object, we do not assert that this object is
+necessarily a being existing outside the substance, and it is enough for us
+that it be conceivable: for its representation acts in the substance, or
+rather the substance acts upon itself, in so far as it is disposed and
+influenced by this representation. With God, it is plain that his
+understanding contains the ideas of all possible things, and that is how
+everything is in him in a transcendent manner. These ideas represent to him
+the good and evil, the perfection and imperfection, the order and disorder,
+the congruity and incongruity of possibles; and his superabundant goodness
+makes him choose the most advantageous. God therefore determines himself by
+himself; his will acts by virtue of his goodness, but it is particularized
+and directed in action by understanding filled with wisdom. And since his
+understanding is perfect, since his thoughts are always clear, his
+inclinations always good, he never fails to do the best; whereas we may be
+deceived by the mere semblances of truth and goodness. But how is it
+possible for it to be said that there is no good or evil in the ideas
+before the operation of God's will? Does the will of God form the ideas
+which are in his understanding? I dare not ascribe to our learned author so
+strange a sentiment, which would confuse understanding and will, and would
+subvert the current use of our notions. Now if ideas are independent of
+will, the perfection or imperfection which is represented in them will be
+independent also. Indeed, is it by the will of God, for example, or is it
+not rather by the nature of numbers, that certain numbers allow more than
+others of various exact divisions? that some are more fitted than others
+for forming battalions, composing polygons and other regular figures? that
+the number six has the advantage of being the least of all the numbers that
+are called perfect? that in a plane six equal circles may touch a seventh?
+that of all equal bodies, the sphere has the least surface? that      [429]
+certain lines are incommensurable, and consequently ill-adapted for
+harmony? Do we not see that all these advantages or disadvantages spring
+from the idea of the thing, and that the contrary would imply
+contradiction? Can it be thought that the pain and discomfort of sentient
+creatures, and above all the happiness and unhappiness of intelligent
+substances, are a matter of indifference to God? And what shall be said of
+his justice? Is it also something arbitrary, and would he have acted wisely
+and justly if he had resolved to condemn the innocent? I know that there
+have been writers so ill-advised as to maintain an opinion so dangerous and
+so liable to overthrow religion. But I am assured that our illustrious
+author is far from holding it. Nevertheless, it seems as though this
+hypothesis tends in that direction, if there is nothing in objects save
+what is indifferent to the divine will before its choice. It is true that
+God has need of nothing; but the author has himself shown clearly that
+God's goodness, and not his need, prompted him to produce creatures. There
+was therefore in him a reason anterior to the resolution; and, as I have
+said so many times, it was neither by chance nor without cause, nor even by
+necessity, that God created this world, but rather as a result of his
+inclination, which always prompts him to the best. Thus it is surprising
+that our author should assert here (ch. 5, sect. 1, sub-sect. 4, § 5) that
+there is no reason which could have induced God, absolutely perfect and
+happy in himself, to create anything outside him, although, according to
+the author's previous declarations (ch. 1, sect. 3, §§ 8, 9), God acts for
+an end, and his aim is to communicate his goodness. It was therefore not
+altogether a matter of indifference to him whether he should create or not
+create, and creation is notwithstanding a free act. Nor was it a matter of
+indifference to him either, whether he should create one world rather than
+another; a perpetual chaos, or a completely ordered system. Thus the
+qualities of objects, included in their ideas, formed the reason for God's
+choice.
+
+22. Our author, having already spoken so admirably about the beauty and
+fittingness of the works of God, has tried to search out phrases that would
+reconcile them with his hypothesis, which appears to deprive God of all
+consideration for the good or the advantage of creatures. The indifference
+of God prevails (he says) only in his first elections, but as soon as God
+has chosen something he has virtually chosen, at the same time, all   [430]
+that which is of necessity connected therewith. There were innumerable
+possible men equally perfect: the election of some from among them is
+purely arbitrary (in the judgement of our author). But God, once having
+chosen them, could not have willed in them anything contrary to human
+nature. Up to this point the author's words are consistent with his
+hypothesis; but those that follow go further. He advances the proposition
+that when God resolved to produce certain creatures he resolved at the same
+time, by virtue of his infinite goodness, to give them every possible
+advantage. Nothing, indeed, could be so reasonable, but also nothing could
+be so contrary to the hypothesis he has put forward, and he does right to
+overthrow it, rather than prolong the existence of anything so charged with
+incongruities incompatible with the goodness and wisdom of God. Here is the
+way to see plainly that this hypothesis cannot harmonize with what has just
+been said. The first question will be: Will God create something or not,
+and wherefore? The author has answered that he will create something in
+order to communicate his goodness. It is therefore no matter of
+indifference to him whether he shall create or not. Next the question is
+asked: Will God create such and such a thing, and wherefore? One must needs
+answer (to speak consistently) that the same goodness makes him choose the
+best, and indeed the author falls back on that subsequently. But, following
+his own hypothesis, he answers that God will create such a thing, but that
+there is no _wherefore_, because God is absolutely indifferent towards
+creatures, who have their goodness only from his choice. It is true that
+our author varies somewhat on this point, for he says here (ch. 5, sect. 5,
+sub-sect. 4, § 12) that God is indifferent to the choice between men of
+equal perfection, or between equally perfect kinds of rational creatures.
+Thus, according to this form of expression, he would choose rather the more
+perfect kind: and as kinds that are of equal perfection harmonize more or
+less with others, God will choose those that agree best together; there
+will therefore be no pure and absolute indifference, and the author thus
+comes back to my principles. But let us speak, as he speaks, in accordance
+with his hypothesis, and let us assume with him that God chooses certain
+creatures even though he be absolutely indifferent towards them. He will
+then just as soon choose creatures that are irregular, ill-shapen,
+mischievous, unhappy, chaos everlasting, monsters everywhere,         [431]
+scoundrels as sole inhabitants of the earth, devils filling the whole
+universe, all this rather than excellent systems, shapely forms, upright
+persons, good angels! No, the author will say, God, when once he had
+resolved to create men, resolved at the same time to give them all the
+advantages possible in the world, and it is the same with regard to
+creatures of other kinds. I answer, that if this advantage were connected
+of necessity with their nature, the author would be speaking in accordance
+with his hypothesis. That not being so, however, he must admit that God's
+resolve to give every possible advantage to men arises from a new election
+independent of that one which prompted God to make men. But whence comes
+this new election? Does it also come from mere indifference? If such is the
+case, nothing prompts God to seek the good of men, and if he sometimes
+comes to do it, it will be merely by accident. But the author maintains
+that God was prompted to the choice by his goodness; therefore the good and
+ill of creatures is no matter of indifference to him, and there are in him
+primary choices to which the goodness of the object prompts him. He chooses
+not only to create men, but also to create men as happy as it is possible
+to be in this system. After that not the least vestige of mere indifference
+will be left, for we can reason concerning the entire world just as we have
+reasoned concerning the human race. God resolved to create a world, but he
+was bound by his goodness at the same time to make choice of such a world
+as should contain the greatest possible amount of order, regularity,
+virtue, happiness. For I can see no excuse for saying that whereas God was
+prompted by his goodness to make the men he has resolved to create as
+perfect as is possible within this system, he had not the same good
+intention towards the whole universe. There we have come back again to the
+goodness of the objects; and pure indifference, where God would act without
+cause, is altogether destroyed by the very procedure of our gifted author,
+with whom the force of truth, once the heart of the matter was reached,
+prevailed over a speculative hypothesis, which cannot admit of any
+application to the reality of things.
+
+23. Since, therefore, nothing is altogether indifferent to God, who knows
+all degrees, all effects, all relations of things, and who penetrates at
+one and the same time all their possible connexions, let us see whether at
+least the ignorance and insensibility of man can make him absolutely
+indifferent in his choice. The author regales us with this pure       [432]
+indifference as with a handsome present. Here are the proofs of it which he
+gives: (1) We feel it within us. (2) We have experience within ourselves of
+its marks and its properties. (3) We can show that other causes which might
+determine our will are insufficient. As for the first point, he asserts
+that in feeling freedom within us we feel within us at the same time pure
+indifference. But I do not agree that we feel such indifference, or that
+this alleged feeling follows upon that of freedom. We feel usually within
+us something which inclines us to our choice. At times it happens, however,
+that we cannot account for all our dispositions. If we give our mind to the
+question, we shall recognize that the constitution of our body and of
+bodies in our environment, the present or previous temper of our soul,
+together with countless small things included under these comprehensive
+headings, may contribute towards our greater or lesser predilection for
+certain objects, and the variation of our opinions from one time to
+another. At the same time we shall recognize that none would attribute this
+to mere indifference, or to some indefinable force of the soul which has
+the same effect upon objects as colours are said to have upon the
+chameleon. Thus the author has no cause here to appeal to the judgement of
+the people: he does so, saying that in many things the people reason better
+than the philosophers. It is true that certain philosophers have been
+misled by chimeras, and it would seem that mere indifference is numbered
+among chimerical notions. But when someone maintains that a thing does not
+exist because the common herd does not perceive it, here the populace
+cannot be regarded as a good judge, being, as it is, only guided by the
+senses. Many people think that air is nothing when it is not stirred by the
+wind. The majority do not know of imperceptible bodies, the fluid which
+causes weight or elasticity, magnetic matter, to say nothing of atoms and
+other indivisible substances. Do we say then that these things are not
+because the common herd does not know of them? If so, we shall be able to
+say also that the soul acts sometimes without any disposition or
+inclination contributing towards the production of its act, because there
+are many dispositions and inclinations which are not sufficiently perceived
+by the common herd, for lack of attention and thought. Secondly, as to the
+marks of the power in question, I have already refuted the claim advanced
+for it, that it possesses the advantage of making one active, the real
+cause of one's action, and subject to responsibility and morality:    [433]
+these are not genuine marks of its existence. Here is one the author
+adduces, which is not genuine either, namely, that we have within us a
+power of resisting natural appetites, that is to say of resisting not only
+the senses, but also the reason. But I have already stated this fact: one
+resists natural appetites through other natural appetites. One sometimes
+endures inconveniences, and is happy to do so; but that is on account of
+some hope or of some satisfaction which is combined with the ill and
+exceeds it: either one anticipates good from it, or one finds good in it.
+The author asserts that it is through that power to transform appearances
+which he has introduced on the scene, that we render agreeable what at
+first displeased us. But who cannot see that the true reason is, that
+application and attention to the object and custom change our disposition
+and consequently our natural appetites? Once we become used to a rather
+high degree of cold or heat, it no longer incommodes us as it formerly did,
+and yet no one would ascribe this effect to our power of choice. Time is
+needed, for instance, to bring about that hardening, or rather that
+callosity, which enables the hands of certain workmen to resist a degree of
+heat that would burn our hands. The populace, whom the author invokes,
+guess correctly the cause of this effect, although they sometimes apply it
+in a laughable manner. Two serving-maids being close to the fire in the
+kitchen, one who has burnt herself says to the other: Oh, my dear, who will
+be able to endure the fire of purgatory? The other answers: Don't be
+absurd, my good woman, one grows used to everything.
+
+24. But (the author will say) this wonderful power which causes us to be
+indifferent to everything, or inclined towards everything, simply at our
+own free will, prevails over reason itself. And this is his third proof,
+namely, that one cannot sufficiently explain our actions without having
+recourse to this power. One sees numbers of people despising the entreaties
+of their friends, the counsels of their neighbours, the reproaches of their
+conscience, discomforts, tortures, death, the wrath of God, hell itself,
+for the sake of running after follies which have no claim to be good or
+tolerable, save as being freely chosen by such people. All is well in this
+argument, with the exception of the last words only. For when one takes an
+actual instance one will find that there were reasons or causes which led
+the man to his choice, and that there are very strong bonds to fasten [434]
+him thereto. A love-affair, for example, will never have arisen from mere
+indifference: inclination or passion will have played its part; but habit
+and stubbornness will cause certain natures to face ruin rather than
+separation from the beloved. Here is another example cited by the author:
+an atheist, a man like Lucilio Vanini (that is what many people call him,
+whereas he himself adopts the magnificent name of Giulio Cesare Vanini in
+his works), will suffer a preposterous martyrdom for his chimera rather
+than renounce his impiety. The author does not name Vanini; and the truth
+is that this man repudiated his wrong opinions, until he was convicted of
+having published atheistical dogmas and acted as an apostle of atheism.
+When he was asked whether there was a God, he plucked some grass, saying:
+
+  _Et levis est cespes qui probet esse Deum._
+
+But since the Attorney General to the Parliament of Toulouse desired to
+cause annoyance to the First President (so it is said), to whom Vanini was
+granted considerable access, teaching his children philosophy, if indeed he
+was not altogether in the service of that magistrate, the inquisition was
+carried through rigorously. Vanini, seeing that there was no chance of
+pardon, declared himself, when at the point of death, for what he was, an
+atheist; and there was nothing very extraordinary in that. But supposing
+there were an atheist who gave himself up for torture, vanity might be in
+his case a strong enough motive, as in that of the Gymnosophist, Calanus,
+and of the Sophist who, according to Lucian's account, was burnt to death
+of his own will. But the author thinks that that very vanity, that
+stubbornness, those other wild intentions of persons who otherwise seem to
+have quite good sense, cannot be explained by the appetites that arise from
+the representation of good and evil, and that they compel us to have
+recourse to that transcendent power which transforms good into evil, and
+evil into good, and the indifferent into good or into evil. But we do not
+need to go so far, and the causes of our errors are only too visible.
+Indeed, we can make these transformations, but it is not as with the
+Fairies, by a mere act of this magic power, but by obscuring and
+suppressing in one's mind the representations of good or bad qualities
+which are naturally attached to certain objects, and by contemplating only
+such representations as conform to our taste or our prejudices; or    [435]
+again, because one attaches to the objects, by dint of thinking of them,
+certain qualities which are connected with them only accidentally or
+through our habitual contemplation of them. For example, all my life long I
+detest a certain kind of good food, because in my childhood I found in it
+something distasteful, which made a strong impression upon me. On the other
+hand, a certain natural defect will be pleasing to me, because it will
+revive within me to some extent the thought of a person I used to esteem or
+love. A young man will have been delighted by the applause which has been
+showered upon him after some successful public action; the impression of
+this great pleasure will have made him remarkably sensitive to reputation;
+he will think day and night of nothing save what nourishes this passion,
+and that will cause him to scorn death itself in order to attain his end.
+For although he may know very well that he will not feel what is said of
+him after his death, the representation he makes of it for himself
+beforehand creates a strong impression on his mind. And there are always
+motives of the same kind in actions which appear most useless and absurd to
+those who do not enter into these motives. In a word, a strong or
+oft-repeated impression may alter considerably our organs, our imagination,
+our memory, and even our reasoning. It happens that a man, by dint of
+having often related something untrue, which he has perhaps invented,
+finally comes to believe in it himself. And as one often represents to
+oneself something pleasing, one makes it easy to imagine, and one thinks it
+also easy to put into effect, whence it comes that one persuades oneself
+easily of what one wishes.
+
+  _Et qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt._
+
+25. Errors are therefore, absolutely speaking, never voluntary, although
+the will very often contributes towards them indirectly, owing to the
+pleasure one takes in giving oneself up to certain thoughts, or owing to
+the aversion one feels for others. Beautiful print in a book will help
+towards making it persuasive to the reader. The air and manner of a speaker
+will win the audience for him. One will be inclined to despise doctrines
+coming from a man one despises or hates, or from another who resembles him
+in some point that strikes us. I have already said why one is readily
+disposed to believe what is advantageous or agreeable, and I have known
+people who at first had changed their religion for worldly            [436]
+considerations, but who have been persuaded (and well persuaded) afterwards
+that they had taken the right course. One sees also that stubbornness is
+not simply wrong choice persevering, but also a disposition to persevere
+therein, which is due to some good supposed to be inherent in the choice,
+or some evil imagined as arising from a change. The first choice has
+perchance been made in mere levity, but the intention to abide by it
+springs from certain stronger reasons or impressions. There are even some
+writers on ethics who lay it down that one ought to abide by one's choice
+so as not to be inconstant or appear so. Yet perseverance is wrong when one
+despises the warnings of reason, especially when the subject is important
+enough to be examined carefully; but when the thought of change is
+unpleasant, one readily averts one's attention from it, and that is the way
+which most frequently leads one to stubbornness. The author wished to
+connect stubbornness with his so-called pure indifference. He might then
+have taken into account that to make us cling to a choice there would be
+need of more than the mere choice itself or a pure indifference, especially
+if this choice has been made lightly, and all the more lightly in
+proportion to the indifference shown. In such a case we shall be readily
+inclined to reverse the choice, unless vanity, habit, interest or some
+other motive makes us persevere therein. It must not be supposed either
+that vengeance pleases without cause. Persons of intense feeling ponder
+upon it day and night, and it is hard for them to efface the impression of
+the wrong or the affront they have sustained. They picture for themselves a
+very great pleasure in being freed from the thought of scorn which comes
+upon them every moment, and which causes some to find vengeance sweeter
+than life itself.
+
+  _Quis vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa._
+
+The author would wish to persuade us that usually, when our desire or our
+aversion is for some object which does not sufficiently deserve it, we have
+given to it the surplus of good or evil which has affected us, through the
+alleged power of choice which makes things appear good or evil as we wish.
+One has had two degrees of natural evil, one gives oneself six degrees of
+artificial good through the power that can choose without cause. Thus one
+will have four degrees of net good (ch. 5, sect. 2, § 7). If that could be
+carried out it would take us far, as I have already said here. The    [437]
+author even thinks that ambition, avarice, the gambling mania and other
+frivolous passions derive all their force from this power (ch. 5, sect. 5,
+sub-sect. 6). But there are besides so many false appearances in things, so
+many imaginations capable of enlarging or diminishing objects, so many
+unjustified connexions in our arguments, that there is no need of this
+little Fairy, that is, of this inward power operating as it were by
+enchantment, to whom the author attributes all these disorders. Indeed, I
+have already said repeatedly that when we resolve upon some course contrary
+to acknowledged reason, we are prompted to it by another reason stronger to
+outward appearance, such as, for instance, is the pleasure of appearing
+independent and of performing an extraordinary action. There was in days
+past at the Court of Osnabrück a tutor to the pages, who, like a second
+Mucius Scaevola, held out his arm into the flame and looked like getting a
+gangrene, in order to show that the strength of his mind was greater than a
+very acute pain. Few people will follow his example; and I do not even know
+if a writer could easily be found who, having once affirmed the existence
+of a power capable of choosing without cause, or even contrary to reason,
+would be willing to prove his case by his own example, in renouncing some
+good benefice or some high office, simply in order to display this
+superiority of will over reason. But I am sure at the least that an
+intelligent man would not do so. He would be presently aware that someone
+would nullify his sacrifice by pointing out to him that he had simply
+imitated Heliodorus, Bishop of Larissa. That man (so it is said) held his
+book on Theagenes and Chariclea dearer than his bishopric; and such a thing
+may easily happen when a man has resources enabling him to dispense with
+his office and when he is sensitive to reputation. Thus every day people
+are found ready to sacrifice their advantages to their caprices, that is to
+say, actual goods to the mere semblance of them.
+
+26. If I wished to follow step by step the arguments of our gifted author,
+which often come back to matters previously considered in our inquiry,
+usually however with some elegant and well-phrased addition, I should be
+obliged to proceed too far; but I hope that I shall be able to avoid doing
+so, having, as I think, sufficiently met all his reasons. The best thing is
+that with him practice usually corrects and amends theory. After having
+advanced the hypothesis, in the second section of this fifth chapter, [438]
+that we approach God through the capacity to choose without reason, and
+that this power being of the noblest kind its exercise is the most capable
+of making one happy, things in the highest degree paradoxical, since it is
+reason which leads us to imitate God and our happiness lies in following
+reason: after that, I say, the author provides an excellent corrective, for
+he says rightly (§ 5) that in order to be happy we must adapt our choice to
+things, since things are scarcely prone to adapt themselves to us, and that
+this is in effect adapting oneself to the divine will. Doubtless that is
+well said, but it implies besides that our will must be guided as far as
+possible by the reality of the objects, and by true representations of good
+and evil. Consequently also the motives of good and evil are not opposed to
+freedom, and the power of choosing without cause, far from ministering to
+our happiness, will be useless and even highly prejudicial. Thus it is
+happily the case that this power nowhere exists, and that it is 'a being of
+reasoning reason', as some Schoolmen call the fictions that are not even
+possible. As for me, I should have preferred to call them 'beings of
+non-reasoning reason'. Also I think that the third section (on wrong
+elections) may pass, since it says that one must not choose things that are
+impossible, inconsistent, harmful, contrary to the divine will, or already
+taken by others. Moreover, the author remarks appositely that by
+prejudicing the happiness of others needlessly one offends the divine will,
+which desires that all be happy as far as it is possible. I will say as
+much of the fourth section, where there is mention of the source of wrong
+elections, which are error or ignorance, negligence, fickleness in changing
+too readily, stubbornness in not changing in time, and bad habits; finally
+there is the importunity of the appetites, which often drive us
+inopportunely towards external things. The fifth section is designed to
+reconcile evil elections or sins with the power and goodness of God; and
+this section, as it is diffuse, is divided into sub-sections. The author
+has cumbered himself needlessly with a great objection: for he asserts that
+without a power to choose that is altogether indifferent in the choice
+there would be no sin. Now it was very easy for God to refuse to creatures
+a power so irrational. It was sufficient for them to be actuated by the
+representations of goods and evils; it was therefore easy, according to the
+author's hypothesis, for God to prevent sin. To extricate himself from this
+difficulty, he has no other resource than to state that if this power [439]
+were removed from things the world would be nothing but a purely passive
+machine. But that is the very thing which I have disproved. If this power
+were missing in the world (as in fact it is), one would hardly complain of
+the fact. Souls will be well content with the representations of goods and
+evils for the making of their choice, and the world will remain as
+beautiful as it is. The author comes back to what he had already put
+forward here, that without this power there would be no happiness. But I
+have given a sufficient answer to that, and there is not the slightest
+probability in this assertion and in certain other paradoxes he puts
+forward here to support his principal paradox.
+
+27. He makes a small digression on prayer (sub-sect. 4), saying that those
+who pray to God hope for some change in the order of nature; but it seems
+as though, according to his opinion, they are mistaken. In reality, men
+will be content if their prayers are heard, without troubling themselves as
+to whether the course of nature is changed in their favour, or not. Indeed,
+if they receive succour from good angels there will be no change in the
+general order of things. Also this opinion of our author is a very
+reasonable one, that there is a system of spiritual substances, just as
+there is of corporeal substances, and that the spiritual have communication
+with one another, even as bodies do. God employs the ministry of angels in
+his rule of mankind, without any detriment to the order of nature.
+Nevertheless, it is easier to put forward theories on these matters than to
+explain them, unless one have recourse to my system of Harmony. But the
+author goes somewhat further. He believes that the mission of the Holy
+Spirit was a great miracle in the beginning, but that now his operations
+within us are natural. I leave it to him to explain his opinion, and to
+settle the matter with other theologians. Yet I observe that he finds the
+natural efficacy of prayer in the power it has of making the soul better,
+of overcoming the passions, and of winning for oneself a certain degree of
+new grace. I can say almost the same things on my hypothesis, which
+represents the will as acting only in accordance with motives; and I am
+immune from the difficulties in which the author has become involved over
+his power of choosing without cause. He is in great embarrassment also with
+regard to the foreknowledge of God. For if the soul is perfectly
+indifferent in its choice how is it possible to foresee this choice? and
+what sufficient reason will one be able to find for the knowledge of a[440]
+thing, if there is no reason for its existence? The author puts off to some
+other occasion the solution of this difficulty, which would require
+(according to him) an entire work. For the rest, he sometimes speaks
+pertinently, and in conformity with my principles, on the subject of moral
+evil. He says, for example (sub-sect. 6), that vices and crimes do not
+detract from the beauty of the universe, but rather add to it, just as
+certain dissonances would offend the ear by their harshness if they were
+heard quite alone, and yet in combination they render the harmony more
+pleasing. He also points out divers goods involved in evils, for instance,
+the usefulness of prodigality in the rich and avarice in the poor; indeed
+it serves to make the arts flourish. We must also bear in mind that we are
+not to judge the universe by the small size of our globe and of all that is
+known to us. For the stains and defects in it may be found as useful for
+enhancing the beauty of the rest as patches, which have nothing beautiful
+in themselves, are by the fair sex found adapted to embellish the whole
+face, although they disfigure the part they cover. Cotta, in Cicero's book,
+had compared providence, in its granting of reason to men, to a physician
+who allows wine to a patient, notwithstanding that he foresees the misuse
+which will be made thereof by the patient, at the expense of his life. The
+author replies that providence does what wisdom and goodness require, and
+that the good which accrues is greater than the evil. If God had not given
+reason to man there would have been no man at all, and God would be like a
+physician who killed someone in order to prevent his falling ill. One may
+add that it is not reason which is harmful in itself, but the absence of
+reason; and when reason is ill employed we reason well about means, but not
+adequately about an end, or about that bad end we have proposed to
+ourselves. Thus it is always for lack of reason that one does an evil deed.
+The author also puts forward the objection made by Epicurus in the book by
+Lactantius on the wrath of God. The terms of the objection are more or less
+as follows. Either God wishes to banish evils and cannot contrive to do so,
+in which case he would be weak; or he can abolish them, and will not, which
+would be a sign of malignity in him; or again he lacks power and also will,
+which would make him appear both weak and jealous; or finally he can and
+will, but in this case it will be asked why he then does not banish evil,
+if he exists? The author replies that God cannot banish evil, that he does
+not wish to either, and that notwithstanding he is neither malicious  [441]
+nor weak. I should have preferred to say that he can banish evil, but that
+he does not wish to do so absolutely, and rightly so, because he would then
+banish good at the same time, and he would banish more good than evil.
+Finally our author, having finished his learned work, adds an Appendix, in
+which he speaks of the Divine Laws. He fittingly divides these laws into
+natural and positive. He observes that the particular laws of the nature of
+animals must give way to the general laws of bodies, that God is not in
+reality angered when his laws are violated, but that order demanded that he
+who sins should bring an evil upon himself, and that he who does violence
+to others should suffer violence in his turn. But he believes that the
+positive laws of God rather indicate and forecast the evil than cause its
+infliction. And that gives him occasion to speak of the eternal damnation
+of the wicked, which no longer serves either for correction or example, and
+which nevertheless satisfies the retributive justice of God, although the
+wicked bring their unhappiness upon themselves. He suspects, however, that
+these punishments of the wicked bring some advantage to virtuous people. He
+is doubtful also whether it is not better to be damned than to be nothing:
+for it might be that the damned are fools, capable of clinging to their
+state of misery owing to a certain perversity of mind which, he maintains,
+makes them congratulate themselves on their false judgements in the midst
+of their misery, and take pleasure in finding fault with the will of God.
+For every day one sees peevish, malicious, envious people who enjoy the
+thought of their ills, and seek to bring affliction upon themselves. These
+ideas are not worthy of contempt, and I have sometimes had the like myself,
+but I am far from passing final judgement on them. I related, in 271 of the
+essays written to oppose M. Bayle, the fable of the Devil's refusal of the
+pardon a hermit offers him on God's behalf. Baron André Taifel, an Austrian
+nobleman, Knight of the Court of Ferdinand Archduke of Austria who became
+the second emperor of that name, alluding to his name (which appears to
+mean Devil in German) assumed as his emblem a devil or satyr, with this
+Spanish motto, _Mas perdido, y menos arrepentido_, the more lost, the less
+repentant, which indicates a hopeless passion from which one cannot free
+oneself. This motto was afterwards repeated by the Spanish Count of
+Villamediana when he was said to be in love with the Queen. Coming to the
+question why evil often happens to the good and good to the wicked,   [442]
+our illustrious author thinks that it has been sufficiently answered, and
+that hardly any doubt remains on that point. He observes nevertheless that
+one may often doubt whether good people who endure affliction have not been
+made good by their very misfortune, and whether the fortunate wicked have
+not perhaps been spoilt by prosperity. He adds that we are often bad
+judges, when it is a question of recognizing not only a virtuous man, but
+also a happy man. One often honours a hypocrite, and one despises another
+whose solid virtue is without pretence. We are poor judges of happiness
+also, and often felicity is hidden from sight under the rags of a contented
+poor man, while it is sought in vain in the palaces of certain of the
+great. Finally the author observes, that the greatest felicity here on
+earth lies in the hope of future happiness, and thus it may be said that to
+the wicked nothing happens save what is of service for correction or
+chastisement, and to the good nothing save what ministers to their greater
+good. These conclusions entirely correspond to my opinion, and one can say
+nothing more appropriate for the conclusion of this work.
+
+                                                                      [443]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CAUSA DEI ASSERTA
+PER JUSTITIAM EJUS
+
+_cum caeteris ejus perfectionibus cunctisque actionibus conciliatam._
+
+The original edition of the Theodicy contained a fourth appendix under this
+title. It presented in scholastic Latin a formal summary of the positive
+doctrine expressed by the French treatise. It satisfied the academic
+requirements of its day, but would not, presumably, be of interest to many
+modern readers, and is consequently omitted here.
+
+                                                                      [445]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+INDEX
+
+  Abélard, 122, 232-4, 272
+  Abraham, 209
+  Adam, 222, 270-2, 346-7
+  Adam Kadmon, 133
+  Albius, Thomas, 122
+  Alcuin, 77
+  Alfonso, King of Castile, 247-8
+  Aloysius Novarinus, 191
+  Alrasi, 288
+  Alvarez, 149
+  Ambrose, St., 153, 194
+  Amyraut, 238
+  Anaxagoras, 353
+  Andradius, Jacques Payva, 176
+  Andreas Cisalpinus, 81
+  Angelus Silesius, Johann, 79
+  Annat, 344-5
+  Anselm, St., 77
+  Antipater, 232
+  Aquinas, Thomas, _see_ Thomas
+  Arcesilaus, 337
+  Archidemus, 232
+  Aristotelians, 27-8
+  Aristotle, 13, 76-8, 81, 148, 170, 195, 203, 229, 241, 243-4, 265, 269,
+      283, 304, 309-10, 324, 352, 353, 409
+  Arminius, _see_ Irminius
+  Arminius (Jacob Harmensen), 383, 398
+  Arnauld, 67, 89, 225, 254, 260, 264-6, 351
+  Arriaga, 112, 356
+  Arrian, 232
+  Assassins, 284
+  Athanasius, St., 87
+  Augustine (of Hippo), St., 60, 100, 122, 134, 148, 166, 173, 187, 226,
+      274, 285, 294, 296-7, 300-3, 347, 352-3, 378, 384, 409, 412
+  ----, his disciples, 145, 297, 300, 324, 330, 348
+  Augustus (Emperor), 287
+  Aulus Gellius, 258-9, 325, 327
+  Aureolus, Cardinal, 139, 353
+  Averroes, Averroists, 77 ff.
+
+  Bacon, Francis, 306
+  Bañez, 149
+  Barbaro, Ermolao, 170
+  Baron, Vincent, 121
+  Baronius, Robert, 84
+  Barton, Thomas, 122
+  Basil, St., 221, 352
+  Bayle, P., 34 ff. _et passim_
+  Becher, Johann Joachim, 334-5
+  Becker, 221
+  Bede, 77
+  Bellarmine, St. Robert, 107, 313, 323
+  Berigardus, Claudius, 81
+  Berkeley, Bp., 11
+  Bernard, St., 277
+  Bernier, 139, 353
+  Bertius, 227
+  de Bèze, Theodore, 274
+  _Birgitta, Revelations of St._, 173
+  Boethius, 76, 365-6
+  Bonartes, Thomas, 58, 121-2
+  Bonaventura, St., 294
+  des Bosses, Fr., 121, 389
+  Bossuet, 10
+  Bradwardine, Abp., 159, 176
+  Bramhall, Bp. John, 161, 393
+  Bredenburg, Johan, 349-50
+  Brunswick, Duke of, 8, 82
+  Buckingham, Duke of, 142
+  Buridan's ass, 150, 311, 312
+  Burnet, Thomas, 278
+
+  Cabalists, 79, 133, 347
+  Caesar Cremoninus, 81
+  Cajetan, Cardinal, 100, 243
+  Calanus, 284, 434
+  Caligula, 227
+  Calixtus, 108
+  Calli, 359
+  Callimachus, 213
+  Calovius, 84
+  Calvin, 84-5, 101, 165, 222, 238, 240, 328
+  Cameron, 313
+  Campanella, 217
+  Capella, Martianus, 264
+  Cardan, Jerome, 282, 286
+  Carneades, 312, 320-1, 337
+  Caroli, Andreas, 227
+  Casaubon, Meric, 285
+  Caselius, 82
+  Cassiodorus, 76
+  [Page 446]
+  Casuists, 194, 222, 241
+  Catharin, Ambrose, 173
+  Catherine de Medicis, 227
+  Cato, 263, 318
+  Celsus, 102-3
+  Chardin, 209
+  de la Charmoye, Abbé, 213
+  Chemnitz, Martin, 111, 176
+  Christine, Queen of Sweden, 96, 104
+  Chrysippus, 229-32, 258-9, 324-7
+  Cicero, 99, 194, 229-32, 241, 286, 297, 312, 321, 324-5, 342
+  Claudian, 132, 191, 215
+  Cleanthes, 233, 324
+  Coelius Secundus Curio, 134
+  Coimbra, Fathers of, 325
+  Colerus, 350
+  Conringius, 161, 422
+  Constance, Council of, 234
+  de la Cour, 350-1
+  Crellius, 161
+  Cudworth, Ralph, 64, 245
+  Cuper, Franz, 350
+  Cyrano de Bergerac, 331
+
+  Dacier, 337
+  Daillé, 70, 107
+  Davidius, John, 179
+  _De Auxiliis_, 168
+  Democritus, 324
+  Descartes, 12-13, 19-21, 107, 111-12, 140, 150, 156, 224 ff., 239, 244,
+      265, 281, 304, 331, 333, 334, 343, 390, 409, 426
+  Desmarests, Samuel, 241
+  Diodorus, 230-2
+  Diogenianus, 325
+  Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 232
+  Diphilus, 285
+  Diroys, 249-53, 329
+  Dominicans, 348
+  Dreier, 244
+  Drexler, 291
+  Dualists, 251
+  du Plessis-Mornay, 91
+  Durand de Saint-Pourçain, 139, 324, 341, 353
+
+  Empedocles, 324
+  Epictetus, 352
+  Epicureans, 282-3
+  Epicurus, 229-30, 310-11, 319, 320, 324, 395
+  Esprit, Abbé, 131
+  Euclid, 261
+  Euripides, 284, 285
+  Eusebius, 326
+  Eutrapelus, 191
+
+  Fabricius, Johann Ludwig, 67
+  Fabry, 333
+  Fecht, 290, 291, 293
+  Fénelon, 287
+  Fludde, 184
+  Fonseca, 145
+  Foucher, 34, 89, 337
+  Francis I of France, 204
+  Francis of Sales, St., 176
+  Francis Xavier, St., 176
+  Freitag, Johann, 171
+  Fromondus, Libertus, 89
+  Fulgentius, 167
+  _Fur praedestinatus_, 227
+
+  della Galla, Julius Caesar, 171
+  Gassendi, 12, 337
+  Gatacre, Thomas, 262
+  Gerhard, Johann, 291
+  Gerson, 79
+  Gibieuf, 344-5
+  Glarea, Antonio, 366
+  Godescalc, 167, 294
+  Gomarists, 227
+  Gregory, St., the Great, 100, 291, 293, 294
+  Gregory, St., of Nazianzus, 173
+  Gregory, St., of Nyssa, 132
+  Gregory of Rimini, 173
+  Grotius, 77, 91, 161, 194, 241, 243, 276
+  Guerre, Martin, 97-8
+  Gymnosophists, 284
+
+  Hartsoeker, 172
+  Heliodorus of Larissa, 437
+  Heraclitus, 324
+  Herminius, _see_ Irminius
+  Hermippus, 209
+  Herodotus, 196, 208, 210
+  Heshusius, Tilemann, 82
+  Hobbes, Thomas, 67, 89, 159, 161, 234, 265, 348, 393 ff., 410
+  Hoffmann, Daniel, 82
+  Horace, 131, 318
+  Homer, 284
+  Hyde, 209
+
+  Innocent III, Pope, 131
+  Irminius, 209
+  Isbrand, 238
+
+  Jansenists, 145, 346-7
+  Jansenius, 344
+  Jacquelot, 157, 223, 259, 265, 278, 341
+  Jerome, St., 132
+  John of Damascus, St., 77
+  [Page 447]
+  John Scot, 171
+  Jung, 261
+  Jupiter, 213
+  Jurieu, 174, 187, 290-2, 356
+  Justin, 208
+
+  Keckermann, Bartholomaeus, 106
+  Keilah, siege of, 145-6
+  Kendal, George, 228
+  Kepler, 140, 353
+  Kerkering, 351
+  Kessler, Andreas, 83
+  Kortholt, Sebastian, 351
+  Krell, Nicolas, 398
+
+  de Labadie, Jean, 82
+  Lactantius, 221, 285, 286, 440
+  Lami, François, 89, 359
+  Lateran Council, 80
+  Laud, Abp., 398
+  de Launoy, 100
+  Lazarus, 294
+  le Clerc, 64, 121, 132, 245, 292
+  Leeuwenhoek, 172
+  Limbourg, 350
+  Lipsius, Justus, 325, 337, 353
+  Livy, 263
+  Locke, John, 8, 9, 33-4, 86, 409
+  Löscher, 298
+  Louis of Dole, 149, 353
+  Lucan, 122, 212
+  Lucian, 265, 434
+  Lucretius, 320
+  Lully, Raymond, 106
+  Luther, 67, 81, 99, 101, 110-11, 122, 298, 328, 395
+
+  Machiavelli, 216
+  Maignan, 359
+  Maimonides, 287-8
+  Malebranche, 172, 244, 254 ff., 276, 280, 333, 359, 361
+  Manichaeans, 59, 98, 113, 124, 208, 274, 419
+  Marchetti, 320
+  Marcion, 213
+  Marcus Aurelius, 263
+  Mary, Blessed Virgin, 193
+  Matthieu, Pierre, 204
+  Maurice, Prince, 398
+  Melanchthon, 81
+  Melissus, 218, 220
+  Ménage, 232
+  Meyer, Louis, 82
+  Mithras, 209
+  Molina, 145, 173, 207
+  Molinists, 145, 317, 324, 342
+  More, Henry, 169
+  Moses Germanus, 79
+  de la Motte le Vayer, 282
+  Musaeus, Johann, 86, 111
+
+  Naudé, Gabriel, 81
+  Newcastle, Duke of, 393 ff.
+  Newton, Isaac, 34, 85-6
+  Nicole, 96-7, 174, 291, 299
+  Nominalists, 203
+  Novarini, 286
+
+  Ochino, Bernardino, 89
+  Onomaus, 325
+  Opalenius, 194
+  Origen, 102-3, 132, 235, 294
+  Origenists, 260, 292
+  Orobio, 350
+  Ovid, 209, 220, 306
+
+  Pardies, 333
+  Pascal, 35
+  Paul, St., 129-30, 238, 260
+  Paulicians, _see_ Manichaeans
+  Pelagius, 139
+  Pélisson, 176
+  Pereir, Louis, 139
+  Peter Lombard, 290
+  Pfanner, 352
+  Pierre de Saint-Joseph, 342, 357
+  Pietists, Leipzig, 83
+  Piscator, 207
+  Pitcairne, 172
+  Plato, 59, 76, 135, 148, 209, 241, 286, 297, 321, 352-4
+  Pliny the Younger, 204, 209, 284, 287, 365
+  Plutarch, 208, 231, 326, 353
+  Pomponazzi, 80, 161
+  de la Porrée, Gilbert, 122
+  de Preissac, 80
+  Prudentius, 132, 218
+  Ptolomei, Fr., 70
+  Pufendorf, 194, 241, 403
+  Pythagoras, 172
+
+  Quênel, Fr., 70
+  Quietists, 79
+
+  Rachelius, 194
+  de la Ramée, Pierre, 81
+  Ravaillac, 204
+  Regis, 305, 330, 340
+  Remonstrants, 226
+  Reynaud, Theophile, 348
+  [Page 448]
+  Rodon, David de, 354
+  Rorarius, 160
+  Rutherford, Samuel, 236, 238, 269
+  Ruysbroek, 79
+
+  Saguens, 359
+  Salmeron, 173
+  Saurin, 106
+  Scaliger, Joseph, 89, 104-5
+  Scaliger, Julius, 170
+  Scherzer, 84
+  Schoolmen, 75, 77, 100, 241, 290, 310, 354, 407
+  Scioppius, 337
+  Scotists, 243, 324
+  Scotus, Duns, 203, 271, 328, 383
+  Seneca, 226, 285
+  Sennert, Daniel, 171
+  Sentences, Master of the, _see_ Peter Lombard
+  Servetus, Michael, 81
+  Sfondrati, Cardinal, 129, 173
+  Sharrok, 194
+  Silenus, 286
+  Slevogt, Paul, 82
+  Socinians, 58, 83-4, 161-2, 307, 343, 394, 412, 423
+  Sonner, Ernst, 290
+  Spee, Friedrich, 176-7
+  Sperling, Johann, 171
+  Sperling, Otto, 212
+  Spinoza, 67, 68, 79, 82, 159, 234-6, 331, 348-51, 359, 418
+  Stahl, Daniel, 243
+  Stegman, Josua, 107
+  Stegmann, Christopher, 84
+  Steno, 178
+  Steuchus, Augustinus, 91
+  Stoics, 79, 232, 263, 282-3, 324 ff., 342
+  Strato, 67, 245-6, 331, 335, 336, 349, 395
+  Strinesius, 241
+  Sturm, 69, 261
+  Suarez, 314
+  Suetonius, 287
+  Supralapsarians, 166, 228, 236, 238, 269, 273-4, 289
+  Swammerdam, 172
+
+  Tacitus, 210, 211, 265, 287
+  Taifel, Baron André, 441
+  Taurel, Nicolas, 81, 353
+  Tertullian, 101
+  Thomas Aquinas, St., 174, 176, 241, 243, 262, 324, 357, 378, 383
+  Thomasius, Jacob, 243, 265
+  Thomists, 145, 149, 241, 311, 324, 344, 347
+  Tiberius, 227
+  Timon, 265
+  Tiresias, 230
+  Toland, John, 106
+  de Tournemine, Fr., 69
+  Trajan, 293
+  Trogus, 208
+  Turretin, 240
+  Twiss, 238
+
+  Ursinus, Zacharias, 291
+  Usserius, 70
+
+  Valla, Laurentius, 67, 344, 365 ff.
+  van Beverwyck, Johan, 153-4
+  van den Ende, Franz, 351
+  van den Hoof, 350
+  van der Weye, 82
+  van Helmont, 169
+  Vanini, Lucilio, 434
+  Vedelius, Nicolaus, 86, 111
+  Velleius Paterculus, 318
+  Vergil, 78-9, 122, 287, 293, 306, 315
+  Véron, François, 107
+  Versé, Aubert de, 350
+  Voëtius, Gisbertus, 86
+  Vorstius, Conrad, 58
+  Vogelsang, 82
+
+  von Wallenberg, Bp. Peter, 67
+  Wander, William, 169
+  Weigel, Erhard, 261, 355
+  Weigel, Valentine, 79
+  de Witt, 351
+  Wittich, 187, 306-7, 309
+  von Wollzogen, 82
+  Wyclif, John, 122, 159, 234, 272, 395
+
+  Xanthus, 209
+
+  Zeisold, Johann, 171
+  Zoroaster, 71, 208-10, 218
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Theodicy, by G. W. Leibniz
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Theodicy, by G. W. Leibniz
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Theodicy
+       Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
+
+Author: G. W. Leibniz
+
+Commentator: Austin Farrer
+
+Translator: E.M. Huggard
+
+Release Date: November 24, 2005 [EBook #17147]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEODICY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Juliet Sutherland, Keith Edkins
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<h2>Theodicy</h2>
+
+  <p class="author">Essays on<br />
+the Goodness of God<br />
+the Freedom of Man and<br />
+the Origin of Evil</p>
+
+  <p>G.W. LEIBNIZ</p>
+
+  <p>Edited with an Introduction by Austin Farrer, Fellow of Trinity
+  College, Oxford</p>
+
+  <p>Translated by E.M. Huggard from C.J. Gerhardt's Edition of the
+  Collected Philosophical Works, 1875-90</p>
+
+  <p>Open <img src="images/opencourtlogo.png" alt="Open Court Logo"/>
+  Court</p>
+
+  <p>La Salle, Illinois 61301</p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+  <p><img src="images/opencourtlogo.png" alt="Open Court Logo"/></p>
+
+  <p>OPEN COURT and the above logo are registered in the U.S. Patent &amp;
+  Trademark Office.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Published 1985 by Open Court Publishing Company, Peru, Illinois 61354.</p>
+      <p>This edition first published 1951 by Routledge &amp; Kegan Paul Limited, London.</p>
+      <p>Second printing 1988</p>
+      <p>Third printing 1990</p>
+      <p>Fourth printing 1993</p>
+      <p>Fifth printing 1996</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>Printed and bound in the United States of America.</p>
+
+  <p><b>Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data</b></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716.</p>
+      <p class="i2">Theodicy: essays on the goodness of God, the</p>
+      <p>freedom of man, and the origin of evil.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Translation of: Essais de Théodicée.</p>
+      <p class="i2">Includes index.</p>
+      <p class="i2">1. Theodicy&mdash;Early works to 1800. I. Title.</p>
+      <p>B2590.E5 1985 231'.8 85-8833</p>
+      <p>ISBN O-87548-437-9</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+<p><!-- Page 5 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page5"></a>[5]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+
+<table width="100%" class="single" summary="Table of Contents" title="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" colspan="2">
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left" width="79%">
+      EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
+    </td>
+    <td align="right" width="20%">
+      page <a href="#page7">7</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left">
+      PREFACE
+    </td>
+    <td align="right">
+      <a href="#page49">49</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left">
+      PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH REASON
+    </td>
+    <td align="right">
+      <a href="#page73">73</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left">
+      ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF
+      EVIL, IN THREE PARTS
+    </td>
+    <td align="right">
+      <a href="#page123">123</a>, <a href="#page182">182</a>, <a
+      href="#page276">276</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center" colspan="2">
+      APPENDICES
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left">
+      SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY, REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS
+    </td>
+    <td align="right">
+      <a href="#page377">377</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left">
+      EXCURSUS ON THEODICY, § 392
+    </td>
+    <td align="right">
+      <a href="#page389">389</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left">
+      REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH ON
+      'FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND CHANCE'
+    </td>
+    <td align="right">
+      <a href="#page393">393</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left">
+      OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL', PUBLISHED
+      RECENTLY IN LONDON
+    </td>
+    <td align="right">
+      <a href="#page405">405</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left">
+      CAUSA DEI ASSERTA
+    </td>
+    <td align="right">
+      <a href="#page443">443</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td align="left">
+      INDEX
+    </td>
+    <td align="right">
+      <a href="#page445">445</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><!-- Page 7 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page7"></a>[7]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>EDITOR'S
+INTRODUCTION</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+  <p>Leibniz was above all things a metaphysician. That does not mean that
+  his head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences lacked
+  interest for him. Not at all&mdash;he felt a lively concern for
+  theological debate, he was a mathematician of the first rank, he made
+  original contributions to physics, he gave a realistic attention to moral
+  psychology. But he was incapable of looking at the objects of any special
+  enquiry without seeing them as aspects or parts of one intelligible
+  universe. He strove constantly after system, and the instrument on which
+  his effort relied was the speculative reason. He embodied in an extreme
+  form the spirit of his age. Nothing could be less like the spirit of
+  ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means a body of wild and
+  meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A professor of
+  metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with the duties of
+  his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at all,
+  though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by showing them
+  up as confused forms of something else. A chair in metaphysical
+  philosophy becomes analogous to a chair in tropical diseases: what is
+  taught from it is not the propagation but the cure.</p>
+
+  <p>Confidence in metaphysical construction has ebbed and flowed through
+  philosophical history; periods of speculation have been followed by
+  periods of criticism. The tide will flow again, but it has <!-- Page 8
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page8"></a>[8]</span> not turned yet,
+  and such metaphysicians as survive scarcely venture further than to argue
+  a case for the possibility of their art. It would be an embarrassing task
+  to open an approach to Leibnitian metaphysics from the present
+  metaphysical position, if there is a present position. If we want an
+  agreed starting-point, it will have to be historical.</p>
+
+  <p>The historical importance of Leibniz's ideas is anyhow unmistakable.
+  If metaphysical thinking is nonsensical, its empire over the human
+  imagination must still be confessed; if it is as chimerical a science as
+  alchemy, it is no less fertile in by-products of importance. And if we
+  are to consider Leibniz historically, we cannot do better than take up
+  his <i>Theodicy</i>, for two reasons. It was the only one of his main
+  philosophical works to be published in his lifetime, so that it was a
+  principal means of his direct influence; the Leibniz his own age knew was
+  the Leibniz of the <i>Theodicy</i>. Then in the second place, the
+  <i>Theodicy</i> itself is peculiarly rich in historical material. It
+  reflects the world of men and books which Leibniz knew; it expresses the
+  theological setting of metaphysical speculation which still predominated
+  in the first years of the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz is remembered for his philosophy; he was not a professional
+  philosopher. He was offered academic chairs, but he declined them. He was
+  a gentleman, a person of means, librarian to a reigning prince, and
+  frequently employed in state affairs of trust and importance. The
+  librarian might at any moment become the political secretary, and offer
+  his own contributions to policy. Leibniz was for the greater part of his
+  active life the learned and confidential servant of the House of
+  Brunswick; when the Duke had nothing better to do with him, he set him to
+  research into ducal history. If Leibniz had a profession in literature,
+  it was history rather than philosophy. He was even more closely bound to
+  the interests of his prince than John Locke was to those of the Prince of
+  Orange. The Houses of Orange and of Brunswick were on the same side in
+  the principal contest which divided Europe, the battle between Louis XIV
+  and his enemies. It was a turning-point of the struggle when the Prince
+  of Orange supplanted Louis's Stuart friends on the English throne. It was
+  a continuation of the same movement, when Leibniz's master, George I,
+  succeeded to the same throne, and frustrated the restoration of the
+  Stuart heir. Locke returned to England in the wake of the Prince <!--
+  Page 9 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page9"></a>[9]</span> of Orange,
+  and became the representative thinker of the régime. Leibniz wished to
+  come to the English court of George I, but was unkindly ordered to attend
+  to the duties of his librarianship. So he remained in Hanover. He was
+  then an old man, and before the tide of favour had turned, he died.</p>
+
+  <p>Posterity has reckoned Locke and Leibniz the heads of rival sects, but
+  politically they were on the same side. As against Louis's political
+  absolutism and enforced religious uniformity, both championed religious
+  toleration and the freedom of the mind. Their theological liberalism was
+  political prudence; it was not necessarily for that reason the less
+  personally sincere. They had too much wisdom to meet bigotry with
+  bigotry, or set Protestant intolerance against Catholic absolutism. But
+  they had too much sympathy with the spirit of Europe to react into free
+  thinking or to make a frontal attack on revealed truth. They took their
+  stand on a fundamental Christian theism, the common religion of all good
+  men; they repudiated the negative enormities of Hobbes and Spinoza.</p>
+
+  <p>The Christian was to hold a position covered by three lines of
+  defences. The base line was to be the substance of Christian theism and
+  of Christian morals, and it was to be held by the forces of sheer reason,
+  without aid from scriptural revelation. The middle line was laid down by
+  the general sense of Scripture, and the defence of it was this.
+  'Scriptural doctrine is reconcilable with the findings of sheer reason,
+  but it goes beyond them. We believe the Scriptures, because they are
+  authenticated by marks of supernatural intervention in the circumstances
+  of their origin. We believe them, but reason controls our interpretation
+  of them.' There remained the most forward and the most hazardous line:
+  the special positions which a Church, a sect, or an individual might
+  found upon the scriptural revelation. A prudent man would not hold his
+  advance positions in the same force or defend them with the same
+  obstinacy as either of the lines behind them. He could argue for them,
+  but he could not require assent to them.</p>
+
+  <p>One cannot help feeling, indeed, the readiness of these writers to
+  fall back, not only from the front line to the middle line, but from the
+  middle line itself to the base line. Leibniz, for example, writes with
+  perfect seriousness and decency about the Christian scheme of redemption,
+  but it hardly looks like being for him a crucial deliverance from
+  perdition. It is not the intervention of Mercy, <!-- Page 10 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page10"></a>[10]</span> by which alone He
+  possesses himself of us: it is one of the ways in which supreme
+  Benevolence carries out a cosmic policy; and God's benevolence is known
+  by pure reason, and apart from Christian revelation.</p>
+
+  <p>In one politically important particular the theological attitude of
+  Leibniz differed from that of Locke. Both stood for toleration and for
+  the minimizing of the differences between the sects. This was a serious
+  enough matter in England, but it was an even more serious matter in
+  Germany. For Germany was divided between Catholics and Protestants;
+  effective toleration must embrace them both. English toleration might
+  indulge a harmless Catholic minority, while rejecting the Catholic régime
+  as the embodiment of intolerance. But this was not practical politics on
+  the Continent; you must tolerate Catholicism on an equal footing, and
+  come to terms with Catholic régimes. Leibniz was not going to damn the
+  Pope with true Protestant fervour. It was his consistent aim to show that
+  his theological principles were as serviceable to Catholic thinkers as to
+  the doctors of his own church. On some points, indeed, he found his most
+  solid support from Catholics; in other places there are hints of a joint
+  Catholic-Lutheran front against Calvinism. But on the whole Leibniz's
+  writings suggest that the important decisions cut across all the
+  Churches, and not between them.</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz was impelled to a compromise with 'popery', not only by the
+  religious divisions of Germany, but (at one stage) by the political
+  weakness of the German Protestant States. At the point of Louis XIV's
+  highest success, the Protestant princes had no hope but in Catholic
+  Austria, and Austria was distracted by Turkish pressure in the rear.
+  Leibniz hoped to relieve the situation by preaching a crusade. Could not
+  the Christian princes sink their differences and unite against the
+  infidel? And could not the Christian alliance be cemented by theological
+  agreement? Hence Leibniz's famous negotiation with Bossuet for a basis of
+  Catholic-Lutheran concord. It was plainly destined to fail; and it was
+  bound to recoil upon its author. How could he be a true Protestant who
+  treated the differences with the Catholics as non-essentials? How could
+  he have touched pitch and taken no defilement? Leibniz was generally
+  admired, but he was not widely trusted. As a mere politician, he may be
+  judged to have over-reached himself.</p>
+
+  <p>It has been the object of the preceding paragraphs to show that <!--
+  Page 11 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page11"></a>[11]</span> Leibniz
+  the politician and Leibniz the theologian were one and the same person;
+  not at all to suggest that his rational theology was just political
+  expediency. We may apply to him a parody of his own doctrine, the
+  pre-established harmony between nature and grace. Everything happens as
+  though Leibniz were a liberal politician, and his theology expressed his
+  politics. Yes, but equally, everything happens as though Leibniz were a
+  philosophical theologian, and his politics expressed his theology. His
+  appreciation of Catholic speculation was natural and sincere; his
+  dogmatic ancestry is to be looked for in Thomism and Catholic humanism as
+  much as anywhere. Above all, he had himself a liberal and generous mind.
+  It gave him pleasure to appreciate good wherever he could see it, and to
+  discover a soul of truth in every opinion.</p>
+
+  <p>From the moment when Leibniz became aware of himself as an independent
+  thinker, he was the man of a doctrine. Sometimes he called it 'my
+  principles', sometimes 'the new system', sometimes 'pre-established
+  harmony'. It could be quite briefly expressed; he was always ready to
+  oblige his friends with a summary statement, either in a letter or an
+  enclosed memorandum, and several such have come down to us. The doctrine
+  may have been in Leibniz's view simple, but it was applicable to every
+  department of human speculation or enquiry. It provided a new alphabet of
+  philosophical ideas, and everything in heaven and earth could be
+  expressed in it; not only could be, but ought to be, and Leibniz showed
+  tireless energy in working out restatements of standing problems.</p>
+
+  <p>As a man with an idea, with a philosophical nostrum, Leibniz may be
+  compared to Bishop Berkeley. There was never any more doubt that Leibniz
+  was a Leibnitian than that Berkeley was a Berkeleian. But there is no
+  comparison between the two men in the width of their range. About many
+  things Berkeley never took the trouble to Berkeleianize. To take the most
+  surprising instance of his neglect&mdash;he assured the world that his
+  whole doctrine pointed to, and hung upon, theology. But what sort of a
+  theology? He scarcely took the first steps in the formulation of it. He
+  preferred to keep on defending and explaining his <i>esse est
+  percipi</i>. With Leibniz it is wholly different; he carries his new
+  torch into every corner, to illuminate the dark questions.</p>
+
+  <p>The wide applicability of pre-established harmony might come home to
+  its inventor as a rich surprise. The reflective historian will <!-- Page
+  12 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page12"></a>[12]</span> find it less
+  surprising, for he will suspect that the applications were in view from
+  the start. What was Leibniz thinking of when the new principle flashed
+  upon him? What was he <i>not</i> thinking of? He had a many-sided mind.
+  If the origins of the principle were complex, little wonder that its
+  applications were manifold. Every expositor of Leibniz who does not wish
+  to be endlessly tedious must concentrate attention on one aspect of
+  Leibniz's principle, and one source of its origin. We will here give an
+  account of the matter which, we trust, will go most directly to the heart
+  of it, but we will make no claims to sufficient interpretation of
+  Leibniz's thought-processes.</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz, then, like all the philosophers of the seventeenth century,
+  was reforming scholasticism in the light of a new physical science. The
+  science was mathematical in its form, mechanistical in its doctrine, and
+  unanswerable in its evidence&mdash;it got results. But it was
+  metaphysically intractable, and the doctrines of infinite and finite
+  substance which it generated furnish a gallery of metaphysical
+  grotesques; unless we are to except Leibniz; his system is, if nothing
+  else, a miracle of ingenuity, and there are moments when we are in danger
+  of believing it.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a natural mistake for the student of seventeenth-century thought
+  to underestimate the tenacity of scholastic Aristotelianism. Descartes,
+  we all know, was reared in it, but then Descartes overthrew it; and he
+  had done his work and died by the time that Leibniz was of an age to
+  philosophize at all. We expect to see Leibniz starting on his shoulders
+  and climbing on from there. We are disappointed. Leibniz himself tells us
+  that he was raised in the scholastic teaching. His acquaintance with
+  Descartes's opinions was second-hand, and they were retailed to him only
+  that they might be derided. He agreed, like an amiable youth, with his
+  preceptors.</p>
+
+  <p>The next phase of his development gave him a direct knowledge of
+  Cartesian writings, and of other modern books beside, such as those of
+  the atomist Gassendi. He was delighted with what he read, because of its
+  fertility in the field of physics and mathematics; and for a short time
+  he was an enthusiastic modern. But presently he became dissatisfied. The
+  new systems did not go far enough, they were still scientifically
+  inadequate. At the same time they went too far, and carried metaphysical
+  paradox beyond the limits of human credulity.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 13 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page13"></a>[13]</span></p>
+
+  <p>There is no mystery about Leibniz's scientific objections to the new
+  philosophers. If he condemned them here, it was on the basis of
+  scientific thought and observation. Descartes's formulation of the laws
+  of motion could, for example, be refuted by physical experiment; and if
+  his general view of physical nature was bound up with it, then so much
+  the worse for the Cartesian philosophy. But whence came Leibniz's more
+  strictly metaphysical objections? Where had he learned that standard of
+  metaphysical adequacy which showed up the inadequacy of the new
+  metaphysicians? His own disciples might be satisfied to reply, that he
+  learnt it from Reason herself; but the answer will not pass with us.
+  Leibniz reasoned, indeed, but he did not reason from nowhere, nor would
+  he have got anywhere if he had. His conception of metaphysical reason was
+  what his early scholastic training had made it.</p>
+
+  <p>There are certain absurd opinions which we are sure we have been
+  taught, although, when put to it, we find it hard to name the teacher.
+  Among them is something of this sort. 'Leibniz was a scholarly and
+  sympathetic thinker. He had more sense of history than his
+  contemporaries, and he was instinctively eclectic. He believed he could
+  learn something from each of his great predecessors. We see him reaching
+  back to cull a notion from Plato or from Aristotle; he even found
+  something of use in the scholastics. In particular, he picked out the
+  Aristotelian "entelechy" to stop a gap in the philosophy of his own age.'
+  What this form of statement ignores is that Leibniz <i>was</i> a
+  scholastic: a scholastic endeavouring, like Descartes before him, to
+  revolutionize scholasticism. The word 'entelechy' was, indeed, a piece of
+  antiquity which Leibniz revived, but the thing for which it stood was the
+  most familiar of current scholastic conceptions. 'Entelechy' means active
+  principle of wholeness or completion in an individual thing.
+  Scholasticism was content to talk about it under the name of 'substantial
+  form' or 'formal cause'. But the scholastic interpretation of the idea
+  was hopelessly discredited by the new science, and the scholastic terms
+  shared the discredit of scholastic doctrine. Leibniz wanted a term with a
+  more general sound. 'There is an <i>X</i>', he wanted to say, 'which
+  scholasticism has defined as substantial form, but I am going to give a
+  new definition of it.' Entelechy was a useful name for <i>X</i>, the more
+  so as it had the authority of Aristotle, the master of scholasticism.</p>
+
+  <p>Under the name of entelechy Leibniz was upholding the soul of <!--
+  Page 14 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page14"></a>[14]</span>
+  scholastic doctrine, while retrenching the limbs and outward flourishes.
+  The doctrine of substantial form which he learnt in his youth had had
+  <i>something</i> in it; he could not settle down in the principles of
+  Descartes or of Gassendi, because both ignored this vital
+  <i>something</i>. Since the requirements of a new science would not allow
+  a return to sheer scholasticism, it was necessary to find a fresh
+  philosophy, in which entelechy and mechanism might be accommodated side
+  by side.</p>
+
+  <p>If one had asked any 'modern' of the seventeenth century to name the
+  'ancient' doctrine he most abominated, he would most likely have replied,
+  'Substantial form'. Let us recall what was rejected under this name, and
+  why.</p>
+
+  <p>The medieval account of physical nature had been dominated by what we
+  may call common-sense biology. Biology, indeed, is the science of the
+  living, and the medievals were no more inclined than we are to endow all
+  physical bodies with life. What they did do was to take living bodies as
+  typical, and to treat other bodies as imperfectly analogous to them. Such
+  an approach was <i>a priori</i> reasonable enough. For we may be expected
+  to know best the physical being closest to our own; and we, at any rate,
+  are alive. Why not argue from the better known to the less known, from
+  the nearer to the more remote, interpreting other things by the formula
+  of our own being, and allowing whatever discount is necessary for their
+  degree of unlikeness to us?</p>
+
+  <p>Common-sense biology reasons as follows. In a living body there is a
+  certain pattern of organized parts, a certain rhythm of successive
+  motions, and a certain range of characteristic activities. The pattern,
+  the sheer anatomy, is basic; but it cannot long continue to exist
+  (outside a refrigerator) without accompanying vital rhythms in heart,
+  respiration and digestion. Nor do these perform their parts without the
+  intermittent support of variable but still characteristic activities:
+  dogs not only breathe and digest, they run about, hunt their food, look
+  for mates, bark at cats, and so on. The anatomical pattern, the vital
+  rhythm, and the characteristic acts together express dogginess; they
+  reveal the specific form of the dog. They <i>reveal</i> it; exactly what
+  the specific form <i>consisted in</i> was the subject of much medieval
+  speculation. It need not concern us here.</p>
+
+  <p>Taking the form of the species for granted, common-sense biology
+  proceeds to ask how it comes to be in a given instance, say <!-- Page 15
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page15"></a>[15]</span> in the dog
+  Toby. Before this dog was born or thought of, his form or species was
+  displayed in each of his parents. And now it looks as though the form of
+  dog had detached itself from them through the generative act, and set up
+  anew on its own account. How does it do that? By getting hold of some
+  materials in which to express itself. At first it takes them from the
+  body of the mother, afterwards it collects them from a wider environment,
+  and what the dog eats becomes the dog.</p>
+
+  <p>What, then, is the relation of the assimilated materials to the
+  dog-form which assimilates them? Before assimilation, they have their own
+  form. Before the dog eats the leg of mutton, it has the form given to it
+  by its place in the body of a sheep. What happens to the mutton? Is it
+  without remainder transubstantiated from sheep into dog? It loses all its
+  distinctively sheep-like characteristicsm but there may be some more
+  basically material characteristics which it preserves. They underlay the
+  structure of the mutton, and they continue to underlie the structure of
+  the dog's flesh which supplants it. Whatever these characteristics may
+  be, let us call them common material characteristics, and let us say that
+  they belong to or compose a common material nature.</p>
+
+  <p>The common material nature has its own way of existing, and perhaps
+  its own principles of physical action. We may suppose that we know much
+  or that we know little about it. This one thing at least we know, that it
+  is capable of becoming alternatively either mutton or dog's flesh. It is
+  not essential to it to be mutton, or mutton it would always be; nor dog's
+  flesh, or it would always be dog's flesh. It is capable of becoming
+  either, according as it is captured by one or other system of formal
+  organization. So the voters who are to go to the polls are, by their
+  common nature, Englishmen; they are essentially neither Socialist curs
+  nor Conservative sheep, but intrinsically capable of becoming either, if
+  they become captured by either system of party organization.</p>
+
+  <p>According to this way of thinking, there is a certain <i>looseness</i>
+  about the relation of the common material nature to the higher forms of
+  organization capable of capturing it. Considered in itself alone, it is
+  perhaps to be seen as governed by absolutely determined laws of its own.
+  It is heavy, then it will fall unless obstructed; it is solid, then it
+  will resist intrusions. But considered as material for organization by
+  higher forms, it is indeterminate. It acts in one sort of way under the
+  persuasion of the sheep-form, and <!-- Page 16 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page16"></a>[16]</span> in another sort of way
+  under the persuasion of the dog-form, and we cannot tell how it will act
+  until we know which form is going to capture it. No amount of study
+  bestowed on the common material nature will enable us to judge how it
+  will behave under the persuasion of the higher organizing form. The only
+  way to discover that is to examine the higher form itself.</p>
+
+  <p>Every form, then, will really be the object of a distinct science. The
+  form of the sheep and the form of the dog have much in common, but that
+  merely happens to be so; we cannot depend upon it, or risk inferences
+  from sheep to dog: we must examine each in itself; we shall really need a
+  science of probatology about sheep, and cynology about dogs. Again, the
+  common material nature has its own principles of being and action, so it
+  will need a science of itself, which we may call hylology. Each of these
+  sciences is mistress in her own province; but how many there are, and how
+  puzzlingly they overlap! So long as we remain within the province of a
+  single science, we may be able to think rigorously, everything will be
+  'tight'. But as soon as we consider border-issues between one province
+  and another, farewell to exactitude: everything will be 'loose'. We can
+  think out hylology till we are blue in the face, but we shall never
+  discover anything about the entry of material elements into higher
+  organizations, or how they behave when they get there. We may form
+  perfect definitions and descriptions of the form of the dog as such, and
+  still derive no rules for telling what elements of matter will enter into
+  the body of a given dog or how they will be placed when they do. All we
+  can be sure of is, that the dog-form will keep itself going in, and by
+  means of, the material it embodies&mdash;unless the dog dies. But what
+  happens to the matter in the body of the dog is 'accidental' to the
+  nature of the matter; and the use of this matter, rather than of some
+  other equally suitable, is accidental to the nature of the dog.</p>
+
+  <p>No account of material events can dispense with accidental relations
+  altogether. We must at least recognize that there are accidental
+  relations between particular things. Accident in the sense of brute fact
+  had to be acknowledged even by the tidiest and most dogmatic atomism of
+  the last century. That atomism must allow it to be accidental, in this
+  sense, that the space surrounding any given atom was occupied by other
+  atoms in a given manner. It belonged neither to the nature of space to be
+  occupied by just those atoms in just those places, nor to the nature of
+  the atoms to <!-- Page 17 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page17"></a>[17]</span> be distributed just like that over space;
+  and so in a certain sense the environment of any atom was an accidental
+  environment. That is, the particular arrangement of the environment was
+  accidental. The nature of the environment was not accidental at all. It
+  was proper to the nature of the atom to be in interaction with other
+  atoms over a spatial field, and it never encountered in the
+  fellow-denizens of space any other nature but its own. It was not subject
+  to the accident of meeting strange natures, nor of becoming suddenly
+  subject to strange or unequal laws of interaction. All interactions,
+  being with its own kind, were reciprocal and obedient to a single set of
+  calculable laws.</p>
+
+  <p>But the medieval philosophy had asserted accidental relations between
+  distinct sorts of <i>natures</i>, the form of living dog and the form of
+  dead matter, for example. No one could know <i>a priori</i> what effect
+  an accidental relation would produce, and all accidental relations
+  between different pairs of natures were different: at the most there was
+  analogy between them. Every different nature had to be separately
+  observed, and when you had observed them all, you could still simply
+  write an inventory of them, you could not hope to rationalize your body
+  of knowledge. Let us narrow the field and consider what this doctrine
+  allows us to know about the wood of a certain kind of tree. We shall
+  begin by observing the impressions it makes on our several senses, and we
+  shall attribute to it a substantial form such as naturally to give rise
+  to these impressions, without, perhaps, being so rash as to claim a
+  knowledge of what this substantial form is. Still we do not know what its
+  capacities of physical action and passion may be. We shall find them out
+  by observing it in relation to different 'natures'. It turns out to be
+  combustible by fire, resistant to water, tractable to the carpenter's
+  tools, intractable to his digestive organs, harmless to ostriches,
+  nourishing to wood-beetles. Each of these capacities of the wood is
+  distinct; we cannot relate them intelligibly to one another, nor deduce
+  them from the assumed fundamental 'woodiness'.</p>
+
+  <p>We can now see why 'substantial forms' were the <i>bêtes noires</i> of
+  the seventeenth-century philosophers. It was because they turned nature
+  into an unmanageable jungle, in which trees, bushes, and parasites of a
+  thousand kinds wildly interlaced. There was nothing for it, if science
+  was to proceed, but to clear the ground and replant with spruce in rows:
+  to postulate a single uniform nature, of which there should be a single
+  science. Now neither probatology <!-- Page 18 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page18"></a>[18]</span> nor cynology could hope to be
+  universal&mdash;the world is not all sheep nor all dog: it would have to
+  be hylology; for the world is, in its spatial aspect, all material. Let
+  us say, then, that there is one uniform material nature of things, and
+  that everything else consists in the arrangements of the basic material
+  nature; as the show of towers and mountains in the sunset results simply
+  from an arrangement of vapours. And let us suppose that the interactions
+  of the parts of matter are all like those which we can observe in dead
+  manipulable bodies&mdash;in mechanism, in fact. Such was the postulate of
+  the new philosophers, and it yielded them results.</p>
+
+  <p>It yielded them results, and that was highly gratifying. But what,
+  meanwhile, had happened to those palpable facts of common experience from
+  which the whole philosophy of substantial forms had taken its rise? Is
+  the wholeness of a living thing the mere resultant of the orderly
+  operations of its parts? Is a bee no more essentially one than a swarm
+  is? Is the life of a living animal indistinguishable from the rhythm of a
+  going watch, except in degree of complication and subtlety of
+  contrivance? And if an animal's body, say my own, is simply an
+  agglomerate of minute interacting material units, and its wholeness is
+  merely accidental and apparent, how is my conscious mind to be adjusted
+  to it? For my consciousness appears to identify itself with that whole
+  vital pattern which used to be called the substantial form. We are now
+  told that the pattern is nothing real or active, but the mere accidental
+  resultant of distinct interacting forces: it does no work, it exercises
+  no influence or control, it <i>is</i> nothing. How then can it be the
+  vehicle and instrument of my conscious soul? It cannot. Then is my soul
+  homeless? Or is it to be identified with the activity and fortunes of a
+  single atomic constituent of my body, a single cog in the animal
+  clockwork? If so, how irrational! For the soul does not experience itself
+  as the soul of one minute part, but as the soul of the body.</p>
+
+  <p>Such questions rose thick and fast in the minds of the
+  seventeenth-century philosophers. It will cause us no great surprise that
+  Leibniz should have quickly felt that the Formal Principle of Aristotle
+  and of the Scholastic philosophy must be by hook or by crook
+  reintroduced&mdash;not as the detested <i>substantial form</i>, but under
+  a name by which it might hope to smell more sweet, <i>entelechy</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Nothing so tellingly revealed the difficulties of the new philosophy
+  <!-- Page 19 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page19"></a>[19]</span> in
+  dealing with living bodies as the insufficiency of the solutions
+  Descartes had proposed. He had boldly declared the unity of animal life
+  to be purely mechanical, and denied that brutes had souls at all, or any
+  sensation. He had to admit soul in man, but he still denied the
+  substantial unity of the human body. It was put together like a watch, it
+  was many things, not one: if Descartes had lived in our time, he would
+  have been delighted to compare it with a telephone system, the nerves
+  taking the place of the wires, and being so arranged that all currents of
+  'animal spirit' flowing in them converged upon a single unit, a gland at
+  the base of the brain. In this unit, or in the convergence of all the
+  motions upon it, the 'unity' of the body virtually consisted; and the
+  soul was incarnate, not in the plurality of members (for how could it,
+  being one, indwell many things?), but in the single gland.</p>
+
+  <p>Even so, the relation between the soul and the gland was absolutely
+  unintelligible, as Descartes disarmingly confessed. Incarnation was all
+  very well in the old philosophy: those who had allowed the interaction of
+  disparate natures throughout the physical world need find no particular
+  difficulty about the special case of it provided by incarnation. Why
+  should not a form of conscious life so interact with what would otherwise
+  be dead matter as to 'indwell' it? But the very principle of the new
+  philosophy disallowed the interaction of disparate natures, because such
+  an interaction did not allow of exact formulation, it was a 'loose' and
+  not a 'tight' relation.</p>
+
+  <p>From a purely practical point of view the much derided pineal gland
+  theory would serve. If we could be content to view Descartes as a man who
+  wanted to make the world safe for physical science, then there would be a
+  good deal to be said for his doctrine. In the old philosophy exact
+  science had been frustrated by the hypothesis of loose relations all over
+  the field of nature. Descartes had cleared them from as much of the field
+  as science was then in a position to investigate; he allowed only one
+  such relation to subsist, the one which experience appeared unmistakably
+  to force upon us&mdash;that between our own mind and its bodily vehicle.
+  He had exorcized the spirits from the rest of nature; and though there
+  was a spirit here which could not be exorcized, the philosophic conjurer
+  had nevertheless confined it and its unaccountable pranks within a
+  minutely narrow magic circle: all mind could do <!-- Page 20 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page20"></a>[20]</span> was to turn the one tiny
+  switch at the centre of its animal telephone system. It could create no
+  energy&mdash;it could merely redirect the currents actually flowing.</p>
+
+  <p>Practically this might do, but speculatively it was most disturbing.
+  For if the 'loose relation' had to be admitted in one instance, it was
+  admitted in principle; and one could not get rid of the suspicion that it
+  would turn up elsewhere, and that the banishment of it from every other
+  field represented a convenient pragmatic postulate rather than a solid
+  metaphysical truth. Moreover, the correlation of the unitary soul with
+  the unitary gland might do justice to a mechanistical philosophy, but it
+  did not do justice to the soul's own consciousness of itself. The soul's
+  consciousness is the 'idea' or 'representation' of the life of the whole
+  body, certainly not of the life of the pineal gland nor, as the
+  unreflective nowadays would say, of the brain. I am not conscious in, or
+  of, my brain except when I have a headache; consciousness is in my eyes
+  and finger-tips and so on. It is physically true, no doubt, that
+  consciousness in and of my finger-tips is not possible without the
+  functioning of my brain; but that is a poor reason for locating the
+  consciousness in the brain. The filament of the electric bulb will not be
+  incandescent apart from the functioning of the dynamo; but that is a poor
+  reason for saying that the incandescence is in the dynamo.</p>
+
+  <p>Certainly the area of representation in our mind is not simply
+  equivalent to the area of our body. But in so far as the confines of
+  mental representation part company with the confines of the body, it is
+  not that they may contract and fall back upon the pineal gland, but that
+  they may expand and advance over the surrounding world. The mind does not
+  represent its own body merely, it represents the world in so far as the
+  world affects that body or is physically reproduced in it. The mind has
+  no observable natural relation to the pineal gland. It has only two
+  natural relations: to its body as a whole and to its effective
+  environment. What Descartes had really done was to pretend that the soul
+  was related to the pineal gland as it is in fact related to its whole
+  body; and then that it was related to the bodily members as in fact it is
+  related to outer environment. The members became an inner environment,
+  known only in so far as they affected the pineal gland; just as the outer
+  environment in its turn was to be known only in so far as it affected the
+  members.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 21 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page21"></a>[21]</span></p>
+
+  <p>This doctrine of a double environment was wholly artificial. It was
+  forced on Descartes by the requirements of mechanistical science: if the
+  members were simply a plurality of things, they must really be parts of
+  environment; the body which the soul indwelt must be <i>a</i> body;
+  presumably, then, the pineal gland. An untenable compromise, surely,
+  between admitting and denying the reality of the soul's incarnation.</p>
+
+  <p>What, then, was to be done? Descartes's rivals and successors
+  attempted several solutions, which it would be too long to examine here.
+  They dissatisfied Leibniz and they have certainly no less dissatisfied
+  posterity. It will be enough for us here to consider what Leibniz did. He
+  admitted, to begin with, the psychological fact. The unity of
+  consciousness is the representation of a plurality&mdash;the plurality of
+  the members, and through them the plurality of the world. Here, surely,
+  was the very principle the new philosophy needed for the reconciliation
+  of substantial unity with mechanical plurality of parts. For it is
+  directly evident to us that consciousness focuses the plurality of
+  environing things in a unity of representation. This is no philosophical
+  theory, it is a simple fact. Our body, then, as a physical system is a
+  mechanical plurality; as focused in consciousness it is a unity of
+  'idea'.</p>
+
+  <p>Very well: but we have not got far yet. For the old difficulty still
+  remains&mdash;it is purely arbitrary, after all, that a unitary
+  consciousness should be attached to, and represent, a mechanical
+  collection of things which happen to interact in a sort of pattern. If
+  there is a consciousness attached to human bodies, then why not to
+  systems of clockwork? If the body is <i>represented</i> as unity, it must
+  surely be because it <i>is</i> unity, as the old philosophy had held. But
+  how can we reintroduce unity into the body without reintroducing
+  substantial form, and destroying the mechanistical plurality which the
+  new science demanded?</p>
+
+  <p>It is at this point that Leibniz produces the speculative postulate of
+  his system. Why not reverse the relation, and make the members represent
+  the mind as the mind represents the members? For then the unity of person
+  represented in the mind will become something actual in the members
+  also.</p>
+
+  <p>Representation appears to common sense to be a one-way sort of
+  traffic. If my mind represents my bodily members, something happens to my
+  mind, for it becomes a representation of such members in such a state;
+  but nothing happens to the members by <!-- Page 22 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page22"></a>[22]</span> their being so
+  represented in the mind. The mental representation obeys the bodily
+  facts; the bodily facts do not obey the mental representation. It seems
+  nonsense to say that my members obey my mind <i>because</i> they are
+  mirrored in it. And yet my members do obey my mind, or at least common
+  sense supposes so. Sometimes my mind, instead of representing the state
+  my members are in, represents a state which it intends that they shall be
+  in, for example, that my hand should go through the motion of writing
+  these words. And my hand obeys; its action becomes the moving diagram of
+  my thought, my thought is represented or expressed in the manual act.
+  Here the relation of mind and members appears to be reversed: instead of
+  its representing them, they represent it. With this representation it is
+  the opposite of what it was with the other. By the members' being
+  represented in the mind, something happened to the mind, and nothing to
+  the members; by the mind's being represented in the members something
+  happens to the members and nothing to the mind.</p>
+
+  <p>Why should not we take this seriously? Why not allow that there is
+  two-way traffic&mdash;by one relation the mind represents the members, by
+  another the members represent the mind? But then again, how can we take
+  it seriously? For representation, in the required sense, is a mental act;
+  brute matter can represent nothing, only mind can represent. And the
+  members are brute matter. But are they? How do we know that? By brute
+  matter we understand extended lumps of stuff, interacting with one
+  another mechanically, as do, for example, two cogs in a piece of
+  clockwork. But this is a large-scale view. The cogs are themselves
+  composed of interrelated parts and those parts of others, and so on <i>ad
+  infinitum</i>. Who knows what the ultimate constituents really are? The
+  'modern' philosophers, certainly, have proposed no hypothesis about them
+  which even looks like making sense. They have supposed that the
+  apparently inert lumps, the cogs, are composed of parts themselves
+  equally inert, and that by subdivision we shall still reach nothing but
+  the inert. But this supposition is in flat contradiction with what
+  physical theory demands. We have to allow the reality of <i>force</i> in
+  physics. Now the force which large-scale bodies display may easily be the
+  block-effect of activity in their minute real constituents. If not, where
+  does it come from? Let it be supposed, then, that these minute real
+  constituents are active because they are alive, because they are minds;
+  for indeed we have <!-- Page 23 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page23"></a>[23]</span> no notion of activity other than the
+  perception we have of our own. We have no notion of it except as
+  something mental. On the hypothesis that the constituents of active body
+  are also mental, this limitation in our conception of activity need cause
+  us neither sorrow nor surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>The mind-units which make up body will not of course be developed and
+  fully conscious minds like yours or mine, and it is only for want of a
+  better word that we call them minds at all. They will be mere
+  unselfconscious representations of their physical environment, as it
+  might be seen from the physical point to which they belong by a human
+  mind paying no attention at all to its own seeing. How many of these
+  rudimentary 'minds' will there be in my body? As many as you
+  like&mdash;as many as it is possible there should be&mdash;say an
+  infinite number and have done with it.</p>
+
+  <p>We may now observe how this hypothesis introduces real formal unity
+  without prejudicing mechanical plurality. Each of the mind-units in my
+  body is itself and substantially distinct. But since each, in its own way
+  and according to its own position, represents the superior and more
+  developed mind which I call 'me', they will order themselves according to
+  a common form. The order is real, not accidental: it is like the order of
+  troops on a parade-ground. Each man is a distinct active unit, but each
+  is really expressing by his action the mind of the officer in command. He
+  is expressing no less his relation to the other men in the ranks&mdash;to
+  obey the officer is to keep in step with them. So the metaphysical units
+  of the body, being all minds, represent one another as well as the
+  dominant mind: one another co-ordinately, the dominant mind
+  subordinately.</p>
+
+  <p>But if the metaphysically real units of the body are of the nature of
+  mind, then <i>the</i> mind is a mind among minds, a spirit-atom among
+  spirit-atoms. What then constitutes its superiority or dominance, and
+  makes it a mind <i>par excellence</i>? Well, what constitutes the officer
+  an officer? Two things: a more developed mentality and the fact of being
+  obeyed. In military life these two factors are not always perfectly
+  proportioned to one another, but in the order of Leibniz's universe they
+  are. A fuller power to represent the universe is necessarily combined
+  with dominance over an organized troop of members; for the mind knows the
+  universe only in so far as the universe is expressed in its body. <!--
+  Page 24 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page24"></a>[24]</span> That is
+  what the <i>finitude</i> of the mind means. Only an infinite mind
+  appreciates the whole plurality of things in themselves; a finite mind
+  perceives them in so far as mirrored in the physical being of an
+  organized body of members. The more adequate the mirror, the more
+  adequate the representation: the more highly organized the body, the more
+  developed the mind.</p>
+
+  <p>The developed mind has an elaborate body; but the least developed mind
+  has still some body, or it would lack any mirror whatever through which
+  to represent the world. This means, in effect, that Leibniz's system is
+  not an unmitigated spiritual atomism. For though the spiritual atoms, or
+  monads, are the ultimate constituents out of which nature is composed,
+  they stand composed together from the beginning in a minimal order which
+  cannot be broken up. Each monad, if it is to be anything at all, must be
+  a continuing finite representation of the universe, and to be that it
+  must have a body, that is to say, it must have other monads in a
+  permanent relation of mutual correspondence with it. And if you said to
+  Leibniz, 'But surely any physical body can be broken up, and this must
+  mean the dissolution of the organic relation between its monadical
+  constituents,' he would take refuge in the infinitesimal. The wonders
+  revealed by that new miracle, the microscope, suggested what the
+  intrinsic divisibility of space itself suggests&mdash;whatever
+  organization is broken up, there will still be a minute organization
+  within each of the fragments which remains unbroken&mdash;and so <i>ad
+  infinitum</i>. You will never come down to loose monads, monads out of
+  all organization. You will never disembody the monads, and so remove
+  their representative power; you will only reduce their bodies and so
+  impoverish their representative power. In this sense no animal dies and
+  no animal is generated. Death is the reduction and generation the
+  enrichment of some existing monad's body; and, by being that, is the
+  enrichment or the reduction of the monad's mental life.</p>
+
+  <p>'But,' our common sense protests, 'it is too great a strain on our
+  credulity to make the real nature of things so utterly different from
+  what sense and science make of them. If the real universe is what you say
+  it is, why do our minds represent it to us as they do?' The philosopher's
+  answer is, 'Because they <i>represent</i> it. According to the truth of
+  things, each monad is simply its own mental life, its own world-view, its
+  own thoughts and desires. To know things as they are would be
+  simultaneously to live over, as though from <!-- Page 25 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page25"></a>[25]</span> within and by a miracle
+  of sympathy, the biographies of an infinite number of distinct monads.
+  This is absolutely impossible. Our senses represent the coexistent
+  families of monads <i>in the gross</i>, and therefore conventionally;
+  what is in fact the mutual representation of monads in ordered systems,
+  is represented as the mechanical interaction of spatially extended and
+  material parts.' This does not mean that science is overthrown. The
+  physical world-view is in terms of the convention of representation, but
+  it is not, for all that, illusory. It can, ideally, be made as true as it
+  is capable of being. There is no reason whatever for confusing the
+  'well-grounded seemings' of the apparent physical world with the
+  fantastic seemings of dream and hallucination.</p>
+
+  <p>So far the argument seems to draw whatever cogency it has from the
+  simplicity and naturalness of the notion of representation. The nature of
+  idea, it is assumed, is to represent plurality in a unified view. If idea
+  did not represent, it would not be idea. And since there <i>is</i> idea
+  (for our minds at least exist and are made up of idea) there is
+  representation. It belongs to idea to represent, and since the whole
+  world has now been interpreted as a system of mutually representing
+  ideations, or ideators, it might seem that all their mutual relations are
+  perfectly natural, a harmony of agreement which could not be other than
+  it is. But if so, why does Leibniz keep saying that the harmony is
+  <i>pre-established</i>, by special and infinitely elaborate divine
+  decrees?</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz himself says that the very nature of representation excludes
+  interaction. By representing environment a mind does not do anything to
+  environment, that is plain. But it is no less plain that environment does
+  nothing to it, either. The act of representing is simply the act of the
+  mind; it represents <i>in view of</i> environment, of course, but not
+  under the causal influence of environment. Representation is a business
+  carried on by the mind on its own account, and in virtue of its innate
+  power to represent.</p>
+
+  <p>Very well; but does this consideration really drive us into theology?
+  Is not Leibniz the victim of a familiar fallacy, that of incompletely
+  stated alternatives? '<i>Either</i> finite beings interact <i>or else</i>
+  they do not directly condition one another. Monads do not interact,
+  therefore they do not directly condition one another. How then explain
+  the actual conformity of their mutual representation, without recourse to
+  divine fore-ordaining?' It seems sufficient to introduce a further
+  alternative in the first line of the argument, <!-- Page 26 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page26"></a>[26]</span> and we are rid of the
+  theology. Things may condition the action of a further thing, without
+  acting upon it. It acts of itself, but it acts in view of what they are.
+  We are tempted to conclude that Leibniz has introduced the <i>Deus ex
+  machina</i> with the fatal facility of his age. 'Where a little further
+  meditation on the characters in the play would furnish a natural
+  <i>dénouement</i>, he swings divine intervention on to the scene by wires
+  from the ceiling. It is easy for us to reconstruct for him the end of the
+  piece without recourse to stage-machines.'</p>
+
+  <p>Is it? No, I fear it is not. There is really no avoiding the
+  pre-established harmony. And so we shall discover, if we pursue our train
+  of reflexion a little further. It is natural, we were saying, than an
+  idea should represent an environment; indeed, it <i>is</i> the
+  representation of one. Given no environment to represent, it would be
+  empty, a mere capacity for representation. Then every idea or ideator,
+  taken merely in itself, <i>is</i> an empty capacity. But of what is the
+  environment of each made up? According to the Leibnitian theory, of
+  further ideas or ideators: of empty capacities, therefore. Then no idea
+  will either be anything in itself, or find anything in its neighbours to
+  represent. An unhappy predicament, like that of a literary clique in
+  which all the members are adepts at discussing one another's
+  ideas&mdash;only that unfortunately none of them are provided with any;
+  or like the shaky economics of the fabled Irish village where they all
+  lived by taking in one another's washing.</p>
+
+  <p>It is useless, then, to conceive representations as simply coming into
+  existence in response to environment, and modelling themselves on
+  environment. They must all mutually reflect environment or they would not
+  be representations; but they must also exist as themselves and in their
+  own right or there would be no environment for them mutually to
+  represent. Since the world is infinitely various, each representor must
+  have its own distinct character or nature, as our minds have: that is to
+  say, it must represent in its own individual way; and all these endlessly
+  various representations must be so constituted as to form a mutually
+  reflecting harmony. Considered as a representation, each monadical
+  existence simply reflects the universe after its own manner. But
+  considered as something to be represented by the others, it is a
+  self-existent mental life, or world of ideas. Now when we are considering
+  the fact of representation, that which is to be represented comes first
+  and the representation follows upon it. <!-- Page 27 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page27"></a>[27]</span> Thus in considering the
+  Leibnitian universe, we must begin with the monads as self-existent
+  mental lives, or worlds of ideas; their representation of one another
+  comes second. Nothing surely, then, but omnipotent creative wisdom could
+  have pre-established between so many distinct given mental worlds that
+  harmony which constitutes their mutual representation.</p>
+
+  <p>Our common-sense pluralistic thinking escapes from the need of the
+  pre-established harmony by distinguishing what we are from what we do.
+  Let the world be made up of a plurality of agents in a 'loose' order,
+  with room to manoeuvre and to adjust themselves to one another. Then, by
+  good luck or good management, through friction and disaster, by trial and
+  error, by accident or invention, they may work out for themselves a
+  harmony of <i>action</i>. There is no need for divine preordaining here.
+  But on Leibniz's view what the monads do is to represent, and what they
+  are is representation; there is no ultimate distinction between what they
+  are and what they do: all that they do belongs to what they are. The
+  whole system of action in each monad, which fits with such infinite
+  complexity the system of action in each other monad, is precisely the
+  existence of that monad, and apart from it the monad is not. The monads
+  do not <i>achieve</i> a harmony, they <i>are</i> a harmony, and therefore
+  they are pre-established in harmony.</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz denied that he invoked God to intervene in nature, or that
+  there was anything arbitrary or artificial about his physical theology.
+  He was simply analysing nature and finding it to be a system of mutual
+  representation; he was analysing mutual representation and finding it to
+  be of its nature intrinsically pre-established, and therefore
+  God-dependent. He was not adding anything to mutual representation, he
+  was just showing what it necessarily contained or implied. At least he
+  was doing nothing worse than recognized scholastic practice. Scholastic
+  Aristotelianism explained all natural causality as response to stimulus,
+  and then had to postulate a stimulus which stimulated without being
+  stimulated, and this was God. Apart from this supreme and first stimulus
+  nothing would in fact be moving. The Aristotelians claimed simply to be
+  analysing the nature of physical motion as they perceived it, and to find
+  the necessity of perpetually applied divine stimulation implicit in it.
+  No violence was thereby done to the system of physical motion nor was
+  anything brought in from <!-- Page 28 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page28"></a>[28]</span> without to patch it up; it was simply found
+  to be of its own nature God-dependent.</p>
+
+  <p>It seems as though the reproachful description <i>'Deus ex
+  machina'</i> should be reserved for more arbitrary expedients than
+  Aristotle's or Leibniz's, say for the occasionalist theory. Occasionalism
+  appeared to introduce God that he might make physical matter do what it
+  had no natural tendency to do, viz. to obey the volitions of finite mind.
+  Ideas, on the other hand, have a natural tendency to represent one
+  another, for to be an idea is to be a representation; God is not
+  introduced by Leibniz to make them correspond, he is introduced to work a
+  system in which they shall correspond. This may not be <i>Deus-ex-machina
+  philosophy</i>, but it is <i>physical theology</i>; that is to say, it
+  treats divine action as one factor among the factors which together
+  constitute the working of the natural system. And this appears to be
+  perhaps unscientific, certainly blasphemous: God's action cannot be a
+  factor among factors; the Creator works through and in all creaturely
+  action equally; we can never say 'This is the creature, and that is God'
+  of distinguishable causalities in the natural world. The creature is, in
+  its creaturely action, self-sufficient: but because a creature,
+  insufficient to itself throughout, and sustained by its Creator both in
+  existence and in action.</p>
+
+  <p>The only acceptable argument for theism is that which corresponds to
+  the religious consciousness, and builds upon the insufficiency of finite
+  existence throughout, because it is finite. All arguments to God's
+  existence from a particular gap in our account of the world of finites
+  are to be rejected. They do not indicate God, they indicate the failure
+  of our power to analyse the world-order. When Leibniz discovered that his
+  system of mutual representations needed to be pre-established, he ought
+  to have seen that he had come up a cul-de-sac and backed out; he ought
+  not to have said, 'With the help of God I will leap over the wall.'</p>
+
+  <p>If we condemn Leibniz for writing physical theology, we condemn not
+  him but his age. No contemporary practice was any better, and much of it
+  a good deal worse, as Leibniz liked somewhat complacently to point out.
+  And because he comes to theology through physical theology, that does not
+  mean that all his theology was physical theology and as such to be
+  written off. On the contrary, Leibniz is led to wrestle with many
+  problems which beset any philosophical theism of the Christian type. This
+  is particularly <!-- Page 29 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page29"></a>[29]</span> so in the <i>Theodicy</i>, as its many
+  citations of theologians suggest. His discussions never lack ingenuity,
+  and the system of creation and providence in which they result has much
+  of that luminous serenity which colours the best works of the Age of
+  Reason.</p>
+
+  <p>Every theistic philosopher is bound, with whatever cautions, to
+  conceive God by the analogy of the human mind. When Leibniz declares the
+  harmony of monads to be pre-established by God, he is invoking the image
+  of intelligent human pre-arrangement. Nor is he content simply to leave
+  it at that: he endeavours as well as he may to conceive the sort of act
+  by which God pre-arranges; and this involves the detailed adaptation for
+  theological purposes of Leibnitian doctrine about the human mind.</p>
+
+  <p>The human mind, as we have seen, is the mind predominant in a certain
+  system of 'minds', viz. in those which constitute the members of the
+  human body. If we call it predominant, we mean that its system of ideas
+  is more developed than theirs, so that there are more points in which
+  each of them conforms to it than in which it conforms to any one of them.
+  The conception of a divine pre-establishing mind will be analogous. It
+  will be the conception of a mind <i>absolutely</i> dominant, to whose
+  ideas, that is to say, the whole system simply corresponds, without any
+  reciprocating correspondence on his side. In a certain sense this is to
+  make God the 'Mind of the World'; and yet the associations of the phrase
+  are misleading. It suggests that the world is an organism or body in
+  which the divine mind is incarnate, and on which he relies for his
+  representations. But that is nonsense; the world is not <i>a</i> body,
+  nor is it organic to God. Absolute dominance involves absolute
+  transcendence: if everything in the world without remainder simply obeys
+  the divine thoughts, that is only another way of saying that the world is
+  the creature of God; the whole system is pre-established by him who is
+  absolute Being and perfectly independent of the world.</p>
+
+  <p>Of createdness, or pre-establishedness, there is no more to be said:
+  we can think of it as nothing but the pure or absolute case of subjection
+  to dominant mind. It is no use asking further <i>how</i> God's thoughts
+  are obeyed in the existence and action of things. What we can and must
+  enquire into further, is the nature of the divine thoughts which are thus
+  obeyed. They must be understood to be volitions or decrees. There are
+  indeed two ways in which things obey the divine thought, and
+  correspondingly two sorts of divine <!-- Page 30 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page30"></a>[30]</span> thoughts that they obey.
+  In so far as created things conform to the mere universal principles of
+  reason, they obey a reasonableness which is an inherent characteristic of
+  the divine mind itself. If God wills the existence of any creature, that
+  creature's existence must observe the limits prescribed by eternal
+  reason: it cannot, for example, both have and lack a certain
+  characteristic in the same sense and at the same time; nor can it contain
+  two parts and two parts which are not also countable as one part and
+  three parts. Finite things, if they exist at all, must thus conform to
+  the reasonableness of the divine nature, but what the divine
+  reasonableness thus prescribes is highly general: we can deduce from it
+  only certain laws which any finite things must obey, we can never deduce
+  from it which finite things there are to be, nor indeed that there are to
+  be any. Finite things are particular and individual: each of them might
+  have been other than it is or, to speak more properly, instead of any one
+  of them there might have existed something else; it was, according to the
+  mere principles of eternal reason, equally possible. But if so, the whole
+  universe, being made up of things each of which might be otherwise, might
+  as a whole be otherwise. Therefore the divine thoughts which it obeys by
+  existing have the nature of <i>choices</i> or <i>decrees</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>What material does the finite mind supply for an analogical picture of
+  the infinite mind making choices or decrees? If we use such language of
+  God, we are using language which has its first and natural application to
+  ourselves. We all of us choose, and those of us who are in authority make
+  decrees. What is to choose? It involves a real freedom in the mind. A
+  finite mind, let us remember, is nothing but a self-operating succession
+  of perceptions, ideas, or representations. With regard to some of our
+  ideas we have no freedom, those, for example, which represent to us our
+  body. We think of them as constituting our given substance. They are
+  sheer datum for us, and so are those reflexions of our environment which
+  they mediate to us. They make up a closely packed and confused mass; they
+  persevere in their being with an obstinate innate force, the spiritual
+  counterpart of the force which we have to recognize in things as
+  physically interpreted. Being real spiritual force, it is
+  quasi-voluntary, and indeed do we not love our own existence and, in a
+  sense, will it in all its necessary circumstances? But if we can be said
+  to will to be ourselves and to enact with native force what our body and
+  its environment makes <!-- Page 31 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page31"></a>[31]</span> us, we are merely willing to conform to the
+  conditions of our existence; we are making no choice. When, however, we
+  think freely or perform deliberate acts, there is not only force but
+  choice in our activity. Choice between what? Between alternative
+  possibilities arising out of our situation. And choice in virtue of what?
+  In virtue of the appeal exercised by one alternative as seemingly
+  better.</p>
+
+  <p>Can we adapt our scheme of choice to the description of God's creative
+  decrees? We will take the second point in it first: our choice is in
+  virtue of the appeal of the seeming best. Surely the only corrective
+  necessary in applying this to God is the omission of the word 'seeming'.
+  His choice is in virtue of the appeal of the simply best. The other point
+  causes more trouble. We choose between possibilities which arise for us
+  out of our situation in the system of the existing world. But as the
+  world does not exist before God's creative choices, he is in no
+  world-situation, and no alternative possibilities can arise out of it,
+  between which he should have to choose. But if God does not choose
+  between intrinsic possibilities of some kind, his choice becomes
+  something absolutely meaningless to us&mdash;it is not a choice at all,
+  it is an arbitrary and unintelligible <i>fiat</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz's solution is this: what are mere possibilities of thought for
+  us are possibilities of action for God. For a human subject,
+  possibilities of action are limited to what arises out of his actual
+  situation, but possibilities for thought are not so limited. I can
+  conceive a world different in many respects from this world, in which,
+  for example, vegetables should be gifted with thought and speech; but I
+  can do nothing towards bringing it about. My imaginary world is
+  practically impossible but speculatively possible, in the sense that it
+  contradicts no single principle of necessary and immutable reason. I,
+  indeed, can explore only a very little way into the region of sheer
+  speculative possibility; God does not explore it, he simply possesses it
+  all: the whole region of the possible is but a part of the content of his
+  infinite mind. So among all possible creatures he chooses the best and
+  creates it.</p>
+
+  <p>But the whole realm of the possible is an actual infinity of ideas.
+  Out of the consideration of an infinity of ideas, how can God arrive at a
+  choice? Why not? His mind is not, of course, discursive; he does not
+  successively turn over the leaves of an infinite book of sample worlds,
+  for then he would never come to the end <!-- Page 32 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page32"></a>[32]</span> of it. Embracing
+  infinite possibility in the single act of his mind, he settles his will
+  with intuitive immediacy upon the best. The inferior, the monstrous, the
+  absurd is not a wilderness through which he painfully threads his way, it
+  is that from which he immediately turns; his wisdom is his elimination of
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>But in so applying the scheme of choice to God's act, have we not
+  invalidated its application to our own? For if God has chosen the whole
+  form and fabric of the world, he has chosen everything in it, including
+  the choices we shall make. And if our choices have already been chosen
+  for us by God, it would seem to follow that they are not real open
+  choices on our part at all, but are pre-determined. And if they are
+  pre-determined, it would seem that they are not really even choices, for
+  a determined choice is not a choice. But if we do not ourselves exercise
+  real choice in any degree, then we have no clue to what any choice would
+  be: and if so, we have no power of conceiving divine choice, either; and
+  so the whole argument cuts its own throat.</p>
+
+  <p>There are two possible lines of escape from this predicament. One is
+  to define human choice in such a sense that it allows of
+  pre-determination without ceasing to be choice; and this is Leibniz's
+  method, and it can be studied at length in the <i>Theodicy</i>. He
+  certainly makes the very best he can of it, and it hardly seems that any
+  of those contemporaries whose views he criticizes was in a position to
+  answer him. The alternative method is to make the most of the negative
+  element involved in all theology. After all, we do not positively or
+  adequately understand the nature of infinite creative will. Perhaps it is
+  precisely the transcendent glory of divine freedom to be able to work
+  infallibly through free instruments. But so mystical a paradox is not the
+  sort of thing we can expect to appeal to a late-seventeenth-century
+  philosopher.</p>
+
+  <p>One criticism of Leibniz's argument we cannot refrain from making. He
+  allows himself too easy a triumph when he says that the only alternative
+  to a choice determined by a prevailing inclination towards one proposal
+  is a choice of mere caprice. There is a sort of choice Leibniz never so
+  much as considers and which appears at least to fall quite outside his
+  categories, and that is the sort of choice exercised in artistic
+  creativity. In such choice we freely feel after the shaping of a scheme,
+  we do not arbitrate simply between shaped and given possible schemes. And
+  perhaps some such element enters into all our choices, since our life is
+  to <!-- Page 33 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page33"></a>[33]</span>
+  some extent freely designed by ourselves. If so, our minds are even more
+  akin to the divine mind than Leibniz realized. For the sort of choice we
+  are now referring to seems to be an intuitive turning away from an
+  infinite, or at least indefinite, range of less attractive possibility.
+  And such is the nature of the divine creative choice. The consequence of
+  such a line of speculation would be, that the divine mind designs more
+  through us, and less simply for us, than Leibniz allowed: the 'harmony'
+  into which we enter would be no longer simply 'pre-established'. Leibniz,
+  in fact, could have nothing to do with such a suggestion, and he would
+  have found it easy to be ironical about it if his contemporaries had
+  proposed it.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+  <p>Leibniz wrote two books; a considerable number of articles in learned
+  periodicals; and an enormous number of unpublished notes, papers and
+  letters, preserved in the archives of the Electors of Hanover not because
+  of the philosophical significance of some of them, but because of the
+  political importance of most of them. From among this great mass various
+  excerpts of philosophical interest have been made by successive editors
+  of Leibniz's works. It may be that the most profound understanding of his
+  mind is to be derived from some of these pieces, but if we wish to
+  consider the public history of Leibniz, we may set them aside.</p>
+
+  <p>Of the two books, one was published, and the other never was. The
+  <i>New Essays</i> remained in Leibniz's desk, the <i>Theodicy</i> saw the
+  light. And so, to his own and the succeeding generation, Leibniz was
+  known as the author of the <i>Theodicy</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>The articles in journals form the immediate background to the two
+  books. In 1696 Leibniz heard that a French translation of Locke's
+  <i>Essay concerning Human Understanding</i> was being prepared at
+  Amsterdam. He wrote some polite comments on Locke's great work, and
+  published them. He also sent them to Locke, hoping that Locke would write
+  a reply, and that Leibniz's reflexions and Locke's reply might be
+  appended to the projected French translation. But Locke set Leibniz's
+  comments aside. Leibniz, not to be defeated, set to work upon the <i>New
+  Essays</i>, in which the whole substance of Locke's book is
+  systematically discussed in dialogue. The <i>New Essays</i> were written
+  in 1703. But meanwhile a painful <!-- Page 34 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page34"></a>[34]</span> dispute had broken out between Leibniz and
+  the disciples of Locke and Newton, in which the English, and perhaps
+  Newton himself, were much to blame, and Leibniz thought it impolitic to
+  publish his book. It was not issued until long after his death, in the
+  middle of the century.</p>
+
+  <p>The discussion with Locke was a failure: Locke would not play, and the
+  book in which the whole controversy was to be systematized never
+  appeared. The discussion with Bayle, on the other hand, was a model of
+  what a discussion should be. Bayle played up tirelessly, and was never
+  embarrassingly profound; he provided just the sort of objections most
+  useful for drawing forth illuminating expositions; he was as good as a
+  fictitious character in a philosophical dialogue. And the book in which
+  the controversy was systematized duly appeared with great éclat.</p>
+
+  <p>Here is the history of the controversy. In 1695 Leibniz was forty-nine
+  years old. He had just emerged from a period of close employment under
+  his prince's commands, and he thought fit to try his metaphysical
+  principles upon the polite world and see what would come of it. He
+  therefore published an article in the <i>Journal des Savants</i> under
+  the title: 'New System of Nature and of the Communication of Substances,
+  as well as of the Union between Soul and Body'. In the same year Foucher
+  published an article in the <i>Journal</i> controverting Leibniz; and in
+  the next year Leibniz replied with an 'Explanation'. A second explanation
+  in the same year appeared in Basnage's <i>Histoire des Ouvrages des
+  Savants</i>, in answer to reflexions by the editor. M. Pierre Bayle had
+  all these articles before him when he inserted a note on Leibniz's
+  doctrine in his article on 'Rorarius', in the first edition of his
+  <i>Historical and Critical Dictionary</i>. The point of connexion between
+  Rorarius and Leibniz was no more than this, that both held views about
+  the souls of beasts.</p>
+
+  <p>Pierre Bayle was the son of a Calvinist pastor, early converted to
+  Catholicism, but recovered to his old faith after a short time. He held
+  academic employments in Switzerland and Holland; he promoted and edited
+  the <i>Nouvelles de la République des Lettres</i>, and he produced that
+  extraordinary work the <i>Historical and Critical Dictionary.</i> The
+  notices it contains of authors and thinkers are little more than pegs
+  upon which Bayle could hang his philosophical reflexions. He could write
+  an intelligent discussion on any opinion; what he could not do was to
+  reconcile the points of <!-- Page 35 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page35"></a>[35]</span> view from which he felt impelled to write
+  upon this author and that. His was not a systematic mind. So far as he
+  had a philosophical opinion, he was a Cartesian; in theology he was an
+  orthodox Calvinist. He could not reconcile his theology with his
+  Cartesianism and he did not try to. He made a merit of the oppositions of
+  faith to reason and reason to itself, so that he could throw himself upon
+  a meritorious and voluntary faith.</p>
+
+  <p>There is nothing original in this position. It was characteristic of
+  decadent scholasticism, it squared with Luther's exaggerations about the
+  impotence of reason in fallen man, and Pascal had given his own highly
+  personal twist to it. Bayle has been hailed as a forerunner of Voltairean
+  scepticism. It would be truer to say that a Voltairean sceptic could read
+  Bayle's discussions in his own sense and for his own purposes if he
+  wished. But Bayle was not a sceptic. It is hard to say what he was; his
+  whole position as between faith and reason is hopelessly confused. He was
+  a scholar, a wit, and a philosophical sparring-partner of so perfectly
+  convenient a kind that if we had not evidence of his historical reality,
+  we might have suspected Leibniz of inventing him.</p>
+
+  <p>In the first edition of his <i>Dictionary</i>, under the article
+  'Rorarius', Bayle gave a very fair account of Leibniz's doctrine
+  concerning the souls of animals, as it could be collected from his
+  article in the <i>Journal des Savants</i>, 27 June 1695. He then
+  proceeded to comment upon it in the following terms:</p>
+
+  <p>'There are some things in Mr. Leibniz's hypothesis that are liable to
+  some difficulties, though they show the great extent of his genius. He
+  will have it, for example, that the soul of a dog acts independently of
+  outward bodies; that <i>it stands upon its own bottom, by a perfect
+  </i>spontaneity<i> with respect to itself, and yet with a perfect
+  </i>conformity<i> to outward things</i>.... That <i>its internal
+  perceptions arise from its original constitution, that is to say, the
+  representative constitution (capable of expressing beings outside itself
+  in relation to its organs) which was bestowed upon it from the time of
+  its creation, and makes its individual character</i> (<i>Journal des
+  Savants</i>, 4 July 1695). From whence it results that it would feel
+  hunger and thirst at such and such an hour, though there were not any one
+  body in the universe, and <i>though nothing should exist but God and that
+  soul</i>. He has explained (<i>Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants</i>,
+  Feb. 1696) his thought by the example of two pendulums that should
+  perfectly agree: that is, he supposes that according to the particular
+  laws which put the soul upon <!-- Page 36 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page36"></a>[36]</span> action, it must feel hunger at such an
+  hour; and that according to the particular laws which direct the motion
+  of matter, the body which is united to that soul must be modified at that
+  same hour as it is modified when the soul is hungry. I will forbear
+  preferring this system to that of occasional causes till the learned
+  author has perfected it. I cannot apprehend the connexion of internal and
+  spontaneous actions which would have this effect, that the soul of a dog
+  would feel pain immediately after having felt joy, though it were alone
+  in the universe. I understand why a dog passes immediately from pleasure
+  to pain when, being very hungry and eating a piece of bread, he is
+  suddenly struck with a cudgel. But I cannot apprehend that his soul
+  should be so framed that at the very moment of his being beaten he should
+  feel pain though he were not beaten, and though he should continue to eat
+  bread without any trouble or hindrance. Nor do I see how the spontaneity
+  of that soul should be consistent with the sense of pain, and in general
+  with any unpleasing perceptions.</p>
+
+  <p>'Besides, the reason why this learned man does not like the Cartesian
+  system seems to me to be a false supposition; for it cannot be said that
+  the system of occasional causes brings in God acting by a miracle
+  (ibid.), <i>Deum ex machina</i>, in the mutual dependency of the body and
+  soul: for since God does only intervene according to general laws, he
+  cannot be said to act in an extraordinary manner. Does the internal and
+  active virtue communicated to the forms of bodies according to M. Leibniz
+  know the train of actions which it is to produce? By no means; for we
+  know by experience that we are ignorant whether we shall have such and
+  such perceptions in an hour's time. It were therefore necessary that the
+  forms should be directed by some internal principle in the production of
+  their acts. But this would be <i>Deus ex machina,</i> as much as in the
+  system of occasional causes. In fine, as he supposes with great reason
+  that all souls are simple and indivisible, it cannot be apprehended how
+  they can be compared with a pendulum, that is, how by their original
+  constitution they can diversify their operations by using the spontaneous
+  activity bestowed upon them by their Creator. It may clearly be conceived
+  that a simple being will always act in a uniform manner, if no external
+  cause hinders it. If it were composed of several pieces, as a machine, it
+  would act different ways, because the peculiar activity of each piece
+  might change every moment the progress of <!-- Page 37 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page37"></a>[37]</span> others; but how will you
+  find in a simple substance the cause of a change of operation?'</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz published a reply to Bayle in the <i>Histoire des Ouvrages des
+  Savants</i> for July 1698. As in all his references to Bayle, he is
+  studiously polite and repays compliment for compliment. The following are
+  perhaps the principal points of his answer.</p>
+
+  <p>1. On the example of the dog:</p>
+
+  <p>(<i>a</i>) How should it of itself change its sentiment, since
+  everything left to itself continues in the state in which it is? Because
+  the state may be a state of <i>change</i>, as in a moving body which,
+  unless hindered, continues to move. And such is the nature of simple
+  substances&mdash;they continue to evolve steadily.</p>
+
+  <p>(<i>b</i>) Would it really feel as though beaten if it were not
+  beaten, since Leibniz says that the action of every substance takes place
+  as though nothing existed but God and itself? Leibniz replies that his
+  remark refers to the causality behind an action, not to the reasons for
+  it. The spontaneous action of the dog, which leads to the feeling of
+  pain, is only decreed to be what it is, for the reason that the dog is
+  part of a world of mutually reflecting substances, a world which also
+  includes the cudgel.</p>
+
+  <p>(<i>c</i>) Why should the dog ever be displeased <i>spontaneously</i>?
+  Leibniz distinguishes the spontaneous from the voluntary: many things
+  occur in the mind, of itself, but not chosen by it.</p>
+
+  <p>2. On Cartesianism and miracle:</p>
+
+  <p>Cartesianism in the form of occasionalism <i>does</i> involve miracle,
+  for though God is said by it to act according to laws in conforming body
+  and mind to one another, he thereby causes them to act beyond their
+  natural capacities.</p>
+
+  <p>3. On the problem, how can the simple act otherwise than
+  uniformly?</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz distinguishes: some uniform action is monotonous, but some is
+  not. A point moves uniformly in describing a parabola, for it constantly
+  fulfils the formula of the curve. But it does not move monotonously, for
+  the curve constantly varies. Such is the uniformity of the action of
+  simple substances.</p>
+
+  <p>Bayle read this reply, and was pleased but not satisfied with it. In
+  the second edition of the dictionary, under the same article 'Rorarius',
+  he added the following note:</p>
+
+  <p>'I declare first of all that I am very glad I have proposed some small
+  difficulties against the system of that great philosopher, <!-- Page 38
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page38"></a>[38]</span> since they have
+  occasioned some answers whereby that subject has been made clearer to me,
+  and which have given me a more distinct notion of what is most to be
+  admired in it. I look now upon that new system as an important conquest,
+  which enlarges the bounds of philosophy. We had only two hypotheses, that
+  of the Schools and that of the Cartesians: the one was a <i>way of
+  influence</i> of the body upon the soul and of the soul upon the body;
+  the other was a <i>way of assistance</i> or occasional causality. But
+  here is a new acquisition, a new hypothesis, which may be called, as Fr.
+  Lami styles it, a <i>way of pre-established harmony</i>. We are beholden
+  for it to M. Leibniz, and it is impossible to conceive anything that
+  gives us a nobler idea of the power and wisdom of the Author of all
+  things. This, together with the advantage of setting aside all notions of
+  a miraculous conduct, would engage me to prefer this new system to that
+  of the Cartesians, if I could conceive any possibility in the <i>way of
+  pre-established harmony</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>'I desire the reader to take notice that though I confess that this
+  way removes all notions of a miraculous conduct, yet I do not retract
+  what I have said formerly, that the system of occasional causes does not
+  bring in God acting miraculously. (See M. Leibniz's article in
+  <i>Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants</i>, July 1698.) I am as much
+  persuaded as ever I was that an action cannot be said to be miraculous,
+  unless God produces it as an exception to the general laws; and that
+  everything of which he is immediately the author according to those laws
+  is distinct from a miracle properly so called. But being willing to cut
+  off from this dispute as many things as I possibly can, I consent it
+  should be said that the surest way of removing all notions that include a
+  miracle is to suppose that all created substances are actively the
+  immediate causes of the effects of nature. I will therefore lay aside
+  what I might reply to that part of M. Leibniz's answer.</p>
+
+  <p>'I will also omit all objections which are not more contrary to his
+  opinion than to that of some other philosophers. I will not therefore
+  propose the difficulties that may be raised against the supposition that
+  a creature can receive from God the power of moving itself. They are
+  strong and almost unanswerable, but M. Leibniz's system does not lie more
+  open to them than that of the Aristotelians; nay, I do not know whether
+  the Cartesians would presume to say that God cannot communicate to our
+  souls a power of acting. If they say so, how can they own that Adam
+  sinned? <!-- Page 39 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page39"></a>[39]</span> And if they dare not say so they weaken the
+  arguments whereby they endeavour to prove that matter is not capable of
+  any activity. Nor do I believe that it is more difficult for M. Leibniz
+  than for the Cartesians or other philosophers, to free himself from the
+  objection of a fatal mechanism which destroys human liberty. Wherefore,
+  waiving this, I shall only speak of what is peculiar to the system of the
+  <i>pre-established harmony</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>'I. My first observation shall be, that it raises the power and wisdom
+  of the divine art above everything that can be conceived. Fancy to
+  yourself a ship which, without having any sense or knowledge, and without
+  being directed by any created or uncreated being, has the power of moving
+  itself so seasonably as to have always the wind favourable, to avoid
+  currents and rocks, to cast anchor where it ought to be done, and to
+  retire into a harbour precisely when it is necessary. Suppose such a ship
+  sails in that manner for several years successively, being always turned
+  and situated as it ought to be, according to the several changes of the
+  air and the different situations of seas and lands; you will acknowledge
+  that God, notwithstanding his infinite power, cannot communicate such a
+  faculty to a ship; or rather you will say that the nature of a ship is
+  not capable of receiving it from God. And yet what M. Leibniz supposes
+  about the machine of a human body is more admirable and more surprising
+  than all this. Let us apply his system concerning the union of the soul
+  with the body to the person of Julius Caesar.</p>
+
+  <p>'II. We must say according to this system that the body of Julius
+  Caesar did so exercise its moving faculty that from its birth to its
+  death it went through continual changes which did most exactly answer the
+  perpetual changes of a certain soul which it did not know and which made
+  no impression on it. We must say that the rule according to which that
+  faculty of Caesar's body performed such actions was such, that he would
+  have gone to the Senate upon such a day and at such an hour, that he
+  would have spoken there such and such words, etc., though God had willed
+  to annihilate his soul the next day after it was created. We must say
+  that this moving power did change and modify itself exactly according to
+  the volubility of the thoughts of that ambitious man, and that it was
+  affected precisely in a certain manner rather than in another, because
+  the soul of Caesar passed from a certain thought to another. Can a blind
+  power modify itself so exactly <!-- Page 40 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page40"></a>[40]</span> by virtue of an impression communicated
+  thirty or forty years before and never renewed since, but left to itself,
+  without ever knowing what it is to do? Is not this much more
+  incomprehensible than the navigation I spoke of in the foregoing
+  paragraph?</p>
+
+  <p>'III. The difficulty will be greater still, if it be considered that
+  the human machine contains an almost infinite number of organs, and that
+  it is continually exposed to the shock of the bodies that surround it,<a
+  name="NtA_1" href="#Nt_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> and which by an innumerable
+  variety of shakings produce in it a thousand sorts of modifications. How
+  is it possible to conceive that this <i>pre-established harmony</i>
+  should never be disordered, but go on still during the longest life of a
+  man, notwithstanding the infinite varieties of the reciprocal action of
+  so many organs upon one another, which are surrounded on all sides with
+  infinite corpuscles, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, sometimes dry and
+  sometimes moist, and always acting, and pricking the nerves a thousand
+  different ways? Suppose that the multiplicity of organs and of external
+  agents be a necessary instrument of the almost infinite variety of
+  changes in a human body: will that variety have the exactness here
+  required? Will it never disturb the correspondence of those changes with
+  the changes of the soul? This seems to be altogether impossible.</p>
+
+<div class="note">
+  <p><a name="Nt_1" href="#NtA_1">[1]</a> 'According to M. Leibniz what is
+  active in every substance ought to be reduced to a true unity. Since
+  therefore the body of every man is composed of several substances, each
+  of them ought to have a principle of action really distinct from the
+  principle of each of the others. He will have the action of every
+  principle to be spontaneous. Now this must vary the effects <i>ad
+  infinitum</i>, and confound them. For the impression of the neighbouring
+  bodies must needs put some constraint upon the natural spontaneity of
+  every one of them.'</p>
+
+</div>
+  <p>'IV. It is in vain to have recourse to the power of God, in order to
+  maintain that brutes are mere machines; it is in vain to say that God was
+  able to make machines so artfully contrived that the voice of a man, the
+  reflected light of an object, etc., will strike them exactly where it is
+  necessary, that they may move in a given manner. This supposition is
+  rejected by everybody except some Cartesians; and no Cartesian would
+  admit it if it were to be extended to man; that is, if anyone were to
+  assert that God was able to form such bodies as would mechanically do
+  whatever we see other men do. By denying this we do not pretend to limit
+  the power and knowledge of God: we only mean that the nature of things
+  does not permit that the faculties imparted to a creature should not be
+  necessarily confined within certain bounds. The <!-- Page 41 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page41"></a>[41]</span> actions of creatures
+  must be necessarily proportioned to their essential state, and performed
+  according to the character belonging to each machine; for according to
+  the maxim of the philosophers, whatever is received is proportionate to
+  the capacity of the subject that receives it. We may therefore reject M.
+  Leibniz's hypothesis as being impossible, since it is liable to greater
+  difficulties than that of the Cartesians, which makes beasts to be mere
+  machines. It puts a perpetual harmony between two beings, which do not
+  act one upon another; whereas if servants were mere machines, and should
+  punctually obey their masters' command, it could not be said that they do
+  it without a real action of their masters upon them; for their masters
+  would speak words and make signs which would really shake and move the
+  organs of the servants.</p>
+
+  <p>'V. Now let us consider the soul of Julius Caesar, and we shall find
+  the thing more impossible still. That soul was in the world without being
+  exposed to the influence of any spirit. The power it received from God
+  was the only principle of the actions it produced at every moment: and if
+  those actions were different one from another, it was not because some of
+  them were produced by the united influence of some springs which did not
+  contribute to the production of others, for the soul of man is simple,
+  indivisible and immaterial. M. Leibniz owns it; and if he did not
+  acknowledge it, but if, on the contrary, he should suppose with most
+  philosophers and some of the most excellent metaphysicians of our age
+  (Mr. Locke, for instance) that a compound of several material parts
+  placed and disposed in a certain manner, is capable of thinking, his
+  hypothesis would appear to be on that very ground absolutely impossible,
+  and I could refute it several other ways; which I need not mention since
+  he acknowledges the immateriality of our soul and builds upon it.</p>
+
+  <p>'Let us return to the soul of Julius Caesar, and call it an immaterial
+  automaton (M. Leibniz's own phrase), and compare it with an atom of
+  Epicurus; I mean an atom surrounded with a vacuum on all sides, and which
+  will never meet any other atom. This is a very just comparison: for this
+  atom, on the one hand, has a natural power of moving itself and exerts it
+  without any assistance, and without being retarded or hindered by
+  anything: and, on the other hand, the soul of Caesar is a spirit which
+  has received the faculty of producing thoughts, and exerts it without
+  <!-- Page 42 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page42"></a>[42]</span>
+  the influence of any other spirit or of any body. It is neither assisted
+  nor thwarted by anything whatsoever. If you consult the common notions
+  and the ideas of order, you will find that this atom can never stop, and
+  that having been in motion in the foregoing moment, it will continue in
+  it at the present moment and in all the moments that shall follow, and
+  that it will always move in the same manner. This is the consequence of
+  an axiom approved by M. Leibniz: <i>since a thing does always remain in
+  the same state wherein it happens to be, unless it receives some
+  alteration from some other thing ... we conclude</i>, says he, <i>not
+  only that a body which is at rest will always be at rest, but that a body
+  in motion will always keep that motion or change, that is, the same
+  swiftness and the same direction, unless something happens to hinder
+  it</i>. (M. Leibniz, ibid.)</p>
+
+  <p>'Everyone clearly sees that this atom, whether it moves by an innate
+  power, as Democritus and Epicurus would have it, or by a power received
+  from the Creator, will always move in the same line equally and after a
+  uniform manner, without ever turning or going back. Epicurus was laughed
+  at, when he invented the motion of declination; it was a needless
+  supposition, which he wanted in order to get out of the labyrinth of a
+  fatal necessity; and he could give no reason for this new part of his
+  system. It was inconsistent with the clearest notions of our minds: for
+  it is evident that an atom which describes a straight line for the space
+  of two days cannot turn away at the beginning of a third, unless it meets
+  with some obstacle, or has a mind all of a sudden to go out of its road,
+  or contains some spring which begins to play at that very moment. The
+  first of these reasons cannot be admitted in a vacuum. The second is
+  impossible, since an atom has not the faculty of thinking. And the third
+  is likewise impossible in a corpuscle that is a perfect unity. I must
+  make some use of all this.</p>
+
+  <p>'VI. Caesar's soul is a being to which unity belongs in a strict
+  sense. The faculty of producing thoughts is a property of its nature (so
+  M. Leibniz), which it has received from God, both as to possession and
+  exercise. If the first thought it produces is a sense of pleasure, there
+  is no reason why the second should not likewise be a sense of pleasure;
+  for when the total cause of an effect remains the same, the effect cannot
+  be altered. Now this soul, at the second moment of its existence, does
+  not receive a new faculty of thinking; it only preserves the faculty it
+  had at the first moment, and it is as independent of the concourse of any
+  other cause at the second <!-- Page 43 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page43"></a>[43]</span> moment as it was at the first. It must
+  therefore produce again at the second moment the same thought it had
+  produced just before. If it be objected that it ought to be in a state of
+  change, and that it would not be in such a state, in the case that I have
+  supposed; I answer that its change will be like the change of the atom;
+  for an atom which continually moves in the same line acquires a new
+  situation at every moment, but it is like the preceding situation. A soul
+  may therefore continue in its state of change, if it does but produce a
+  new thought like the preceding.</p>
+
+  <p>'But suppose it to be not confined within such narrow bounds; it must
+  be granted at least that its going from one thought to another implies
+  some reason of affinity. If I suppose that in a certain moment the soul
+  of Caesar sees a tree with leaves and blossoms, I can conceive that it
+  does immediately desire to see one that has only leaves, and then one
+  that has only blossoms, and that it will thus successively produce
+  several images arising from one another; but one cannot conceive the odd
+  change of thoughts, which have no affinity with, but are even contrary
+  to, one another, and which are so common in men's souls. One cannot
+  apprehend how God could place in the soul of Julius Caesar the principle
+  of what I am going to say. He was without doubt pricked with a pin more
+  than once, when he was sucking; and therefore according to M. Leibniz's
+  hypothesis which I am here considering, his soul must have produced in
+  itself a sense of pain immediately after the pleasant sensations of the
+  sweetness of the milk, which it had enjoyed for the space of two or three
+  minutes. By what springs was it determined to interrupt its pleasures and
+  to give itself all of a sudden a sense of pain, without receiving any
+  intimation of preparing itself to change, and without any new alteration
+  in its substance? If you run over the life of that Roman emperor, every
+  page will afford you matter for a stronger objection than this is.</p>
+
+  <p>'VII. The thing would be less incomprehensible if it were supposed
+  that the soul of man is not one spirit but rather a multitude of spirits,
+  each of which has its functions, that begin and end precisely as the
+  changes made in a human body require. By virtue of this supposition it
+  should be said that something analogous to a great number of wheels and
+  springs, or of matters that ferment, disposed according to the changes of
+  our machine, awakens or lulls asleep for a certain time the action of
+  each of those spirits. But then the soul of man would be no longer a
+  single substance <!-- Page 44 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page44"></a>[44]</span> but an <i>ens per aggregationem</i>, a
+  collection and heap of substances just like all material beings. We are
+  here in quest of a single being, which produces in itself sometimes joy,
+  sometimes pain, etc., and not of many beings, one of which produces hope,
+  another despair, etc.</p>
+
+  <p>'In these observations I have merely cleared and unfolded those which
+  M. Leibniz has done me the honour to examine: and now I shall make some
+  reflexions upon his answers.</p>
+
+  <p>'VIII. He says (ibid., p. 332) that <i>the law of the change which
+  happens in the substance of the animal transports him from pleasure to
+  pain at the very moment that a solution of continuity is made in his
+  body; because the law of the indivisible substance of that animal is to
+  represent what is done in his body as we experience it, and even to
+  represent in some manner, and with respect to that body, whatever is done
+  in the world</i>. These words are a very good explication of the grounds
+  of this system; they are, as it were, the unfolding and key of it; but at
+  the same time they are the very things at which the objections of those
+  who take this system to be impossible are levelled. The law M. Leibniz
+  speaks of supposes a decree of God, and shows wherein this system agrees
+  with that of occasional causes. Those two systems agree in this point,
+  that there are laws according to which the soul of man is <i>to represent
+  what is done in the body of man, as we experience it</i>. But they
+  disagree as to the manner of executing those laws. The Cartesians say
+  that God executes them; M. Leibniz will have it, that the soul itself
+  does it; which appears to me impossible, because the soul has not the
+  necessary instruments for such an execution. Now however infinite the
+  power and knowledge of God be, he cannot perform with a machine deprived
+  of a certain piece, what requires the concourse of such a piece. He must
+  supply that defect; but then the effect would be produced by him and not
+  by the machine. I shall show that the soul has not the instruments
+  requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it I shall
+  make use of a comparison.</p>
+
+  <p>'Fancy to yourself an animal created by God and designed to sing
+  continually. It will always sing, that is most certain; but if God
+  designs him a certain tablature, he must necessarily either put it before
+  his eyes or imprint it upon his memory or dispose his muscles in such a
+  manner that according to the laws of mechanism one certain note will
+  always come after another, agreeably to the order of the tablature.
+  Without this one cannot apprehend <!-- Page 45 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page45"></a>[45]</span> that the animal can
+  always follow the whole set of the notes appointed him by God. Let us
+  apply this to man's soul. M. Leibniz will have it that it has received
+  not only the power of producing thoughts continually, but also the
+  faculty of following always a certain set of thoughts, which answers the
+  continual changes that happen in the machine of the body. This set of
+  thoughts is like the tablature prescribed to the singing animal above
+  mentioned. Can the soul change its perceptions or modifications at every
+  moment according to such a set of thoughts, without knowing the series of
+  the notes, and actually thinking upon them? But experience teaches us
+  that it knows nothing of it. Were it not at least necessary that in
+  default of such a knowledge, there should be in the soul a set of
+  particular instruments, each of which would be a necessary cause of such
+  and such a thought? Must they not be so placed and disposed as to operate
+  precisely one after another, according to the correspondence
+  <i>pre-established</i> between the changes of the body and the thoughts
+  of the soul? but it is most certain that an immaterial simple and
+  indivisible substance cannot be made up of such an innumerable multitude
+  of particular instruments placed one before another, according to the
+  order of the tablature in question. It is not therefore possible that a
+  human soul should execute that law.</p>
+
+  <p>'M. Leibniz supposes that the soul does not distinctly know its future
+  perceptions, <i>but that it perceives them confusedly</i>, and that
+  <i>there are in each substance traces of whatever hath happened, or shall
+  happen to it: but that an infinite multitude of perceptions hinders us
+  from distinguishing them. The present state of each substance is a
+  natural consequence of its preceding state. The soul, though never so
+  simple, has always a sentiment composed of several perceptions at one
+  time: which answers our end as well as though it were composed of pieces,
+  like a machine. For each foregoing perception has an influence on those
+  that follow agreeably to a law of order, which is in perceptions as well
+  as in motions...The perceptions that are together in one and the same
+  soul at the same time, including an infinite multitude of little and
+  indistinguishable sentiments that are to be unfolded, we need not wonder
+  at the infinite variety of what is to result from it in time. This is
+  only a consequence of the representative nature of the soul, which is, to
+  express what happens and what will happen in its body, by the connexion
+  and correspondence of all the parts of the world</i>. I have but little
+  to say in answer to this: I shall only observe that this supposition when
+  sufficiently cleared is the right way of solving all <!-- Page 46
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page46"></a>[46]</span> the
+  difficulties. M. Leibniz, through the penetration of his great genius,
+  has very well conceived the extent and strength of this objection, and
+  what remedy ought to be applied to the main inconveniency. I do not doubt
+  but that he will smooth the rough parts of his system, and teach us some
+  excellent things about the nature of spirits. Nobody can travel more
+  usefully or more safely than he in the intellectual world. I hope that
+  his curious explanations will remove all the impossibilities which I have
+  hitherto found in his system, and that he will solidly remove my
+  difficulties, as well as those of Father Lami. And these hopes made me
+  say before, without designing to pass a compliment upon that learned man,
+  that his system ought to be looked upon as an important conquest.</p>
+
+  <p>'He will not be much embarrassed by this, viz. that whereas according
+  to the supposition of the Cartesians there is but one general law for the
+  union of spirits and bodies, he will have it that God gives a particular
+  law to each spirit; from whence it seems to result that the primitive
+  constitution of each spirit is specifically different from all others. Do
+  not the Thomists say, that there are as many species as individuals in
+  angelic nature?'</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz acknowledged Bayle's note in a further reply, which is written
+  as though for publication. It was communicated to Bayle, but it was not
+  in fact published. It is dated 1702. It may be found in the standard
+  collections of Leibniz's philosophical works. It reads almost like a
+  sketch for the <i>Theodicy</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>The principal point developed by Leibniz is the richness of content
+  which, according to him, is to be found in each 'simple substance'. Its
+  simplicity is more like the infinitely rich simplicity of the divine
+  Being, than like the simplicity of the atom of Epicurus, with which Bayle
+  had chosen to compare it. It contains a condensation in confused idea of
+  the whole universe: and its essence is from the first defined by the part
+  it is to play in the total harmony.</p>
+
+  <p>As to the musical score ('tablature of notes') which the individual
+  soul plays from, in order to perform its ordained part in the universal
+  harmony, this 'score' is to be found in the confused or implicit ideas at
+  any moment present, from which an omniscient observer could always deduce
+  what is to happen next. To the objection 'But the created soul is not an
+  omniscient observer, <!-- Page 47 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page47"></a>[47]</span> and if it cannot read the score, the score
+  is useless to it', Leibniz replies by affirming that much spontaneous
+  action arises from subjective and yet unperceived reasons, as we are all
+  perfectly aware, once we attend to the relevant facts. All he claims to
+  be doing is to generalize this observation. All events whatsoever arise
+  from the 'interpretation of the score' by monads, but very little of this
+  'interpretation' is in the least conscious.</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz passes from the remarks about his own doctrine under the
+  article 'Rorarius' to other articles of Bayle's dictionary, and touches
+  the question of the origin of evil, and other matters which receive their
+  fuller treatment in the <i>Theodicy</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>In the same year Leibniz wrote a very friendly letter to Bayle
+  himself, offering further explanations of disputed points. He concluded
+  it with a paragraph of some personal interest, comparing himself the
+  historian-philosopher with Bayle the philosophic lexicographer, and
+  revealing by the way his attitude to philosophy, science and history:</p>
+
+  <p>'We have good reason to admire, Sir, the way in which your striking
+  reflexions on the deepest questions of philosophy remain unhindered by
+  your boundless researches into matters of fact. I too am not always able
+  to excuse myself from discussions of the sort, and have even been obliged
+  to descend to questions of genealogy, which would be still more trifling,
+  were it not that the interests of States frequently depend upon them. I
+  have worked much on the history of Germany in so far as it bears upon
+  these countries, a study which has furnished me with some observations
+  belonging to general history. So I have learnt not to neglect the
+  knowledge of sheer facts. But if the choice were open to me, I should
+  prefer natural history to political, and the customs and laws God has
+  established in nature, to what is observed among mankind.'</p>
+
+  <p>Leibniz now conceived the idea of putting together all the passages in
+  Bayle's works which interested him, and writing a systematic answer to
+  them. Before he had leisure to finish the task, Bayle died. The work
+  nevertheless appeared in 1710 as the Essays in <i>Theodicy</i>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 49 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page49"></a>[49]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>PREFACE</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+  <p>It has ever been seen that men in general have resorted to outward
+  forms for the expression of their religion: sound piety, that is to say,
+  light and virtue, has never been the portion of the many. One should not
+  wonder at this, nothing is so much in accord with human weakness. We are
+  impressed by what is outward, while the inner essence of things requires
+  consideration of such a kind as few persons are fitted to give. As true
+  piety consists in principles and practice, the outward forms of religion
+  imitate these, and are of two kinds: the one kind consists in ceremonial
+  practices, and the other in the formularies of belief. Ceremonies
+  resemble virtuous actions, and formularies are like shadows of the truth
+  and approach, more or less, the true light. All these outward forms would
+  be commendable if those who invented them had rendered them appropriate
+  to maintain and to express that which they imitate&mdash;if religious
+  ceremonies, ecclesiastical discipline, the rules of communities, human
+  laws were always like a hedge round the divine law, to withdraw us from
+  any approach to vice, to inure us to the good and to make us familiar
+  with virtue. That was the aim of Moses and of other good lawgivers, of
+  the wise men who founded religious orders, and above all of Jesus Christ,
+  divine founder of the purest and most enlightened religion. It is just
+  the same with the formularies of <!-- Page 50 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page50"></a>[50]</span> belief: they would be valid provided there
+  were nothing in them inconsistent with truth unto salvation, even though
+  the full truth concerned were not there. But it happens only too often
+  that religion is choked in ceremonial, and that the divine light is
+  obscured by the opinions of men.</p>
+
+  <p>The pagans, who inhabited the earth before Christianity was founded,
+  had only one kind of outward form: they had ceremonies in their worship,
+  but they had no articles of faith and had never dreamed of drawing up
+  formularies for their dogmatic theology. They knew not whether their gods
+  were real persons or symbols of the forces of Nature, as the sun, the
+  planets, the elements. Their mysteries consisted not in difficult dogmas
+  but in certain secret observances, whence the profane, namely those who
+  were not initiated, were excluded. These observances were very often
+  ridiculous and absurd, and it was necessary to conceal them in order to
+  guard them against contempt. The pagans had their superstitions: they
+  boasted of miracles, everything with them was full of oracles, auguries,
+  portents, divinations; the priests invented signs of the anger or of the
+  goodness of the gods, whose interpreters they claimed to be. This tended
+  to sway minds through fear and hope concerning human events; but the
+  great future of another life was scarce envisaged; one did not trouble to
+  impart to men true notions of God and of the soul.</p>
+
+  <p>Of all ancient peoples, it appears that the Hebrews alone had public
+  dogmas for their religion. Abraham and Moses established the belief in
+  one God, source of all good, author of all things. The Hebrews speak of
+  him in a manner worthy of the Supreme Substance; and one wonders at
+  seeing the inhabitants of one small region of the earth more enlightened
+  than the rest of the human race. Peradventure the wise men of other
+  nations have sometimes said the same, but they have not had the good
+  fortune to find a sufficient following and to convert the dogma into law.
+  Nevertheless Moses had not inserted in his laws the doctrine of the
+  immortality of souls: it was consistent with his ideas, it was taught by
+  oral tradition; but it was not proclaimed for popular acceptance until
+  Jesus Christ lifted the veil, and, without having force in his hand,
+  taught with all the force of a lawgiver that immortal souls pass into
+  another life, wherein they shall receive the wages of their deeds. Moses
+  had already expressed the beautiful conceptions of the greatness and the
+  goodness of God, whereto many civilized <!-- Page 51 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page51"></a>[51]</span> peoples to-day assent;
+  but Jesus Christ demonstrated fully the results of these ideas,
+  proclaiming that divine goodness and justice are shown forth to
+  perfection in God's designs for the souls of men.</p>
+
+  <p>I refrain from considering here the other points of the Christian
+  doctrine, and I will show only how Jesus Christ brought about the
+  conversion of natural religion into law, and gained for it the authority
+  of a public dogma. He alone did that which so many philosophers had
+  endeavoured in vain to do; and Christians having at last gained the upper
+  hand in the Roman Empire, the master of the greater part of the known
+  earth, the religion of the wise men became that of the nations. Later
+  also Mahomet showed no divergence from the great dogmas of natural
+  theology: his followers spread them abroad even among the most remote
+  races of Asia and of Africa, whither Christianity had not been carried;
+  and they abolished in many countries heathen superstitions which were
+  contrary to the true doctrine of the unity of God and the immortality of
+  souls.</p>
+
+  <p>It is clear that Jesus Christ, completing what Moses had begun, wished
+  that the Divinity should be the object not only of our fear and
+  veneration but also of our love and devotion. Thus he made men happy by
+  anticipation, and gave them here on earth a foretaste of future felicity.
+  For there is nothing so agreeable as loving that which is worthy of love.
+  Love is that mental state which makes us take pleasure in the perfections
+  of the object of our love, and there is nothing more perfect than God,
+  nor any greater delight than in him. To love him it suffices to
+  contemplate his perfections, a thing easy indeed, because we find the
+  ideas of these within ourselves. The perfections of God are those of our
+  souls, but he possesses them in boundless measure; he is an Ocean,
+  whereof to us only drops have been granted; there is in us some power,
+  some knowledge, some goodness, but in God they are all in their entirety.
+  Order, proportions, harmony delight us; painting and music are samples of
+  these: God is all order; he always keeps truth of proportions, he makes
+  universal harmony; all beauty is an effusion of his rays.</p>
+
+  <p>It follows manifestly that true piety and even true felicity consist
+  in the love of God, but a love so enlightened that its fervour is
+  attended by insight. This kind of love begets that pleasure in good
+  actions which gives relief to virtue, and, relating all to God as to the
+  centre, transports the human to the divine. For in doing <!-- Page 52
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page52"></a>[52]</span> one's duty, in
+  obeying reason, one carries out the orders of Supreme Reason. One directs
+  all one's intentions to the common good, which is no other than the glory
+  of God. Thus one finds that there is no greater individual interest than
+  to espouse that of the community, and one gains satisfaction for oneself
+  by taking pleasure in the acquisition of true benefits for men. Whether
+  one succeeds therein or not, one is content with what comes to pass,
+  being once resigned to the will of God and knowing that what he wills is
+  best. But before he declares his will by the event one endeavours to find
+  it out by doing that which appears most in accord with his commands. When
+  we are in this state of mind, we are not disheartened by ill success, we
+  regret only our faults; and the ungrateful ways of men cause no
+  relaxation in the exercise of our kindly disposition. Our charity is
+  humble and full of moderation, it presumes not to domineer; attentive
+  alike to our own faults and to the talents of others, we are inclined to
+  criticize our own actions and to excuse and vindicate those of others. We
+  must work out our own perfection and do wrong to no man. There is no
+  piety where there is not charity; and without being kindly and beneficent
+  one cannot show sincere religion.</p>
+
+  <p>Good disposition, favourable upbringing, association with pious and
+  virtuous persons may contribute much towards such a propitious condition
+  for our souls; but most securely are they grounded therein by good
+  principles. I have already said that insight must be joined to fervour,
+  that the perfecting of our understanding must accomplish the perfecting
+  of our will. The practices of virtue, as well as those of vice, may be
+  the effect of a mere habit, one may acquire a taste for them; but when
+  virtue is reasonable, when it is related to God, who is the supreme
+  reason of things, it is founded on knowledge. One cannot love God without
+  knowing his perfections, and this knowledge contains the principles of
+  true piety. The purpose of religion should be to imprint these principles
+  upon our souls: but in some strange way it has happened all too often
+  that men, that teachers of religion have strayed far from this purpose.
+  Contrary to the intention of our divine Master, devotion has been reduced
+  to ceremonies and doctrine has been cumbered with formulae. All too often
+  these ceremonies have not been well fitted to maintain the exercise of
+  virtue, and the formulae sometimes have not been lucid. Can one believe
+  it? Some Christians have imagined that they could be <!-- Page 53
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page53"></a>[53]</span> devout without
+  loving their neighbour, and pious without loving God; or else people have
+  thought that they could love their neighbour without serving him and
+  could love God without knowing him. Many centuries have passed without
+  recognition of this defect by the people at large; and there are still
+  great traces of the reign of darkness. There are divers persons who speak
+  much of piety, of devotion, of religion, who are even busied with the
+  teaching of such things, and who yet prove to be by no means versed in
+  the divine perfections. They ill understand the goodness and the justice
+  of the Sovereign of the universe; they imagine a God who deserves neither
+  to be imitated nor to be loved. This indeed seemed to me dangerous in its
+  effect, since it is of serious moment that the very source of piety
+  should be preserved from infection. The old errors of those who arraigned
+  the Divinity or who made thereof an evil principle have been renewed
+  sometimes in our own days: people have pleaded the irresistible power of
+  God when it was a question rather of presenting his supreme goodness; and
+  they have assumed a despotic power when they should rather have conceived
+  of a power ordered by the most perfect wisdom. I have observed that these
+  opinions, apt to do harm, rested especially on confused notions which had
+  been formed concerning freedom, necessity and destiny; and I have taken
+  up my pen more than once on such an occasion to give explanations on
+  these important matters. But finally I have been compelled to gather up
+  my thoughts on all these connected questions, and to impart them to the
+  public. It is this that I have undertaken in the Essays which I offer
+  here, on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of
+  Evil.</p>
+
+  <p>There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes
+  astray: one concerns the great question of the Free and the Necessary,
+  above all in the production and the origin of Evil; the other consists in
+  the discussion of continuity and of the indivisibles which appear to be
+  the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must
+  enter in. The first perplexes almost all the human race, the other
+  exercises philosophers only. I shall have perchance at another time an
+  opportunity to declare myself on the second, and to point out that, for
+  lack of a true conception of the nature of substance and matter, people
+  have taken up false positions leading to insurmountable difficulties,
+  difficulties which should properly be applied to the overthrow of these
+  very <!-- Page 54 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page54"></a>[54]</span> positions. But if the knowledge of
+  continuity is important for speculative enquiry, that of necessity is
+  none the less so for practical application; and it, together with the
+  questions therewith connected, to wit, the freedom of man and the justice
+  of God, forms the object of this treatise.</p>
+
+  <p>Men have been perplexed in well-nigh every age by a sophism which the
+  ancients called the 'Lazy Reason', because it tended towards doing
+  nothing, or at least towards being careful for nothing and only following
+  inclination for the pleasure of the moment. For, they said, if the future
+  is necessary, that which must happen will happen, whatever I may do. Now
+  the future (so they said) is necessary, whether because the Divinity
+  foresees everything, and even pre-establishes it by the control of all
+  things in the universe; or because everything happens of necessity,
+  through the concatenation of causes; or finally, through the very nature
+  of truth, which is determinate in the assertions that can be made on
+  future events, as it is in all assertions, since the assertion must
+  always be true or false in itself, even though we know not always which
+  it is. And all these reasons for determination which appear different
+  converge finally like lines upon one and the same centre; for there is a
+  truth in the future event which is predetermined by the causes, and God
+  pre-establishes it in establishing the causes.</p>
+
+  <p>The false conception of necessity, being applied in practice, has
+  given rise to what I call <i>Fatum Mahometanum</i>, fate after the
+  Turkish fashion, because it is said of the Turks that they do not shun
+  danger or even abandon places infected with plague, owing to their use of
+  such reasoning as that just recorded. For what is called <i>Fatum
+  Stoicum</i> was not so black as it is painted: it did not divert men from
+  the care of their affairs, but it tended to give them tranquillity in
+  regard to events, through the consideration of necessity, which renders
+  our anxieties and our vexations needless. In which respect these
+  philosophers were not far removed from the teaching of our Lord, who
+  deprecates these anxieties in regard to the morrow, comparing them with
+  the needless trouble a man would give himself in labouring to increase
+  his stature.</p>
+
+  <p>It is true that the teachings of the Stoics (and perhaps also of some
+  famous philosophers of our time), confining themselves to this alleged
+  necessity, can only impart a forced patience; whereas our Lord inspires
+  thoughts more sublime, and even instructs us in the means of gaining
+  contentment by assuring us that since God, <!-- Page 55 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page55"></a>[55]</span> being altogether good
+  and wise, has care for everything, even so far as not to neglect one hair
+  of our head, our confidence in him ought to be entire. And thus we should
+  see, if we were capable of understanding him, that it is not even
+  possible to wish for anything better (as much in general as for
+  ourselves) than what he does. It is as if one said to men: Do your duty
+  and be content with that which shall come of it, not only because you
+  cannot resist divine providence, or the nature of things (which may
+  suffice for tranquillity, but not for contentment), but also because you
+  have to do with a good master. And that is what may be called <i>Fatum
+  Christianum</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Nevertheless it happens that most men, and even Christians, introduce
+  into their dealings some mixture of fate after the Turkish fashion,
+  although they do not sufficiently acknowledge it. It is true that they
+  are not inactive or negligent when obvious perils or great and manifest
+  hopes present themselves; for they will not fail to abandon a house that
+  is about to fall and to turn aside from a precipice they see in their
+  path; and they will burrow in the earth to dig up a treasure half
+  uncovered, without waiting for fate to finish dislodging it. But when the
+  good or the evil is remote and uncertain and the remedy painful or little
+  to our taste, the lazy reason seems to us to be valid. For example, when
+  it is a question of preserving one's health and even one's life by good
+  diet, people to whom one gives advice thereupon very often answer that
+  our days are numbered and that it avails nothing to try to struggle
+  against that which God destines for us. But these same persons run to
+  even the most absurd remedies when the evil they had neglected draws
+  near. One reasons in somewhat the same way when the question for
+  consideration is somewhat thorny, as for instance when one asks oneself,
+  <i>quod vitae sectabor iter</i>? what profession one must choose; when it
+  is a question of a marriage being arranged, of a war being undertaken, of
+  a battle being fought; for in these cases many will be inclined to evade
+  the difficulty of consideration and abandon themselves to fate or to
+  inclination, as if reason should not be employed except in easy cases.
+  One will then all too often reason in the Turkish fashion (although this
+  way is wrongly termed trusting in providence, a thing that in reality
+  occurs only when one has done one's duty) and one will employ the lazy
+  reason, derived from the idea of inevitable fate, to relieve oneself of
+  the need to reason properly. <!-- Page 56 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page56"></a>[56]</span> One will thus overlook the fact that if
+  this argument contrary to the practice of reason were valid, it would
+  always hold good, whether the consideration were easy or not. This
+  laziness is to some extent the source of the superstitious practices of
+  fortune-tellers, which meet with just such credulity as men show towards
+  the philosopher's stone, because they would fain have short cuts to the
+  attainment of happiness without trouble.</p>
+
+  <p>I do not speak here of those who throw themselves upon fortune because
+  they have been happy before, as if there were something permanent
+  therein. Their argument from the past to the future has just as slight a
+  foundation as the principles of astrology and of other kinds of
+  divination. They overlook the fact that there is usually an ebb and flow
+  in fortune, <i>una marea</i>, as Italians playing basset are wont to call
+  it. With regard to this they make their own particular observations,
+  which I would, nevertheless, counsel none to trust too much. Yet this
+  confidence that people have in their fortune serves often to give courage
+  to men, and above all to soldiers, and causes them to have indeed that
+  good fortune they ascribe to themselves. Even so do predictions often
+  cause that to happen which has been foretold, as it is supposed that the
+  opinion the Mahometans hold on fate makes them resolute. Thus even errors
+  have their use at times, but generally as providing a remedy for other
+  errors: and truth is unquestionably better.</p>
+
+  <p>But it is taking an unfair advantage of this alleged necessity of fate
+  to employ it in excuse for our vices and our libertinism. I have often
+  heard it said by smart young persons, who wished to play the freethinker,
+  that it is useless to preach virtue, to censure vice, to create hopes of
+  reward and fears of punishment, since it may be said of the book of
+  destiny, that what is written is written, and that our behaviour can
+  change nothing therein. Thus, they would say, it were best to follow
+  one's inclination, dwelling only upon such things as may content us in
+  the present. They did not reflect upon the strange consequences of this
+  argument, which would prove too much, since it would prove (for instance)
+  that one should take a pleasant beverage even though one knows it is
+  poisoned. For the same reason (if it were valid) I could say: if it is
+  written in the records of the Parcae that poison will kill me now or will
+  do me harm, this will happen even though I were not to take this
+  beverage; and if this is not written, it will not happen even though I
+  should take this same beverage; consequently I shall be <!-- Page 57
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page57"></a>[57]</span> able to follow
+  with impunity my inclination to take what is pleasing, however injurious
+  it may be; the result of which reasoning is an obvious absurdity. This
+  objection disconcerted them a little, but they always reverted to their
+  argument, phrased in different ways, until they were brought to
+  understand where the fault of the sophism lies. It is untrue that the
+  event happens whatever one may do: it will happen because one does what
+  leads thereto; and if the event is written beforehand, the cause that
+  will make it happen is written also. Thus the connexion of effects and
+  causes, so far from establishing the doctrine of a necessity detrimental
+  to conduct, serves to overthrow it.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet, without having evil intentions inclined towards libertinism, one
+  may envisage differently the strange consequences of an inevitable
+  necessity, considering that it would destroy the freedom of the will, so
+  essential to the morality of action: for justice and injustice, praise
+  and blame, punishment and reward cannot attach to necessary actions, and
+  nobody will be under obligation to do the impossible or to abstain from
+  doing what is absolutely necessary. Without any intention of abusing this
+  consideration in order to favour irregularity, one will nevertheless not
+  escape embarrassment sometimes, when it comes to a question of judging
+  the actions of others, or rather of answering objections, amongst which
+  there are some even concerned with the actions of God, whereof I will
+  speak presently. And as an insuperable necessity would open the door to
+  impiety, whether through the impunity one could thence infer or the
+  hopelessness of any attempt to resist a torrent that sweeps everything
+  along with it, it is important to note the different degrees of
+  necessity, and to show that there are some which cannot do harm, as there
+  are others which cannot be admitted without giving rise to evil
+  consequences.</p>
+
+  <p>Some go even further: not content with using the pretext of necessity
+  to prove that virtue and vice do neither good nor ill, they have the
+  hardihood to make the Divinity accessary to their licentious way of life,
+  and they imitate the pagans of old, who ascribed to the gods the cause of
+  their crimes, as if a divinity drove them to do evil. The philosophy of
+  Christians, which recognizes better than that of the ancients the
+  dependence of things upon the first Author and his co-operation with all
+  the actions of creatures, appears to have increased this difficulty. Some
+  able men in our own time have gone so far as to deny all <!-- Page 58
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page58"></a>[58]</span> action to
+  creatures, and M. Bayle, who tended a little towards this extraordinary
+  opinion, made use of it to restore the lapsed dogma of the two
+  principles, or two gods, the one good, the other evil, as if this dogma
+  were a better solution to the difficulties over the origin of evil. Yet
+  again he acknowledges that it is an indefensible opinion and that the
+  oneness of the Principle is incontestably founded on <i>a priori</i>
+  reasons; but he wishes to infer that our Reason is confounded and cannot
+  meet her own objections, and that one should disregard them and hold fast
+  the revealed dogmas, which teach us the existence of one God altogether
+  good, altogether powerful and altogether wise. But many readers,
+  convinced of the irrefutable nature of his objections and believing them
+  to be at least as strong as the proofs for the truth of religion, would
+  draw dangerous conclusions.</p>
+
+  <p>Even though there were no co-operation by God in evil actions, one
+  could not help finding difficulty in the fact that he foresees them and
+  that, being able to prevent them through his omnipotence, he yet permits
+  them. This is why some philosophers and even some theologians have rather
+  chosen to deny to God any knowledge of the detail of things and, above
+  all, of future events, than to admit what they believed repellent to his
+  goodness. The Socinians and Conrad Vorstius lean towards that side; and
+  Thomas Bonartes, an English Jesuit disguised under a pseudonym but
+  exceedingly learned, who wrote a book <i>De Concordia Scientiae cum
+  Fide</i>, of which I will speak later, appears to hint at this also.</p>
+
+  <p>They are doubtless much mistaken; but others are not less so who,
+  convinced that nothing comes to pass save by the will and the power of
+  God, ascribe to him intentions and actions so unworthy of the greatest
+  and the best of all beings that one would say these authors have indeed
+  renounced the dogma which recognizes God's justice and goodness. They
+  thought that, being supreme Master of the universe, he could without any
+  detriment to his holiness cause sins to be committed, simply at his will
+  and pleasure, or in order that he might have the pleasure of punishing;
+  and even that he could take pleasure in eternally afflicting innocent
+  people without doing any injustice, because no one has the right or the
+  power to control his actions. Some even have gone so far as to say that
+  God acts thus indeed; and on the plea that we are as nothing in
+  comparison with him, they liken us to earthworms which men crush without
+  heeding as they walk, or in general to <!-- Page 59 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page59"></a>[59]</span> animals that are not of
+  our species and which we do not scruple to ill-treat.</p>
+
+  <p>I believe that many persons otherwise of good intentions are misled by
+  these ideas, because they have not sufficient knowledge of their
+  consequences. They do not see that, properly speaking, God's justice is
+  thus overthrown. For what idea shall we form of such a justice as has
+  only will for its rule, that is to say, where the will is not guided by
+  the rules of good and even tends directly towards evil? Unless it be the
+  idea contained in that tyrannical definition by Thrasymachus in Plato,
+  which designated as <i>just</i> that which pleases the stronger. Such
+  indeed is the position taken up, albeit unwittingly, by those who rest
+  all obligation upon constraint, and in consequence take power as the
+  gauge of right. But one will soon abandon maxims so strange and so unfit
+  to make men good and charitable through the imitation of God. For one
+  will reflect that a God who would take pleasure in the misfortune of
+  others cannot be distinguished from the evil principle of the
+  Manichaeans, assuming that this principle had become sole master of the
+  universe; and that in consequence one must attribute to the true God
+  sentiments that render him worthy to be called the good Principle.</p>
+
+  <p>Happily these extravagant dogmas scarce obtain any longer among
+  theologians. Nevertheless some astute persons, who are pleased to make
+  difficulties, revive them: they seek to increase our perplexity by
+  uniting the controversies aroused by Christian theology to the disputes
+  of philosophy. Philosophers have considered the questions of necessity,
+  of freedom and of the origin of evil; theologians have added thereto
+  those of original sin, of grace and of predestination. The original
+  corruption of the human race, coming from the first sin, appears to us to
+  have imposed a natural necessity to sin without the succour of divine
+  grace: but necessity being incompatible with punishment, it will be
+  inferred that a sufficient grace ought to have been given to all men;
+  which does not seem to be in conformity with experience.</p>
+
+  <p>But the difficulty is great, above all, in relation to God's
+  dispositions for the salvation of men. There are few saved or chosen;
+  therefore the choice of many is not God's decreed will. And since it is
+  admitted that those whom he has chosen deserve it no more than the rest,
+  and are not even fundamentally less evil, the goodness which they have
+  coming only from the gift of God, the difficulty <!-- Page 60 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page60"></a>[60]</span> is increased. Where is,
+  then, his justice (people will say), or at the least, where is his
+  goodness? Partiality, or respect of persons, goes against justice, and he
+  who without cause sets bounds to his goodness cannot have it in
+  sufficient measure. It is true that those who are not chosen are lost by
+  their own fault: they lack good will or living faith; but it rested with
+  God alone to grant it them. We know that besides inward grace there are
+  usually outward circumstances which distinguish men, and that training,
+  conversation, example often correct or corrupt natural disposition. Now
+  that God should call forth circumstances favourable to some and abandon
+  others to experiences which contribute to their misfortune, will not that
+  give us cause for astonishment? And it is not enough (so it seems) to say
+  with some that inward grace is universal and equal for all. For these
+  same authors are obliged to resort to the exclamations of St. Paul, and
+  to say: 'O the depth!' when they consider how men are distinguished by
+  what we may call outward graces, that is, by graces appearing in the
+  diversity of circumstances which God calls forth, whereof men are not the
+  masters, and which have nevertheless so great an influence upon all that
+  concerns their salvation.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor will it help us to say with St. Augustine that, all men being
+  involved in the damnation caused by the sin of Adam, God might have left
+  them all in their misery; and that thus his goodness alone induces him to
+  deliver some of them. For not only is it strange that the sin of another
+  should condemn anyone, but there still remains the question why God does
+  not deliver all&mdash;why he delivers the lesser number and why some in
+  preference to others. He is in truth their master, but he is a good and
+  just master; his power is absolute, but his wisdom permits not that he
+  exercise that power in an arbitrary and despotic way, which would be
+  tyrannous indeed.</p>
+
+  <p>Moreover, the fall of the first man having happened only with God's
+  permission, and God having resolved to permit it only when once he had
+  considered its consequences, which are the corruption of the mass of the
+  human race and the choice of a small number of elect, with the
+  abandonment of all the rest, it is useless to conceal the difficulty by
+  limiting one's view to the mass already corrupt. One must, in spite of
+  oneself, go back to the knowledge of the consequences of the first sin,
+  preceding the decree whereby God permitted it, and whereby he permitted
+  simultaneously that <!-- Page 61 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page61"></a>[61]</span> the damned should be involved in the mass
+  of perdition and should not be delivered: for God and the sage make no
+  resolve without considering its consequences.</p>
+
+  <p>I hope to remove all these difficulties. I will point out that
+  absolute necessity, which is called also logical and metaphysical and
+  sometimes geometrical, and which would alone be formidable in this
+  connexion, does not exist in free actions, and that thus freedom is
+  exempt not only from constraint but also from real necessity. I will show
+  that God himself, although he always chooses the best, does not act by an
+  absolute necessity, and that the laws of nature laid down by God, founded
+  upon the fitness of things, keep the mean between geometrical truths,
+  absolutely necessary, and arbitrary decrees; which M. Bayle and other
+  modern philosophers have not sufficiently understood. Further I will show
+  that there is an indifference in freedom, because there is no absolute
+  necessity for one course or the other; but yet that there is never an
+  indifference of perfect equipoise. And I will demonstrate that there is
+  in free actions a perfect spontaneity beyond all that has been conceived
+  hitherto. Finally I will make it plain that the hypothetical and the
+  moral necessity which subsist in free actions are open to no objection,
+  and that the 'Lazy Reason' is a pure sophism.</p>
+
+  <p>Likewise concerning the origin of evil in its relation to God, I offer
+  a vindication of his perfections that shall extol not less his holiness,
+  his justice and his goodness than his greatness, his power and his
+  independence. I show how it is possible for everything to depend upon
+  God, for him to co-operate in all the actions of creatures, even, if you
+  will, to create these creatures continually, and nevertheless not to be
+  the author of sin. Here also it is demonstrated how the privative nature
+  of evil should be understood. Much more than that, I explain how evil has
+  a source other than the will of God, and that one is right therefore to
+  say of moral evil that God wills it not, but simply permits it. Most
+  important of all, however, I show that it has been possible for God to
+  permit sin and misery, and even to co-operate therein and promote it,
+  without detriment to his holiness and his supreme goodness: although,
+  generally speaking, he could have avoided all these evils.</p>
+
+  <p>Concerning grace and predestination, I justify the most debatable
+  assertions, as for instance: that we are converted only <!-- Page 62
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page62"></a>[62]</span> through the
+  prevenient grace of God and that we cannot do good except with his aid;
+  that God wills the salvation of all men and that he condemns only those
+  whose will is evil; that he gives to all a sufficient grace provided they
+  wish to use it; that, Jesus Christ being the source and the centre of
+  election, God destined the elect for salvation, because he foresaw that
+  they would cling with a lively faith to the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Yet
+  it is true that this reason for election is not the final reason, and
+  that this very pre-vision is still a consequence of God's anterior
+  decree. Faith likewise is a gift of God, who has predestinated the faith
+  of the elect, for reasons lying in a superior decree which dispenses
+  grace and circumstance in accordance with God's supreme wisdom.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, as one of the most gifted men of our time, whose eloquence was as
+  great as his acumen and who gave great proofs of his vast erudition, had
+  applied himself with a strange predilection to call attention to all the
+  difficulties on this subject which I have just touched in general, I
+  found a fine field for exercise in considering the question with him in
+  detail. I acknowledge that M. Bayle (for it is easy to see that I speak
+  of him) has on his side all the advantages except that of the root of the
+  matter, but I hope that truth (which he acknowledges himself to be on our
+  side) by its very plainness, and provided it be fittingly set forth, will
+  prevail over all the ornaments of eloquence and erudition. My hope for
+  success therein is all the greater because it is the cause of God I
+  plead, and because one of the maxims here upheld states that God's help
+  is never lacking for those that lack not good will. The author of this
+  discourse believes that he has given proof of this good will in the
+  attention he has brought to bear upon this subject. He has meditated upon
+  it since his youth; he has conferred with some of the foremost men of the
+  time; and he has schooled himself by the reading of good authors. And the
+  success which God has given him (according to the opinion of sundry
+  competent judges) in certain other profound meditations, of which some
+  have much influence on this subject, gives him peradventure some right to
+  claim the attention of readers who love truth and are fitted to search
+  after it.</p>
+
+  <p>The author had, moreover, particular and weighty reasons inducing him
+  to take pen in hand for discussion of this subject. Conversations which
+  he had concerning the same with literary and court personages, in Germany
+  and in France, and especially <!-- Page 63 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page63"></a>[63]</span> with one of the greatest and most
+  accomplished of princesses, have repeatedly prompted him to this course.
+  He had had the honour of expressing his opinions to this Princess upon
+  divers passages of the admirable <i>Dictionary</i> of M. Bayle, wherein
+  religion and reason appear as adversaries, and where M. Bayle wishes to
+  silence reason after having made it speak too loud: which he calls the
+  triumph of faith. The present author declared there and then that he was
+  of a different opinion, but that he was nevertheless well pleased that a
+  man of such great genius had brought about an occasion for going deeply
+  into these subjects, subjects as important as they are difficult. He
+  admitted having examined them also for some long time already, and having
+  sometimes been minded to publish upon this matter some reflexions whose
+  chief aim should be such knowledge of God as is needed to awaken piety
+  and to foster virtue. This Princess exhorted and urged him to carry out
+  his long-cherished intention, and some friends added their persuasions.
+  He was all the more tempted to accede to their requests since he had
+  reason to hope that in the sequel to his investigation M. Bayle's genius
+  would greatly aid him to give the subject such illumination as it might
+  receive with his support. But divers obstacles intervened, and the death
+  of the incomparable Queen was not the least. It happened, however, that
+  M. Bayle was attacked by excellent men who set themselves to examine the
+  same subject; he answered them fully and always ingeniously. I followed
+  their dispute, and was even on the point of being involved therein. This
+  is how it came about.</p>
+
+  <p>I had published a new system, which seemed well adapted to explain the
+  union of the soul and the body: it met with considerable applause even
+  from those who were not in agreement with it, and certain competent
+  persons testified that they had already been of my opinion, without
+  having reached so distinct an explanation, before they saw what I had
+  written on the matter. M. Bayle examined it in his <i>Historical and
+  Critical Dictionary</i>, article 'Rorarius'. He thought that my
+  expositions were worthy of further development; he drew attention to
+  their usefulness in various connexions, and he laid stress upon what
+  might still cause difficulty. I could not but reply in a suitable way to
+  expressions so civil and to reflexions so instructive as his. In order to
+  turn them to greater account, I published some elucidations in the
+  <i>Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants</i>, July 1698. M. Bayle replied to
+  them in the <!-- Page 64 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page64"></a>[64]</span> second edition of his <i>Dictionary</i>. I
+  sent him a rejoinder which has not yet been published; I know not whether
+  he ever made a further reply.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile it happened that M. le Clerc had inserted in his <i>Select
+  Library</i> an extract from the <i>Intellectual System</i> of the late
+  Mr. Cudworth, and had explained therein certain 'plastic natures' which
+  this admirable author applied to the formation of animals. M. Bayle
+  believed (see the continuation of <i>Divers Thoughts on the Comet</i>,
+  ch. 21, art. 11) that, these natures being without cognition, in
+  establishing them one weakened the argument which proves, through the
+  marvellous formation of things, that the universe must have an
+  intelligent Cause. M. le Clerc replied (4th art. of the 5th vol. of his
+  <i>Select Library</i>) that these natures required to be directed by
+  divine wisdom. M. Bayle insisted (7th article of the <i>Histoire des
+  Ouvrages des Savants</i>, August 1704) that direction alone was not
+  sufficient for a cause devoid of cognition, unless one took the cause to
+  be a mere instrument of God, in which case direction would be needless.
+  My system was touched upon in passing; and that gave me an opportunity to
+  send a short essay to the illustrious author of the <i>Histoire des
+  Ouvrages des Savants</i>, which he inserted in the month of May 1705,
+  art. 9. In this I endeavoured to make clear that in reality mechanism is
+  sufficient to produce the organic bodies of animals, without any need of
+  other plastic natures, provided there be added thereto the
+  <i>preformation</i> already completely organic in the seeds of the bodies
+  that come into existence, contained in those of the bodies whence they
+  spring, right back to the primary seeds. This could only proceed from the
+  Author of things, infinitely powerful and infinitely wise, who, creating
+  all in the beginning in due order, had <i>pre-established</i> there all
+  order and artifice that was to be. There is no chaos in the inward nature
+  of things, and there is organism everywhere in a matter whose disposition
+  proceeds from God. More and more of it would come to light if we pressed
+  closer our examination of the anatomy of bodies; and we should continue
+  to observe it even if we could go on to infinity, like Nature, and make
+  subdivision as continuous in our knowledge as Nature has made it in
+  fact.</p>
+
+  <p>In order to explain this marvel of the formation of animals, I made
+  use of a Pre-established Harmony, that is to say, of the same means I had
+  used to explain another marvel, namely the <!-- Page 65 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page65"></a>[65]</span> correspondence of soul
+  with body, wherein I proved the uniformity and the fecundity of the
+  principles I had employed. It seems that this reminded M. Bayle of my
+  system of accounting for this correspondence, which he had examined
+  formerly. He declared (in chapter 180 of his <i>Reply to the Questions of
+  a Provincial</i>, vol. III, p. 1253) that he did not believe God could
+  give to matter or to any other cause the faculty of becoming organic
+  without communicating to it the idea and the knowledge of organic nature.
+  Also he was not yet disposed to believe that God, with all his power over
+  Nature and with all the foreknowledge which he has of the contingencies
+  that may arrive, could have so disposed things that by the laws of
+  mechanics alone a vessel (for instance) should go to its port of
+  destination without being steered during its passage by some intelligent
+  guide. I was surprised to see that limits were placed on the power of
+  God, without the adduction of any proof and without indication that there
+  was any contradiction to be feared on the side of the object or any
+  imperfection on God's side. Whereas I had shown before in my Rejoinder
+  that even men often produce through automata something like the movements
+  that come from reason, and that even a finite mind (but one far above
+  ours) could accomplish what M. Bayle thinks impossible to the Divinity.
+  Moreover, as God orders all things at once beforehand, the accuracy of
+  the path of this vessel would be no more strange than that of a fuse
+  passing along a cord in fireworks, since the whole disposition of things
+  preserves a perfect harmony between them by means of their influence one
+  upon the other.</p>
+
+  <p>This declaration of M. Bayle pledged me to an answer. I therefore
+  purposed to point out to him, that unless it be said that God forms
+  organic bodies himself by a perpetual miracle, or that he has entrusted
+  this care to intelligences whose power and knowledge are almost divine,
+  we must hold the opinion that God <i>preformed</i> things in such sort
+  that new organisms are only a mechanical consequence of a preceding
+  organic constitution. Even so do butterflies come out of silkworms, an
+  instance where M. Swammerdam has shown that there is nothing but
+  development. And I would have added that nothing is better qualified than
+  the preformation of plants and of animals to confirm my System of
+  Pre-established Harmony between the soul and the body. For in this the
+  body is prompted by its original constitution to carry out with the help
+  of external things all that it does in accordance with the <!-- Page 66
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page66"></a>[66]</span> will of the
+  soul. So the seeds by their original constitution carry out naturally the
+  intentions of God, by an artifice greater still than that which causes
+  our body to perform everything in conformity with our will. And since M.
+  Bayle himself deems with reason that there is more artifice in the
+  organism of animals than in the most beautiful poem in the world or in
+  the most admirable invention whereof the human mind is capable, it
+  follows that my system of the connexion between the body and the soul is
+  as intelligible as the general opinion on the formation of animals. For
+  this opinion (which appears to me true) states in effect that the wisdom
+  of God has so made Nature that it is competent in virtue of its laws to
+  form animals; I explain this opinion and throw more light upon the
+  possibility of it through the system of preformation. Whereafter there
+  will be no cause for surprise that God has so made the body that by
+  virtue of its own laws it can carry out the intentions of the reasoning
+  soul: for all that the reasoning soul can demand of the body is less
+  difficult than the organization which God has demanded of the seeds. M.
+  Bayle says (<i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>, ch. 182, p.
+  1294) that it is only very recently there have been people who have
+  understood that the formation of living bodies cannot be a natural
+  process. This he could say also (in accordance with his principles) of
+  the communication between the soul and the body, since God effects this
+  whole communication in the system of occasional causes to which this
+  author subscribes. But I admit the supernatural here only in the
+  beginning of things, in respect of the first formation of animals or in
+  respect of the original constitution of pre-established harmony between
+  the soul and the body. Once that has come to pass, I hold that the
+  formation of animals and the relation between the soul and the body are
+  something as natural now as the other most ordinary operations of Nature.
+  A close parallel is afforded by people's ordinary thinking about the
+  instinct and the marvellous behaviour of brutes. One recognizes reason
+  there not in the brutes but in him who created them. I am, then, of the
+  general opinion in this respect; but I hope that my explanation will have
+  added clearness and lucidity, and even a more ample range, to that
+  opinion.</p>
+
+  <p>Now when preparing to justify my system in face of the new
+  difficulties of M. Bayle, I purposed at the same time to communicate to
+  him the ideas which I had had for some time already, on <!-- Page 67
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page67"></a>[67]</span> the
+  difficulties put forward by him in opposition to those who endeavour to
+  reconcile reason with faith in regard to the existence of evil. Indeed,
+  there are perhaps few persons who have toiled more than I in this matter.
+  Hardly had I gained some tolerable understanding of Latin writings when I
+  had an opportunity of turning over books in a library. I flitted from
+  book to book, and since subjects for meditation pleased me as much as
+  histories and fables, I was charmed by the work of Laurentius Valla
+  against Boethius and by that of Luther against Erasmus, although I was
+  well aware that they had need of some mitigation. I did not omit books of
+  controversy, and amongst other writings of this nature the records of the
+  Montbéliard Conversation, which had revived the dispute, appeared to me
+  instructive. Nor did I neglect the teachings of our theologians: and the
+  study of their opponents, far from disturbing me, served to strengthen me
+  in the moderate opinions of the Churches of the Augsburg Confession. I
+  had opportunity on my journeys to confer with some excellent men of
+  different parties, for instance with Bishop Peter von Wallenburg,
+  Suffragan of Mainz, with Herr Johann Ludwig Fabricius, premier theologian
+  of Heidelberg, and finally with the celebrated M. Arnauld. To him I even
+  tendered a Latin Dialogue of my own composition upon this subject, about
+  the year 1673, wherein already I laid it down that God, having chosen the
+  most perfect of all possible worlds, had been prompted by his wisdom to
+  permit the evil which was bound up with it, but which still did not
+  prevent this world from being, all things considered, the best that could
+  be chosen. I have also since read many and various good authors on these
+  subjects, and I have endeavoured to make progress in the knowledge that
+  seems to me proper for banishing all that could have obscured the idea of
+  supreme perfection which must be acknowledged in God. I have not
+  neglected to examine the most rigorous authors, who have extended
+  furthest the doctrine of the necessity of things, as for instance Hobbes
+  and Spinoza, of whom the former advocated this absolute necessity not
+  only in his <i>Physical Elements</i> and elsewhere, but also in a special
+  book against Bishop Bramhall. And Spinoza insists more or less (like an
+  ancient Peripatetic philosopher named Strato) that all has come from the
+  first cause or from primitive Nature by a blind and geometrical
+  necessity, with complete absence of capacity for choice, for goodness and
+  for understanding in this first source of things.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 68 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page68"></a>[68]</span></p>
+
+  <p>I have found the means, so it seems to me, of demonstrating the
+  contrary in a way that gives one a clear insight into the inward essence
+  of the matter. For having made new discoveries on the nature of active
+  force and the laws of motion, I have shown that they have no geometrical
+  necessity, as Spinoza appears to have believed they had. Neither, as I
+  have made plain, are they purely arbitrary, even though this be the
+  opinion of M. Bayle and of some modern philosophers: but they are
+  dependent upon the fitness of things as I have already pointed out above,
+  or upon that which I call the 'principle of the best'. Moreover one
+  recognizes therein, as in every other thing, the marks of the first
+  substance, whose productions bear the stamp of a supreme wisdom and make
+  the most perfect of harmonies. I have shown also that this harmony
+  connects both the future with the past and the present with the absent.
+  The first kind of connexion unites times, and the other places. This
+  second connexion is displayed in the union of the soul with the body, and
+  in general in the communication of true substances with one another and
+  with material phenomena. But the first takes place in the preformation of
+  organic bodies, or rather of all bodies, since there is organism
+  everywhere, although all masses do not compose organic bodies. So a pond
+  may very well be full of fish or of other organic bodies, although it is
+  not itself an animal or organic body, but only a mass that contains them.
+  Thus I had endeavoured to build upon such foundations, established in a
+  conclusive manner, a complete body of the main articles of knowledge that
+  reason pure and simple can impart to us, a body whereof all the parts
+  were properly connected and capable of meeting the most important
+  difficulties of the ancients and the moderns. I had also in consequence
+  formed for myself a certain system concerning the freedom of man and the
+  cooperation of God. This system appeared to me to be such as would in no
+  wise offend reason and faith; and I desired to submit it to the scrutiny
+  of M. Bayle, as well as of those who are in controversy with him. Now he
+  has departed from us, and such a loss is no small one, a writer whose
+  learning and acumen few have equalled. But since the subject is under
+  consideration and men of talent are still occupied with it, while the
+  public also follows it attentively, I take this to be a fitting moment
+  for the publication of certain of my ideas.</p>
+
+  <p>It will perhaps be well to add the observation, before finishing this
+  preface, that in denying the physical influence of the soul upon <!--
+  Page 69 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page69"></a>[69]</span> the
+  body or of the body upon the soul, that is, an influence causing the one
+  to disturb the laws of the other, I by no means deny the union of the one
+  with the other which forms of them a suppositum; but this union is
+  something metaphysical, which changes nothing in the phenomena. This is
+  what I have already said in reply to the objection raised against me, in
+  the <i>Mémoires de Trévoux</i>, by the Reverend Father de Tournemine,
+  whose wit and learning are of no ordinary mould. And for this reason one
+  may say also in a metaphysical sense that the soul acts upon the body and
+  the body upon the soul. Moreover, it is true that the soul is the
+  Entelechy or the active principle, whereas the corporeal alone or the
+  mere material contains only the passive. Consequently the principle of
+  action is in the soul, as I have explained more than once in the
+  <i>Leipzig Journal</i>. More especially does this appear in my answer to
+  the late Herr Sturm, philosopher and mathematician of Altorf, where I
+  have even demonstrated that, if bodies contained only the passive, their
+  different conditions would be indistinguishable. Also I take this
+  opportunity to say that, having heard of some objections made by the
+  gifted author of the book on <i>Self-knowledge</i>, in that same book, to
+  my System of Pre-established Harmony, I sent a reply to Paris, showing
+  that he has attributed to me opinions I am far from holding. On another
+  matter recently I met with like treatment at the hands of an anonymous
+  Doctor of the Sorbonne. And these misconceptions would have become plain
+  to the reader at the outset if my own words, which were being taken in
+  evidence, had been quoted.</p>
+
+  <p>This tendency of men to make mistakes in presenting the opinions of
+  others leads me to observe also, that when I said somewhere that man
+  helps himself in conversion through the succour of grace, I mean only
+  that he derives advantage from it through the cessation of the resistance
+  overcome, but without any cooperation on his part: just as there is no
+  co-operation in ice when it is broken. For conversion is purely the work
+  of God's grace, wherein man co-operates only by resisting it; but human
+  resistance is more or less great according to the persons and the
+  occasions. Circumstances also contribute more or less to our attention
+  and to the motions that arise in the soul; and the co-operation of all
+  these things, together with the strength of the impression and the
+  condition of the will, determines the operation of grace, although not
+  rendering it necessary. I have expounded sufficiently elsewhere <!-- Page
+  70 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page70"></a>[70]</span> that in
+  relation to matters of salvation unregenerate man is to be considered as
+  dead; and I greatly approve the manner wherein the theologians of the
+  Augsburg Confession declare themselves on this subject. Yet this
+  corruption of unregenerate man is, it must be added, no hindrance to his
+  possession of true moral virtues and his performance of good actions in
+  his civic life, actions which spring from a good principle, without any
+  evil intention and without mixture of actual sin. Wherein I hope I shall
+  be forgiven, if I have dared to diverge from the opinion of St.
+  Augustine: he was doubtless a great man, of admirable intelligence, but
+  inclined sometimes, as it seems, to exaggerate things, above all in the
+  heat of his controversies. I greatly esteem some persons who profess to
+  be disciples of St. Augustine, amongst others the Reverend Father Quênel,
+  a worthy successor of the great Arnauld in the pursuit of controversies
+  that have embroiled them with the most famous of Societies. But I have
+  found that usually in disputes between people of conspicuous merit (of
+  whom there are doubtless some here in both parties) there is right on
+  both sides, although in different points, and it is rather in the matter
+  of defence than attack, although the natural malevolence of the human
+  heart generally renders attack more agreeable to the reader than defence.
+  I hope that the Reverend Father Ptolemei, who does his Society credit and
+  is occupied in filling the gaps left by the famous Bellarmine, will give
+  us, concerning all of that, some explanations worthy of his acumen and
+  his knowledge, and I even dare to add, his moderation. And one must
+  believe that among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession there will
+  arise some new Chemnitz or some new Callixtus; even as one is justified
+  in thinking that men like Usserius or Daillé will again appear among the
+  Reformed, and that all will work more and more to remove the
+  misconceptions wherewith this matter is charged. For the rest I shall be
+  well pleased that those who shall wish to examine it closely read the
+  objections with the answers I have given thereto, formulated in the small
+  treatise I have placed at the end of the work by way of summary. I have
+  endeavoured to forestall some new objections. I have explained, for
+  instance, why I have taken the antecedent and consequent will as
+  preliminary and final, after the example of Thomas, of Scotus and others;
+  how it is possible that there be incomparably more good in the glory of
+  all the saved than there is evil in the misery of all the damned, <!--
+  Page 71 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page71"></a>[71]</span> despite
+  that there are more of the latter; how, in saying that evil has been
+  permitted as a <i>conditio sine qua non</i> of good, I mean not according
+  to the principle of necessity, but according to the principle of the
+  fitness of things. Furthermore I show that the predetermination I admit
+  is such as always to predispose, but never to necessitate, and that God
+  will not refuse the requisite new light to those who have made a good use
+  of that which they had. Other elucidations besides I have endeavoured to
+  give on some difficulties which have been put before me of late. I have,
+  moreover, followed the advice of some friends who thought it fitting that
+  I should add two appendices: the one treats of the controversy carried on
+  between Mr. Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall touching Freedom and Necessity,
+  the other of the learned work on <i>The Origin of Evil</i>, published a
+  short time ago in England.</p>
+
+  <p>Finally I have endeavoured in all things to consider edification: and
+  if I have conceded something to curiosity, it is because I thought it
+  necessary to relieve a subject whose seriousness may cause
+  discouragement. It is with that in view that I have introduced into this
+  dissertation the pleasing chimera of a certain astronomical theology,
+  having no ground for apprehension that it will ensnare anyone and deeming
+  that to tell it and refute it is the same thing. Fiction for fiction,
+  instead of imagining that the planets were suns, one might conceive that
+  they were masses melted in the sun and thrown out, and that would destroy
+  the foundation of this hypothetical theology. The ancient error of the
+  two principles, which the Orientals distinguished by the names Oromasdes
+  and Arimanius, caused me to explain a conjecture on the primitive history
+  of peoples. It appears indeed probable that these were the names of two
+  great contemporary princes, the one monarch of a part of upper Asia,
+  where there have since been others of this name, the other king of the
+  Scythian Celts who made incursions into the states of the former, and who
+  was also named amongst the divinities of Germania. It seems, indeed, that
+  Zoroaster used the names of these princes as symbols of the invisible
+  powers which their exploits made them resemble in the ideas of Asiatics.
+  Yet elsewhere, according to the accounts of Arab authors, who in this
+  might well be better informed than the Greeks, it appears from detailed
+  records of ancient oriental history, that this Zerdust or Zoroaster, whom
+  they make contemporary with the great Darius, did not look upon these two
+  <!-- Page 72 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page72"></a>[72]</span>
+  principles as completely primitive and independent, but as dependent upon
+  one supreme and single principle. They relate that he believed, in
+  conformity with the cosmogony of Moses, that God, who is without an
+  equal, created all and separated the light from the darkness; that the
+  light conformed with his original design, but that the darkness came as a
+  consequence, even as the shadow follows the body, and that this is
+  nothing but privation. Such a thesis would clear this ancient author of
+  the errors the Greeks imputed to him. His great learning caused the
+  Orientals to compare him with the Mercury or Hermes of the Egyptians and
+  Greeks; just as the northern peoples compared their Wodan or Odin to this
+  same Mercury. That is why Mercredi (Wednesday), or the day of Mercury,
+  was called Wodansdag by the northern peoples, but day of Zerdust by the
+  Asiatics, since it is named Zarschamba or Dsearschambe by the Turks and
+  the Persians, Zerda by the Hungarians from the north-east, and Sreda by
+  the Slavs from the heart of Great Russia, as far as the Wends of the
+  Luneburg region, the Slavs having learnt the name also from the
+  Orientals. These observations will perhaps not be displeasing to the
+  curious. And I flatter myself that the small dialogue ending the Essays
+  written to oppose M. Bayle will give some satisfaction to those who are
+  well pleased to see difficult but important truths set forth in an easy
+  and familiar way. I have written in a foreign language at the risk of
+  making many errors in it, because that language has been recently used by
+  others in treating of my subject, and because it is more generally read
+  by those whom one would wish to benefit by this small work. It is to be
+  hoped that the language errors will be pardoned: they are to be
+  attributed not only to the printer and the copyist, but also to the haste
+  of the author, who has been much distracted from his task. If, moreover,
+  any error has crept into the ideas expressed, the author will be the
+  first to correct it, once he has been better informed: he has given
+  elsewhere such indications of his love of truth that he hopes this
+  declaration will not be regarded as merely an empty phrase.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 73 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page73"></a>[73]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION
+ON THE CONFORMITY OF
+FAITH WITH REASON</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+  <p>1. I begin with the preliminary question of the <i>conformity of faith
+  with reason</i>, and the use of philosophy in theology, because it has
+  much influence on the main subject of my treatise, and because M. Bayle
+  introduces it everywhere. I assume that two truths cannot contradict each
+  other; that the object of faith is the truth God has revealed in an
+  extraordinary way; and that reason is the linking together of truths, but
+  especially (when it is compared with faith) of those whereto the human
+  mind can attain naturally without being aided by the light of faith. This
+  definition of reason (that is to say of strict and true reason) has
+  surprised some persons accustomed to inveigh against reason taken in a
+  vague sense. They gave me the answer that they had never heard of any
+  such explanation of it: the truth is that they have never conferred with
+  people who expressed themselves clearly on these subjects. They have
+  confessed to me, nevertheless, that one could not find fault with reason,
+  understood in the sense which I gave to it. It is in the same sense that
+  sometimes reason is contrasted with experience. Reason, since it consists
+  in the linking together of truths, is entitled to connect also those
+  wherewith experience has furnished it, in order thence to draw mixed
+  conclusions; but reason pure and simple, as distinct from experience,
+  only has to do with truths independent of the senses. And one may compare
+  faith with experience, since faith (in <!-- Page 74 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page74"></a>[74]</span> respect of the motives
+  that give it justification) depends upon the experience of those who have
+  seen the miracles whereon revelation is founded, and upon the trustworthy
+  tradition which has handed them down to us, whether through the
+  Scriptures or by the account of those who have preserved them. It is
+  rather as we rely upon the experience of those who have seen China and on
+  the credibility of their account when we give credence to the wonders
+  that are told us of that distant country. Yet I would also take into
+  account the inward motion of the Holy Spirit, who takes possession of
+  souls and persuades them and prompts them to good, that is, to faith and
+  to charity, without always having need of motives.</p>
+
+  <p>2. Now the truths of reason are of two kinds: the one kind is of those
+  called the 'Eternal Verities', which are altogether necessary, so that
+  the opposite implies contradiction. Such are the truths whose necessity
+  is logical, metaphysical or geometrical, which one cannot deny without
+  being led into absurdities. There are others which may be called
+  <i>positive</i>, because they are the laws which it has pleased God to
+  give to Nature, or because they depend upon those. We learn them either
+  by experience, that is, <i>a posteriori</i>, or by reason and <i>a
+  priori</i>, that is, by considerations of the fitness of things which
+  have caused their choice. This fitness of things has also its rules and
+  reasons, but it is the free choice of God, and not a geometrical
+  necessity, which causes preference for what is fitting and brings it into
+  existence. Thus one may say that physical necessity is founded on moral
+  necessity, that is, on the wise one's choice which is worthy of his
+  wisdom; and that both of these ought to be distinguished from geometrical
+  necessity. It is this physical necessity that makes order in Nature and
+  lies in the rules of motion and in some other general laws which it
+  pleased God to lay down for things when he gave them being. It is
+  therefore true that God gave such laws not without reason, for he chooses
+  nothing from caprice and as though by chance or in pure indifference; but
+  the general reasons of good and of order, which have prompted him to the
+  choice, may be overcome in some cases by stronger reasons of a superior
+  order.</p>
+
+  <p>3. Thus it is made clear that God can exempt creatures from the laws
+  he has prescribed for them, and produce in them that which their nature
+  does not bear by performing a miracle. When they have risen to
+  perfections and faculties nobler than those whereto they can by their
+  nature attain, the Schoolmen call this <!-- Page 75 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page75"></a>[75]</span> faculty an 'Obediential
+  Power', that is to say, a power which the thing acquires by obeying the
+  command of him who can give that which the thing has not. The Schoolmen,
+  however, usually give instances of this power which to me appear
+  impossible: they maintain, for example, that God can give the creature
+  the faculty to create. It may be that there are miracles which God
+  performs through the ministry of angels, where the laws of Nature are not
+  violated, any more than when men assist Nature by art, the skill of
+  angels differing from ours only by degree of perfection. Nevertheless it
+  still remains true that the laws of Nature are subject to be dispensed
+  from by the Law-giver; whereas the eternal verities, as for instance
+  those of geometry, admit no dispensation, and faith cannot contradict
+  them. Thus it is that there cannot be any invincible objection to truth.
+  For if it is a question of proof which is founded upon principles or
+  incontestable facts and formed by a linking together of eternal verities,
+  the conclusion is certain and essential, and that which is contrary to it
+  must be false; otherwise two contradictories might be true at the same
+  time. If the objection is not conclusive, it can only form a probable
+  argument, which has no force against faith, since it is agreed that the
+  Mysteries of religion are contrary to appearances. Now M. Bayle declares,
+  in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc, that he does not claim that there
+  are demonstrations contrary to the truths of faith: and as a result all
+  these insuperable difficulties, these so-called wars between reason and
+  faith, vanish away.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Hi motus animorum atque haec discrimina tanta,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>4. Protestant theologians as well as those of the Roman confession
+  admit the maxims which I have just laid down, when they handle the matter
+  with attention; and all that is said against reason has no force save
+  against a kind of counterfeit reason, corrupted and deluded by false
+  appearances. It is the same with our notions of the justice and the
+  goodness of God, which are spoken of sometimes as if we had neither any
+  idea nor any definition of their nature. But in that case we should have
+  no ground for ascribing these attributes to him, or lauding him for them.
+  His goodness and his justice as well as his wisdom differ from ours only
+  because they are infinitely more perfect. Thus the simple notions, the
+  necessary truths and the conclusive results of philosophy <!-- Page 76
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page76"></a>[76]</span> cannot be
+  contrary to revelation. And when some philosophical maxims are rejected
+  in theology, the reason is that they are considered to have only a
+  physical or moral necessity, which speaks only of that which takes place
+  usually, and is consequently founded on appearances, but which may be
+  withheld if God so pleases.</p>
+
+  <p>5. It seems, according to what I have just said, that there is often
+  some confusion in the expressions of those who set at variance philosophy
+  and theology, or faith and reason: they confuse the terms 'explain',
+  'comprehend', 'prove', 'uphold'. And I find that M. Bayle, shrewd as he
+  is, is not always free from this confusion. Mysteries may be
+  <i>explained</i> sufficiently to justify belief in them; but one cannot
+  <i>comprehend</i> them, nor give understanding of how they come to pass.
+  Thus even in natural philosophy we explain up to a certain point sundry
+  perceptible qualities, but in an imperfect manner, for we do not
+  comprehend them. Nor is it possible for us, either, to prove Mysteries by
+  reason; for all that which can be proved <i>a priori</i>, or by pure
+  reason, can be comprehended. All that remains for us then, after having
+  believed in the Mysteries by reason of the proofs of the truth of
+  religion (which are called 'motives of credibility') is to be able to
+  <i>uphold</i> them against objections. Without that our belief in them
+  would have no firm foundation; for all that which can be refuted in a
+  sound and conclusive manner cannot but be false. And such proofs of the
+  truth of religion as can give only a <i>moral certainty</i> would be
+  balanced and even outweighed by such objections as would give an
+  <i>absolute certainty</i>, provided they were convincing and altogether
+  conclusive. This little might suffice me to remove the difficulties
+  concerning the use of reason and philosophy in relation to religion if
+  one had not to deal all too often with prejudiced persons. But as the
+  subject is important and it has fallen into a state of confusion, it will
+  be well to take it in greater detail.</p>
+
+  <p>6. The question of the <i>conformity of faith with reason</i> has
+  always been a great problem. In the primitive Church the ablest Christian
+  authors adapted themselves to the ideas of the Platonists, which were the
+  most acceptable to them, and were at that time most generally in favour.
+  Little by little Aristotle took the place of Plato, when the taste for
+  systems began to prevail, and when theology itself became more
+  systematic, owing to the decisions of the General Councils, which
+  provided precise and positive formularies. St. Augustine, Boethius and
+  Cassiodorus in the West, and <!-- Page 77 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page77"></a>[77]</span> St. John of Damascus in the East
+  contributed most towards reducing theology to scientific form, not to
+  mention Bede, Alcuin, St. Anselm and some other theologians versed in
+  philosophy. Finally came the Schoolmen. The leisure of the cloisters
+  giving full scope for speculation, which was assisted by Aristotle's
+  philosophy translated from the Arabic, there was formed at last a
+  compound of theology and philosophy wherein most of the questions arose
+  from the trouble that was taken to reconcile faith with reason. But this
+  had not met with the full success hoped for, because theology had been
+  much corrupted by the unhappiness of the times, by ignorance and
+  obstinacy. Moreover, philosophy, in addition to its own faults, which
+  were very great, found itself burdened with those of theology, which in
+  its turn was suffering from association with a philosophy that was very
+  obscure and very imperfect. One must confess, notwithstanding, with the
+  incomparable Grotius, that there is sometimes gold hidden under the
+  rubbish of the monks' barbarous Latin. I have therefore oft-times wished
+  that a man of talent, whose office had necessitated his learning the
+  language of the Schoolmen, had chosen to extract thence whatever is of
+  worth, and that another Petau or Thomasius had done in respect of the
+  Schoolmen what these two learned men have done in respect of the Fathers.
+  It would be a very curious work, and very important for ecclesiastical
+  history, and it would continue the History of Dogmas up to the time of
+  the Revival of Letters (owing to which the aspect of things has changed)
+  and even beyond that point. For sundry dogmas, such as those of physical
+  predetermination, of mediate knowledge, philosophical sin, objective
+  precisions, and many other dogmas in speculative theology and even in the
+  practical theology of cases of conscience, came into currency even after
+  the Council of Trent.</p>
+
+  <p>7. A little before these changes, and before the great schism in the
+  West that still endures, there was in Italy a sect of philosophers which
+  disputed this conformity of faith with reason which I maintain. They were
+  dubbed 'Averroists' because they were adherents of a famous Arab author,
+  who was called the Commentator by pre-eminence, and who appeared to be
+  the one of all his race that penetrated furthest into Aristotle's
+  meaning. This Commentator, extending what Greek expositors had already
+  taught, maintained that according to Aristotle, and even according to
+  reason (and at that time the two were considered almost identical) <!--
+  Page 78 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page78"></a>[78]</span> there
+  was no case for the immortality of the soul. Here is his reasoning. The
+  human kind is eternal, according to Aristotle, therefore if individual
+  souls die not, one must resort to the metempsychosis rejected by that
+  philosopher. Or, if there are always new souls, one must admit the
+  infinity of these souls existing from all eternity; but actual infinity
+  is impossible, according to the doctrine of the same Aristotle. Therefore
+  it is a necessary conclusion that the souls, that is, the forms of
+  organic bodies, must perish with the bodies, or at least this must happen
+  to the passive understanding that belongs to each one individually. Thus
+  there will only remain the active understanding common to all men, which
+  according to Aristotle comes from outside, and which must work
+  wheresoever the organs are suitably disposed; even as the wind produces a
+  kind of music when it is blown into properly adjusted organ pipes.</p>
+
+  <p>8. Nothing could have been weaker than this would-be proof. It is not
+  true that Aristotle refuted metempsychosis, or that he proved the
+  eternity of the human kind; and after all, it is quite untrue that an
+  actual infinity is impossible. Yet this proof passed as irresistible
+  amongst Aristotelians, and induced in them the belief that there was a
+  certain sublunary intelligence and that our active intellect was produced
+  by participation in it. But others who adhered less to Aristotle went so
+  far as to advocate a universal soul forming the ocean of all individual
+  souls, and believed this universal soul alone capable of subsisting,
+  whilst individual souls are born and die. According to this opinion the
+  souls of animals are born by being separated like drops from their ocean,
+  when they find a body which they can animate; and they die by being
+  reunited to the ocean of souls when the body is destroyed, as streams are
+  lost in the sea. Many even went so far as to believe that God is that
+  universal soul, although others thought that this soul was subordinate
+  and created. This bad doctrine is very ancient and apt to dazzle the
+  common herd. It is expressed in these beautiful lines of Vergil
+  (<i>Aen.</i>, VI, v. 724):</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Principio coelum ac terram camposque liquentes,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus</i></p>
+      <p><i>Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitaeque volantum.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+<p><!-- Page 79 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page79"></a>[79]</span></p>
+
+  <p>And again elsewhere (<i>Georg.</i>, IV, v. 221):</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4"><i>Deum namque ire per omnes</i></p>
+      <p><i>Terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum:</i></p>
+      <p><i>Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>9. Plato's Soul of the World has been taken in this sense by some, but
+  there is more indication that the Stoics succumbed to that universal soul
+  which swallows all the rest. Those who are of this opinion might be
+  called 'Monopsychites', since according to them there is in reality only
+  one soul that subsists. M. Bernier observes that this is an opinion
+  almost universally accepted amongst scholars in Persia and in the States
+  of the Grand Mogul; it appears even that it has gained a footing with the
+  Cabalists and with the mystics. A certain German of Swabian birth,
+  converted to Judaism some years ago, who taught under the name Moses
+  Germanus, having adopted the dogmas of Spinoza, believed that Spinoza
+  revived the ancient Cabala of the Hebrews. And a learned man who confuted
+  this proselyte Jew appears to be of the same opinion. It is known that
+  Spinoza recognizes only substance in the world, whereof individual souls
+  are but transient modifications. Valentin Weigel, Pastor of Zschopau in
+  Saxony, a man of wit, even of excessive wit, although people would have
+  it that he was a visionary, was perhaps to some extent of that opinion;
+  as was also a man known as Johann Angelus Silesius, author of certain
+  quite pleasing little devotional verses in German, in the form of
+  epigrams, which have just been reprinted. In general, the mystics'
+  doctrine of deification was liable to such a sinister interpretation.
+  Gerson already has written opposing Ruysbroek, a mystical writer, whose
+  intention was evidently good and whose expressions are excusable. But it
+  would be better to write in a manner that has no need of excuses:
+  although I confess that oft-times expressions which are extravagant, and
+  as it were poetical, have greater force to move and to persuade than
+  correct forms of statement.</p>
+
+  <p>10. The annihilation of all that belongs to us in our own right,
+  carried to great lengths by the Quietists, might equally well be veiled
+  irreligion in certain minds, as is related, for example, concerning the
+  Quietism of Foë, originator of a great Chinese sect. <!-- Page 80
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page80"></a>[80]</span> After having
+  preached his religion for forty years, when he felt death was
+  approaching, he declared to his disciples that he had hidden the truth
+  from them under the veil of metaphors, and that all reduced itself to
+  Nothingness, which he said was the first source of all things. That was
+  still worse, so it would seem, than the opinion of the Averroists. Both
+  of these doctrines are indefensible and even extravagant; nevertheless
+  some moderns have made no difficulty about adopting this one and
+  universal Soul that engulfs the rest. It has met with only too much
+  applause amongst the so-called freethinkers, and M. de Preissac, a
+  soldier and man of wit, who dabbled in philosophy, at one time aired it
+  publicly in his discourses. The System of Pre-established Harmony is the
+  one best qualified to cure this evil. For it shows that there are of
+  necessity substances which are simple and without extension, scattered
+  throughout all Nature; that these substances must subsist independently
+  of every other except God; and that they are never wholly separated from
+  organic body. Those who believe that souls capable of feeling but
+  incapable of reason are mortal, or who maintain that none but reasoning
+  souls can have feeling, offer a handle to the Monopsychites. For it will
+  ever be difficult to persuade men that beasts feel nothing; and once the
+  admission has been made that that which is capable of feeling can die, it
+  is difficult to found upon reason a proof of the immortality of our
+  souls.</p>
+
+  <p>11. I have made this short digression because it appeared to me
+  seasonable at a time when there is only too much tendency to overthrow
+  natural religion to its very foundations. I return then to the
+  Averroists, who were persuaded that their dogma was proved conclusively
+  in accordance with reason. As a result they declared that man's soul is,
+  according to philosophy, mortal, while they protested their acquiescence
+  in Christian theology, which declares the soul's immortality. But this
+  distinction was held suspect, and this divorce between faith and reason
+  was vehemently rejected by the prelates and the doctors of that time, and
+  condemned in the last Lateran Council under Leo X. On that occasion also,
+  scholars were urged to work for the removal of the difficulties that
+  appeared to set theology and philosophy at variance. The doctrine of
+  their incompatibility continued to hold its ground <i>incognito</i>.
+  Pomponazzi was suspected of it, although he declared himself otherwise;
+  and that very sect of the Averroists survived as a school. It is thought
+  <!-- Page 81 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page81"></a>[81]</span>
+  that Caesar Cremoninus, a philosopher famous in his time, was one of its
+  mainstays. Andreas Cisalpinus, a physician (and an author of merit who
+  came nearest after Michael Servetus to the discovery of the circulation
+  of the blood), was accused by Nicolas Taurel (in a book entitled <i>Alpes
+  Caesae</i>) of belonging to these anti-religious Peripatetics. Traces of
+  this doctrine are found also in the <i>Circulus Pisanus Claudii
+  Berigardi</i>, an author of French nationality who migrated to Italy and
+  taught philosophy at Pisa: but especially the writings and the letters of
+  Gabriel Naudé, as well as the <i>Naudaeana</i>, show that Averroism still
+  lived on when this learned physician was in Italy. Corpuscular
+  philosophy, introduced shortly after, appears to have extinguished this
+  excessively Peripatetic sect, or perhaps to have been intermixed with its
+  teaching. It may be indeed that there have been Atomists who would be
+  inclined to teach dogmas like those of the Averroists, if circumstances
+  so permitted: but this abuse cannot harm such good as there is in
+  Corpuscular philosophy, which can very well be combined with all that is
+  sound in Plato and in Aristotle, and bring them both into harmony with
+  true theology.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="sect12">12</a>. The Reformers, and especially Luther, as I
+  have already observed, spoke sometimes as if they rejected philosophy,
+  and deemed it inimical to faith. But, properly speaking, Luther
+  understood by philosophy only that which is in conformity with the
+  ordinary course of Nature, or perhaps even philosophy as it was taught in
+  the schools. Thus for example he says that it is impossible in
+  philosophy, that is, in the order of Nature, that the word be made flesh;
+  and he goes so far as to maintain that what is true in natural philosophy
+  might be false in ethics. Aristotle was the object of his anger; and so
+  far back as the year 1516 he contemplated the purging of philosophy, when
+  he perhaps had as yet no thoughts of reforming the Church. But at last he
+  curbed his vehemence and in the <i>Apology for the Augsburg
+  Confession</i> allowed a favourable mention of Aristotle and his
+  <i>Ethics</i>. Melanchthon, a man of sound and moderate ideas, made
+  little systems from the several parts of philosophy, adapted to the
+  truths of revelation and useful in civic life, which deserve to be read
+  even now. After him, Pierre de la Ramée entered the lists. His philosophy
+  was much in favour: the sect of the Ramists was powerful in Germany,
+  gaining many adherents among the Protestants, and even concerning itself
+  with theology, until the revival of Corpuscular philosophy, which <!--
+  Page 82 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page82"></a>[82]</span> caused
+  that of Ramée to fall into oblivion and weakened the authority of the
+  Peripatetics.</p>
+
+  <p>13. Meanwhile sundry Protestant theologians, deviating as far as they
+  could from Scholastic philosophy, which prevailed in the opposite party,
+  went so far as to despise philosophy itself, which to them was suspect.
+  The controversy blazed up finally owing to the rancour of Daniel
+  Hoffmann. He was an able theologian, who had previously gained a
+  reputation at the Conference of Quedlinburg, when Tilemann Heshusius and
+  he had supported Duke Julius of Brunswick in his refusal to accept the
+  Formula of Concord. For some reason or other Dr. Hoffmann flew into a
+  passion with philosophy, instead of being content to find fault with the
+  wrong uses made thereof by philosophers. He was, however, aiming at the
+  famous Caselius, a man esteemed by the princes and scholars of his time;
+  and Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick (son of Julius, founder of the
+  University), having taken the trouble himself to investigate the matter,
+  condemned the theologian. There have been some small disputes of the kind
+  since, but it has always been found that they were misunderstandings.
+  Paul Slevogt, a famous Professor at Jena in Thuringia, whose still extant
+  treatises prove how well versed he was in Scholastic philosophy, as also
+  in Hebrew literature, had published in his youth under the title of
+  <i>Pervigilium</i> a little book 'de dissidio Theologi et Philosophi in
+  utriusque principiis fundato', bearing on the question whether God is
+  accidentally the cause of sin. But it was easy to see that his aim was to
+  demonstrate that theologians sometimes misuse philosophical terms.</p>
+
+  <p>14. To come now to the events of my own time, I remember that when in
+  1666 Louis Meyer, a physician of Amsterdam, published anonymously the
+  book entitled <i>Philosophia Scripturae Interpres</i> (by many persons
+  wrongly attributed to Spinoza, his friend) the theologians of Holland
+  bestirred themselves, and their written attacks upon this book gave rise
+  to great disputes among them. Divers of them held the opinion that the
+  Cartesians, in confuting the anonymous philosopher, had conceded too much
+  to philosophy. Jean de Labadie (before he had seceded from the Reformed
+  Church, his pretext being some abuses which he said had crept into public
+  observance and which he considered intolerable) attacked the book by Herr
+  von Wollzogen, and called it pernicious. On the other hand Herr
+  Vogelsang, Herr van der Weye and some <!-- Page 83 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page83"></a>[83]</span> other anti-Cocceïans
+  also assailed the same book with much acrimony. But the accused won his
+  case in a Synod. Afterwards in Holland people spoke of 'rational' and
+  'non-rational' theologians, a party distinction often mentioned by M.
+  Bayle, who finally declared himself against the former. But there is no
+  indication that any precise rules have yet been defined which the rival
+  parties accept or reject with regard to the use of reason in the
+  interpretation of Holy Scripture.</p>
+
+  <p>15. A like dispute has threatened of late to disturb the peace in the
+  Churches of the Augsburg Confession. Some Masters of Arts in the
+  University of Leipzig gave private lessons at their homes, to students
+  who sought them out in order to learn what is called 'Sacra Philologia',
+  according to the practice of this university and of some others where
+  this kind of study is not restricted to the Faculty of Theology. These
+  masters pressed the study of the Holy Scriptures and the practice of
+  piety further than their fellows had been wont to do. It is alleged that
+  they had carried certain things to excess, and aroused suspicions of
+  certain doctrinal innovations. This caused them to be dubbed 'Pietists',
+  as though they were a new sect; and this name is one which has since
+  caused a great stir in Germany. It has been applied somehow or other to
+  those whom one suspected, or pretended to suspect, of fanaticism, or even
+  of hypocrisy, concealed under some semblance of reform. Now some of the
+  students attending these masters had become conspicuous for behaviour
+  which gave general offence, and amongst other things for their scorn of
+  philosophy, even, so it was said, burning their notebooks. In consequence
+  the belief arose that their masters rejected philosophy: but they
+  justified themselves very well; nor could they be convicted either of
+  this error or of the heresies that were being imputed to them.</p>
+
+  <p>16. The question of the use of philosophy in theology was debated much
+  amongst Christians, and difficulty was experienced over settling the
+  limits of its use when it came to detailed consideration. The Mysteries
+  of the Trinity, of the Incarnation and of the Holy Communion gave most
+  occasion for dispute. The new Photinians, disputing the first two
+  Mysteries, made use of certain philosophic maxims which Andreas Kessler,
+  a theologian of the Augsburg Confession, summarized in the various
+  treatises that he published on the parts of the Socinian philosophy. But
+  as to their metaphysics, one might instruct oneself better therein by
+  reading <!-- Page 84 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page84"></a>[84]</span> the work of Christopher Stegmann the
+  Socinian. It is not yet in print; but I saw it in my youth and it has
+  been recently again in my hands.</p>
+
+  <p>17. Calovius and Scherzer, authors well versed in Scholastic
+  philosophy, and sundry other able theologians answered the Socinians at
+  great length, and often with success: for they would not content
+  themselves with the general and somewhat cavalier answers that were
+  commonly used against that sect. The drift of such answers was: that
+  their maxims were good in philosophy and not in theology; that it was the
+  fault of heterogeneousness called <span lang="el" title="metabasis eis allo genos"
+  >&#x3BC;&#x3B5;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3B2;&#x3B1;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3C2; &#x3B1;&#x3BB;&#x3BB;&#x3BF;
+  &#x3B3;&#x3B5;&#x3BD;&#x3BF;&#x3C2;</span> to apply those maxims to a
+  matter transcending reason; and that philosophy should be treated as a
+  servant and not a mistress in relation to theology, according to the
+  title of the book by a Scot named Robert Baronius, <i>Philosophia
+  Theologiae ancillans</i>. In fine, philosophy was a Hagar beside Sara and
+  must be driven from the house with her Ishmael when she was refractory.
+  There is something good in these answers: but one might abuse them, and
+  set natural truths and truths of revelation at variance. Scholars
+  therefore applied themselves to distinguishing between what is necessary
+  and indispensable in natural or philosophic truths and that which is not
+  so.</p>
+
+  <p>18. The two Protestant parties are tolerably in agreement when it is a
+  question of making war on the Socinians; and as the philosophy of these
+  sectaries is not of the most exact, in most cases the attack succeeded in
+  reducing it. But the Protestants themselves had dissensions on the matter
+  of the Eucharistic Sacrament. A section of those who are called Reformed
+  (namely those who on that point follow rather Zwingli than Calvin) seemed
+  to reduce the participation in the body of Jesus Christ in the Holy
+  Communion to a mere figurative representation, employing the maxim of the
+  philosophers which states that a body can only be in one place at a time.
+  Contrariwise the Evangelicals (who name themselves thus in a particular
+  sense to distinguish themselves from the Reformed), being more attached
+  to the literal sense of Scripture, opined with Luther that this
+  participation was real, and that here there lay a supernatural Mystery.
+  They reject, in truth, the dogma of Transubstantiation, which they
+  believe to be without foundation in the Text; neither do they approve
+  that of Consubstantiation or of Impanation, which one could only impute
+  to them if one were ill-informed on their opinion. For they admit no
+  inclusion of the body <!-- Page 85 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page85"></a>[85]</span> of Jesus Christ in the bread, nor do they
+  even require any union of the one with the other: but they demand at
+  least a concomitance, so that these two substances be received both at
+  the same time. They believe that the ordinary sense of the words of Jesus
+  Christ on an occasion so important as that which concerned the expression
+  of his last wishes ought to be preserved. Thus in order to show that this
+  sense is free from all absurdity which could make it repugnant to us,
+  they maintain that the philosophic maxim restricting the existence of,
+  and partaking in, bodies to one place alone is simply a consequence of
+  the ordinary course of Nature. They make that no obstacle to the
+  presence, in the ordinary sense of the word, of the body of our Saviour
+  in such form as may be in keeping with the most glorified body. They do
+  not resort to a vague diffusion of ubiquity, which would disperse the
+  body and leave it nowhere in particular; nor do they admit the
+  multiple-reduplication theory of some Schoolmen, as if to say one and the
+  same body could be at the same time seated here and standing elsewhere.
+  In fine, they so express themselves that many consider the opinion of
+  Calvin, authorized by sundry confessions of faith from the Churches that
+  have accepted his teaching, to be not so far removed from the Augsburg
+  Confession as one might think: for he affirmed a partaking in the
+  substance. The divergence rests perhaps only upon the fact that Calvin
+  demands true faith in addition to the oral reception of the symbols, and
+  consequently excludes the unworthy.</p>
+
+  <p>19. Thence we see that the dogma of real and substantial participation
+  can be supported (without resorting to the strange opinions of some
+  Schoolmen) by a properly understood analogy between <i>immediate
+  operation</i> and <i>presence</i>. Many philosophers have deemed that,
+  even in the order of Nature, a body may operate from a distance
+  immediately on many remote bodies at the same time. So do they believe,
+  all the more, that nothing can prevent divine Omnipotence from causing
+  one body to be present in many bodies together, since the transition from
+  immediate operation to presence is but slight, the one perhaps depending
+  upon the other. It is true that modern philosophers for some time now
+  have denied the immediate natural operation of one body upon another
+  remote from it, and I confess that I am of their opinion. Meanwhile
+  remote operation has just been revived in England by the admirable Mr.
+  Newton, who maintains that it is the nature of <!-- Page 86 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page86"></a>[86]</span> bodies to be attracted
+  and gravitate one towards another, in proportion to the mass of each one,
+  and the rays of attraction it receives. Accordingly the famous Mr. Locke,
+  in his answer to Bishop Stillingfleet, declares that having seen Mr.
+  Newton's book he retracts what he himself said, following the opinion of
+  the moderns, in his <i>Essay concerning Human Understanding</i>, to wit,
+  that a body cannot operate immediately upon another except by touching it
+  upon its surface and driving it by its motion. He acknowledges that God
+  can put properties into matter which cause it to operate from a distance.
+  Thus the theologians of the Augsburg Confession claim that God may ordain
+  not only that a body operate immediately on divers bodies remote from one
+  another, but that it even exist in their neighbourhood and be received by
+  them in a way with which distances of place and dimensions of space have
+  nothing to do. Although this effect transcends the forces of Nature, they
+  do not think it possible to show that it surpasses the power of the
+  Author of Nature. For him it is easy to annul the laws that he has given
+  or to dispense with them as seems good to him, in the same way as he was
+  able to make iron float upon water and to stay the operation of fire upon
+  the human body.</p>
+
+  <p>20. I found in comparing the <i>Rationale Theologicum</i> of Nicolaus
+  Vedelius with the refutation by Johann Musaeus that these two authors, of
+  whom one died while a Professor at Franecker after having taught at
+  Geneva and the other finally became the foremost theologian at Jena, are
+  more or less in agreement on the principal rules for the use of reason,
+  but that it is in the application of these rules they disagree. For they
+  both agree that revelation cannot be contrary to the truths whose
+  necessity is called by philosophers 'logical' or 'metaphysical', that is
+  to say, whose opposite implies contradiction. They both admit also that
+  revelation will be able to combat maxims whose necessity is called
+  'physical' and is founded only upon the laws that the will of God has
+  prescribed for Nature. Thus the question whether the presence of one and
+  the same body in divers places is possible in the supernatural order only
+  touches the application of the rule; and in order to decide this question
+  conclusively by reason, one must needs explain exactly wherein the
+  essence of body consists. Even the Reformed disagree thereon amongst
+  themselves; the Cartesians confine it to extension, but their adversaries
+  oppose that; and I think I have even observed that Gisbertus Voëtius, a
+  famous <!-- Page 87 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page87"></a>[87]</span> theologian of Utrecht, doubted the alleged
+  impossibility of plurality of locations.</p>
+
+  <p>21. Furthermore, although the two Protestant parties agree that one
+  must distinguish these two necessities which I have just indicated,
+  namely metaphysical necessity and physical necessity, and that the first
+  excludes exceptions even in the case of Mysteries, they are not yet
+  sufficiently agreed upon the rules of interpretation, which serve to
+  determine in what cases it is permitted to desert the letter of Scripture
+  when one is not certain that it is contrary to strictly universal truths.
+  It is agreed that there are cases where one must reject a literal
+  interpretation that is not absolutely impossible, when it is otherwise
+  unsuitable. For instance, all commentators agree that when our Lord said
+  that Herod was a fox he meant it metaphorically; and one must accept
+  that, unless one imagine with some fanatics that for the time the words
+  of our Lord lasted Herod was actually changed into a fox. But it is not
+  the same with the texts on which Mysteries are founded, where the
+  theologians of the Augsburg Confession deem that one must keep to the
+  literal sense. Since, moreover, this discussion belongs to the art of
+  interpretation and not to that which is the proper sphere of logic, we
+  will not here enter thereon, especially as it has nothing in common with
+  the disputes that have arisen recently upon the conformity of faith with
+  reason.</p>
+
+  <p>22. Theologians of all parties, I believe (fanatics alone excepted),
+  agree at least that no article of faith must imply contradiction or
+  contravene proofs as exact as those of mathematics, where the opposite of
+  the conclusion can be reduced <i>ad absurdum</i>, that is, to
+  contradiction. St. Athanasius with good reason made sport of the
+  preposterous ideas of some writers of his time, who maintained that God
+  had suffered without any suffering. <i>'Passus est impassibiliter. O
+  ludicram doctrinam aedificantem simul et demolientem!'</i> It follows
+  thence that certain writers have been too ready to grant that the Holy
+  Trinity is contrary to that great principle which states that two things
+  which are the same as a third are also the same as each other: that is to
+  say, if A is the same as B, and if C is the same as B, then A and C must
+  also be the same as each other. For this principle is a direct
+  consequence of that of contradiction, and forms the basis of all logic;
+  and if it ceases, we can no longer reason with certainty. Thus when one
+  says that the Father is God, that the Son is God and that the Holy Spirit
+  is God, and that <!-- Page 88 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page88"></a>[88]</span> nevertheless there is only one God,
+  although these three Persons differ from one another, one must consider
+  that this word <i>God</i> has not the same sense at the beginning as at
+  the end of this statement. Indeed it signifies now the Divine Substance
+  and now a Person of the Godhead. In general, one must take care never to
+  abandon the necessary and eternal truths for the sake of upholding
+  Mysteries, lest the enemies of religion seize upon such an occasion for
+  decrying both religion and Mysteries.</p>
+
+  <p>23. The distinction which is generally drawn between that which is
+  <i>above</i> reason and that which is <i>against</i> reason is tolerably
+  in accord with the distinction which has just been made between the two
+  kinds of necessity. For what is contrary to reason is contrary to the
+  absolutely certain and inevitable truths; and what is above reason is in
+  opposition only to what one is wont to experience or to understand. That
+  is why I am surprised that there are people of intelligence who dispute
+  this distinction, and that M. Bayle should be of this number. The
+  distinction is assuredly very well founded. A truth is above reason when
+  our mind (or even every created mind) cannot comprehend it. Such is, as
+  it seems to me, the Holy Trinity; such are the miracles reserved for God
+  alone, as for instance Creation; such is the choice of the order of the
+  universe, which depends upon universal harmony, and upon the clear
+  knowledge of an infinity of things at once. But a truth can never be
+  contrary to reason, and once a dogma has been disputed and refuted by
+  reason, instead of its being incomprehensible, one may say that nothing
+  is easier to understand, nor more obvious, than its absurdity. For I
+  observed at the beginning that by <font class="sc">reason</font> here I
+  do not mean the opinions and discourses of men, nor even the habit they
+  have formed of judging things according to the usual course of Nature,
+  but rather the inviolable linking together of truths.</p>
+
+  <p>24. I must come now to the great question which M. Bayle brought up
+  recently, to wit, whether a truth, and especially a truth of faith, can
+  prove to be subject to irrefutable objections. This excellent author
+  appears to answer with a bold affirmative: he quotes theologians of
+  repute in his party, and even in the Church of Rome, who appear to say
+  the same as he affirms; and he cites philosophers who have believed that
+  there are even philosophical truths whose champions cannot answer the
+  objections that are brought up against them. He believes that the
+  theological <!-- Page 89 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page89"></a>[89]</span> doctrine of predestination is of this
+  nature, and in philosophy that of the composition of the
+  <i>Continuum</i>. These are, indeed, the two labyrinths which have ever
+  exercised theologians and philosophers. Libertus Fromondus, a theologian
+  of Louvain (a great friend of Jansenius, whose posthumous book entitled
+  <i>Augustinus</i> he in fact published), who also wrote a book entitled
+  explicitly <i>Labyrinthus de Compositione Continui</i>, experienced in
+  full measure the difficulties inherent in both doctrines; and the
+  renowned Ochino admirably presented what he calls 'the labyrinths of
+  predestination'.</p>
+
+  <p>25. But these writers have not denied the possibility of finding
+  thread in the labyrinth; they have recognized the difficulty, but they
+  have surely not turned difficulty into sheer impossibility. As for me, I
+  confess that I cannot agree with those who maintain that a truth can
+  admit of irrefutable objections: for is an <i>objection</i> anything but
+  an argument whose conclusion contradicts our thesis? And is not an
+  irrefutable argument a <i>demonstration</i>? And how can one know the
+  certainty of demonstrations except by examining the argument in detail,
+  the form and the matter, in order to see if the form is good, and then if
+  each premiss is either admitted or proved by another argument of like
+  force, until one is able to make do with admitted premisses alone? Now if
+  there is such an objection against our thesis we must say that the
+  falsity of this thesis is demonstrated, and that it is impossible for us
+  to have reasons sufficient to prove it; otherwise two contradictories
+  would be true at once. One must always yield to proofs, whether they be
+  proposed in positive form or advanced in the shape of objections. And it
+  is wrong and fruitless to try to weaken opponents' proofs, under the
+  pretext that they are only objections, since the opponent can play the
+  same game and can reverse the denominations, exalting his arguments by
+  naming them 'proofs' and sinking ours under the blighting title of
+  'objections'.</p>
+
+  <p>26. It is another question whether we are always obliged to examine
+  the objections we may have to face, and to retain some doubt in respect
+  of our own opinion, or what is called <i>formido oppositi</i>, until this
+  examination has been made. I would venture to say no, for otherwise one
+  would never attain to certainty and our conclusion would be always
+  provisional. I believe that able geometricians will scarce be troubled by
+  the objections of Joseph Scaliger against Archimedes, or by those of Mr.
+  Hobbes against <!-- Page 90 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page90"></a>[90]</span> Euclid; but that is because they have fully
+  understood and are sure of the proofs. Nevertheless it is sometimes well
+  to show oneself ready to examine certain objections. On the one hand it
+  may serve to rescue people from their error, while on the other we
+  ourselves may profit by it; for specious fallacies often contain some
+  useful solution and bring about the removal of considerable difficulties.
+  That is why I have always liked ingenious objections made against my own
+  opinions, and I have never examined them without profit: witness those
+  which M. Bayle formerly made against my System of Pre-established
+  Harmony, not to mention those which M. Arnauld, M. l'Abbé Foucher and
+  Father Lami, O.S.B., made to me on the same subject. But to return to the
+  principal question, I conclude from reasons I have just set forth that
+  when an objection is put forward against some truth, it is always
+  possible to answer it satisfactorily.</p>
+
+  <p>27. It may be also that M. Bayle does not mean 'insoluble objections'
+  in the sense that I have just explained. I observe that he varies, at
+  least in his expressions: for in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc he
+  does not admit that one can bring demonstrations against the truths of
+  faith. It appears therefore that he takes the objections to be insoluble
+  only in respect of our present degree of enlightenment; and in this
+  Reply, p. 35, he even does not despair of the possibility that one day a
+  solution hitherto unknown may be found by someone. Concerning that more
+  will be said later. I hold an opinion, however, that will perchance cause
+  surprise, namely that this solution has been discovered entire, and is
+  not even particularly difficult. Indeed a mediocre intelligence capable
+  of sufficient care, and using correctly the rules of common logic, is in
+  a position to answer the most embarrassing objection made against truth,
+  when the objection is only taken from reason, and when it is claimed to
+  be a 'demonstration'. Whatever scorn the generality of moderns have
+  to-day for the logic of Aristotle, one must acknowledge that it teaches
+  infallible ways of resisting error in these conjunctures. For one has
+  only to examine the argument according to the rules and it will always be
+  possible to see whether it is lacking in form or whether there are
+  premisses such as are not yet proved by a good argument.</p>
+
+  <p>28. It is quite another matter when there is only a question of
+  <i>probabilities</i>, for the art of judging from probable reasons is not
+  yet well established; so that our logic in this connexion is still very
+  <!-- Page 91 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page91"></a>[91]</span>
+  imperfect, and to this very day we have little beyond the art of judging
+  from demonstrations. But this art is sufficient here: for when it is a
+  question of opposing reason to an article of our faith, one is not
+  disturbed by objections that only attain probability. Everyone agrees
+  that appearances are against Mysteries, and that they are by no means
+  probable when regarded only from the standpoint of reason; but it
+  suffices that they have in them nothing of absurdity. Thus demonstrations
+  are required if they are to be refuted.</p>
+
+  <p>29. And doubtless we are so to understand it when Holy Scripture warns
+  us that the wisdom of God is foolishness before men, and when St. Paul
+  observed that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is foolishness unto the Greeks,
+  as well as unto the Jews a stumbling-block. For, after all, one truth
+  cannot contradict another, and the light of reason is no less a gift of
+  God than that of revelation. Also it is a matter of no difficulty among
+  theologians who are expert in their profession, that the motives of
+  credibility justify, once for all, the authority of Holy Scripture before
+  the tribunal of reason, so that reason in consequence gives way before
+  it, as before a new light, and sacrifices thereto all its probabilities.
+  It is more or less as if a new president sent by the prince must show his
+  letters patent in the assembly where he is afterwards to preside. That is
+  the tendency of sundry good books that we have on the truth of religion,
+  such as those of Augustinus Steuchus, of Du Plessis-Mornay or of Grotius:
+  for the true religion must needs have marks that the false religions have
+  not, else would Zoroaster, Brahma, Somonacodom and Mahomet be as worthy
+  of belief as Moses and Jesus Christ. Nevertheless divine faith itself,
+  when it is kindled in the soul, is something more than an opinion, and
+  depends not upon the occasions or the motives that have given it birth;
+  it advances beyond the intellect, and takes possession of the will and of
+  the heart, to make us act with zeal and joyfully as the law of God
+  commands. Then we have no further need to think of reasons or to pause
+  over the difficulties of argument which the mind may anticipate.</p>
+
+  <p>30. Thus what we have just said of human reason, which is extolled and
+  decried by turns, and often without rule or measure, may show our lack of
+  exactitude and how much we are accessary to our own errors. Nothing would
+  be so easy to terminate as these disputes on the rights of faith and of
+  reason if men would make use <!-- Page 92 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page92"></a>[92]</span> of the commonest rules of logic and reason
+  with even a modicum of attention. Instead of that, they become involved
+  in oblique and ambiguous phrases, which give them a fine field for
+  declamation, to make the most of their wit and their learning. It would
+  seem, indeed, that they have no wish to see the naked truth, peradventure
+  because they fear that it may be more disagreeable than error: for they
+  know not the beauty of the Author of all things, who is the source of
+  truth.</p>
+
+  <p>31. This negligence is a general defect of humanity, and one not to be
+  laid to the charge of any particular person. <i>Abundamus dulcibus
+  vitiis</i>, as Quintilian said of the style of Seneca, and we take
+  pleasure in going astray. Exactitude incommodes us and rules we regard as
+  puerilities. Thus it is that common logic (although it is more or less
+  sufficient for the examination of arguments that tend towards certainty)
+  is relegated to schoolboys; and there is not even a thought for a kind of
+  logic which should determine the balance between probabilities, and would
+  be so necessary in deliberations of importance. So true is it that our
+  mistakes for the most part come from scorn or lack of the art of
+  thinking: for nothing is more imperfect than our logic when we pass
+  beyond necessary arguments. The most excellent philosophers of our time,
+  such as the authors of <i>The Art of Thinking</i>, of <i>The Search for
+  Truth</i> and of the <i>Essay concerning Human Understanding</i>, have
+  been very far from indicating to us the true means fitted to assist the
+  faculty whose business it is to make us weigh the probabilities of the
+  true and the false: not to mention the art of discovery, in which success
+  is still more difficult of attainment, and whereof we have nothing beyond
+  very imperfect samples in mathematics.</p>
+
+  <p>32. One thing which might have contributed most towards M. Bayle's
+  belief that the difficulties of reason in opposition to faith cannot be
+  obviated is that he seems to demand that God be justified in some such
+  manner as that commonly used for pleading the cause of a man accused
+  before his judge. But he has not remembered that in the tribunals of men,
+  which cannot always penetrate to the truth, one is often compelled to be
+  guided by signs and probabilities, and above all by presumptions or
+  prejudices; whereas it is agreed, as we have already observed, that
+  Mysteries are not probable. For instance, M. Bayle will not have it that
+  one can justify the goodness of God in the permission of sin, because
+  probability would be against a man that should happen to be in <!-- Page
+  93 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page93"></a>[93]</span>
+  circumstances comparable in our eyes to this permission. God foresees
+  that Eve will be deceived by the serpent if he places her in the
+  circumstances wherein she later found herself; and nevertheless he placed
+  her there. Now if a father or a guardian did the same in regard to his
+  child or his ward, if a friend did so in regard to a young person whose
+  behaviour was his concern, the judge would not be satisfied by the
+  excuses of an advocate who said that the man only permitted the evil,
+  without doing it or willing it: he would rather take this permission as a
+  sign of ill intention, and would regard it as a sin of omission, which
+  would render the one convicted thereof accessary in another's sin of
+  commission.</p>
+
+  <p>33. But it must be borne in mind that when one has foreseen the evil
+  and has not prevented it although it seems as if one could have done so
+  with ease, and one has even done things that have facilitated it, it does
+  not follow on that account <i>necessarily</i> that one is accessary
+  thereto. It is only a very strong presumption, such as commonly replaces
+  truth in human affairs, but which would be destroyed by an exact
+  consideration of the facts, supposing we were capable of that in relation
+  to God. For amongst lawyers that is called 'presumption' which must
+  provisionally pass for truth in case the contrary is not proved; and it
+  says more than 'conjecture', although the <i>Dictionary</i> of the
+  Academy has not sifted the difference. Now there is every reason to
+  conclude unquestionably that one would find through this consideration,
+  if only it were attainable, that reasons most just, and stronger than
+  those which appear contrary to them, have compelled the All-Wise to
+  permit the evil, and even to do things which have facilitated it. Of this
+  some instances will be given later.</p>
+
+  <p>34. It is none too easy, I confess, for a father, a guardian, a friend
+  to have such reasons in the case under consideration. Yet the thing is
+  not absolutely impossible, and a skilled writer of fiction might
+  perchance find an extraordinary case that would even justify a man in the
+  circumstances I have just indicated. But in reference to God there is no
+  need to suppose or to establish particular reasons such as may have
+  induced him to permit the evil; general reasons suffice. One knows that
+  he takes care of the whole universe, whereof all the parts are connected;
+  and one must thence infer that he has had innumerable considerations
+  whose result made him deem it inadvisable to prevent certain evils.</p>
+
+  <p>35. It should even be concluded that there must have been <!-- Page 94
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page94"></a>[94]</span> great or rather
+  invincible reasons which prompted the divine Wisdom to the permission of
+  the evil that surprises us, from the mere fact that this permission has
+  occurred: for nothing can come from God that is not altogether consistent
+  with goodness, justice and holiness. Thus we can judge by the event (or
+  <i>a posteriori</i>) that the permission was indispensable, although it
+  be not possible for us to show this (<i>a priori</i>) by the detailed
+  reasons that God can have had therefor; as it is not necessary either
+  that we show this to justify him. M. Bayle himself aptly says concerning
+  that (<i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 165,
+  p. 1067): Sin made its way into the world; God therefore was able to
+  permit it without detriment to his perfections; <i>ab actu ad potentiam
+  valet consequentia.</i> In God this conclusion holds good: he did this,
+  therefore he did it well. It is not, then, that we have no notion of
+  justice in general fit to be applied also to God's justice; nor is it
+  that God's justice has other rules than the justice known of men, but
+  that the case in question is quite different from those which are common
+  among men. Universal right is the same for God and for men; but the
+  question of fact is quite different in their case and his.</p>
+
+  <p>36. We may even assume or pretend (as I have already observed) that
+  there is something similar among men to this circumstance in God's
+  actions. A man might give such great and strong proofs of his virtue and
+  his holiness that all the most apparent reasons one could put forward
+  against him to charge him with an alleged crime, for instance a larceny
+  or murder, would deserve to be rejected as the calumnies of false
+  witnesses or as an extraordinary play of chance which sometimes throws
+  suspicion on the most innocent. Thus in a case where every other would
+  run the risk of being condemned or put to the torture (according to the
+  laws of the country), this man would be absolved by his judges
+  unanimously. Now in this case, which indeed is rare, but which is not
+  impossible, one might say in a sense (<i>sano sensu</i>) that there is a
+  conflict between reason and faith, and that the rules of law are other in
+  respect of this person than they are in respect of the remainder of
+  mankind. But that, when explained, will signify only that appearances of
+  reason here give way before the faith that is due to the word and the
+  integrity of this great and holy man, and that he is privileged above
+  other men; not indeed as if there were one law for others and another for
+  him, nor as if one had no understanding of what justice is in relation to
+  him. It is rather <!-- Page 95 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page95"></a>[95]</span> because the rules of universal justice do
+  not find here the application that they receive elsewhere, or because
+  they favour him instead of accusing him, since there are in this
+  personage qualities so admirable, that by virtue of a good logic of
+  probabilities one should place more faith in his word than in that of
+  many others.</p>
+
+  <p>37. Since it is permitted here to imagine possible cases, may one not
+  suppose this incomparable man to be the Adept or the Possessor of</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i16"><i>'that blessed Stone</i></p>
+      <p><i>Able to enrich all earthly Kings alone'</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>and that he spends every day prodigious sums in order to feed and to
+  rescue from distress countless numbers of poor men? Be there never so
+  many witnesses or appearances of every kind tending to prove that this
+  great benefactor of the human race has just committed some larceny, is it
+  not true that the whole earth would make mock of the accusation, however
+  specious it might be? Now God is infinitely above the goodness and the
+  power of this man, and consequently there are no reasons at all, however
+  apparent they be, that can hold good against faith, that is, against the
+  assurance or the confidence in God wherewith we can and ought to say that
+  God has done all things well. The objections are therefore not insoluble.
+  They only involve prejudices and probabilities, which are, however,
+  overthrown by reasons incomparably stronger. One must not say either that
+  what we call <i>justice</i> is nothing in relation to God, that he is the
+  absolute Master of all things even to the point of being able to condemn
+  the innocent without violating his justice, or finally that justice is
+  something arbitrary where he is concerned. Those are rash and dangerous
+  expressions, whereunto some have been led astray to the discredit of the
+  attributes of God. For if such were the case there would be no reason for
+  praising his goodness and his justice: rather would it be as if the most
+  wicked spirit, the Prince of evil genii, the evil principle of the
+  Manichaeans, were the sole master of the universe, just as I observed
+  before. What means would there be of distinguishing the true God from the
+  false God of Zoroaster if all things depended upon the caprice of an
+  arbitrary power and there were neither rule nor consideration for
+  anything whatever?</p>
+
+  <p>38. It is therefore more than evident that nothing compels us to
+  commit ourselves to a doctrine so strange, since it suffices to say <!--
+  Page 96 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page96"></a>[96]</span> that we
+  have not enough knowledge of the facts when there is a question of
+  answering probabilities which appear to throw doubt upon the justice and
+  the goodness of God, and which would vanish away if the facts were well
+  known to us. We need neither renounce reason in order to listen to faith
+  nor blind ourselves in order to see clearly, as Queen Christine used to
+  say: it is enough to reject ordinary appearances when they are contrary
+  to Mysteries; and this is not contrary to reason, since even in natural
+  things we are very often undeceived about appearances either by
+  experience or by superior reasons. All that has been set down here in
+  advance, only with the object of showing more plainly wherein the fault
+  of the objections and the abuse of reason consists in the present case,
+  where the claim is made that reason has greatest force against faith: we
+  shall come afterwards to a more exact discussion of that which concerns
+  the origin of evil and the permission of sin with its consequences.</p>
+
+  <p>39. For now, it will be well to continue our examination of the
+  important question of the use of reason in theology, and to make
+  reflexions upon what M. Bayle has said thereon in divers passages of his
+  works. As he paid particular attention in his <i>Historical and Critical
+  Dictionary</i> to expounding the objections of the Manichaeans and those
+  of the Pyrrhonians, and as this procedure had been criticized by some
+  persons zealous for religion, he placed a dissertation at the end of the
+  second edition of this <i>Dictionary</i>, which aimed at showing, by
+  examples, by authorities and by reasons, the innocence and usefulness of
+  his course of action. I am persuaded (as I have said above) that the
+  specious objections one can urge against truth are very useful, and that
+  they serve to confirm and to illumine it, giving opportunity to
+  intelligent persons to find new openings or to turn the old to better
+  account. But M. Bayle seeks therein a usefulness quite the reverse of
+  this: it would be that of displaying the power of faith by showing that
+  the truths it teaches cannot sustain the attacks of reason and that it
+  nevertheless holds its own in the heart of the faithful. M. Nicole seems
+  to call that 'the triumph of God's authority over human reason', in the
+  words of his quoted by M. Bayle in the third volume of his <i>Reply to
+  the Questions of a Provincial</i> (ch. 177, p. 120). But since reason is
+  a gift of God, even as faith is, contention between them would cause God
+  to contend against God; and if the objections of reason against any
+  article of faith are insoluble, then it must be said that <!-- Page 97
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page97"></a>[97]</span> this alleged
+  article will be false and not revealed: this will be a chimera of the
+  human mind, and the triumph of this faith will be capable of comparison
+  with bonfires lighted after a defeat. Such is the doctrine of the
+  damnation of unbaptized children, which M. Nicole would have us assume to
+  be a consequence of original sin; such would be the eternal damnation of
+  adults lacking the light that is necessary for the attainment of
+  salvation.</p>
+
+  <p>40. Yet everyone need not enter into theological discussions; and
+  persons whose condition allows not of exact researches should be content
+  with instruction on faith, without being disturbed by the objections; and
+  if some exceeding great difficulty should happen to strike them, it is
+  permitted to them to avert the mind from it, offering to God a sacrifice
+  of their curiosity: for when one is assured of a truth one has no need to
+  listen to the objections. As there are many people whose faith is rather
+  small and shallow to withstand such dangerous tests, I think one must not
+  present them with that which might be poisonous for them; or, if one
+  cannot hide from them what is only too public, the antidote must be added
+  to it; that is to say, one must try to add the answer to the objection,
+  certainly not withhold it as unobtainable.</p>
+
+  <p>41. The passages from the excellent theologians who speak of this
+  triumph of faith can and should receive a meaning appropriate to the
+  principles I have just affirmed. There appear in some objects of faith
+  two great qualities capable of making it triumph over reason, the one is
+  <i>incomprehensibility</i>, the other is <i>the lack of probability</i>.
+  But one must beware of adding thereto the third quality whereof M. Bayle
+  speaks, and of saying that what one believes is <i>indefensible</i>: for
+  that would be to cause reason in its turn to triumph in a manner that
+  would destroy faith. Incomprehensibility does not prevent us from
+  believing even natural truths. For instance (as I have already pointed
+  out) we do not comprehend the nature of odours and savours, and yet we
+  are persuaded, by a kind of faith which we owe to the evidence of the
+  senses, that these perceptible qualities are founded upon the nature of
+  things and that they are not illusions.</p>
+
+  <p>42. There are also things contrary to appearances, which we admit when
+  they are sufficiently verified. There is a little romance of Spanish
+  origin, whose title states that one must not always believe what one
+  sees. What was there more specious than the lie of the false Martin
+  Guerre, who was acknowledged as the true <!-- Page 98 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page98"></a>[98]</span> Martin by the true
+  Martin's wife and relatives, and caused the judges and the relatives to
+  waver for a long time even after the arrival of the other? Nevertheless
+  the truth was known in the end. It is the same with faith. I have already
+  observed that all one can oppose to the goodness and the justice of God
+  is nothing but appearances, which would be strong against a man, but
+  which are nullified when they are applied to God and when they are
+  weighed against the proofs that assure us of the infinite perfection of
+  his attributes. Thus faith triumphs over false reasons by means of sound
+  and superior reasons that have made us embrace it; but it would not
+  triumph if the contrary opinion had for it reasons as strong as or even
+  stronger than those which form the foundation of faith, that is, if there
+  were invincible and conclusive objections against faith.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="sect43">43</a>. It is well also to observe here that what M.
+  Bayle calls a 'triumph of faith' is in part a triumph of demonstrative
+  reason against apparent and deceptive reasons which are improperly set
+  against the demonstrations. For it must be taken into consideration that
+  the objections of the Manichaeans are hardly less contrary to natural
+  theology than to revealed theology. And supposing one surrendered to them
+  Holy Scripture, original sin, the grace of God in Jesus Christ, the pains
+  of hell and the other articles of our religion, one would not even so be
+  delivered from their objections: for one cannot deny that there is in the
+  world physical evil (that is, suffering) and moral evil (that is, crime)
+  and even that physical evil is not always distributed here on earth
+  according to the proportion of moral evil, as it seems that justice
+  demands. There remains, then, this question of natural theology, how a
+  sole Principle, all-good, all-wise and all-powerful, has been able to
+  admit evil, and especially to permit sin, and how it could resolve to
+  make the wicked often happy and the good unhappy?</p>
+
+  <p>44. Now we have no need of revealed faith to know that there is such a
+  sole Principle of all things, entirely good and wise. Reason teaches us
+  this by infallible proofs; and in consequence all the objections taken
+  from the course of things, in which we observe imperfections, are only
+  based on false appearances. For, if we were capable of understanding the
+  universal harmony, we should see that what we are tempted to find fault
+  with is connected with the plan most worthy of being chosen; in a word,
+  we <i>should see</i>, and should not <i>believe</i> only, that what God
+  has done is the best. I call <!-- Page 99 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page99"></a>[99]</span> 'seeing' here what one knows <i>a
+  priori</i> by the causes; and 'believing' what one only judges by the
+  effects, even though the one be as certainly known as the other. And one
+  can apply here too the saying of St. Paul (2 Cor. v. 7), that we walk by
+  <i>faith</i> and not by <i>sight</i>. For the infinite wisdom of God
+  being known to us, we conclude that the evils we experience had to be
+  permitted, and this we conclude from the effect or <i>a posteriori</i>,
+  that is to say, because they exist. It is what M. Bayle acknowledges; and
+  he ought to content himself with that, and not claim that one must put an
+  end to the false appearances which are contrary thereto. It is as if one
+  asked that there should be no more dreams or optical illusions.</p>
+
+  <p>45. And it is not to be doubted that this faith and this confidence in
+  God, who gives us insight into his infinite goodness and prepares us for
+  his love, in spite of the appearances of harshness that may repel us, are
+  an admirable exercise for the virtues of Christian theology, when the
+  divine grace in Jesus Christ arouses these motions within us. That is
+  what Luther aptly observed in opposition to Erasmus, saying that it is
+  love in the highest degree to love him who to flesh and blood appears so
+  unlovable, so harsh toward the unfortunate and so ready to condemn, and
+  to condemn for evils in which he appears to be the cause or accessary, at
+  least in the eyes of those who allow themselves to be dazzled by false
+  reasons. One may therefore say that the triumph of true reason illumined
+  by divine grace is at the same time the triumph of faith and love.</p>
+
+  <p>46. M. Bayle appears to have taken the matter quite otherwise: he
+  declares himself against reason, when he might have been content to
+  censure its abuse. He quotes the words of Cotta in Cicero, where he goes
+  so far as to say that if reason were a gift of the gods providence would
+  be to blame for having given it, since it tends to our harm. M. Bayle
+  also thinks that human reason is a source of destruction and not of
+  edification (<i>Historical and Critical Dictionary</i>, p. 2026, col. 2),
+  that it is a runner who knows not where to stop, and who, like another
+  Penelope, herself destroys her own work.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Destruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>(<i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III, p. 725). But
+  he takes pains especially to pile up many authorities one upon the other,
+  in order to show that theologians of all parties reject the use of reason
+  just as he does, and that they call attention to such gleams of reason as
+  oppose religion only that they may sacrifice them to <!-- Page 100
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page100"></a>[100]</span> faith by a
+  mere repudiation, answering nothing but the conclusion of the argument
+  that is brought against them. He begins with the New Testament. Jesus
+  Christ was content to say: 'Follow Me' (Luke v. 27; ix. 59). The Apostles
+  said: 'Believe, and thou shalt be saved' (Acts xvi. 3). St. Paul
+  acknowledges that his 'doctrine is obscure' (1 Cor. xiii. 12), that 'one
+  can comprehend nothing therein' unless God impart a spiritual
+  discernment, and without that it only passes for foolishness (1 Cor. ii.
+  14). He exhorts the faithful 'to beware of philosophy' (Col. ii. 8) and
+  to avoid disputations in that science, which had caused many persons to
+  lose faith.</p>
+
+  <p>47. As for the Fathers of the Church, M. Bayle refers us to the
+  collection of passages from them against the use of philosophy and of
+  reason which M. de Launoy made (<i>De Varia Aristotelis Fortuna,</i> cap.
+  2) and especially to the passages from St. Augustine collected by M.
+  Arnauld (against Mallet), which state: that the judgements of God are
+  inscrutable; that they are not any the less just for that they are
+  unknown to us; that it is a deep abyss, which one cannot fathom without
+  running the risk of falling down the precipice; that one cannot without
+  temerity try to elucidate that which God willed to keep hidden; that his
+  will cannot but be just; that many men, having tried to explain this
+  incomprehensible depth, have fallen into vain imaginations and opinions
+  full of error and bewilderment.</p>
+
+  <p>48. The Schoolmen have spoken in like manner. M. Bayle quotes a
+  beautiful passage from Cardinal Cajetan (Part I, <i>Summ.</i>, qu. 22,
+  art. 4) to this effect: 'Our mind', he says, 'rests not upon the evidence
+  of known truth but upon the impenetrable depth of hidden truth. And as
+  St. Gregory says: He who believes touching the Divinity only that which
+  he can gauge with his mind belittles the idea of God. Yet I do not
+  surmise that it is necessary to deny any of the things which we know, or
+  which we see as appertaining to the immutability, the actuality, the
+  certainty, the universality, etc., of God: but I think that there is here
+  some secret, either in regard to the relation which exists between God
+  and the event, or in respect of what connects the event itself with his
+  prevision. Thus, reflecting that the understanding of our soul is the eye
+  of the owl, I find the soul's repose only in ignorance. For it is better
+  both for the Catholic Faith and for Philosophic Faith to confess our
+  blindness, than to affirm as evident what does not afford our mind the
+  contentment which self-evidence gives. I do not accuse of <!-- Page 101
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page101"></a>[101]</span> presumption,
+  on that account, all the learned men who stammeringly have endeavoured to
+  suggest, as far as in them lay, the immobility and the sovereign and
+  eternal efficacy of the understanding, of the will and of the power of
+  God, through the infallibility of divine election and divine relation to
+  all events. Nothing of all that interferes with my surmise that there is
+  some depth which is hidden from us.' This passage of Cajetan is all the
+  more notable since he was an author competent to reach the heart of the
+  matter.</p>
+
+  <p>49. Luther's book against Erasmus is full of vigorous comments hostile
+  to those who desire to submit revealed truths to the tribunal of our
+  reason. Calvin often speaks in the same tone, against the inquisitive
+  daring of those who seek to penetrate into the counsels of God. He
+  declares in his treatise on predestination that God had just causes for
+  damning some men, but causes unknown to us. Finally M. Bayle quotes
+  sundry modern writers who have spoken to the same effect (<i>Reply to the
+  Questions of a Provincial</i>, ch. 161 et seq.).</p>
+
+  <p>50. But all these expressions and innumerable others like them do not
+  prove that the objections opposed to faith are so insoluble as M. Bayle
+  supposes. It is true that the counsels of God are inscrutable, but there
+  is no invincible objection which tends to the conclusion that they are
+  unjust. What appears injustice on the part of God, and foolishness in our
+  faith, only appears so. The famous passage of Tertullian (<i>De Carne
+  Christi</i>), 'mortuus est Dei filius, credibile est, quia ineptum est;
+  et sepultus revixit, certum est, quia impossibile', is a sally that can
+  only be meant to concern appearances of absurdity. There are others like
+  them in Luther's book on <i>Freewill in Bondage</i>, as when he says (ch.
+  174): 'Si placet tibi Deus indignos coronans, non debet displicere
+  immeritos damnans.' Which being reduced to more temperate phrasing,
+  means: If you approve that God give eternal glory to those who are not
+  better than the rest, you should not disapprove that he abandon those who
+  are not worse than the rest. And to judge that he speaks only of
+  appearances of injustice, one only has to weigh these words of the same
+  author taken from the same book: 'In all the rest', he says, 'we
+  recognize in God a supreme majesty; there is only justice that we dare to
+  question: and we will not believe provisionally [tantisper] that he is
+  just, albeit he has promised us that the time shall come when his glory
+  being revealed all men shall see clearly that he has been and that he is
+  just.'</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 102 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page102"></a>[102]</span></p>
+
+  <p>51. It will be found also that when the Fathers entered into a
+  discussion they did not simply reject reason. And, in disputations with
+  the pagans, they endeavour usually to show how paganism is contrary to
+  reason, and how the Christian religion has the better of it on that side
+  also. Origen showed Celsus how reasonable Christianity is and why,
+  notwithstanding, the majority of Christians should believe without
+  examination. Celsus had jeered at the behaviour of Christians, 'who,
+  willing', he said, 'neither to listen to your reasons nor to give you any
+  for what they believe, are content to say to you: Examine not, only
+  believe, or: Your faith will save you; and they hold this as a maxim,
+  that the wisdom of the world is an evil.'</p>
+
+  <p>52. Origen gives the answer of a wise man, and in conformity with the
+  principles we have established in the matter. For reason, far from being
+  contrary to Christianity, serves as a foundation for this religion, and
+  will bring about its acceptance by those who can achieve the examination
+  of it. But, as few people are capable of this, the heavenly gift of plain
+  faith tending towards good suffices for men in general. 'If it were
+  possible', he says, 'for all men, neglecting the affairs of life, to
+  apply themselves to study and meditation, one need seek no other way to
+  make them accept the Christian religion. For, to say nothing likely to
+  offend anyone' (he insinuates that the pagan religion is absurd, but he
+  will not say so explicitly), 'there will be found therein no less
+  exactitude than elsewhere, whether in the discussion of its dogmas, or in
+  the elucidation of the enigmatical expressions of its prophets, or in the
+  interpretation of the parables of its gospels and of countless other
+  things happening or ordained symbolically. But since neither the
+  necessities of life nor the infirmities of men permit of this application
+  to study, save for a very small number of persons, what means could one
+  find more qualified to benefit everyone else in the world than those
+  Jesus Christ wished to be used for the conversion of the nations? And I
+  would fain ask with regard to the great number of those who believe, and
+  who thereby have withdrawn themselves from the quagmire of vices wherein
+  before they were plunged, which would be the better: to have thus changed
+  one's morals and reformed one's life, believing without examination that
+  there are punishments for sin and rewards for good actions; or to have
+  waited for one's conversion until one not only believed but had examined
+  with care the foundations of these dogmas? It is certain <!-- Page 103
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page103"></a>[103]</span> that, were
+  this method to be followed, few indeed would reach that point whither
+  they are led by their plain and simple faith, but the majority would
+  remain in their corruption.'</p>
+
+  <p>53. M. Bayle (in his explanation concerning the objections of the
+  Manichaeans, placed at the end of the second edition of the
+  <i>Dictionary</i>) takes those words where Origen points out that
+  religion can stand the test of having her dogmas discussed, as if it were
+  not meant in relation to philosophy, but only in relation to the accuracy
+  wherewith the authority and the true meaning of Holy Scripture is
+  established. But there is nothing to indicate this restriction. Origen
+  wrote against a philosopher whom such a restriction would not have
+  suited. And it appears that this Father wished to point out that among
+  Christians there was no less exactitude than among the Stoics and some
+  other philosophers, who established their doctrine as much by reason as
+  by authorities, as, for example, Chrysippus did, who found his philosophy
+  even in the symbols of pagan antiquity.</p>
+
+  <p>54. Celsus brings up still another objection to the Christians, in the
+  same place. 'If they withdraw', he says, 'regularly into their "Examine
+  not, only believe", they must tell me at least what are the things they
+  wish me to believe.' Therein he is doubtless right, and that tells
+  against those who would say that God is good and just, and who yet would
+  maintain that we have no notion of goodness and of justice when we
+  attribute these perfections to him. But one must not always demand what I
+  call 'adequate notions', involving nothing that is not explained, since
+  even perceptible qualities, like heat, light, sweetness, cannot give us
+  such notions. Thus we agreed that Mysteries should receive an
+  explanation, but this explanation is imperfect. It suffices for us to
+  have some analogical understanding of a Mystery such as the Trinity and
+  the Incarnation, to the end that in accepting them we pronounce not words
+  altogether devoid of meaning: but it is not necessary that the
+  explanation go as far as we would wish, that is, to the extent of
+  comprehension and to the <i>how</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>55. It appears strange therefore that M. Bayle rejects the tribunal of
+  <i>common notions</i> (in the third volume of his <i>Reply to the
+  Questions of a Provincial</i>, pp. 1062 and 1140) as if one should not
+  consult the idea of goodness in answering the Manichaeans; whereas he had
+  declared himself quite differently in his <i>Dictionary</i>. Of necessity
+  there must be agreement upon the meaning of <i>good</i> <!-- Page 104
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page104"></a>[104]</span> and
+  <i>bad</i>, amongst those who are in dispute over the question whether
+  there is only one principle, altogether good, or whether there are two,
+  the one good and the other bad. We understand something by union when we
+  are told of the union of one body with another or of a substance with its
+  accident, of a subject with its adjunct, of the place with the moving
+  body, of the act with the potency; we also mean something when we speak
+  of the union of the soul with the body to make thereof one single person.
+  For albeit I do not hold that the soul changes the laws of the body, or
+  that the body changes the laws of the soul, and I have introduced the
+  Pre-established Harmony to avoid this derangement, I nevertheless admit a
+  true union between the soul and the body, which makes thereof a
+  suppositum. This union belongs to the metaphysical, whereas a union of
+  influence would belong to the physical. But when we speak of the union of
+  the Word of God with human nature we should be content with an analogical
+  knowledge, such as the comparison of the union of the soul with the body
+  is capable of giving us. We should, moreover, be content to say that the
+  Incarnation is the closest union that can exist between the Creator and
+  the creature; and further we should not want to go.</p>
+
+  <p>56. It is the same with the other Mysteries, where moderate minds will
+  ever find an explanation sufficient for belief, but never such as would
+  be necessary for understanding. A certain <i>what it is</i> (<span
+  lang="el" title="ti esti" >&#x3C4;&#x3B9;
+  &#x3B5;&#x3C3;&#x3C4;&#x3B9;</span>) is enough for us, but the <i>how</i>
+  (<span lang="el" title="pôs" >&#x3C0;&#x3C9;&#x3C2;</span>) is beyond us,
+  and is not necessary for us. One may say concerning the explanations of
+  Mysteries which are given out here and there, what the Queen of Sweden
+  inscribed upon a medal concerning the crown she had abandoned, 'Non mi
+  bisogna, e non mi basta.' Nor have we any need either (as I have already
+  observed) to prove the Mysteries <i>a priori</i>, or to give a reason for
+  them; it suffices us <i>that the thing is thus</i> (<span lang="el"
+  title="to hoti" >&#x3C4;&#x3BF; &#x201B;&#x3BF;&#x3C4;&#x3B9;</span>)
+  even though we know not the <i>why</i> (<span lang="el" title="to dioti"
+  >&#x3C4;&#x3BF; &#x3B4;&#x3B9;&#x3BF;&#x3C4;&#x3B9;</span>), which God
+  has reserved for himself. These lines, written on that theme by Joseph
+  Scaliger, are beautiful and renowned:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Ne curiosus quaere causas omnium,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Quaecumque libris vis Prophetarum indidit</i></p>
+      <p><i>Afflata caelo, plena veraci Deo:</i></p>
+      <p><i>Nec operta sacri supparo silentii</i></p>
+      <p><i>Irrumpere aude, sed pudenter praeteri.</i></p>
+<!-- Page 105 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page105"></a>[105]</span>
+      <p><i>Nescire velle, quae Magister optimus</i></p>
+      <p><i>Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>M. Bayle, who quotes them (<i>Reply to the Questions of a
+  Provincial</i>, vol. III, p. 1055), holds the likely opinion that
+  Scaliger made them upon the disputes between Arminius and Gomarus. I
+  think M. Bayle repeated them from memory, for he put <i>sacrata</i>
+  instead of <i>afflata</i>. But it is apparently the printer's fault that
+  <i>prudenter</i> stands in place of <i>pudenter</i> (that is, modestly)
+  which the metre requires.</p>
+
+  <p>57. Nothing can be more judicious than the warning these lines
+  contain; and M. Bayle is right in saying (p. 729) that those who claim
+  that the behaviour of God with respect to sin and the consequences of sin
+  contains nothing but what they can account for, deliver themselves up to
+  the mercy of their adversary. But he is not right in combining here two
+  very different things, 'to account for a thing', and 'to uphold it
+  against objections'; as he does when he presently adds: 'They are obliged
+  to follow him [their adversary] everywhere whither he shall wish to lead
+  them, and it would be to retire ignominiously and ask for quarter, if
+  they were to admit that our intelligence is too weak to remove completely
+  all the objections advanced by a philosopher.'</p>
+
+  <p>58. It seems here that, according to M. Bayle, 'accounting for' comes
+  short of 'answering objections', since he threatens one who should
+  undertake the first with the resulting obligation to pass on to the
+  second. But it is quite the opposite: he who maintains a thesis (the
+  <i>respondens</i>) is not bound to account for it, but he is bound to
+  meet the objections of an opponent. A defendant in law is not bound (as a
+  general rule) to prove his right or to produce his title to possession;
+  but he is obliged to reply to the arguments of the plaintiff. I have
+  marvelled many times that a writer so precise and so shrewd as M. Bayle
+  so often here confuses things where so much difference exists as between
+  these three acts of reason: to comprehend, to prove, and to answer
+  objections; as if when it is a question of the use of reason in theology
+  one term were as good as another. Thus he says in his posthumous
+  Conversations, p. 73: 'There is no principle which M. Bayle has more
+  often inculcated than this, that the incomprehensibility of a dogma and
+  the insolubility of the objections that oppose it provide no legitimate
+  reason for rejecting it.' This is true as regards the
+  incomprehensibility, but it is not the same with the insolubility. And it
+  is indeed <!-- Page 106 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page106"></a>[106]</span> just as if one said that an invincible
+  reason against a thesis was not a legitimate reason for rejecting it. For
+  what other legitimate reason for rejecting an opinion can one find, if an
+  invincible opposing argument is not such an one? And what means shall one
+  have thereafter of demonstrating the falsity, and even the absurdity, of
+  any opinion?</p>
+
+  <p>59. It is well to observe also that he who proves a thing <i>a
+  priori</i> accounts for it through the efficient cause; and whosoever can
+  thus account for it in a precise and adequate manner is also in a
+  position to comprehend the thing. Therefore it was that the Scholastic
+  theologians had already censured Raymond Lully for having undertaken to
+  demonstrate the Trinity by philosophy. This so-called demonstration is to
+  be found in his <i>Works</i>; and Bartholomaeus Keckermann, a writer
+  renowned in the Reformed party, having made an attempt of just the same
+  kind upon the same Mystery, has been no less censured for it by some
+  modern theologians. Therefore censure will fall upon those who shall wish
+  to account for this Mystery and make it comprehensible, but praise will
+  be given to those who shall toil to uphold it against the objections of
+  adversaries.</p>
+
+  <p>60. I have said already that theologians usually distinguish between
+  what is above reason and what is against reason. They place <i>above</i>
+  reason that which one cannot comprehend and which one cannot account for.
+  But <i>against</i> reason will be all opinion that is opposed by
+  invincible reasons, or the contrary of which can be proved in a precise
+  and sound manner. They avow, therefore, that the Mysteries are above
+  reason, but they do not admit that they are contrary to it. The English
+  author of a book which is ingenious, but has met with disapproval,
+  entitled <i>Christianity not Mysterious</i>, wished to combat this
+  distinction; but it does not seem to me that he has at all weakened it.
+  M. Bayle also is not quite satisfied with this accepted distinction. This
+  is what he says on the matter (vol. III of the <i>Reply to the Questions
+  of a Provincial</i>, ch. 158). Firstly (p. 998) he distinguishes,
+  together with M. Saurin, between these two theses: the one, <i>all the
+  dogmas of Christianity are in conformity with reason</i>; the other,
+  <i>human reason knows that they are in conformity with reason</i>. He
+  affirms the first and denies the second. I am of the same opinion, if in
+  saying 'that a dogma conforms to reason' one means that it is possible to
+  account for it or to explain its <i>how</i> by reason; for God could
+  doubtless do so, and we cannot. But I think that one <!-- Page 107
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page107"></a>[107]</span> must affirm
+  both theses if by 'knowing that a dogma conforms to reason' one means
+  that we can demonstrate, if need be, that there is no contradiction
+  between this dogma and reason, repudiating the objections of those who
+  maintain that this dogma is an absurdity.</p>
+
+  <p>61. M. Bayle explains himself here in a manner not at all convincing.
+  He acknowledges fully that our Mysteries are in accordance with the
+  supreme and universal reason that is in the divine understanding, or with
+  reason in general; yet he denies that they are in accordance with that
+  part of reason which man employs to judge things. But this portion of
+  reason which we possess is a gift of God, and consists in the natural
+  light that has remained with us in the midst of corruption; thus it is in
+  accordance with the whole, and it differs from that which is in God only
+  as a drop of water differs from the ocean or rather as the finite from
+  the infinite. Therefore Mysteries may transcend it, but they cannot be
+  contrary to it. One cannot be contrary to one part without being contrary
+  to the whole. That which contradicts a proposition of Euclid is contrary
+  to the <i>Elements</i> of Euclid. That which in us is contrary to the
+  Mysteries is not reason nor is it the natural light or the linking
+  together of truths; it is corruption, or error, or prejudice, or
+  darkness.</p>
+
+  <p>62. M. Bayle (p. 1002) is not satisfied with the opinion of Josua
+  Stegman and of M. Turretin, Protestant theologians who teach that the
+  Mysteries are contrary only to corrupt reason. He asks, mockingly,
+  whether by right reason is meant perchance that of an orthodox theologian
+  and by corrupt reason that of an heretic; and he urges the objection that
+  the evidence of the Mystery of the Trinity was no greater in the soul of
+  Luther than in the soul of Socinius. But as M. Descartes has well
+  observed, good sense is distributed to all: thus one must believe that
+  both the orthodox and heretics are endowed therewith. Right reason is a
+  linking together of truths, corrupt reason is mixed with prejudices and
+  passions. And in order to discriminate between the two, one need but
+  proceed in good order, admit no thesis without proof, and admit no proof
+  unless it be in proper form, according to the commonest rules of logic.
+  One needs neither any other criterion nor other arbitrator in questions
+  of reason. It is only through lack of this consideration that a handle
+  has been given to the sceptics, and that even in theology François Véron
+  and some others, who <!-- Page 108 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page108"></a>[108]</span> exacerbated the dispute with the
+  Protestants, even to the point of dishonesty, plunged headlong into
+  scepticism in order to prove the necessity of accepting an infallible
+  external judge. Their course meets with no approval from the most expert,
+  even in their own party: Calixtus and Daillé derided it as it deserved,
+  and Bellarmine argued quite otherwise.</p>
+
+  <p>63. Now let us come to what M. Bayle says (p. 999) on the distinction
+  we are concerned with. 'It seems to me', he says, 'that an ambiguity has
+  crept into the celebrated distinction drawn between things that are above
+  reason and things that are against reason. The Mysteries of the Gospel
+  are above reason, so it is usually said, but they are not contrary to
+  reason. I think that the same sense is not given to the word reason in
+  the first part of this axiom as in the second: by the first is understood
+  rather the reason of man, or reason <i>in concreto</i> and by the second
+  reason in general, or reason <i>in abstracto</i>. For supposing that it
+  is understood always as reason in general or the supreme reason, the
+  universal reason that is in God, it is equally true that the Mysteries of
+  the Gospels are not above reason and that they are not against reason.
+  But if in both parts of the axiom human reason is meant, I do not clearly
+  see the soundness of the distinction: for the most orthodox confess that
+  we know not how our Mysteries can conform to the maxims of philosophy. It
+  seems to us, therefore, that they are not in conformity with our reason.
+  Now that which appears to us not to be in conformity with our reason
+  appears contrary to our reason, just as that which appears to us not in
+  conformity with truth appears contrary to truth. Thus why should not one
+  say, equally, that the Mysteries are against our feeble reason, and that
+  they are above our feeble reason?' I answer, as I have done already, that
+  'reason' here is the linking together of the truths that we know by the
+  light of nature, and in this sense the axiom is true and without any
+  ambiguity. The Mysteries transcend our reason, since they contain truths
+  that are not comprised in this sequence; but they are not contrary to our
+  reason, and they do not contradict any of the truths whereto this
+  sequence can lead us. Accordingly there is no question here of the
+  universal reason that is in God, but of our reason. As for the question
+  whether we know the Mysteries to conform with our reason, I answer that
+  at least we never know of any non-conformity or any opposition between
+  the Mysteries and reason. Moreover, we can always abolish such alleged
+  <!-- Page 109 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page109"></a>[109]</span>
+  opposition, and so, if this can be called reconciling or harmonizing
+  faith with reason, or recognizing the conformity between them, it must be
+  said that we can recognize this conformity and this harmony. But if the
+  conformity consists in a reasonable explanation of the <i>how</i>, we
+  cannot recognize it.</p>
+
+  <p>64. M. Bayle makes one more ingenious objection, which he draws from
+  the example of the sense of sight. 'When a square tower', he says, 'from
+  a distance appears to us round, our eyes testify very clearly not only
+  that they perceive nothing square in this tower, but also that they
+  discover there a round shape, incompatible with the square shape. One may
+  therefore say that the truth which is the square shape is not only above,
+  but even against, the witness of our feeble sight.' It must be admitted
+  that this observation is correct, and although it be true that the
+  appearance of roundness comes simply from the effacement of the angles,
+  which distance causes to disappear, it is true, notwithstanding, that the
+  round and the square are opposites. Therefore my answer to this objection
+  is that the representation of the senses, even when they do all that in
+  them lies, is often contrary to the truth; but it is not the same with
+  the faculty of reasoning, when it does its duty, since a strictly
+  reasoned argument is nothing but a linking together of truths. And as for
+  the sense of sight in particular, it is well to consider that there are
+  yet other false appearances which come not from the 'feebleness of our
+  eyes' nor from the loss of visibility brought about by distance, but from
+  the very <i>nature of vision</i>, however perfect it be. It is thus, for
+  instance, that the circle seen sideways is changed into that kind of oval
+  which among geometricians is known as an ellipse, and sometimes even into
+  a parabola or a hyperbola, or actually into a straight line, witness the
+  ring of Saturn.</p>
+
+  <p>65. The <i>external</i> senses, properly speaking, do not deceive us.
+  It is our inner sense which often makes us go too fast. That occurs also
+  in brute beasts, as when a dog barks at his reflexion in the mirror: for
+  beasts have <i>consecutions</i> of perception which resemble reasoning,
+  and which occur also in the inner sense of men, when their actions have
+  only an empirical quality. But beasts do nothing which compels us to
+  believe that they have what deserves to be properly called a
+  <i>reasoning</i> sense, as I have shown elsewhere. Now when the
+  understanding uses and follows the false decision of the inner sense (as
+  when the famous Galileo thought that Saturn had <!-- Page 110 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page110"></a>[110]</span> two handles) it is
+  deceived by the judgement it makes upon the effect of appearances, and it
+  infers from them more than they imply. For the appearances of the senses
+  do not promise us absolutely the truth of things, any more than dreams
+  do. It is we who deceive ourselves by the use we make of them, that is,
+  by our consecutions. Indeed we allow ourselves to be deluded by probable
+  arguments, and we are inclined to think that phenomena such as we have
+  found linked together often are so always. Thus, as it happens usually
+  that that which appears without angles has none, we readily believe it to
+  be always thus. Such an error is pardonable, and sometimes inevitable,
+  when it is necessary to act promptly and choose that which appearances
+  recommend; but when we have the leisure and the time to collect our
+  thoughts, we are in fault if we take for certain that which is not so. It
+  is therefore true that appearances are often contrary to truth, but our
+  reasoning never is when it proceeds strictly in accordance with the rules
+  of the art of reasoning. If by <i>reason</i> one meant generally the
+  faculty of reasoning whether well or ill, I confess that it might deceive
+  us, and does indeed deceive us, and the appearances of our understanding
+  are often as deceptive as those of the senses: but here it is a question
+  of the linking together of truths and of objections in due form, and in
+  this sense it is impossible for reason to deceive us.</p>
+
+  <p>66. Thus it may be seen from all I have just said that M. Bayle
+  carries too far <i>the being above reason</i>, as if it included the
+  insoluble nature of objections: for according to him (<i>Reply to the
+  Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 130, p. 651) 'once a dogma
+  is above reason, philosophy can neither explain it nor comprehend it, nor
+  meet the difficulties that are urged against it'. I agree with regard to
+  comprehension, but I have already shown that the Mysteries receive a
+  necessary verbal explanation, to the end that the terms employed be not
+  <i>sine mente soni</i>, words signifying nothing. I have shown also that
+  it is necessary for one to be capable of answering the objections, and
+  that otherwise one must needs reject the thesis.</p>
+
+  <p>67. He adduces the authority of theologians, who appear to recognize
+  the insoluble nature of the objections against the Mysteries. Luther is
+  one of the chief of these; but I have already replied, in <a
+  href="#sect12">§ 12</a>, to the passage where he seems to say that
+  philosophy contradicts theology. There is another passage (<i>De Servo
+  Arbitrio</i>, ch. 246) where he says that the apparent injustice of <!--
+  Page 111 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page111"></a>[111]</span> God
+  is proved by arguments taken from the adversity of good people and the
+  prosperity of the wicked, an argument irresistible both for all reason
+  and for natural intelligence ('Argumentis talibus traducta, quibus nulla
+  ratio aut lumen naturae potest resistere'). But soon afterwards he shows
+  that he means it only of those who know nothing of the life to come,
+  since he adds that an expression in the Gospel dissipates this
+  difficulty, teaching us that there is another life, where that which has
+  not been punished and rewarded in this life shall receive its due. The
+  objection is then far from being insuperable, and even without the aid of
+  the Gospel one could bethink oneself of this answer. There is also quoted
+  (<i>Reply</i>, vol. III, p. 652) a passage from Martin Chemnitz,
+  criticized by Vedelius and defended by Johann Musaeus, where this famous
+  theologian seems to say clearly that there are truths in the word of God
+  which are not only above reason but also against reason. But this passage
+  must be taken as referring only to the principles of reason that are in
+  accordance with the order of Nature, as Musaeus also interprets it.</p>
+
+  <p>68. It is true nevertheless that M. Bayle finds some authorities who
+  are more favourable to him, M. Descartes being one of the chief. This
+  great man says positively (Part I of his <i>Principles</i>, art. 41)
+  'that we shall have not the slightest trouble in ridding ourselves of the
+  difficulty' (which one may have in harmonizing the freedom of our will
+  with the order of the eternal providence of God) 'if we observe that our
+  thought is finite, and that the Knowledge and the Omnipotence of God,
+  whereby he has not only known from all eternity all that which is or
+  which can be, but also has willed it, is infinite. We have therefore
+  quite enough intelligence to recognize clearly and distinctly that this
+  knowledge and this power are in God; but we have not enough so to
+  comprehend their scope that we can know how they leave the actions of men
+  entirely free and undetermined. Yet the Power and the Knowledge of God
+  must not prevent us from believing that we have a free will; for we
+  should be wrong to doubt of that whereof we are inwardly conscious, and
+  which we know by experience to be within us, simply because we do not
+  comprehend some other thing which we know to be incomprehensible in its
+  nature.'</p>
+
+  <p>69. This passage from M. Descartes, followed by his adherents (who
+  rarely think of doubting what he asserts), has always appeared strange to
+  me. Not content with saying that, as for him, <!-- Page 112 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page112"></a>[112]</span> he sees no way of
+  reconciling the two dogmas, he puts the whole human race, and even all
+  rational creatures, in the same case. Yet could he have been unaware that
+  there is no possibility of an insuperable objection against truth? For
+  such an objection could only be a necessary linking together of other
+  truths whose result would be contrary to the truth that one maintains;
+  and consequently there would be contradiction between the truths, which
+  would be an utter absurdity. Moreover, albeit our mind is finite and
+  cannot comprehend the infinite, of the infinite nevertheless it has
+  proofs whose strength or weakness it comprehends; why then should it not
+  have the same comprehension in regard to the objections? And since the
+  power and the wisdom of God are infinite and comprehend everything, there
+  is no pretext for doubting their scope. Further, M. Descartes demands a
+  freedom which is not needed, by his insistence that the actions of the
+  will of man are altogether undetermined, a thing which never happens.
+  Finally, M. Bayle himself maintains that this experience or this inward
+  sense of our independence, upon which M. Descartes founds the proof of
+  our freedom, does not prove it: for from the fact that we are not
+  conscious of the causes whereon we depend, it does not follow, according
+  to M. Bayle, that we are independent. But that is something we will speak
+  of in its proper place.</p>
+
+  <p>70. It seems that M. Descartes confesses also, in a passage of his
+  <i>Principles</i>, that it is impossible to find an answer to the
+  difficulties on the division of matter to infinity, which he nevertheless
+  recognizes as actual. Arriaga and other Schoolmen make well-nigh the same
+  confession: but if they took the trouble to give to the objections the
+  form these ought to have, they would see that there are faults in the
+  reasoning, and sometimes false assumptions which cause confusion. Here is
+  an example. A man of parts one day brought up to me an objection in the
+  following form: Let the straight line BA be cut in two equal parts at the
+  point C, and the part CA at the point D, and the part DA at the point E,
+  and so on to infinity; all the halves, BC, CD, DE, etc., together make
+  the whole BA; therefore there must be a last half, since the straight
+  line BA finishes at A. But this last half is absurd: for since it is a
+  line, it will be possible again to cut it in two. Therefore division to
+  infinity cannot be admitted. But I pointed out to him that one is not
+  justified in the inference that there must be a last half, although there
+  be a last point A, for this last point belongs to all <!-- Page 113
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page113"></a>[113]</span> the halves of
+  its side. And my friend acknowledged it himself when he endeavoured to
+  prove this deduction by a formal argument; on the contrary, just because
+  the division goes on to infinity, there is no last half. And although the
+  straight line AB be finite, it does not follow that the process of
+  dividing it has any final end. The same confusion arises with the series
+  of numbers going on to infinity. One imagines a final end, a number that
+  is infinite, or infinitely small; but that is all simple fiction. Every
+  number is finite and specific; every line is so likewise, and the
+  infinite or infinitely small signify only magnitudes that one may take as
+  great or as small as one wishes, to show that an error is smaller than
+  that which has been specified, that is to say, that there is no error; or
+  else by the infinitely small is meant the state of a magnitude at its
+  vanishing point or its beginning, conceived after the pattern of
+  magnitudes already actualized.</p>
+
+  <p>71. It will, however, be well to consider the argument that M. Bayle
+  puts forward to show that one cannot refute the objections which reason
+  opposes to the Mysteries. It is in his comment on the Manichaeans (p.
+  3140 of the second edition of his <i>Dictionary</i>). 'It is enough for
+  me', he says, 'that it be unanimously acknowledged that the Mysteries of
+  the Gospel are above reason. For thence comes the necessary conclusion
+  that it is impossible to settle the difficulties raised by the
+  philosophers, and in consequence that a dispute where only the light of
+  Nature is followed will always end unfavourably for the theologians, and
+  that they will see themselves forced to give way and to take refuge in
+  the canon of the supernatural light.' I am surprised that M. Bayle speaks
+  in such general terms, since he has acknowledged himself that the light
+  of Nature is against the Manichaeans, and for the oneness of the
+  Principle, and that the goodness of God is proved incontrovertibly by
+  reason. Yet this is how he continues:</p>
+
+  <p>72. 'It is evident that reason can never attain to that which is above
+  it. Now if it could supply answers to the objections which are opposed to
+  the dogma of the Trinity and that of hypostatic union, it would attain to
+  those two Mysteries, it would have them in subjection and submit them to
+  the strictest examination by comparison with its first principles, or
+  with the aphorisms that spring from common notions, and proceed until
+  finally it had drawn the conclusion that they are in accordance with
+  natural light. It would therefore do what exceeds its powers, it would
+  soar <!-- Page 114 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page114"></a>[114]</span> above its confines, and that is a formal
+  contradiction. One must therefore say that it cannot provide answers to
+  its own objections, and that thus they remain victorious, so long as one
+  does not have recourse to the authority of God and to the necessity of
+  subjugating one's understanding to the obedience of faith.' I do not find
+  that there is any force in this reasoning. We can attain to that which is
+  above us not by penetrating it but by maintaining it; as we can attain to
+  the sky by sight, and not by touch. Nor is it necessary that, in order to
+  answer the objections which are made against the Mysteries, one should
+  have them in subjection to oneself, and submit them to examination by
+  comparison with the first principles that spring from common notions. For
+  if he who answers the objections had to go so far, he who proposes the
+  objections needs must do it first. It is the part of the objection to
+  open up the subject, and it is enough for him who answers to say Yes or
+  No. He is not obliged to counter with a distinction: it will do, in case
+  of need, if he denies the universality of some proposition in the
+  objection or criticizes its form, and one may do both these things
+  without penetrating beyond the objection. When someone offers me a proof
+  which he maintains is invincible, I can keep silence while I compel him
+  merely to prove in due form all the enunciations that he brings forward,
+  and such as appear to me in the slightest degree doubtful. For the
+  purpose of doubting only, I need not at all probe to the heart of the
+  matter; on the contrary, the more ignorant I am the more shall I be
+  justified in doubting. M. Bayle continues thus:</p>
+
+  <p>73. 'Let us endeavour to clarify that. If some doctrines are above
+  reason they are beyond its reach, it cannot attain to them; if it cannot
+  attain to them, it cannot comprehend them.' (He could have begun here
+  with the 'comprehend', saying that reason cannot comprehend that which is
+  above it.) 'If it cannot comprehend them, it can find in them no idea'
+  (<i>Non valet consequentia</i>: for, to 'comprehend' something, it is not
+  enough that one have some ideas thereof; one must have all the ideas of
+  everything that goes to make it up, and all these ideas must be clear,
+  distinct, <i>adequate</i>. There are a thousand objects in Nature in
+  which we understand something, but which we do not therefore necessarily
+  comprehend. We have some ideas on the rays of light, we demonstrate upon
+  them up to a certain point; but there ever remains something which makes
+  us confess that we do not yet comprehend the whole <!-- Page 115 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page115"></a>[115]</span> nature of light.) 'nor
+  any principle such as may give rise to a solution;' (Why should not
+  evident principles be found mingled with obscure and confused knowledge?)
+  'and consequently the objections that reason has made will remain
+  unanswered;' (By no means; the difficulty is rather on the side of the
+  opposer. It is for him to seek an evident principle such as may give rise
+  to some objection; and the more obscure the subject, the more trouble he
+  will have in finding such a principle. Moreover, when he has found it he
+  will have still more trouble in demonstrating an opposition between the
+  principle and the Mystery: for, if it happened that the Mystery was
+  evidently contrary to an evident principle, it would not be an obscure
+  Mystery, it would be a manifest absurdity.) 'or what is the same thing,
+  answer will be made with some distinction as obscure as the very thesis
+  that will have been attacked.' (One can do without distinctions, if need
+  be, by denying either some premiss or some conclusion; and when one is
+  doubtful of the meaning of some term used by the opposer one may demand
+  of him its definition. Thus the defender has no need to incommode himself
+  when it is a question of answering an adversary who claims that he is
+  offering us an invincible proof. But even supposing that the defender,
+  perchance being kindly disposed, or for the sake of brevity, or because
+  he feels himself strong enough, should himself vouchsafe to show the
+  ambiguity concealed in the objection, and to remove it by making some
+  distinction, this distinction need not of necessity lead to anything
+  clearer than the first thesis, since the defender is not obliged to
+  elucidate the Mystery itself.)</p>
+
+  <p>74. 'Now it is certain', so M. Bayle continues, 'that an objection
+  which is founded on distinct notions remains equally victorious, whether
+  you give to it no answer, or you make an answer where none can comprehend
+  anything. Can the contest be equal between a man who alleges in objection
+  to you that which you and he very clearly conceive, and you, who can only
+  defend yourself by answers wherein neither of you understands anything?'
+  (It is not enough that the objection be founded on quite distinct
+  notions, it is necessary also that one apply it in contradiction of the
+  thesis. And when I answer someone by denying some premiss, in order to
+  compel him to prove it, or some conclusion, to compel him to put it in
+  good form, it cannot be said that I answer nothing or that I answer
+  nothing intelligible. For as it is the doubtful <!-- Page 116 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page116"></a>[116]</span> premiss of the
+  adversary that I deny, my denial will be as intelligible as his
+  affirmation. Finally, when I am so obliging as to explain myself by means
+  of some distinction, it suffices that the terms I employ have some
+  meaning, as in the Mystery itself. Thus something in my answer will be
+  comprehended: but one need not of necessity comprehend all that it
+  involves; otherwise one would comprehend the Mystery also.)</p>
+
+  <p>75. M. Bayle continues thus: 'Every philosophical dispute assumes that
+  the disputant parties agree on certain definitions' (This would be
+  desirable, but usually it is only in the dispute itself that one reaches
+  such a point, if the necessity arises.) 'and that they admit the rules of
+  Syllogisms, and the signs for the recognition of bad arguments. After
+  that everything lies in the investigation as to whether a thesis conforms
+  mediately or immediately to the principles one is agreed upon' (which is
+  done by means of the syllogisms of him who makes objections); 'whether
+  the premisses of a proof (advanced by the opposer) 'are true; whether the
+  conclusion is properly drawn; whether a four-term Syllogism has been
+  employed; whether some aphorism of the chapter <i>de oppositis</i> or
+  <i>de sophisticis elenchis</i>, etc., has not been violated.' (It is
+  enough, putting it briefly, to deny some premiss or some conclusion, or
+  finally to explain or get explained some ambiguous term.) 'One comes off
+  victorious either by showing that the subject of dispute has no connexion
+  with the principles which had been agreed upon' (that is to say, by
+  showing that the objection proves nothing, and then the defender wins the
+  case), 'or by reducing the defender to absurdity' (when all the premisses
+  and all the conclusions are well proved). 'Now one can reduce him to that
+  point either by showing him that the conclusions of his thesis are "yes"
+  and "no" at once, or by constraining him to say only intelligible things
+  in answer.' (This last embarrassment he can always avoid, because he has
+  no need to advance new theses.) 'The aim in disputes of this kind is to
+  throw light upon obscurities and to arrive at self-evidence.' (It is the
+  aim of the opposer, for he wishes to demonstrate that the Mystery is
+  false; but this cannot here be the aim of the defender, for in admitting
+  Mystery he agrees that one cannot demonstrate it.) 'This leads to the
+  opinion that during the course of the proceedings victory sides more or
+  less with the defender or with the opposer, according to whether there is
+  more or less clarity in the propositions of the one than in the <!-- Page
+  117 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page117"></a>[117]</span>
+  propositions of the other.' (That is speaking as if the defender and the
+  opposer were equally unprotected; but the defender is like a besieged
+  commander, covered by his defence works, and it is for the attacker to
+  destroy them. The defender has no need here of self-evidence, and he
+  seeks it not: but it is for the opposer to find it against him, and to
+  break through with his batteries in order that the defender may be no
+  longer protected.)</p>
+
+  <p>76. 'Finally, it is judged that victory goes against him whose answers
+  are such that one comprehends nothing in them,' (It is a very equivocal
+  sign of victory: for then one must needs ask the audience if they
+  comprehend anything in what has been said, and often their opinions would
+  be divided. The order of formal disputes is to proceed by arguments in
+  due form and to answer them by denying or making a distinction.) 'and who
+  confesses that they are incomprehensible.' (It is permitted to him who
+  maintains the truth of a Mystery to confess that this mystery is
+  incomprehensible; and if this confession were sufficient for declaring
+  him vanquished there would be no need of objection. It will be possible
+  for a truth to be incomprehensible, but never so far as to justify the
+  statement that one comprehends nothing at all therein. It would be in
+  that case what the ancient Schools called <i>Scindapsus</i> or
+  <i>Blityri</i> (Clem. Alex., <i>Stromateis</i>, 8), that is, words devoid
+  of meaning.) 'He is condemned thenceforth by the rules for awarding
+  victory; and even when he cannot be pursued in the mist wherewith he has
+  covered himself, and which forms a kind of abyss between him and his
+  antagonists, he is believed to be utterly defeated, and is compared to an
+  army which, having lost the battle, steals away from the pursuit of the
+  victor only under cover of night.' (Matching allegory with allegory, I
+  will say that the defender is not vanquished so long as he remains
+  protected by his entrenchments; and if he risks some sortie beyond his
+  need, it is permitted to him to withdraw within his fort, without being
+  open to blame for that.)</p>
+
+  <p>77. I was especially at pains to analyse this long passage where M.
+  Bayle has put down his strongest and most skilfully reasoned statements
+  in support of his opinion: and I hope that I have shown clearly how this
+  excellent man has been misled. That happens all too easily to the ablest
+  and shrewdest persons when they give free rein to their wit without
+  exercising the patience necessary for delving down to the very
+  foundations of their systems. The details <!-- Page 118 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page118"></a>[118]</span> we have entered into
+  here will serve as answer to some other arguments upon the subject which
+  are dispersed through the works of M. Bayle, as for instance when he says
+  in his <i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i> (vol. III, ch. 133,
+  p. 685): 'To prove that one has brought reason and religion into harmony
+  one must show not only that one has philosophic maxims favourable to our
+  faith, but also that the particular maxims cast up against us as not
+  being consistent with our Catechism are in reality consistent with it in
+  a clearly conceived way.' I do not see that one has need of all that,
+  unless one aspire to press reasoning as far as the <i>how</i> of the
+  Mystery. When one is content to uphold its truth, without attempting to
+  render it comprehensible, one has no need to resort to philosophic
+  maxims, general or particular, for the proof; and when another brings up
+  some philosophic maxims against us, it is not for us to prove clearly and
+  distinctly that these maxims are consistent with our dogma, but it is for
+  our opponent to prove that they are contrary thereto.</p>
+
+  <p>78. M. Bayle continues thus in the same passage: 'For this result we
+  need an answer as clearly evident as the objection.' I have already shown
+  that it is obtained when one denies the premisses, but that for the rest
+  it is not necessary for him who maintains the truth of the Mystery always
+  to advance evident propositions, since the principal thesis concerning
+  the Mystery itself is not evident. He adds further: 'If we must make
+  reply and rejoinder, we must never rest in our positions, nor claim that
+  we have accomplished our design, so long as our opponent shall make
+  answer with things as evident as our reasons can be.' But it is not for
+  the defender to adduce reasons; it is enough for him to answer those of
+  his opponent.</p>
+
+  <p>79. Finally the author draws the conclusion: 'If it were claimed that,
+  on making an evident objection, a man has to be satisfied with an answer
+  which we can only state as a thing possible though incomprehensible to
+  us, that would be unfair.' He repeats this in the posthumous Dialogues,
+  against M. Jacquelot, p. 69. I am not of this opinion. If the objection
+  were completely evident, it would triumph, and the thesis would be
+  overthrown. But when the objection is only founded on appearances or on
+  instances of the most frequent occurrence, and when he who makes it
+  desires to draw from it a universal and certain conclusion, he who
+  upholds the Mystery may answer with the instance of a bare possibility.
+  <!-- Page 119 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page119"></a>[119]</span>
+  For such an instance suffices to show that what one wished to infer from
+  the premisses, is neither certain nor general; and it suffices for him
+  who upholds the Mystery to maintain that it is possible, without having
+  to maintain that it is probable. For, as I have often said, it is agreed
+  that the Mysteries are against appearances. He who upholds the Mystery
+  need not even adduce such an instance; and should he adduce it, it were
+  indeed a work of supererogation, or else an instrument of greater
+  confusion to the adversary.</p>
+
+  <p>80. There are passages of M. Bayle in the posthumous reply that he
+  made to M. Jacquelot which seem to me still worthy of scrutiny. 'M.
+  Bayle' (according to pp. 36, 37) 'constantly asserts in his
+  <i>Dictionary</i>, whenever the subject allows, that our reason is more
+  capable of refuting and destroying than of proving and building; that
+  there is scarcely any philosophical or theological matter in respect of
+  which it does not create great difficulties. Thus', he says, 'if one
+  desired to follow it in a disputatious spirit, as far as it can go, one
+  would often be reduced to a state of troublesome perplexity; and in fine,
+  there are doctrines certainly true, which it disputes with insoluble
+  objections.' I think that what is said here in reproach of reason is to
+  its advantage. When it overthrows some thesis, it builds up the opposing
+  thesis. And when it seems to be overthrowing the two opposing theses at
+  the same time, it is then that it promises us something profound,
+  provided that we follow it <i>as far as it can go</i>, not in a
+  disputatious spirit but with an ardent desire to search out and discover
+  the truth, which will always be recompensed with a great measure of
+  success.</p>
+
+  <p>81. M. Bayle continues: 'that one must then ridicule these objections,
+  recognizing the narrow bounds of the human mind.' And I think, on the
+  other hand, that one must recognize the signs of the force of the human
+  mind, which causes it to penetrate into the heart of things. These are
+  new openings and, as it were, rays of the dawn which promises us a
+  greater light: I mean in philosophical subjects or those of natural
+  theology. But when these objections are made against revealed faith it is
+  enough that one be able to repel them, provided that one do so in a
+  submissive and zealous spirit, with intent to sustain and exalt the glory
+  of God. And when we succeed in respect of his justice, we shall likewise
+  be impressed by his greatness and charmed by his goodness, which will
+  show themselves through the clouds of a seeming reason that is <!-- Page
+  120 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page120"></a>[120]</span> deceived
+  by outward appearances, in proportion as the mind is elevated by true
+  reason to that which to us is invisible, but none the less sure.</p>
+
+  <p>82. 'Thus' (to continue with M. Bayle) 'reason will be compelled to
+  lay down its arms, and to subjugate itself to the obedience of the faith,
+  which it can and ought to do, in virtue of some of its most incontestable
+  maxims. Thus also in renouncing some of its other maxims it acts
+  nevertheless in accordance with that which it is, that is to say, in
+  reason.' But one must know 'that such maxims of reason as must be
+  renounced in this case are only those which make us judge by appearances
+  or according to the ordinary course of things.' This reason enjoins upon
+  us even in philosophical subjects, when there are invincible proofs to
+  the contrary. It is thus that, being made confident by demonstrations of
+  the goodness and the justice of God, we disregard the appearances of
+  harshness and injustice which we see in this small portion of his Kingdom
+  that is exposed to our gaze. Hitherto we have been illumined by the
+  <i>light of Nature</i> and by that of <i>grace</i>, but not yet by that
+  of <i>glory</i>. Here on earth we see apparent injustice, and we believe
+  and even know the truth of the hidden justice of God; but we shall see
+  that justice when at last the Sun of Justice shall show himself as he
+  is.</p>
+
+  <p>83. It is certain that M. Bayle can only be understood as meaning
+  those ostensible maxims which must give way before the eternal verities;
+  for he acknowledges that reason is not in reality contrary to faith. In
+  these posthumous Dialogues he complains (p. 73, against M. Jacquelot) of
+  being accused of the belief that our Mysteries are in reality against
+  reason, and (p. 9, against M. le Clerc) of the assertion made that he who
+  acknowledges that a doctrine is exposed to irrefutable objections
+  acknowledges also by a necessary consequence the falsity of this
+  doctrine. Nevertheless one would be justified in the assertion if the
+  irrefutability were more than an outward appearance.</p>
+
+  <p>84. It may be, therefore, that having long contended thus against M.
+  Bayle on the matter of the use of reason I shall find after all that his
+  opinions were not fundamentally so remote from mine as his expressions,
+  which have provided matter for our considerations, have led one to
+  believe. It is true that frequently he appears to deny absolutely that
+  one can ever answer the objections of reason against faith, and that he
+  asserts the necessity of comprehending, in order to achieve such an end,
+  how the Mystery comes <!-- Page 121 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page121"></a>[121]</span> to be or exists. Yet there are passages
+  where he becomes milder, and contents himself with saying that the
+  answers to these objections are unknown to him. Here is a very precise
+  passage, taken from the excursus on the Manichaeans, which is found at
+  the end of the second edition of his <i>Dictionary</i>: 'For the greater
+  satisfaction of the most punctilious readers, I desire to declare here'
+  (he says, p. 3148) 'that wherever the statement is to be met with in my
+  <i>Dictionary</i> that such and such arguments are irrefutable I do not
+  wish it to be taken that they are so in actuality. I mean naught else
+  than that they appear to me irrefutable. That is of no consequence: each
+  one will be able to imagine, if he pleases, that if I deem thus of a
+  matter it is owing to my lack of acumen.' I do not imagine such a thing;
+  his great acumen is too well known to me: but I think that, after having
+  applied his whole mind to magnifying the objections, he had not enough
+  attention left over for the purpose of answering them.</p>
+
+  <p>85. M. Bayle confesses, moreover, in his posthumous work against M. le
+  Clerc, that the objections against faith have not the force of proofs. It
+  is therefore <i>ad hominem</i> only, or rather <i>ad homines</i>, that
+  is, in relation to the existing state of the human race, that he deems
+  these objections irrefutable and the subject unexplainable. There is even
+  a passage where he implies that he despairs not of the possibility that
+  the answer or the explanation may be found, and even in our time. For
+  here is what he says in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc (p. 35): 'M.
+  Bayle dared to hope that his toil would put on their mettle some of those
+  great men of genius who create new systems, and that they could discover
+  a solution hitherto unknown.' It seems that by this 'solution' he means
+  such an explanation of Mystery as would penetrate to the <i>how</i>: but
+  that is not necessary for replying to the objections.</p>
+
+  <p>86. Many have undertaken to render this <i>how</i> comprehensible, and
+  to prove the possibility of Mysteries. A certain writer named Thomas
+  Bonartes Nordtanus Anglus, in his <i>Concordia Scientiae cum Fide,</i>
+  claimed to do so. This work seemed to me ingenious and learned, but
+  crabbed and involved, and it even contains indefensible opinions. I
+  learned from the <i>Apologia Cyriacorum</i> of the Dominican Father
+  Vincent Baron that that book was censured in Rome, that the author was a
+  Jesuit, and that he suffered for having published it. The Reverend Father
+  des Bosses, who now teaches Theology in the Jesuit College of Hildesheim,
+  and who has <!-- Page 122 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page122"></a>[122]</span> combined rare erudition with great
+  acumen, which he displays in philosophy and theology, has informed me
+  that the real name of Bonartes was Thomas Barton, and that after leaving
+  the Society he retired to Ireland, where the manner of his death brought
+  about a favourable verdict on his last opinions. I pity the men of talent
+  who bring trouble upon themselves by their toil and their zeal. Something
+  of like nature happened in time past to Pierre Abelard, to Gilbert de la
+  Porree, to John Wyclif, and in our day to the Englishman Thomas Albius,
+  as well as to some others who plunged too far into the explanation of the
+  Mysteries.</p>
+
+  <p>87. St. Augustine, however (as well as M. Bayle), does not despair of
+  the possibility that the desired solution may be found upon earth; but
+  this Father believes it to be reserved for some holy man illumined by a
+  peculiar grace: 'Est aliqua causa fortassis occultior, quae melioribus
+  sanctioribusque reservatur, illius gratia potius quam meritis illorum'
+  (in <i>De Genesi ad Literam</i>, lib. 11, c. 4). Luther reserves the
+  knowledge of the Mystery of Election for the academy of heaven (lib.
+  <i>De Servo Arbitrio</i>, c. 174): 'Illic [Deus] gratiam et misericordiam
+  spargit in indignos, his iram et severitatem spargit in immeritos;
+  utrobique nimius et iniquus apud homines, sed justus et verax apud se
+  ipsum. Nam quomodo hoc justum sit ut indignos coronet, incomprehensibile
+  est modo, videbimus autem, cum illuc venerimus, ubi jam non credetur, sed
+  revelata facie videbitur. Ita quomodo hoc justum sit, ut immeritos
+  damnet, incomprehensibile est modo, creditur tamen, donec revelabitur
+  filius hominis.' It is to be hoped that M. Bayle now finds himself
+  surrounded by that light which is lacking to us here below, since there
+  is reason to suppose that he was not lacking in good will.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>VIRGIL</p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>Candidus insueti miratur limen Olympi,</i></p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>LUCAN</p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>...Illic postquam se lumine vero</i></p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>Implevit, stellasque vagas miratur et astra</i></p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>Fixa polis, vidit quanta sub nocte jaceret</i></p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>Nostra dies.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+<p><!-- Page 123 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page123"></a>[123]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>ESSAYS
+ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD
+AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN
+IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>PART ONE</h3>
+
+  <p>1. Having so settled the rights of faith and of reason as rather to
+  place reason at the service of faith than in opposition to it, we shall
+  see how they exercise these rights to support and harmonize what the
+  light of nature and the light of revelation teach us of God and of man in
+  relation to evil. The <i>difficulties</i> are distinguishable into two
+  classes. The one kind springs from man's freedom, which appears
+  incompatible with the divine nature; and nevertheless freedom is deemed
+  necessary, in order that man may be deemed guilty and open to punishment.
+  The other kind concerns the conduct of God, and seems to make him
+  participate too much in the existence of evil, even though man be free
+  and participate also therein. And this conduct appears contrary to the
+  goodness, the holiness and the justice of God, since God co-operates in
+  evil as well physical as moral, and co-operates in each of them both
+  morally and physically; and since it seems that these evils are
+  manifested in the order of nature as well as in that of grace, and in the
+  future and eternal life as well as, nay, more than, in this transitory
+  life.</p>
+
+  <p>2. To present these difficulties in brief, it must be observed that
+  freedom is opposed, to all appearance, by determination or certainty of
+  any kind whatever; and nevertheless the common dogma of our philosophers
+  states that the truth of contingent futurities is <!-- Page 124 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page124"></a>[124]</span> determined. The
+  foreknowledge of God renders all the future certain and determined, but
+  his providence and his foreordinance, whereon foreknowledge itself
+  appears founded, do much more: for God is not as a man, able to look upon
+  events with unconcern and to suspend his judgement, since nothing exists
+  save as a result of the decrees of his will and through the action of his
+  power. And even though one leave out of account the co-operation of God,
+  all is perfectly connected in the order of things, since nothing can come
+  to pass unless there be a cause so disposed as to produce the effect,
+  this taking place no less in voluntary than in all other actions.
+  According to which it appears that man is compelled to do the good and
+  evil that he does, and in consequence that he deserves therefor neither
+  recompense nor chastisement: thus is the morality of actions destroyed
+  and all justice, divine and human, shaken.</p>
+
+  <p>3. But even though one should grant to man this freedom wherewith he
+  arrays himself to his own hurt, the conduct of God could not but provide
+  matter for a criticism supported by the presumptuous ignorance of men,
+  who would wish to exculpate themselves wholly or in part at the expense
+  of God. It is objected that all the reality and what is termed the
+  substance of the act in sin itself is a production of God, since all
+  creatures and all their actions derive from him that reality they have.
+  Whence one could infer not only that he is the physical cause of sin, but
+  also that he is its moral cause, since he acts with perfect freedom and
+  does nothing without a complete knowledge of the thing and the
+  consequences that it may have. Nor is it enough to say that God has made
+  for himself a law to co-operate with the wills or resolutions of man,
+  whether we express ourselves in terms of the common opinion or in terms
+  of the system of occasional causes. Not only will it be found strange
+  that he should have made such a law for himself, of whose results he was
+  not ignorant, but the principal difficulty is that it seems the evil will
+  itself cannot exist without co-operation, and even without some
+  predetermination, on his part, which contributes towards begetting this
+  will in man or in some other rational creature. For an action is not, for
+  being evil, the less dependent on God. Whence one will come at last to
+  the conclusion that God does all, the good and the evil, indifferently;
+  unless one pretend with the Manichaeans that there are two principles,
+  the one good and the other evil. Moreover, according to the general <!--
+  Page 125 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page125"></a>[125]</span>
+  opinion of theologians and philosophers, conservation being a perpetual
+  creation, it will be said that man is perpetually created corrupt and
+  erring. There are, furthermore, modern Cartesians who claim that God is
+  the sole agent, of whom created beings are only the purely passive
+  organs; and M. Bayle builds not a little upon that idea.</p>
+
+  <p>4. But even granting that God should co-operate in actions only with a
+  general co-operation, or even not at all, at least in those that are bad,
+  it suffices, so it is said, to inculpate him and to render him the moral
+  cause that nothing comes to pass without his permission. To say nothing
+  of the fall of the angels, he knows all that which will come to pass, if,
+  having created man, he places him in such and such circumstances; and he
+  places him there notwithstanding. Man is exposed to a temptation to which
+  it is known that he will succumb, thereby causing an infinitude of
+  frightful evils, by which the whole human race will be infected and
+  brought as it were into a necessity of sinning, a state which is named
+  'original sin'. Thus the world will be brought into a strange confusion,
+  by this means death and diseases being introduced, with a thousand other
+  misfortunes and miseries that in general afflict the good and the bad;
+  wickedness will even hold sway and virtue will be oppressed on earth, so
+  that it will scarce appear that a providence governs affairs. But it is
+  much worse when one considers the life to come, since but a small number
+  of men will be saved and since all the rest will perish eternally.
+  Furthermore these men destined for salvation will have been withdrawn
+  from the corrupt mass through an unreasoning election, whether it be said
+  that God in choosing them has had regard to their future actions, to
+  their faith or to their works, or one claim that he has been pleased to
+  give them these good qualities and these actions because he has
+  predestined them to salvation. For though it be said in the most lenient
+  system that God wished to save all men, and though in the other systems
+  commonly accepted it be granted, that he has made his Son take human
+  nature upon him to expiate their sins, so that all they who shall believe
+  in him with a lively and final faith shall be saved, it still remains
+  true that this lively faith is a gift of God; that we are dead to all
+  good works; that even our will itself must be aroused by a prevenient
+  grace, and that God gives us the power to will and to do. And whether
+  that be done through a grace efficacious of itself, that is to say,
+  through a divine inward motion <!-- Page 126 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page126"></a>[126]</span> which wholly determines our will to the
+  good that it does; or whether there be only a sufficient grace, but such
+  as does not fail to attain its end, and to become efficacious in the
+  inward and outward circumstances wherein the man is and has been placed
+  by God: one must return to the same conclusion that God is the final
+  reason of salvation, of grace, of faith and of election in Jesus Christ.
+  And be the election the cause or the result of God's design to give
+  faith, it still remains true that he gives faith or salvation to whom he
+  pleases, without any discernible reason for his choice, which falls upon
+  but few men.</p>
+
+  <p>5. So it is a terrible judgement that God, giving his only Son for the
+  whole human race and being the sole author and master of the salvation of
+  men, yet saves so few of them and abandons all others to the devil his
+  enemy, who torments them eternally and makes them curse their Creator,
+  though they have all been created to diffuse and show forth his goodness,
+  his justice and his other perfections. And this outcome inspires all the
+  more horror, as the sole cause why all these men are wretched to all
+  eternity is God's having exposed their parents to a temptation that he
+  knew they would not resist; as this sin is inherent and imputed to men
+  before their will has participated in it; as this hereditary vice impels
+  their will to commit actual sins; and as countless men, in childhood or
+  maturity, that have never heard or have not heard enough of Jesus Christ,
+  Saviour of the human race, die before receiving the necessary succour for
+  their withdrawal from this abyss of sin. These men too are condemned to
+  be for ever rebellious against God and plunged in the most horrible
+  miseries, with the wickedest of all creatures, though in essence they
+  have not been more wicked than others, and several among them have
+  perchance been less guilty than some of that little number of elect, who
+  were saved by a grace without reason, and who thereby enjoy an eternal
+  felicity which they had not deserved. Such in brief are the difficulties
+  touched upon by sundry persons; but M. Bayle was one who insisted on them
+  the most, as will appear subsequently when we examine his passages. I
+  think that now I have recorded the main essence of these difficulties:
+  but I have deemed it fitting to refrain from some expressions and
+  exaggerations which might have caused offence, while not rendering the
+  objections any stronger.</p>
+
+  <p>6. Let us now turn the medal and let us also point out what can be
+  said in answer to those objections; and here a course of <!-- Page 127
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page127"></a>[127]</span> explanation
+  through fuller dissertation will be necessary: for many difficulties can
+  be opened up in few words, but for their discussion one must dilate upon
+  them. Our end is to banish from men the false ideas that represent God to
+  them as an absolute prince employing a despotic power, unfitted to be
+  loved and unworthy of being loved. These notions are the more evil in
+  relation to God inasmuch as the essence of piety is not only to fear him
+  but also to love him above all things: and that cannot come about unless
+  there be knowledge of his perfections capable of arousing the love which
+  he deserves, and which makes the felicity of those that love him. Feeling
+  ourselves animated by a zeal such as cannot fail to please him, we have
+  cause to hope that he will enlighten us, and that he will himself aid us
+  in the execution of a project undertaken for his glory and for the good
+  of men. A cause so good gives confidence: if there are plausible
+  appearances against us there are proofs on our side, and I would dare to
+  say to an adversary:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Aspice, quam mage sit nostrum penetrabile telum.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>7. <i>God is the first reason of things</i>: for such things as are
+  bounded, as all that which we see and experience, are contingent and have
+  nothing in them to render their existence necessary, it being plain that
+  time, space and matter, united and uniform in themselves and indifferent
+  to everything, might have received entirely other motions and shapes, and
+  in another order. Therefore one must seek the reason for the existence of
+  the world, which is the whole assemblage of <i>contingent</i> things, and
+  seek it in the substance which carries with it the reason for its
+  existence, and which in consequence is <i>necessary</i> and eternal.
+  Moreover, this cause must be intelligent: for this existing world being
+  contingent and an infinity of other worlds being equally possible, and
+  holding, so to say, equal claim to existence with it, the cause of the
+  world must needs have had regard or reference to all these possible
+  worlds in order to fix upon one of them. This regard or relation of an
+  existent substance to simple possibilities can be nothing other than the
+  <i>understanding</i> which has the ideas of them, while to fix upon one
+  of them can be nothing other than the act of the <i>will</i> which
+  chooses. It is the <i>power</i> of this substance that renders its will
+  efficacious. Power relates to <i>being</i>, wisdom or understanding to
+  <i>truth</i>, and will to <i>good</i>. And this intelligent cause ought
+  to be infinite in all ways, and absolutely perfect in <i>power</i>, in
+  <i>wisdom</i> and in <i>goodness</i>, since it <!-- Page 128 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page128"></a>[128]</span> relates to all that
+  which is possible. Furthermore, since all is connected together, there is
+  no ground for admitting more than <i>one</i>. Its understanding is the
+  source of <i>essences</i>, and its will is the origin of
+  <i>existences</i>. There in few words is the proof of one only God with
+  his perfections, and through him of the origin of things.</p>
+
+  <p>8. Now this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less
+  infinite, cannot but have chosen the best. For as a lesser evil is a kind
+  of good, even so a lesser good is a kind of evil if it stands in the way
+  of a greater good; and there would be something to correct in the actions
+  of God if it were possible to do better. As in mathematics, when there is
+  no maximum nor minimum, in short nothing distinguished, everything is
+  done equally, or when that is not possible nothing at all is done: so it
+  may be said likewise in respect of perfect wisdom, which is no less
+  orderly than mathematics, that if there were not the best
+  (<i>optimum</i>) among all possible worlds, God would not have produced
+  any. I call 'World' the whole succession and the whole agglomeration of
+  all existent things, lest it be said that several worlds could have
+  existed in different times and different places. For they must needs be
+  reckoned all together as one world or, if you will, as one Universe. And
+  even though one should fill all times and all places, it still remains
+  true that one might have filled them in innumerable ways, and that there
+  is an infinitude of possible worlds among which God must needs have
+  chosen the best, since he does nothing without acting in accordance with
+  supreme reason.</p>
+
+  <p>9. Some adversary not being able to answer this argument will
+  perchance answer the conclusion by a counter-argument, saying that the
+  world could have been without sin and without sufferings; but I deny that
+  then it would have been <i>better</i>. For it must be known that all
+  things are <i>connected</i> in each one of the possible worlds: the
+  universe, whatever it may be, is all of one piece, like an ocean: the
+  least movement extends its effect there to any distance whatsoever, even
+  though this effect become less perceptible in proportion to the distance.
+  Therein God has ordered all things beforehand once for all, having
+  foreseen prayers, good and bad actions, and all the rest; and each thing
+  <i>as an idea</i> has contributed, before its existence, to the
+  resolution that has been made upon the existence of all things; so that
+  nothing can be changed in the universe (any more than in a number) save
+  its essence or, if you will, save its <i>numerical individuality</i>.
+  Thus, if the smallest evil <!-- Page 129 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page129"></a>[129]</span> that comes to pass in the world were
+  missing in it, it would no longer be this world; which, with nothing
+  omitted and all allowance made, was found the best by the Creator who
+  chose it.</p>
+
+  <p>10. It is true that one may imagine possible worlds without sin and
+  without unhappiness, and one could make some like Utopian or Sevarambian
+  romances: but these same worlds again would be very inferior to ours in
+  goodness. I cannot show you this in detail. For can I know and can I
+  present infinities to you and compare them together? But you must judge
+  with me <i>ab effectu</i>, since God has chosen this world as it is. We
+  know, moreover, that often an evil brings forth a good whereto one would
+  not have attained without that evil. Often indeed two evils have made one
+  great good:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Et si fata volunt, bina venena juvant</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>Even so two liquids sometimes produce a solid, witness the spirit of
+  wine and spirit of urine mixed by Van Helmont; or so do two cold and dark
+  bodies produce a great fire, witness an acid solution and an aromatic oil
+  combined by Herr Hoffmann. A general makes sometimes a fortunate mistake
+  which brings about the winning of a great battle; and do they not sing on
+  the eve of Easter, in the churches of the Roman rite:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est!</i></p>
+      <p><i>O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>11. The illustrious prelates of the Gallican church who wrote to Pope
+  Innocent XII against Cardinal Sfondrati's book on predestination, being
+  of the principles of St. Augustine, have said things well fitted to
+  elucidate this great point. The cardinal appears to prefer even to the
+  Kingdom of Heaven the state of children dying without baptism, because
+  sin is the greatest of evils, and they have died innocent of all actual
+  sin. More will be said of that below. The prelates have observed that
+  this opinion is ill founded. The apostle, they say (Rom. iii. 8), is
+  right to disapprove of the doing of evil that good may come, but one
+  cannot disapprove that God, through his exceeding power, derive from the
+  permitting of sins greater goods than such as occurred before the sins.
+  It is not that we ought to take pleasure in sin, God forbid! but that we
+  believe the same apostle when he says (Rom. v. 20) <!-- Page 130 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page130"></a>[130]</span> that where sin
+  abounded, grace did much more abound; and we remember that we have gained
+  Jesus Christ himself by reason of sin. Thus we see that the opinion of
+  these prelates tends to maintain that a sequence of things where sin
+  enters in may have been and has been, in effect, better than another
+  sequence without sin.</p>
+
+  <p>12. Use has ever been made of comparisons taken from the pleasures of
+  the senses when these are mingled with that which borders on pain, to
+  prove that there is something of like nature in intellectual pleasures. A
+  little acid, sharpness or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar;
+  shadows enhance colours; and even a dissonance in the right place gives
+  relief to harmony. We wish to be terrified by rope-dancers on the point
+  of falling and we wish that tragedies shall well-nigh cause us to weep.
+  Do men relish health enough, or thank God enough for it, without having
+  ever been sick? And is it not most often necessary that a little evil
+  render the good more discernible, that is to say, greater?</p>
+
+  <p>13. But it will be said that evils are great and many in number in
+  comparison with the good: that is erroneous. It is only want of attention
+  that diminishes our good, and this attention must be given to us through
+  some admixture of evils. If we were usually sick and seldom in good
+  health, we should be wonderfully sensible of that great good and we
+  should be less sensible of our evils. But is it not better,
+  notwithstanding, that health should be usual and sickness the exception?
+  Let us then by our reflexion supply what is lacking in our perception, in
+  order to make the good of health more discernible. Had we not the
+  knowledge of the life to come, I believe there would be few persons who,
+  being at the point of death, were not content to take up life again, on
+  condition of passing through the same amount of good and evil, provided
+  always that it were not the same kind: one would be content with variety,
+  without requiring a better condition than that wherein one had been.</p>
+
+  <p>14. When one considers also the fragility of the human body, one looks
+  in wonder at the wisdom and the goodness of the Author of Nature, who has
+  made the body so enduring and its condition so tolerable. That has often
+  made me say that I am not astonished men are sometimes sick, but that I
+  am astonished they are sick so little and not always. This also ought to
+  make us the more esteem the divine contrivance of the mechanism of
+  animals, whose Author <!-- Page 131 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page131"></a>[131]</span> has made machines so fragile and so
+  subject to corruption and yet so capable of maintaining themselves: for
+  it is Nature which cures us rather than medicine. Now this very fragility
+  is a consequence of the nature of things, unless we are to will that this
+  kind of creature, reasoning and clothed in flesh and bones, be not in the
+  world. But that, to all appearance, would be a defect which some
+  philosophers of old would have called <i>vacuum formarum</i>, a gap in
+  the order of species.</p>
+
+  <p>15. Those whose humour it is to be well satisfied with Nature and with
+  fortune and not to complain about them, even though they should not be
+  the best endowed, appear to me preferable to the other sort; for besides
+  that these complaints are ill founded, it is in effect murmuring against
+  the orders of providence. One must not readily be among the malcontents
+  in the State where one is, and one must not be so at all in the city of
+  God, wherein one can only wrongfully be of their number. The books of
+  human misery, such as that of Pope Innocent III, to me seem not of the
+  most serviceable: evils are doubled by being given an attention that
+  ought to be averted from them, to be turned towards the good which by far
+  preponderates. Even less do I approve books such as that of Abbé Esprit,
+  <i>On the Falsity of Human Virtues</i>, of which we have lately been
+  given a summary: for such a book serves to turn everything wrong side
+  out, and cause men to be such as it represents them.</p>
+
+  <p>16. It must be confessed, however, that there are disorders in this
+  life, which appear especially in the prosperity of sundry evil men and in
+  the misfortune of many good people. There is a German proverb which even
+  grants the advantage to the evil ones, as if they were commonly the most
+  fortunate:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Je krümmer Holz, je bessre Krücke:</i></p>
+      <p><i>Je ärger Schalck, je grösser Glücke.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>And it were to be desired that this saying of Horace should be true in
+  our eyes:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Raro antecedentem scelestum</i></p>
+      <p><i>Deseruit pede poena claudo.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>Yet it often comes to pass also, though this perchance not the most
+  often,</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 132 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page132"></a>[132]</span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>That in the world's eyes Heaven is justified,</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>and that one may say with Claudian:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poena tumultum,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Absolvitque deos...</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>17. But even though that should not happen here, the remedy is all
+  prepared in the other life: religion and reason itself teach us that, and
+  we must not murmur against a respite which the supreme wisdom has thought
+  fit to grant to men for repentance. Yet there objections multiply on
+  another side, when one considers salvation and damnation: for it appears
+  strange that, even in the great future of eternity, evil should have the
+  advantage over good, under the supreme authority of him who is the
+  sovereign good, since there will be many that are called and few that are
+  chosen or are saved. It is true that one sees from some lines of
+  Prudentius (Hymn. ante Somnum),</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Idem tamen benignus</i></p>
+      <p><i>Ultor retundit iram,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Paucosque non piorum</i></p>
+      <p><i>Patitur perire in aevum,</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>that divers men believed in his time that the number of those wicked
+  enough to be damned would be very small. To some indeed it seems that men
+  believed at that time in a sphere between Hell and Paradise; that this
+  same Prudentius speaks as if he were satisfied with this sphere; that St.
+  Gregory of Nyssa also inclines in that direction, and that St. Jerome
+  leans towards the opinion according whereunto all Christians would
+  finally be taken into grace. A saying of St. Paul which he himself gives
+  out as mysterious, stating that all Israel will be saved, has provided
+  much food for reflexion. Sundry pious persons, learned also, but daring,
+  have revived the opinion of Origen, who maintains that good will
+  predominate in due time, in all and everywhere, and that all rational
+  creatures, even the bad angels, will become at last holy and blessed. The
+  book of the eternal Gospel, published lately in German and supported by a
+  great and learned work entitled <span lang="el" title="'Apokatastasis pantôn"
+  >'&#x391;&#x3C0;&#x3BF;&#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3C3;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3C0;&#x3B1;&#x3BD;&#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;</span>, has caused much stir
+  over this great paradox. M. le Clerc also has ingeniously pleaded the
+  cause of the Origenists, but without declaring himself for them.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 133 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page133"></a>[133]</span></p>
+
+  <p>18. There is a man of wit who, pushing my principle of harmony even to
+  arbitrary suppositions that I in no wise approve, has created for himself
+  a theology well-nigh astronomical. He believes that the present confusion
+  in this world below began when the Presiding Angel of the globe of the
+  earth, which was still a sun (that is, a star that was fixed and luminous
+  of itself) committed a sin with some lesser angels of his department,
+  perhaps rising inopportunely against an angel of a greater sun; that
+  simultaneously, by the Pre-established Harmony of the Realms of Nature
+  and of Grace, and consequently by natural causes occurring at the
+  appointed time, our globe was covered with stains, rendered opaque and
+  driven from its place; which has made it become a wandering star or
+  planet, that is, a Satellite of another sun, and even perhaps of that one
+  whose superiority its angel refused to recognize; and that therein
+  consists the fall of Lucifer. Now the chief of the bad angels, who in
+  Holy Scripture is named the prince, and even the god of this world,
+  being, with the angels of his train, envious of that rational animal
+  which walks on the surface of this globe, and which God has set up there
+  perhaps to compensate himself for their fall, strives to render it
+  accessary in their crimes and a participator in their misfortunes.
+  Whereupon Jesus Christ came to save men. He is the eternal Son of God,
+  even as he is his only Son; but (according to some ancient Christians,
+  and according to the author of this hypothesis) having taken upon him at
+  first, from the beginning of things, the most excellent nature among
+  created beings, to bring them all to perfection, he set himself amongst
+  them: and this is the second filiation, whereby he is the first-born of
+  all creatures. This is he whom the Cabalists called Adam Kadmon. Haply he
+  had planted his tabernacle in that great sun which illumines us; but he
+  came at last into this globe where we are, he was born of the Virgin, and
+  took human nature upon him to save mankind from the hands of their enemy
+  and his. And when the time of judgement shall draw near, when the present
+  face of our globe shall be about to perish, he will return to it in
+  visible form, thence to withdraw the good, transplanting them, it may be,
+  into the sun, and to punish here the wicked with the demons that have
+  allured them; then the globe of the earth will begin to burn and will be
+  perhaps a comet. This fire will last for aeons upon aeons. The tail of
+  the comet is intended by the smoke which will rise incessantly, according
+  to the Apocalypse, and this fire will be <!-- Page 134 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page134"></a>[134]</span> hell, or the second
+  death whereof Holy Scripture speaks. But at last hell will render up its
+  dead, death itself will be destroyed; reason and peace will begin to hold
+  sway again in the spirits that had been perverted; they will be sensible
+  of their error, they will adore their Creator, and will even begin to
+  love him all the more for seeing the greatness of the abyss whence they
+  emerge. Simultaneously (by virtue of the <i>harmonic parallelism</i> of
+  the Realms of Nature and of Grace) this long and great conflagration will
+  have purged the earth's globe of its stains. It will become again a sun;
+  its Presiding Angel will resume his place with the angels of his train;
+  humans that were damned shall be with them numbered amongst the good
+  angels; this chief of our globe shall render homage to the Messiah, chief
+  of created beings. The glory of this angel reconciled shall be greater
+  than it was before his fall.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Inque Deos iterum factorum lege receptus</i></p>
+      <p><i>Aureus aeternum noster regnabit Apollo.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>The vision seemed to me pleasing, and worthy of a follower of Origen:
+  but we have no need of such hypothesis or fictions, where Wit plays a
+  greater part than Revelation, and which even Reason cannot turn to
+  account. For it does not appear that there is one principal place in the
+  known universe deserving in preference to the rest to be the seat of the
+  eldest of created beings; and the sun of our system at least is not
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>19. Holding then to the established doctrine that the number of men
+  damned eternally will be incomparably greater than that of the saved, we
+  must say that the evil could not but seem to be almost as nothing in
+  comparison with the good, when one contemplates the true vastness of the
+  city of God. Coelius Secundus Curio wrote a little book, <i>De
+  Amplitudine Regni Coelestis</i>, which was reprinted not long since; but
+  he is indeed far from having apprehended the compass of the kingdom of
+  heaven. The ancients had puny ideas on the works of God, and St.
+  Augustine, for want of knowing modern discoveries, was at a loss when
+  there was question of explaining the prevalence of evil. It seemed to the
+  ancients that there was only one earth inhabited, and even of that men
+  held the antipodes in dread: the remainder of the world was, according to
+  them, a few shining globes and a few crystalline spheres. To-day,
+  whatever bounds are given or not given to the universe, it must be
+  acknowledged that there is an infinite number of globes, as great <!--
+  Page 135 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page135"></a>[135]</span> as
+  and greater than ours, which have as much right as it to hold rational
+  inhabitants, though it follows not at all that they are human. It is only
+  one planet, that is to say one of the six principal satellites of our
+  sun; and as all fixed stars are suns also, we see how small a thing our
+  earth is in relation to visible things, since it is only an appendix of
+  one amongst them. It may be that all suns are peopled only by blessed
+  creatures, and nothing constrains us to think that many are damned, for
+  few instances or few samples suffice to show the advantage which good
+  extracts from evil. Moreover, since there is no reason for the belief
+  that there are stars everywhere, is it not possible that there may be a
+  great space beyond the region of the stars? Whether it be the Empyrean
+  Heaven, or not, this immense space encircling all this region may in any
+  case be filled with happiness and glory. It can be imagined as like the
+  Ocean, whither flow the rivers of all blessed creatures, when they shall
+  have reached their perfection in the system of the stars. What will
+  become of the consideration of our globe and its inhabitants? Will it not
+  be something incomparably less than a physical point, since our earth is
+  as a point in comparison with the distance of some fixed stars? Thus
+  since the proportion of that part of the universe which we know is almost
+  lost in nothingness compared with that which is unknown, and which we yet
+  have cause to assume, and since all the evils that may be raised in
+  objection before us are in this near nothingness, haply it may be that
+  all evils are almost nothingness in comparison with the good things which
+  are in the universe.</p>
+
+  <p>20. But it is necessary also to meet the more speculative and
+  metaphysical difficulties which have been mentioned, and which concern
+  the cause of evil. The question is asked first of all, whence does evil
+  come? <i>Si Deus est, unde malum? Si non est, unde bonum?</i> The
+  ancients attributed the cause of evil to <i>matter</i>, which they
+  believed uncreate and independent of God: but we, who derive all being
+  from God, where shall we find the source of evil? The answer is, that it
+  must be sought in the ideal nature of the creature, in so far as this
+  nature is contained in the eternal verities which are in the
+  understanding of God, independently of his will. For we must consider
+  that there is an <i>original imperfection in the creature</i> before sin,
+  because the creature is limited in its essence; whence ensues that it
+  cannot know all, and that it can deceive itself and commit other errors.
+  Plato said in <i>Timaeus</i> that the world originated in Understanding
+  <!-- Page 136 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page136"></a>[136]</span>
+  united to Necessity. Others have united God and Nature. This can be given
+  a reasonable meaning. God will be the Understanding; and the Necessity,
+  that is, the essential nature of things, will be the object of the
+  understanding, in so far as this object consists in the eternal verities.
+  But this object is inward and abides in the divine understanding. And
+  therein is found not only the primitive form of good, but also the origin
+  of evil: the Region of the Eternal Verities must be substituted for
+  matter when we are concerned with seeking out the source of things.</p>
+
+  <p>This region is the ideal cause of evil (as it were) as well as of
+  good: but, properly speaking, the formal character of evil has no
+  <i>efficient</i> cause, for it consists in privation, as we shall see,
+  namely, in that which the efficient cause does not bring about. That is
+  why the Schoolmen are wont to call the cause of evil
+  <i>deficient</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>21. Evil may be taken metaphysically, physically and morally.
+  <i>Metaphysical evil</i> consists in mere imperfection, <i>physical
+  evil</i> in suffering, and <i>moral evil</i> in sin. Now although
+  physical evil and moral evil be not necessary, it is enough that by
+  virtue of the eternal verities they be possible. And as this vast Region
+  of Verities contains all possibilities it is necessary that there be an
+  infinitude of possible worlds, that evil enter into divers of them, and
+  that even the best of all contain a measure thereof. Thus has God been
+  induced to permit evil.</p>
+
+  <p>22. But someone will say to me: why speak you to us of 'permitting'?
+  Is it not God that doeth the evil and that willeth it? Here it will be
+  necessary to explain what 'permission' is, so that it may be seen how
+  this term is not employed without reason. But before that one must
+  explain the nature of will, which has its own degrees. Taking it in the
+  general sense, one may say that <i>will</i> consists in the inclination
+  to do something in proportion to the good it contains. This will is
+  called <i>antecedent</i> when it is detached, and considers each good
+  separately in the capacity of a good. In this sense it may be said that
+  God tends to all good, as good, <i>ad perfectionem simpliciter
+  simplicem</i>, to speak like the Schoolmen, and that by an antecedent
+  will. He is earnestly disposed to sanctify and to save all men, to
+  exclude sin, and to prevent damnation. It may even be said that this will
+  is efficacious <i>of itself (per se)</i>, that is, in such sort that the
+  effect would ensue if there were not some stronger reason to prevent it:
+  for this will does not pass into final exercise (<i>ad summum
+  conatum</i>), else it would never fail to produce its <!-- Page 137
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page137"></a>[137]</span> full effect,
+  God being the master of all things. Success entire and infallible belongs
+  only to the <i>consequent will</i>, as it is called. This it is which is
+  complete; and in regard to it this rule obtains, that one never fails to
+  do what one wills, when one has the power. Now this consequent will,
+  final and decisive, results from the conflict of all the antecedent
+  wills, of those which tend towards good, even as of those which repel
+  evil; and from the concurrence of all these particular wills comes the
+  total will. So in mechanics compound movement results from all the
+  tendencies that concur in one and the same moving body, and satisfies
+  each one equally, in so far as it is possible to do all at one time. It
+  is as if the moving body took equal account of these tendencies, as I
+  once showed in one of the Paris Journals (7 Sept. 1693), when giving the
+  general law of the compositions of movement. In this sense also it may be
+  said that the antecedent will is efficacious in a sense and even
+  effective with success.</p>
+
+  <p>23. Thence it follows that God wills <i>antecedently</i> the good and
+  <i>consequently</i> the best. And as for evil, God wills moral evil not
+  at all, and physical evil or suffering he does not will absolutely. Thus
+  it is that there is no absolute predestination to damnation; and one may
+  say of physical evil, that God wills it often as a penalty owing to
+  guilt, and often also as a means to an end, that is, to prevent greater
+  evils or to obtain greater good. The penalty serves also for amendment
+  and example. Evil often serves to make us savour good the more; sometimes
+  too it contributes to a greater perfection in him who suffers it, as the
+  seed that one sows is subject to a kind of corruption before it can
+  germinate: this is a beautiful similitude, which Jesus Christ himself
+  used.</p>
+
+  <p>24. Concerning sin or moral evil, although it happens very often that
+  it may serve as a means of obtaining good or of preventing another evil,
+  it is not this that renders it a sufficient object of the divine will or
+  a legitimate object of a created will. It must only be admitted or
+  <i>permitted</i> in so far as it is considered to be a certain
+  consequence of an indispensable duty: as for instance if a man who was
+  determined not to permit another's sin were to fail of his own duty, or
+  as if an officer on guard at an important post were to leave it,
+  especially in time of danger, in order to prevent a quarrel in the town
+  between two soldiers of the garrison who wanted to kill each other.</p>
+
+  <p>25. The rule which states, <i>non esse facienda mala, ut eveniant
+  bona</i>, and which even forbids the permission of a moral evil with the
+  end <!-- Page 138 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page138"></a>[138]</span> of obtaining a physical good, far from
+  being violated, is here proved, and its source and its reason are
+  demonstrated. One will not approve the action of a queen who, under the
+  pretext of saving the State, commits or even permits a crime. The crime
+  is certain and the evil for the State is open to question. Moreover, this
+  manner of giving sanction to crimes, if it were accepted, would be worse
+  than a disruption of some one country, which is liable enough to happen
+  in any case, and would perchance happen all the more by reason of such
+  means chosen to prevent it. But in relation to God nothing is open to
+  question, nothing can be opposed to <i>the rule of the best</i>, which
+  suffers neither exception nor dispensation. It is in this sense that God
+  permits sin: for he would fail in what he owes to himself, in what he
+  owes to his wisdom, his goodness, his perfection, if he followed not the
+  grand result of all his tendencies to good, and if he chose not that
+  which is absolutely the best, notwithstanding the evil of guilt, which is
+  involved therein by the supreme necessity of the eternal verities. Hence
+  the conclusion that God wills all good <i>in himself antecedently</i>,
+  that he wills the best <i>consequently</i> as an <i>end</i>, that he
+  wills what is indifferent, and physical evil, sometimes as a
+  <i>means</i>, but that he will only permit moral evil as the <i>sine quo
+  non</i> or as a hypothetical necessity which connects it with the best.
+  Therefore the <i>consequent will</i> of God, which has sin for its
+  object, is only <i>permissive</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>26. It is again well to consider that moral evil is an evil so great
+  only because it is a source of physical evils, a source existing in one
+  of the most powerful of creatures, who is also most capable of causing
+  those evils. For an evil will is in its department what the evil
+  principle of the Manichaeans would be in the universe; and reason, which
+  is an image of the Divinity, provides for evil souls great means of
+  causing much evil. One single Caligula, one Nero, has caused more evil
+  than an earthquake. An evil man takes pleasure in causing suffering and
+  destruction, and for that there are only too many opportunities. But God
+  being inclined to produce as much good as possible, and having all the
+  knowledge and all the power necessary for that, it is impossible that in
+  him there be fault, or guilt, or sin; and when he permits sin, it is
+  wisdom, it is virtue.</p>
+
+  <p>27. It is indeed beyond question that we must refrain from preventing
+  the sin of others when we cannot prevent their sin without sinning
+  ourselves. But someone will perhaps bring up the <!-- Page 139 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page139"></a>[139]</span> objection that it is
+  God himself who acts and who effects all that is real in the sin of the
+  creature. This objection leads us to consider the <i>physical
+  co-operation</i> of God with the creature, after we have examined the
+  <i>moral co-operation</i>, which was the more perplexing. Some have
+  believed, with the celebrated Durand de Saint-Pourçain and Cardinal
+  Aureolus, the famous Schoolman, that the co-operation of God with the
+  creature (I mean the physical cooperation) is only general and mediate,
+  and that God creates substances and gives them the force they need; and
+  that thereafter he leaves them to themselves, and does naught but
+  conserve them, without aiding them in their actions. This opinion has
+  been refuted by the greater number of Scholastic theologians, and it
+  appears that in the past it met with disapproval in the writings of
+  Pelagius. Nevertheless a Capuchin named Louis Pereir of Dole, about the
+  year 1630, wrote a book expressly to revive it, at least in relation to
+  free actions. Some moderns incline thereto, and M. Bernier supports it in
+  a little book on freedom and freewill. But one cannot say in relation to
+  God what 'to conserve' is, without reverting to the general opinion. Also
+  it must be taken into account that the action of God in conserving should
+  have some reference to that which is conserved, according to what it is
+  and to the state wherein it is; thus his action cannot be general or
+  indeterminate. These generalities are abstractions not to be found in the
+  truth of individual things, and the conservation of a man standing is
+  different from the conservation of a man seated. This would not be so if
+  conservation consisted only in the act of preventing and warding off some
+  foreign cause which could destroy that which one wishes to conserve; as
+  often happens when men conserve something. But apart from the fact that
+  we are obliged ourselves sometimes to maintain that which we conserve, we
+  must bear in mind that conservation by God consists in the perpetual
+  immediate influence which the dependence of creatures demands. This
+  dependence attaches not only to the substance but also to the action, and
+  one can perhaps not explain it better than by saying, with theologians
+  and philosophers in general, that it is a continued creation.</p>
+
+  <p>28. The objection will be made that God therefore now creates man a
+  sinner, he that in the beginning created him innocent. But here it must
+  be said, with regard to the moral aspect, that God being supremely wise
+  cannot fail to observe certain laws, and to <!-- Page 140 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page140"></a>[140]</span> act according to the
+  rules, as well physical as moral, that wisdom has made him choose. And
+  the same reason that has made him create man innocent, but liable to
+  fall, makes him re-create man when he falls; for God's knowledge causes
+  the future to be for him as the present, and prevents him from rescinding
+  the resolutions made.</p>
+
+  <p>29. As for physical co-operation, here one must consider the truth
+  which has made already so much stir in the Schools since St. Augustine
+  declared it, that evil is a privation of being, whereas the action of God
+  tends to the positive. This answer is accounted a quibble, and even
+  something chimerical in the minds of many people. But here is an instance
+  somewhat similar, which will serve to disabuse them.</p>
+
+  <p>30. The celebrated Kepler and M. Descartes (in his letters) after him
+  have spoken of the 'natural inertia of bodies'; and it is something which
+  may be regarded as a perfect image and even as a sample of the original
+  limitation of creatures, to show that privation constitutes the formal
+  character of the imperfections and disadvantages that are in substance as
+  well as in its actions. Let us suppose that the current of one and the
+  same river carried along with it various boats, which differ among
+  themselves only in the cargo, some being laden with wood, others with
+  stone, and some more, the others less. That being so, it will come about
+  that the boats most heavily laden will go more slowly than the others,
+  provided it be assumed that the wind or the oar, or some other similar
+  means, assist them not at all. It is not, properly speaking, weight which
+  is the cause of this retardation, since the boats are going down and not
+  upwards; but it is the same cause which also increases the weight in
+  bodies that have greater density, which are, that is to say, less porous
+  and more charged with matter that is proper to them: for the matter which
+  passes through the pores, not receiving the same movement, must not be
+  taken into account. It is therefore matter itself which originally is
+  inclined to slowness or privation of speed; not indeed of itself to
+  lessen this speed, having once received it, since that would be action,
+  but to moderate by its receptivity the effect of the impression when it
+  is to receive it. Consequently, since more matter is moved by the same
+  force of the current when the boat is more laden, it is necessary that it
+  go more slowly; and experiments on the impact of bodies, as well as
+  reason, show that twice as much force must be <!-- Page 141 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page141"></a>[141]</span> employed to give equal
+  speed to a body of the same matter but of twice the size. But that indeed
+  would not be necessary if the matter were absolutely indifferent to
+  repose and to movement, and if it had not this natural inertia whereof we
+  have just spoken to give it a kind of repugnance to being moved. Let us
+  now compare the force which the current exercises on boats, and
+  communicates to them, with the action of God, who produces and conserves
+  whatever is positive in creatures, and gives them perfection, being and
+  force: let us compare, I say, the inertia of matter with the natural
+  imperfection of creatures, and the slowness of the laden boat with the
+  defects to be found in the qualities and the action of the creature; and
+  we shall find that there is nothing so just as this comparison. The
+  current is the cause of the boat's movement, but not of its retardation;
+  God is the cause of perfection in the nature and the actions of the
+  creature, but the limitation of the receptivity of the creature is the
+  cause of the defects there are in its action. Thus the Platonists, St.
+  Augustine and the Schoolmen were right to say that God is the cause of
+  the material element of evil which lies in the positive, and not of the
+  formal element, which lies in privation. Even so one may say that the
+  current is the cause of the material element of the retardation, but not
+  of the formal: that is, it is the cause of the boat's speed without being
+  the cause of the limits to this speed. And God is no more the cause of
+  sin than the river's current is the cause of the retardation of the boat.
+  Force also in relation to matter is as the spirit in relation to the
+  flesh; the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak, and spirits
+  act...</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>quantum non noxia corpora tardant.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>31. There is, then, a wholly similar relation between such and such an
+  action of God, and such and such a passion or reception of the creature,
+  which in the ordinary course of things is perfected only in proportion to
+  its 'receptivity', such is the term used. And when it is said that the
+  creature depends upon God in so far as it exists and in so far as it
+  acts, and even that conservation is a continual creation, this is true in
+  that God gives ever to the creature and produces continually all that in
+  it is positive, good and perfect, every perfect gift coming from the
+  Father of lights. The imperfections, on the other hand, and the defects
+  in operations spring from the original limitation that the creature could
+  not but <!-- Page 142 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page142"></a>[142]</span> receive with the first beginning of its
+  being, through the ideal reasons which restrict it. For God could not
+  give the creature all without making of it a God; therefore there must
+  needs be different degrees in the perfection of things, and limitations
+  also of every kind.</p>
+
+  <p>32. This consideration will serve also to satisfy some modern
+  philosophers who go so far as to say that God is the only agent. It is
+  true that God is the only one whose action is pure and without admixture
+  of what is termed 'to suffer': but that does not preclude the creature's
+  participation in actions, since <i>the action of the creature</i> is a
+  modification of the substance, flowing naturally from it and containing a
+  variation not only in the perfections that God has communicated to the
+  creature, but also in the limitations that the creature, being what it
+  is, brings with it. Thus we see that there is an actual distinction
+  between the substance and its modification or accidents, contrary to the
+  opinion of some moderns and in particular of the late Duke of Buckingham,
+  who spoke of that in a little <i>Discourse on Religion</i> recently
+  reprinted. Evil is therefore like darkness, and not only ignorance but
+  also error and malice consist formally in a certain kind of privation.
+  Here is an example of error which we have already employed. I see a tower
+  which from a distance appears round although it is square. The thought
+  that the tower is what it appears to be flows naturally from that which I
+  see; and when I dwell on this thought it is an affirmation, it is a false
+  judgement; but if I pursue the examination, if some reflexion causes me
+  to perceive that appearances deceive me, lo and behold, I abandon my
+  error. To abide in a certain place, or not to go further, not to espy
+  some landmark, these are privations.</p>
+
+  <p>33. It is the same in respect of malice or ill will. The will tends
+  towards good in general, it must strive after the perfection that befits
+  us, and the supreme perfection is in God. All pleasures have within
+  themselves some feeling of perfection. But when one is limited to the
+  pleasures of the senses, or to other pleasures to the detriment of
+  greater good, as of health, of virtue, of union with God, of felicity, it
+  is in this privation of a further aspiration that the defect consists. In
+  general perfection is positive, it is an absolute reality; defect is
+  privative, it comes from limitation and tends towards new privations.
+  This saying is therefore as true as it is ancient: <i>bonum ex causa
+  integra, malum ex quolibet defectu</i>; as also that <!-- Page 143
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page143"></a>[143]</span> which states:
+  <i>malum causam habet non efficientem, sed deficientem</i>. And I hope
+  that the meaning of these axioms will be better apprehended after what I
+  have just said.</p>
+
+  <p>34. The physical co-operation of God and of creatures with the will
+  contributes also to the difficulties existing in regard to freedom. I am
+  of opinion that our will is exempt not only from constraint but also from
+  necessity. Aristotle has already observed that there are two things in
+  freedom, to wit, spontaneity and choice, and therein lies our mastery
+  over our actions. When we act freely we are not being forced, as would
+  happen if we were pushed on to a precipice and thrown from top to bottom;
+  and we are not prevented from having the mind free when we deliberate, as
+  would happen if we were given a draught to deprive us of discernment.
+  There is <i>contingency</i> in a thousand actions of Nature; but when
+  there is no judgement in him who acts there is no <i>freedom</i>. And if
+  we had judgement not accompanied by any inclination to act, our soul
+  would be an understanding without will.</p>
+
+  <p>35. It is not to be imagined, however, that our freedom consists in an
+  indetermination or an indifference of equipoise, as if one must needs be
+  inclined equally to the side of yes and of no and in the direction of
+  different courses, when there are several of them to take. This equipoise
+  in all directions is impossible: for if we were equally inclined towards
+  the courses A, B and C, we could not be equally inclined towards A and
+  towards not A. This equipoise is also absolutely contrary to experience,
+  and in scrutinizing oneself one will find that there has always been some
+  cause or reason inclining us towards the course taken, although very
+  often we be not aware of that which prompts us: just in the same way one
+  is hardly aware why, on issuing from a door, one has placed the right
+  foot before the left or the left before the right.</p>
+
+  <p>36. But let us pass to the difficulties. Philosophers agree to-day
+  that the truth of contingent futurities is determinate, that is to say
+  that contingent futurities are future, or that they will be, that they
+  will happen: for it is as sure that the future will be, as it is sure
+  that the past has been. It was true already a hundred years ago that I
+  should write to-day, as it will be true after a hundred years that I have
+  written. Thus the contingent is not, because it is future, any the less
+  contingent; and <i>determination</i>, which would be called certainty if
+  it were known, is not incompatible with contingency. Often the certain
+  and the determinate are taken as one thing, <!-- Page 144 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page144"></a>[144]</span> because a determinate
+  truth is capable of being known: thus it may be said that determination
+  is an objective certainty.</p>
+
+  <p>37. This determination comes from the very nature of truth, and cannot
+  injure freedom: but there are other determinations taken from elsewhere,
+  and in the first place from the foreknowledge of God, which many have
+  held to be contrary to freedom. They say that what is foreseen cannot
+  fail to exist, and they say so truly; but it follows not that what is
+  foreseen is necessary, for <i>necessary truth</i> is that whereof the
+  contrary is impossible or implies contradiction. Now this truth which
+  states that I shall write tomorrow is not of that nature, it is not
+  necessary. Yet supposing that God foresees it, it is necessary that it
+  come to pass; that is, the consequence is necessary, namely, that it
+  exist, since it has been foreseen; for God is infallible. This is what is
+  termed a <i>hypothetical necessity</i>. But our concern is not this
+  necessity: it is an <i>absolute necessity</i> that is required, to be
+  able to say that an action is necessary, that it is not contingent, that
+  it is not the effect of a free choice. Besides it is very easily seen
+  that foreknowledge in itself adds nothing to the determination of the
+  truth of contingent futurities, save that this determination is known:
+  and this does not augment the determination or the 'futurition' (as it is
+  termed) of these events, that whereon we agreed at the outset.</p>
+
+  <p>38. This answer is doubtless very correct. It is agreed that
+  foreknowledge in itself does not make truth more determinate; truth is
+  foreseen because it is determinate, because it is true; but it is not
+  true because it is foreseen: and therein the knowledge of the future has
+  nothing that is not also in the knowledge of the past or of the present.
+  But here is what an opponent will be able to say: I grant you that
+  foreknowledge in itself does not make truth more determinate, but it is
+  the cause of the foreknowledge that makes it so. For it needs must be
+  that the foreknowledge of God have its foundation in the nature of
+  things, and this foundation, making the truth <i>predeterminate</i>, will
+  prevent it from being contingent and free.</p>
+
+  <p>39. It is this difficulty that has caused two parties to spring up,
+  one of the <i>predeterminators</i>, the other of the supporters of
+  <i>mediate knowledge</i>. The Dominicans and the Augustinians are for
+  predetermination, the Franciscans and the modern Jesuits on the other
+  hand are for mediate knowledge. These two parties appeared towards the
+  middle of the sixteenth century and a little later. <!-- Page 145
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page145"></a>[145]</span> Molina
+  himself, who is perhaps one of the first, with Fonseca, to have
+  systematized this point, and from whom the others derived their name of
+  Molinists, says in the book that he wrote on the reconciliation of
+  freewill with grace, about the year 1570, that the Spanish doctors (he
+  means principally the Thomists), who had been writing then for twenty
+  years, finding no other way to explain how God could have a certain
+  knowledge of contingent futurities, had introduced predetermination as
+  being necessary to free actions.</p>
+
+  <p>40. As for himself, he thought to have found another way. He considers
+  that there are three objects of divine knowledge, the possibles, the
+  actual events and the conditional events that would happen in consequence
+  of a certain condition if it were translated into action. The knowledge
+  of possibilities is what is called the 'knowledge of mere intelligence';
+  that of events occurring actually in the progress of the universe is
+  called the 'knowledge of intuition'. And as there is a kind of mean
+  between the merely possible and the pure and absolute event, to wit, the
+  conditional event, it can be said also, according to Molina, that there
+  is a mediate knowledge between that of intuition and that of
+  intelligence. Instance is given of the famous example of David asking the
+  divine oracle whether the inhabitants of the town of Keilah, where he
+  designed to shut himself in, would deliver him to Saul, supposing that
+  Saul should besiege the town. God answered yes; whereupon David took a
+  different course. Now some advocates of this mediate knowledge are of
+  opinion that God, foreseeing what men would do of their own accord,
+  supposing they were placed in such and such circumstances, and knowing
+  that they would make ill use of their free will, decrees to refuse them
+  grace and favourable circumstances. And he may justly so decree, since in
+  any case these circumstances and these aids would not have served them
+  aught. But Molina contents himself with finding therein generally a
+  reason for the decrees of God, founded on what the free creature would do
+  in such and such circumstances.</p>
+
+  <p>41. I will not enter into all the detail of this controversy; it will
+  suffice for me to give one instance. Certain older writers, not
+  acceptable to St. Augustine and his first disciples, appear to have had
+  ideas somewhat approaching those of Molina. The Thomists and those who
+  call themselves disciples of St. Augustine (but whom their opponents call
+  Jansenists) combat this doctrine on <!-- Page 146 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page146"></a>[146]</span> philosophical and
+  theological grounds. Some maintain that mediate knowledge must be
+  included in the knowledge of mere intelligence. But the principal
+  objection is aimed at the foundation of this knowledge. For what
+  foundation can God have for seeing what the people of Keilah would do? A
+  simple contingent and free act has nothing in itself to yield a principle
+  of certainty, unless one look upon it as predetermined by the decrees of
+  God, and by the causes that are dependent upon them. Consequently the
+  difficulty existing in actual free actions will exist also in conditional
+  free actions, that is to say, God will know them only under the condition
+  of their causes and of his decrees, which are the first causes of things:
+  and it will not be possible to separate such actions from those causes so
+  as to know a contingent event in a way that is independent of the
+  knowledge of its causes. Therefore all must of necessity be traced back
+  to the predetermination of God's decrees, and this mediate knowledge (so
+  it will be said) will offer no remedy. The theologians who profess to be
+  adherents of St. Augustine claim also that the system of the Molinists
+  would discover the source of God's grace in the good qualities of man,
+  and this they deem an infringement of God's honour and contrary to St.
+  Paul's teaching.</p>
+
+  <p>42. It would be long and wearisome to enter here into the replies and
+  rejoinders coming from one side and the other, and it will suffice for me
+  to explain how I conceive that there is truth on both sides. For this
+  result I resort to my principle of an infinitude of possible worlds,
+  represented in the region of eternal verities, that is, in the object of
+  the divine intelligence, where all conditional futurities must be
+  comprised. For the case of the siege of Keilah forms part of a possible
+  world, <i>which differs from ours only in all that is connected with this
+  hypothesis</i>, and the idea of this possible world represents that which
+  would happen in this case. Thus we have a principle for the certain
+  knowledge of contingent futurities, whether they happen actually or must
+  happen in a certain case. For in the region of the possibles they are
+  represented as they are, namely, as free contingencies. Therefore neither
+  the foreknowledge of contingent futurities nor the foundation for the
+  certainty of this foreknowledge should cause us perplexity or seem to
+  prejudice freedom. And though it were true and possible that contingent
+  futurities consisting in free actions of reasonable creatures were
+  entirely independent of the decrees of God and of external causes, <!--
+  Page 147 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page147"></a>[147]</span>
+  there would still be means of foreseeing them; for God would see them as
+  they are in the region of the possibles, before he decrees to admit them
+  into existence.</p>
+
+  <p>43. But if the foreknowledge of God has nothing to do with the
+  dependence or independence of our free actions, it is not so with the
+  foreordinance of God, his decrees, and the sequence of causes which, as I
+  believe, always contribute to the determination of the will. And if I am
+  for the Molinists in the first point, I am for the predeterminators in
+  the second, provided always that predetermination be taken as not
+  necessitating. In a word, I am of opinion that the will is always more
+  inclined towards the course it adopts, but that it is never bound by the
+  necessity to adopt it. That it will adopt this course is certain, but it
+  is not necessary. The case corresponds to that of the famous saying,
+  <i>Astra inclinant, non necessitant</i>, although here the similarity is
+  not complete. For the event towards which the stars tend (to speak with
+  the common herd, as if there were some foundation for astrology) does not
+  always come to pass, whereas the course towards which the will is more
+  inclined never fails to be adopted. Moreover the stars would form only a
+  part of the inclinations that co-operate in the event, but when one
+  speaks of the greater inclination of the will, one speaks of the result
+  of all the inclinations. It is almost as we have spoken above of the
+  consequent will in God, which results from all the antecedent wills.</p>
+
+  <p>44. Nevertheless, objective certainty or determination does not bring
+  about the necessity of the determinate truth. All philosophers
+  acknowledge this, asserting that the truth of contingent futurities is
+  determinate, and that nevertheless they remain contingent. The thing
+  indeed would imply no contradiction in itself if the effect did not
+  follow; and therein lies contingency. The better to understand this
+  point, we must take into account that there are two great principles of
+  our arguments. The one is the principle of <i>contradiction</i>, stating
+  that of two contradictory propositions the one is true, the other false;
+  the other principle is that of the <i>determinant reason</i>: it states
+  that nothing ever comes to pass without there being a cause or at least a
+  reason determining it, that is, something to give an <i>a priori</i>
+  reason why it is existent rather than non-existent, and in this wise
+  rather than in any other. This great principle holds for all events, and
+  a contrary instance will never be supplied: and although more often than
+  not we are <!-- Page 148 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page148"></a>[148]</span> insufficiently acquainted with these
+  determinant reasons, we perceive nevertheless that there are such. Were
+  it not for this great principle we could never prove the existence of
+  God, and we should lose an infinitude of very just and very profitable
+  arguments whereof it is the foundation; moreover, it suffers no
+  exception, for otherwise its force would be weakened. Besides, nothing is
+  so weak as those systems where all is unsteady and full of exceptions.
+  That fault cannot be laid to the charge of the system I approve, where
+  everything happens in accordance with general rules that at most are
+  mutually restrictive.</p>
+
+  <p>45. We must therefore not imagine with some Schoolmen, whose ideas
+  tend towards the chimerical, that free contingent futurities have the
+  privilege of exemption from this general rule of the nature of things.
+  There is always a prevailing reason which prompts the will to its choice,
+  and for the maintenance of freedom for the will it suffices that this
+  reason should incline without necessitating. That is also the opinion of
+  all the ancients, of Plato, of Aristotle, of St. Augustine. The will is
+  never prompted to action save by the representation of the good, which
+  prevails over the opposite representations. This is admitted even in
+  relation to God, the good angels and the souls in bliss: and it is
+  acknowledged that they are none the less free in consequence of that. God
+  fails not to choose the best, but he is not constrained so to do: nay,
+  more, there is no necessity in the object of God's choice, for another
+  sequence of things is equally possible. For that very reason the choice
+  is free and independent of necessity, because it is made between several
+  possibles, and the will is determined only by the preponderating goodness
+  of the object. This is therefore not a defect where God and the saints
+  are concerned: on the contrary, it would be a great defect, or rather a
+  manifest absurdity, were it otherwise, even in men here on earth, and if
+  they were capable of acting without any inclining reason. Of such
+  absurdity no example will ever be found; and even supposing one takes a
+  certain course out of caprice, to demonstrate one's freedom, the pleasure
+  or advantage one thinks to find in this conceit is one of the reasons
+  tending towards it.</p>
+
+  <p>46. There is therefore a freedom of contingency or, in a way, of
+  indifference, provided that by 'indifference' is understood that nothing
+  necessitates us to one course or the other; but there is never any
+  <i>indifference of equipoise</i>, that is, where all is completely <!--
+  Page 149 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page149"></a>[149]</span> even
+  on both sides, without any inclination towards either. Innumerable great
+  and small movements, internal and external, co-operate with us, for the
+  most part unperceived by us. And I have already said that when one leaves
+  a room there are such and such reasons determining us to put the one foot
+  first, without pausing to reflect. For there is not everywhere a slave,
+  as in Trimalchio's house in Petronius, to cry to us: the right foot
+  first. All that we have just said agrees entirely also with the maxims of
+  the philosophers, who teach that a cause cannot act without having a
+  disposition towards action. It is this disposition which contains a
+  predetermination, whether the doer have received it from without, or have
+  had it in consequence of his own antecedent character.</p>
+
+  <p>47. Thus we have no need to resort, in company with some new Thomists,
+  to a new immediate predetermination by God, such as may cause the free
+  creature to abandon his indifference, and to a decree of God for
+  predetermining the creature, making it possible for God to know what the
+  creature will do: for it suffices that the creature be predetermined by
+  its preceding state, which inclines it to one course more than to the
+  other. Moreover, all these connexions of the actions of the creature and
+  of all creatures were represented in the divine understanding, and known
+  to God through the knowledge of mere intelligence, before he had decreed
+  to give them existence. Thus we see that, in order to account for the
+  foreknowledge of God, one may dispense with both the mediate knowledge of
+  the Molinists and the predetermination which a Bañez or an Alvarez
+  (writers otherwise of great profundity) have taught.</p>
+
+  <p>48. By this false idea of an indifference of equipoise the Molinists
+  were much embarrassed. They were asked not only how it was possible to
+  know in what direction a cause absolutely indeterminate would be
+  determined, but also how it was possible that there should finally result
+  therefrom a determination for which there is no source: to say with
+  Molina that it is the privilege of the free cause is to say nothing, but
+  simply to grant that cause the privilege of being chimerical. It is
+  pleasing to see their harassed efforts to emerge from a labyrinth whence
+  there is absolutely no means of egress. Some teach that the will, before
+  it is determined formally, must be determined virtually, in order to
+  emerge from its state of equipoise; and Father Louis of Dole, in his book
+  on the <i>Co-operation of God</i>, quotes Molinists who attempt to take
+  refuge <!-- Page 150 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page150"></a>[150]</span> in this expedient: for they are compelled
+  to acknowledge that the cause must needs be disposed to act. But they
+  gain nothing, they only defer the difficulty: for they will still be
+  asked how the free cause comes to be determined virtually. They will
+  therefore never extricate themselves without acknowledging that there is
+  a predetermination in the preceding state of the free creature, which
+  inclines it to be determined.</p>
+
+  <p>49. In consequence of this, the case also of Buridan's ass between two
+  meadows, impelled equally towards both of them, is a fiction that cannot
+  occur in the universe, in the order of Nature, although M. Bayle be of
+  another opinion. It is true that, if the case were possible, one must say
+  that the ass would starve himself to death: but fundamentally the
+  question deals in the impossible, unless it be that God bring the thing
+  about expressly. For the universe cannot be halved by a plane drawn
+  through the middle of the ass, which is cut vertically through its
+  length, so that all is equal and alike on both sides, in the manner
+  wherein an ellipse, and every plane figure of the number of those I term
+  'ambidexter', can be thus halved, by any straight line passing through
+  its centre. Neither the parts of the universe nor the viscera of the
+  animal are alike nor are they evenly placed on both sides of this
+  vertical plane. There will therefore always be many things in the ass and
+  outside the ass, although they be not apparent to us, which will
+  determine him to go on one side rather than the other. And although man
+  is free, and the ass is not, nevertheless for the same reason it must be
+  true that in man likewise the case of a perfect equipoise between two
+  courses is impossible. Furthermore it is true that an angel, or God
+  certainly, could always account for the course man has adopted, by
+  assigning a cause or a predisposing reason which has actually induced him
+  to adopt it: yet this reason would often be complex and incomprehensible
+  to ourselves, because the concatenation of causes linked together is very
+  long.</p>
+
+  <p>50. Hence it is that the reason M. Descartes has advanced to prove the
+  independence of our free actions, by what he terms an intense inward
+  sensation, has no force. We cannot properly speaking be sensible of our
+  independence, and we are not aware always of the causes, often
+  imperceptible, whereon our resolution depends. It is as though the
+  magnetic needle took pleasure in turning towards the north: for it would
+  think that it was turning independently of any other cause, not being
+  aware of the imperceptible <!-- Page 151 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page151"></a>[151]</span> movements of the magnetic matter.
+  Nevertheless we shall see later in what sense it is quite true that the
+  human soul is altogether its own natural principle in relation to its
+  actions, dependent upon itself and independent of all other
+  creatures.</p>
+
+  <p>51. As for <i>volition</i> itself, to say that it is an object of free
+  will is incorrect. We will to act, strictly speaking, and we do not will
+  to will; else we could still say that we will to have the will to will,
+  and that would go on to infinity. Besides, we do not always follow the
+  latest judgement of practical understanding when we resolve to will; but
+  we always follow, in our willing, the result of all the inclinations that
+  come from the direction both of reasons and passions, and this often
+  happens without an express judgement of the understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>52. All is therefore certain and determined beforehand in man, as
+  everywhere else, and the human soul is a kind of <i>spiritual
+  automaton</i>, although contingent actions in general and free action in
+  particular are not on that account necessary with an absolute necessity,
+  which would be truly incompatible with contingency. Thus neither
+  futurition in itself, certain as it is, nor the infallible prevision of
+  God, nor the predetermination either of causes or of God's decrees
+  destroys this contingency and this freedom. That is acknowledged in
+  respect of futurition and prevision, as has already been set forth.
+  Since, moreover, God's decree consists solely in the resolution he forms,
+  after having compared all possible worlds, to choose that one which is
+  the best, and bring it into existence together with all that this world
+  contains, by means of the all-powerful word <i>Fiat</i>, it is plain to
+  see that this decree changes nothing in the constitution of things: God
+  leaves them just as they were in the state of mere possibility, that is,
+  changing nothing either in their essence or nature, or even in their
+  accidents, which are represented perfectly already in the idea of this
+  possible world. Thus that which is contingent and free remains no less so
+  under the decrees of God than under his prevision.</p>
+
+  <p>53. But could God himself (it will be said) then change nothing in the
+  world? Assuredly he could not now change it, without derogation to his
+  wisdom, since he has foreseen the existence of this world and of what it
+  contains, and since, likewise, he has formed this resolution to bring it
+  into existence: for he cannot be mistaken nor repent, and it did not
+  behove him to from an imperfect resolution applying to one part and not
+  the <!-- Page 152 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page152"></a>[152]</span> whole. Thus, all being ordered from the
+  beginning, it is only because of this hypothetical necessity, recognized
+  by everyone, that after God's prevision or after his resolution nothing
+  can be changed: and yet the events in themselves remain contingent. For
+  (setting aside this supposition of the futurition of the thing and of the
+  prevision or of the resolution of God, a supposition which already lays
+  it down as a fact that the thing will happen, and in accordance with
+  which one must say, 'Unumquodque, quando est, oportet esse, aut
+  unumquodque, siquidem erit, oportet futurum esse'), the event has nothing
+  in it to render it necessary and to suggest that no other thing might
+  have happened in its stead. And as for the connexion between causes and
+  effects, it only inclined, without necessitating, the free agency, as I
+  have just explained; thus it does not produce even a hypothetical
+  necessity, save in conjunction with something from outside, to wit, this
+  very maxim, that the prevailing inclination always triumphs.</p>
+
+  <p>54. It will be said also that, if all is ordered, God cannot then
+  perform miracles. But one must bear in mind that the miracles which
+  happen in the world were also enfolded and represented as possible in
+  this same world considered in the state of mere possibility; and God, who
+  has since performed them, when he chose this world had even then decreed
+  to perform them. Again the objection will be made that vows and prayers,
+  merits and demerits, good and bad actions avail nothing, since nothing
+  can be changed. This objection causes most perplexity to people in
+  general, and yet it is purely a sophism. These prayers, these vows, these
+  good or bad actions that occur to-day were already before God when he
+  formed the resolution to order things. Those things which happen in this
+  existing world were represented, with their effects and their
+  consequences, in the idea of this same world, while it was still possible
+  only; they were represented therein, attracting God's grace whether
+  natural or supernatural, requiring punishments or rewards, just as it has
+  happened actually in this world since God chose it. The prayer or the
+  good action were even then an <i>ideal cause</i> or <i>condition</i>,
+  that is, an inclining reason able to contribute to the grace of God, or
+  to the reward, as it now does in reality. Since, moreover, all is wisely
+  connected together in the world, it is clear that God, foreseeing that
+  which would happen freely, ordered all other things on that basis
+  beforehand, or (what is <!-- Page 153 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page153"></a>[153]</span> the same) he chose that possible world in
+  which everything was ordered in this fashion.</p>
+
+  <p>55. This consideration demolishes at the same time what the ancients
+  called the 'Lazy Sophism' (<span lang="el" title="logos argos"
+  >&#x3BB;&#x3BF;&#x3B3;&#x3BF;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3B1;&#x3C1;&#x3B3;&#x3BF;&#x3C2;</span>) which ended in a decision to
+  do nothing: for (people would say) if what I ask is to happen it will
+  happen even though I should do nothing; and if it is not to happen it
+  will never happen, no matter what trouble I take to achieve it. This
+  necessity, supposedly existent in events, and detached from their causes,
+  might be termed <i>Fatum Mahometanum</i>, as I have already observed
+  above, because a similar line of reasoning, so it is said, causes the
+  Turks not to shun places ravaged by plague. But the answer is quite
+  ready: the effect being certain, the cause that shall produce it is
+  certain also; and if the effect comes about it will be by virtue of a
+  proportionate cause. Thus your laziness perchance will bring it about
+  that you will obtain naught of what you desire, and that you will fall
+  into those misfortunes which you would by acting with care have avoided.
+  We see, therefore, that the <i>connexion of causes with effects</i>, far
+  from causing an unendurable fatality, provides rather a means of
+  obviating it. There is a German proverb which says that death will ever
+  have a cause; and nothing is so true. You will die on that day (let us
+  presume it is so, and that God foresees it): yes, without doubt; but it
+  will be because you will do what shall lead you thither. It is likewise
+  with the chastisements of God, which also depend upon their causes. And
+  it will be apposite in this connexion to quote this famous passage from
+  St. Ambrose (in cap. I <i>Lucae</i>), 'Novit Dominus mutare sententiam,
+  si tu noveris mutare delictum', which is not to be understood as of
+  reprobation, but of denunciation, such as that which Jonah dealt out for
+  God to the Ninevites. This common saying: 'Si non es praedestinatus, fac
+  ut praedestineris', must not be taken literally, its true sense being
+  that he who has doubts of his predestination need only do what is
+  required for him to obtain it by the grace of God. The sophism which ends
+  in a decision to trouble oneself over nothing will haply be useful
+  sometimes to induce certain people to face danger fearlessly. It has been
+  applied in particular to Turkish soldiers: but it seems that hashish is a
+  more important factor than this sophism, not to mention the fact that
+  this resolute spirit in the Turks has greatly belied itself in our
+  days.</p>
+
+  <p>56. A learned physician of Holland named Johan van Beverwyck took the
+  trouble to write <i>De Termino Vitae</i> and to collect <!-- Page 154
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page154"></a>[154]</span> sundry
+  answers, letters and discourses of some learned men of his time on this
+  subject. This collection has been printed, and it is astonishing to see
+  there how often people are misled, and how they have confused a problem
+  which, properly speaking, is the easiest in the world. After that it is
+  no wonder that there are very many doubts which the human race cannot
+  abandon. The truth is that people love to lose themselves, and this is a
+  kind of ramble of the mind, which is unwilling to subject itself to
+  attention, to order, to rules. It seems as though we are so accustomed to
+  games and jesting that we play the fool even in the most serious
+  occupations, and when we least think to do so.</p>
+
+  <p>57. I fear that in the recent dispute between the theologians of the
+  Augsburg Confession, <i>De Termino Paenitentiae Peremptorio</i>, which
+  has called forth so many treatises in Germany, some misunderstanding,
+  though of a different nature, has slipped in. The terms prescribed by the
+  laws are amongst lawyers known as <i>fatalia</i>. It may be said, in a
+  sense, that the <i>peremptory term</i>, prescribed to man for his
+  repentance and amendment, is certain in the sight of God, with whom all
+  is certain. God knows when a sinner will be so hardened that thereafter
+  nothing can be done for him: not indeed that it would be impossible for
+  him to do penance or that sufficient grace needs must be refused to him
+  after a certain term, a grace that never fails; but because there will be
+  a time whereafter he will no more approach the ways of salvation. But we
+  never have certain marks for recognizing this term, and we are never
+  justified in considering a man utterly abandoned: that would be to pass a
+  rash judgement. It were better always to have room for hope; and this is
+  an occasion, with a thousand others, where our ignorance is
+  beneficial.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Prudens futuri temporis exitum</i></p>
+      <p><i>Caliginosa nocte premit Deus</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>58. The whole future is doubtless determined: but since we know not
+  what it is, nor what is foreseen or resolved, we must do our duty,
+  according to the reason that God has given us and according to the rules
+  that he has prescribed for us; and thereafter we must have a quiet mind,
+  and leave to God himself the care for the outcome. For he will never fail
+  to do that which shall be the best, not only in general but also in
+  particular, for those who have true confidence in him, that is, a
+  confidence composed of <!-- Page 155 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page155"></a>[155]</span> true piety, a lively faith and fervent
+  charity, by virtue of which we will, as far as in us lies, neglect
+  nothing appertaining to our duty and his service. It is true that we
+  cannot 'render service' to him, for he has need of nothing: but it is
+  'serving him', in our parlance, when we strive to carry out his
+  presumptive will, co-operating in the good as it is known to us, wherever
+  we can contribute thereto. For we must always presume that God is
+  prompted towards the good we know, until the event shows us that he had
+  stronger reasons, although perhaps unknown to us, which have made him
+  subordinate this good that we sought to some other greater good of his
+  own designing, which he has not failed or will not fail to effect.</p>
+
+  <p>59. I have just shown how the action of the will depends upon its
+  causes; that there is nothing so appropriate to human nature as this
+  dependence of our actions; and that otherwise one would slip into a
+  preposterous and unendurable fatality, namely into the <i>Fatum
+  Mahometanum</i>, which is the worst of all because it overthrows
+  foresight and good counsel. It is well to show, notwithstanding, how this
+  dependence of voluntary actions does not fundamentally preclude the
+  existence within us of a wonderful <i>spontaneity</i>, which in a certain
+  sense makes the soul in its resolves independent of the physical
+  influence of all other creatures. This spontaneity, hitherto little
+  recognized, which exalts our command over our actions to the highest
+  pitch, is a consequence of the System of Pre-established Harmony, of
+  which I must give some explanation here. The Scholastic philosophers
+  believed that there was a reciprocal physical influence between body and
+  soul: but since it has been recognized that thought and dimensional mass
+  have no mutual connexion, and that they are creatures differing <i>toto
+  genere</i>, many moderns have acknowledged that there is no <i>physical
+  communication</i> between soul and body, despite the <i>metaphysical
+  communication</i> always subsisting, which causes soul and body to
+  compose one and the same <i>suppositum</i>, or what is called a person.
+  This physical communication, if there were such, would cause the soul to
+  change the degree of speed and the directional line of some motions that
+  are in the body, and <i>vice versa</i> the body to change the sequence of
+  the thoughts that are in the soul. But this effect cannot be inferred
+  from any notion conceived in the body and in the soul; though nothing be
+  better known to us than the soul, since it is inmost to us, that is to
+  say inmost to itself.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 156 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page156"></a>[156]</span></p>
+
+  <p>60. M. Descartes wished to compromise and to make a part of the body's
+  action dependent upon the soul. He believed in the existence of a rule of
+  Nature to the effect, according to him, that the same quantity of
+  movement is conserved in bodies. He deemed it not possible that the
+  influence of the soul should violate this law of bodies, but he believed
+  that the soul notwithstanding might have power to change the direction of
+  the movements that are made in the body; much as a rider, though giving
+  no force to the horse he mounts, nevertheless controls it by guiding that
+  force in any direction he pleases. But as that is done by means of the
+  bridle, the bit, the spurs and other material aids, it is conceivable how
+  that can be; there are, however, no instruments such as the soul may
+  employ for this result, nothing indeed either in the soul or in the body,
+  that is, either in thought or in the mass, which may serve to explain
+  this change of the one by the other. In a word, that the soul should
+  change the quantity of force and that it should change the line of
+  direction, both these things are equally inexplicable.</p>
+
+  <p>61. Moreover, two important truths on this subject have been
+  discovered since M. Descartes' day. The first is that the quantity of
+  absolute force which is in fact conserved is different from the quantity
+  of movement, as I have demonstrated elsewhere. The second discovery is
+  that the same direction is still conserved in all bodies together that
+  are assumed as interacting, in whatever way they come into collision. If
+  this rule had been known to M. Descartes, he would have taken the
+  direction of bodies to be as independent of the soul as their force; and
+  I believe that that would have led direct to the Hypothesis of
+  Pre-established Harmony, whither these same rules have led me. For apart
+  from the fact that the physical influence of one of these substances on
+  the other is inexplicable, I recognized that without a complete
+  derangement of the laws of Nature the soul could not act physically upon
+  the body. And I did not believe that one could here listen to
+  philosophers, competent in other respects, who produce a God, as it were,
+  <i>ex machina</i>, to bring about the final solution of the piece,
+  maintaining that God exerts himself deliberately to move bodies as the
+  soul pleases, and to give perceptions to the soul as the body requires.
+  For this system, which is called that of <i>occasional causes</i>
+  (because it teaches that God acts on the body at the instance of the
+  soul, and <i>vice versa</i>), besides introducing perpetual miracles to
+  <!-- Page 157 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page157"></a>[157]</span>
+  establish communication between these two substances, does not obviate
+  the derangement of the natural laws obtaining in each of these same
+  substances, which, in the general opinion, their mutual influence would
+  cause.</p>
+
+  <p>62. Being on other considerations already convinced of the principle
+  of Harmony in general, I was in consequence convinced likewise of the
+  <i>preformation</i> and the Pre-established Harmony of all things amongst
+  themselves, of that between nature and grace, between the decrees of God
+  and our actions foreseen, between all parts of matter, and even between
+  the future and the past, the whole in conformity with the sovereign
+  wisdom of God, whose works are the most harmonious it is possible to
+  conceive. Thus I could not fail to arrive at the system which declares
+  that God created the soul in the beginning in such a fashion that it must
+  produce and represent to itself successively that which takes place
+  within the body, and the body also in such a fashion that it must do of
+  itself that which the soul ordains. Consequently the laws that connect
+  the thoughts of the soul in the order of final causes and in accordance
+  with the evolution of perceptions must produce pictures that meet and
+  harmonize with the impressions of bodies on our organs; and likewise the
+  laws of movements in the body, which follow one another in the order of
+  efficient causes, meet and so harmonize with the thoughts of the soul
+  that the body is induced to act at the time when the soul wills it.</p>
+
+  <p>63. Far from its being prejudicial, nothing can be more favourable to
+  freedom than that system. And M. Jacquelot has demonstrated well in his
+  book on the <i>Conformity of Faith with Reason</i>, that it is just as if
+  he who knows all that I shall order a servant to do the whole day long on
+  the morrow made an automaton entirely resembling this servant, to carry
+  out to-morrow at the right moment all that I should order; and yet that
+  would not prevent me from ordering freely all that I should please,
+  although the action of the automaton that would serve me would not be in
+  the least free.</p>
+
+  <p>64. Moreover, since all that passes in the soul depends, according to
+  this system, only upon the soul, and its subsequent state is derived only
+  from it and from its present state, how can one give it a greater
+  <i>independence</i>? It is true that there still remains some
+  imperfection in the constitution of the soul. All that happens to the
+  soul depends upon it, but depends not always upon its will; that <!--
+  Page 158 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page158"></a>[158]</span> were
+  too much. Nor are such happenings even recognized always by its
+  understanding or perceived with distinctness. For there is in the soul
+  not only an order of distinct perceptions, forming its dominion, but also
+  a series of confused perceptions or passions, forming its bondage: and
+  there is no need for astonishment at that; the soul would be a Divinity
+  if it had none but distinct perceptions. It has nevertheless some power
+  over these confused perceptions also, even if in an indirect manner. For
+  although it cannot change its passions forthwith, it can work from afar
+  towards that end with enough success, and endue itself with new passions
+  and even habits. It even has a like power over the more distinct
+  perceptions, being able to endue itself indirectly with opinions and
+  intentions, and to hinder itself from having this one or that, and stay
+  or hasten its judgement. For we can seek means beforehand to arrest
+  ourselves, when occasion arises, on the sliding step of a rash judgement;
+  we can find some incident to justify postponement of our resolution even
+  at the moment when the matter appears ready to be judged. Although our
+  opinion and our act of willing be not directly objects of our will (as I
+  have already observed), one sometimes, takes measures nevertheless, to
+  will and even to believe in due time, that which one does not will, or
+  believe, now. So great is the profundity of the spirit of man.</p>
+
+  <p>65. And now, to bring to a conclusion this question of
+  <i>spontaneity</i>, it must be said that, on a rigorous definition, the
+  soul has within it the principle of all its actions, and even of all its
+  passions, and that the same is true in all the simple substances
+  scattered throughout Nature, although there be freedom only in those that
+  are intelligent. In the popular sense notwithstanding, speaking in
+  accordance with appearances, we must say that the soul depends in some
+  way upon the body and upon the impressions of the senses: much as we
+  speak with Ptolemy and Tycho in everyday converse, and think with
+  Copernicus, when it is a question of the rising and the setting of the
+  sun.</p>
+
+  <p>66. One may however give a true and philosophic sense to this
+  <i>mutual dependence</i> which we suppose between the soul and the body.
+  It is that the one of these two substances depends upon the other
+  ideally, in so far as the reason of that which is done in the one can be
+  furnished by that which is in the other. This had already happened when
+  God ordered beforehand the harmony that there <!-- Page 159 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page159"></a>[159]</span> would be between them.
+  Even so would that automaton, that should fulfil the servant's function,
+  depend upon me <i>ideally</i>, in virtue of the knowledge of him who,
+  foreseeing my future orders, would have rendered it capable of serving me
+  at the right moment all through the morrow. The knowledge of my future
+  intentions would have actuated this great craftsman, who would
+  accordingly have fashioned the automaton: my influence would be
+  objective, and his physical. For in so far as the soul has perfection and
+  distinct thoughts, God has accommodated the body to the soul, and has
+  arranged beforehand that the body is impelled to execute its orders. And
+  in so far as the soul is imperfect and as its perceptions are confused,
+  God has accommodated the soul to the body, in such sort that the soul is
+  swayed by the passions arising out of corporeal representations. This
+  produces the same effect and the same appearance as if the one depended
+  immediately upon the other, and by the agency of a physical influence.
+  Properly speaking, it is by its confused thoughts that the soul
+  represents the bodies which encompass it. The same thing must apply to
+  all that we understand by the actions of simple substances one upon
+  another. For each one is assumed to act upon the other in proportion to
+  its perfection, although this be only ideally, and in the reasons of
+  things, as God in the beginning ordered one substance to accord with
+  another in proportion to the perfection or imperfection that there is in
+  each. (Withal action and passion are always reciprocal in creatures,
+  because one part of the reasons which serve to explain clearly what is
+  done, and which have served to bring it into existence, is in the one of
+  these substances, and another part of these reasons is in the other,
+  perfections and imperfections being always mingled and shared.) Thus it
+  is we attribute <i>action</i> to the one, and <i>passion</i> to the
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>67. But after all, whatsoever dependence be conceived in voluntary
+  actions, and even though there were an absolute and mathematical
+  necessity (which there is not) it would not follow that there would not
+  be a sufficient degree of freedom to render rewards and punishments just
+  and reasonable. It is true that generally we speak as though the
+  necessity of the action put an end to all merit and all demerit, all
+  justification for praise and blame, for reward and punishment: but it
+  must be admitted that this conclusion is not entirely correct. I am very
+  far from sharing the opinions of Bradwardine, Wyclif, Hobbes and Spinoza,
+  who <!-- Page 160 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page160"></a>[160]</span> advocate, so it seems, this entirely
+  mathematical necessity, which I think I have adequately refuted, and
+  perhaps more clearly than is customary. Yet one must always bear
+  testimony to the truth and not impute to a dogma anything that does not
+  result from it. Moreover, these arguments prove too much, since they
+  would prove just as much against hypothetical necessity, and would
+  justify the lazy sophism. For the absolute necessity of the sequence of
+  causes would in this matter add nothing to the infallible certainty of a
+  hypothetical necessity.</p>
+
+  <p>68. In the first place, therefore, it must be agreed that it is
+  permitted to kill a madman when one cannot by other means defend oneself.
+  It will be granted also that it is permitted, and often even necessary,
+  to destroy venomous or very noxious animals, although they be not so by
+  their own fault.</p>
+
+  <p>69. Secondly, one inflicts punishments upon a beast, despite its lack
+  of reason and freedom, when one deems that this may serve to correct it:
+  thus one punishes dogs and horses, and indeed with much success. Rewards
+  serve us no less in the managing of animals: when an animal is hungry,
+  the food that is given to him causes him to do what otherwise would never
+  be obtained from him.</p>
+
+  <p>70. Thirdly, one would inflict even on beasts capital punishments
+  (where it is no longer a question of correcting the beast that is
+  punished) if this punishment could serve as an example, or inspire terror
+  in others, to make them cease from evil doing. Rorarius, in his book on
+  reason in beasts, says that in Africa they crucified lions, in order to
+  drive away other lions from the towns and frequented places, and that he
+  had observed in passing through the province of Jülich that they hanged
+  wolves there in order to ensure greater safety for the sheepfolds. There
+  are people in the villages also who nail birds of prey to the doors of
+  houses, with the idea that other birds of the same kind will then not so
+  readily appear. These measures would always be justified if they were of
+  any avail.</p>
+
+  <p>71. Then, in the fourth place, since experience proves that the fear
+  of chastisements and the hope of rewards serves to make men abstain from
+  evil and strive to do good, one would have good reason to avail oneself
+  of such, even though men were acting under necessity, whatever the
+  necessity might be. The objection will be raised that if good or evil is
+  necessary it is useless to avail oneself of means to obtain it or to
+  hinder it: but the answer has already been <!-- Page 161 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page161"></a>[161]</span> given above in the
+  passage combating the lazy sophism. If good or evil were a necessity
+  without these means, then such means would be unavailing; but it is not
+  so. These goods and evils come only with the aid of these means, and if
+  these results were necessary the means would be a part of the causes
+  rendering them necessary, since experience teaches us that often fear or
+  hope hinders evil or advances good. This objection, then, differs hardly
+  at all from the lazy sophism, which we raise against the certainty as
+  well as the necessity of future events. Thus one may say that these
+  objections are directed equally against hypothetical necessity and
+  absolute necessity, and that they prove as much against the one as
+  against the other, that is to say, nothing at all.</p>
+
+  <p>72. There was a great dispute between Bishop Bramhall and Mr. Hobbes,
+  which began when they were both in Paris, and which was continued after
+  their return to England; all the parts of it are to be found collected in
+  a quarto volume published in London in the year 1656. They are all in
+  English, and have not been translated as far as I know, nor inserted in
+  the Collection of Works in Latin by Mr. Hobbes. I had already read these
+  writings, and have obtained them again since. And I had observed at the
+  outset that he had not at all proved the absolute necessity of all
+  things, but had shown sufficiently that necessity would not overthrow all
+  the rules of divine or human justice, and would not prevent altogether
+  the exercise of this virtue.</p>
+
+  <p>73. There is, however, a kind of justice and a certain sort of rewards
+  and of punishments which appear not so applicable to those who should act
+  by an absolute necessity, supposing such necessity existed. It is that
+  kind of justice which has for its goal neither improvement nor example,
+  nor even redress of the evil. This justice has its foundation only in the
+  fitness of things, which demands a certain satisfaction for the expiation
+  of an evil action. The Socinians, Hobbes and some others do not admit
+  this punitive justice, which properly speaking is avenging justice. God
+  reserves it for himself in many cases; but he does not fail to grant it
+  to those who are entitled to govern others, and he exercises it through
+  their agency, provided that they act under the influence of reason and
+  not of passion. The Socinians believe it to be without foundation, but it
+  always has some foundation in that fitness of things which gives
+  satisfaction not only to the injured but also to the wise who see it;
+  even as a beautiful piece of music, or again a good <!-- Page 162
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page162"></a>[162]</span> piece of
+  architecture, satisfies cultivated minds. And the wise lawgiver having
+  threatened, and having, so to speak, promised a chastisement, it befits
+  his consistency not to leave the action completely unpunished, even
+  though the punishment would no longer avail to correct anyone. But even
+  though he should have promised nothing, it is enough that there is a
+  fitness of things which could have prompted him to make this promise,
+  since the wise man likewise promises only that which is fitting. And one
+  may even say that there is here a certain compensation of the mind, which
+  would be scandalized by disorder if the chastisement did not contribute
+  towards restoring order. One can also consult what Grotius wrote against
+  the Socinians, of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ, and the answer of
+  Crellius thereto.</p>
+
+  <p>74. Thus it is that the pains of the damned continue, even when they
+  no longer serve to turn them away from evil, and that likewise the
+  rewards of the blessed continue, even when they no longer serve for
+  strengthening them in good. One may say nevertheless that the damned ever
+  bring upon themselves new pains through new sins, and that the blessed
+  ever bring upon themselves new joys by new progress in goodness: for both
+  are founded on the <i>principle of the fitness of things</i>, which has
+  seen to it that affairs were so ordered that the evil action must bring
+  upon itself a chastisement. There is good reason to believe, following
+  the parallelism of the two realms, that of final causes and that of
+  efficient causes, that God has established in the universe a connexion
+  between punishment or reward and bad or good action, in accordance
+  wherewith the first should always be attracted by the second, and virtue
+  and vice obtain their reward and their punishment in consequence of the
+  natural sequence of things, which contains still another kind of
+  pre-established harmony than that which appears in the communication
+  between the soul and the body. For, in a word, all that God does, as I
+  have said already, is harmonious to perfection. Perhaps then this
+  principle of the fitness of things would no longer apply to beings acting
+  without true freedom or exemption from absolute necessity; and in that
+  case corrective justice alone would be administered, and not punitive
+  justice. That is the opinion of the famous Conringius, in a dissertation
+  he published on what is just. And indeed, the reasons Pomponazzi employed
+  in his book on fate, to prove the usefulness of chastisements and
+  rewards, even though all should come about in our <!-- Page 163 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page163"></a>[163]</span> actions by a fatal
+  necessity, concern only amendment and not satisfaction, <span lang="el"
+  title="kolasin ou timôrian"
+  >&#x3BA;&#x3BF;&#x3BB;&#x3B1;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3BD; &#x3BF;&#x3C5;
+  &#x3C4;&#x3B9;&#x3BC;&#x3C9;&#x3C1;&#x3B9;&#x3B1;&#x3BD;</span>.
+  Moreover, it is only for the sake of outward appearances that one
+  destroys animals accessary to certain crimes, as one razes the houses of
+  rebels, that is, to inspire terror. Thus it is an act of corrective
+  justice, wherein punitive justice has no part at all.</p>
+
+  <p>75. But we will not amuse ourselves now by discussing a question more
+  curious than necessary, since we have shown sufficiently that there is no
+  such necessity in voluntary actions. Nevertheless it was well to show
+  that <i>imperfect freedom</i> alone, that is, freedom which is exempt
+  only from constraint, would suffice as foundation for chastisements and
+  rewards of the kind conducive to the avoidance of evil, and to amendment.
+  One sees also from this that some persons of intelligence, who persuade
+  themselves that everything is necessary, are wrong in saying that none
+  must be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished. Apparently they say so
+  only to exercise their wit: the pretext is that all being necessary
+  nothing would be in our power. But this pretext is ill founded: necessary
+  actions would be still in our power, at least in so far as we could
+  perform them or omit them, when the hope or the fear of praise or blame,
+  of pleasure or pain prompted our will thereto, whether they prompted it
+  of necessity, or in prompting it they left spontaneity, contingency and
+  freedom all alike unimpaired. Thus praise and blame, rewards and
+  punishments would preserve always a large part of their use, even though
+  there were a true necessity in our actions. We can praise and blame also
+  natural good and bad qualities, where the will has no part&mdash;in a
+  horse, in a diamond, in a man; and he who said of Cato of Utica that he
+  acted virtuously through the goodness of his nature, and that it was
+  impossible for him to behave otherwise, thought to praise him the
+  more.</p>
+
+  <p>76. The difficulties which I have endeavoured up to now to remove have
+  been almost all common to natural and revealed theology. Now it will be
+  necessary to come to a question of revealed theology, concerning the
+  election or the reprobation of men, with the dispensation or use of
+  divine grace in connexion with these acts of the mercy or the justice of
+  God. But when I answered the preceding objections, I opened up a way to
+  meet those that remain. This confirms the observation I made thereon
+  (<i>Preliminary Dissertation,</i> <a href="#sect43">43</a>) that there is
+  rather a conflict between the <!-- Page 164 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page164"></a>[164]</span> true reasons of natural theology and the
+  false reasons of human appearances, than between revealed faith and
+  reason. For on this subject scarcely any difficulty arises that is new,
+  and not deriving its origin from those which can be placed in the way of
+  the truths discerned by reason.</p>
+
+  <p>77. Now as theologians of all parties are divided among themselves on
+  this subject of predestination and grace, and often give different
+  answers to the same objections, according to their various principles,
+  one cannot avoid touching on the differences which prevail among them.
+  One may say in general that some look upon God more metaphysically and
+  others more morally: and it has already been stated on other occasions
+  that the Counter-Remonstrants took the first course and the Remonstrants
+  the second. But to act rightly we must affirm alike on one side the
+  independence of God and the dependence of creatures, and on the other
+  side the justice and goodness of God, which makes him dependent upon
+  himself, his will upon his understanding or his wisdom.</p>
+
+  <p>78. Some gifted and well-intentioned authors, desiring to show the
+  force of the reasons advocated by the two principal parties, in order to
+  persuade them to a mutual tolerance, deem that the whole controversy is
+  reduced to this essential point, namely: What was God's principal aim in
+  making his decrees with regard to man? Did he make them solely in order
+  to show forth his glory by manifesting his attributes, and forming, to
+  that end, the great plan of creation and providence? Or has he had regard
+  rather to the voluntary movements of intelligent substances which he
+  designed to create, considering what they would will and do in the
+  different circumstances and situations wherein he might place them, so as
+  to form a fitting resolve thereupon? It appears to me that the two
+  answers to this great question thus given as opposites to one another are
+  easy to reconcile, and that in consequence the two parties would be
+  agreed in principle, without any need of tolerance, if all were reduced
+  to this point. In truth God, in designing to create the world, purposed
+  solely to manifest and communicate his perfections in the way that was
+  most efficacious, and most worthy of his greatness, his wisdom and his
+  goodness. But that very purpose pledged him to consider all the actions
+  of creatures while still in the state of pure possibility, that he might
+  form the most fitting plan. He is like a great architect whose aim <!--
+  Page 165 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page165"></a>[165]</span> in
+  view is the satisfaction or the glory of having built a beautiful palace,
+  and who considers all that is to enter into this construction: the form
+  and the materials, the place, the situation, the means, the workmen, the
+  expense, before he forms a complete resolve. For a wise person in laying
+  his plans cannot separate the end from the means; he does not contemplate
+  any end without knowing if there are means of attaining thereto.</p>
+
+  <p>79. I know not whether there are also perchance persons who imagine
+  that, God being the absolute master of all things, one can thence infer
+  that everything outside him is indifferent to him, that he considers
+  himself alone, without concern for others, and that thus he has made some
+  happy and others unhappy without any cause, without choice, without
+  reason. But to teach so about God were to deprive him of wisdom and of
+  goodness. We need only observe that he considers himself and neglects
+  nothing of what he owes to himself, to conclude that he considers his
+  creatures also, and that he uses them in the manner most consistent with
+  order. For the more a great and good prince is mindful of his glory, the
+  more he will think of making his subjects happy, even though he were the
+  most absolute of all monarchs, and though his subjects were slaves from
+  birth, bondsmen (in lawyers' parlance), people entirely in subjection to
+  arbitrary power. Calvin himself and some others of the greatest defenders
+  of the absolute decree rightly maintained that God had <i>great and just
+  reasons</i> for his election and the dispensation of his grace, although
+  these reasons be unknown to us in detail: and we must judge charitably
+  that the most rigid predestinators have too much reason and too much
+  piety to depart from this opinion.</p>
+
+  <p>80. There will therefore be no argument for debate on that point (as I
+  hope) with people who are at all reasonable. But there will always be
+  argument among those who are called Universalists and Particularists,
+  according to what they teach of the grace and the will of God. Yet I am
+  somewhat inclined to believe that the heated dispute between them on the
+  will of God to save all men, and on that which depends upon it (when one
+  keeps separate the doctrine <i>de Auxiliis</i>, or of the assistance of
+  grace), rests rather in expressions than in things. For it is sufficient
+  to consider that God, as well as every wise and beneficent mind, is
+  inclined towards all possible good, and that this inclination is
+  proportionate to the excellence of the good. Moreover, this results (if
+  we take the matter <!-- Page 166 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page166"></a>[166]</span> precisely and in itself) from an
+  'antecedent will', as it is termed, which, however, is not always
+  followed by its complete effect, because this wise mind must have many
+  other inclinations besides. Thus it is the result of all the inclinations
+  together that makes his will complete and decretory, as I have already
+  explained. One may therefore very well say with ancient writers that God
+  wills to save all men according to his antecedent will, but not according
+  to his consequent will, which never fails to be followed by its effect.
+  And if those who deny this universal will do not allow that the
+  antecedent inclination be called a will, they are only troubling
+  themselves about a question of name.</p>
+
+  <p>81. But there is a question more serious in regard to predestination
+  to eternal life and to all other destination by God, to wit, whether this
+  destination is absolute or respective. There is destination to good and
+  destination to evil; and as evil is moral or physical, theologians of all
+  parties agree that there is no destination to moral evil, that is to say,
+  that none is destined to sin. As for the greatest physical evil, which is
+  damnation, one can distinguish between destination and predestination:
+  for predestination appears to contain within itself an absolute
+  destination, which is anterior to the consideration of the good or evil
+  actions of those whom it concerns. Thus one may say that the reprobate
+  are <i>destined</i> to be condemned, because they are known to be
+  impenitent. But it cannot so well be said that the reprobate are
+  <i>predestined</i> to damnation: for there is no <i>absolute</i>
+  reprobation, its foundation being final foreseen impenitence.</p>
+
+  <p>82. It is true that there are writers who maintain that God, wishing
+  to manifest his mercy and his justice in accordance with reasons worthy
+  of him, but unknown to us, chose the elect, and in consequence rejected
+  the damned, prior to all thought of sin, even of Adam, that after this
+  resolve he thought fit to permit sin in order to be able to exercise
+  these two virtues, and that he has bestowed grace in Jesus Christ to some
+  in order to save them, while he has refused it to others in order to be
+  able to punish them. Hence these writers are named 'Supralapsarians',
+  because the decree to punish precedes, according to them, the knowledge
+  of the future existence of sin. But the opinion most common to-day
+  amongst those who are called Reformed, and one that is favoured by the
+  Synod of Dordrecht, is that of the 'Infralapsarians', corresponding
+  somewhat to the conception of St. Augustine. For <!-- Page 167 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page167"></a>[167]</span> he asserts that God
+  having resolved to permit the sin of Adam and the corruption of the human
+  race, for reasons just but hidden, his mercy made him choose some of the
+  corrupt mass to be freely saved by the merit of Jesus Christ, and his
+  justice made him resolve to punish the others by the damnation that they
+  deserved. That is why, with the Schoolmen, only the saved were called
+  <i>Praedestinati</i> and the damned were called <i>Praesciti</i>. It must
+  be admitted that some Infralapsarians and others speak sometimes of
+  predestination to damnation, following the example of Fulgentius and of
+  St. Augustine himself: but that signifies the same as destination to
+  them, and it avails nothing to wrangle about words. That pretext,
+  notwithstanding, was in time past used for maltreating that Godescalc who
+  caused a stir about the middle of the ninth century, and who took the
+  name of Fulgentius to indicate that he followed that author.</p>
+
+  <p>83. As for the destination of the elect to eternal life, the
+  Protestants, as well as those of the Roman Church, dispute much among
+  themselves as to whether election is absolute or is founded on the
+  prevision of final living faith. Those who are called Evangelicals, that
+  is, those of the Augsburg Confession, hold the latter opinion: they
+  believe that one need not go into the hidden causes of election while one
+  may find a manifest cause of it shown in Holy Scripture, which is faith
+  in Jesus Christ; and it appears to them that the prevision of the cause
+  is also the cause of the prevision of the effect. Those who are called
+  Reformed are of a different opinion: they admit that salvation comes from
+  faith in Jesus Christ, but they observe that often the cause anterior to
+  the effect in execution is posterior in intention, as when the cause is
+  the means and the effect is the end. Thus the question is, whether faith
+  or salvation is anterior in the intention of God, that is, whether God's
+  design is rather to save man than to make him a believer.</p>
+
+  <p>84. Hence we see that the question between the Supralapsarians and the
+  Infralapsarians in part, and again between them and the Evangelicals,
+  comes back to a right conception of the order that is in God's decrees.
+  Perhaps one might put an end to this dispute at once by saying that,
+  properly speaking, all the decrees of God that are here concerned are
+  simultaneous, not only in respect of time, as everyone agrees, but also
+  <i>in signo rationis</i>, or in the order of nature. And indeed, the
+  Formula of Concord, building upon some passages <!-- Page 168 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page168"></a>[168]</span> of St. Augustine,
+  comprised in the same Decree of Election salvation and the means that
+  conduce to it. To demonstrate this synchronism of destinations or of
+  decrees with which we are concerned, we must revert to the expedient that
+  I have employed more than once, which states that God, before decreeing
+  anything, considered among other possible sequences of things that one
+  which he afterwards approved. In the idea of this is represented how the
+  first parents sin and corrupt their posterity; how Jesus Christ redeems
+  the human race; how some, aided by such and such graces, attain to final
+  faith and to salvation; and how others, with or without such or other
+  graces, do not attain thereto, continue in sin, and are damned. God
+  grants his sanction to this sequence only after having entered into all
+  its detail, and thus pronounces nothing final as to those who shall be
+  saved or damned without having pondered upon everything and compared it
+  with other possible sequences. Thus God's pronouncement concerns the
+  whole sequence at the same time; he simply decrees its existence. In
+  order to save other men, or in a different way, he must needs choose an
+  altogether different sequence, seeing that all is connected in each
+  sequence. In this conception of the matter, which is that most worthy of
+  the All-wise, all whose actions are connected together to the highest
+  possible degree, there would be only one total decree, which is to create
+  such a world. This total decree comprises equally all the particular
+  decrees, without setting one of them before or after another. Yet one may
+  say also that each particular act of antecedent will entering into the
+  total result has its value and order, in proportion to the good whereto
+  this act inclines. But these acts of antecedent will are not called
+  decrees, since they are not yet inevitable, the outcome depending upon
+  the total result. According to this conception of things, all the
+  difficulties that can here be made amount to the same as those I have
+  already stated and removed in my inquiry concerning the origin of
+  evil.</p>
+
+  <p>85. There remains only one important matter of discussion, which has
+  its peculiar difficulties. It is that of the dispensation of the means
+  and circumstances contributing to salvation and to damnation. This
+  comprises amongst others the subject of the Aids of Grace (<i>de auxiliis
+  gratiae</i>), on which Rome (since the Congregation <i>de Auxiliis</i>
+  under Clement VIII, when a debate took place between the Dominicans and
+  the Jesuits) does not readily permit <!-- Page 169 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page169"></a>[169]</span> books to be published.
+  Everyone must agree that God is altogether good and just, that his
+  goodness makes him contribute the least possible to that which can render
+  men guilty, and the most possible to that which serves to save them
+  (possible, I say, subject to the general order of things); that his
+  justice prevents him from condemning innocent men, and from leaving good
+  actions without reward; and that he even keeps an exact proportion in
+  punishments and rewards. Nevertheless, this idea that one should have of
+  the goodness and the justice of God does not appear enough in what we
+  know of his actions with regard to the salvation and the damnation of
+  men: and it is that which makes difficulties concerning sin and its
+  remedies.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="sect86">86</a>. The first difficulty is how the soul could be
+  infected with original sin, which is the root of actual sins, without
+  injustice on God's part in exposing the soul thereto. This difficulty has
+  given rise to three opinions on the origin of the soul itself. The first
+  is that of the <i>pre-existence of human souls</i> in another world or in
+  another life, where they had sinned and on that account had been
+  condemned to this prison of the human body, an opinion of the Platonists
+  which is attributed to Origen and which even to-day finds adherents.
+  Henry More, an English scholar, advocated something like this dogma in a
+  book written with that express purpose. Some of those who affirm this
+  pre-existence have gone as far as metempsychosis. The younger van Helmont
+  held this opinion, and the ingenious author of some metaphysical
+  <i>Meditations</i>, published in 1678 under the name of William Wander,
+  appears to have some leaning towards it. The second opinion is that of
+  <i>Traduction</i>, as if the soul of children were engendered (<i>per
+  traducem</i>) from the soul or souls of those from whom the body is
+  engendered. St. Augustine inclined to this judgement the better to
+  explain original sin. This doctrine is taught also by most of the
+  theologians of the Augsburg Confession. Nevertheless it is not completely
+  established among them, since the Universities of Jena and Helmstedt, and
+  others besides, have long been opposed to it. The third opinion, and that
+  most widely accepted to-day, is that of <i>Creation</i>: it is taught in
+  the majority of the Christian Schools, but it is fraught with the
+  greatest difficulty in respect of original sin.</p>
+
+  <p>87. Into this controversy of theologians on the origin of the human
+  soul has entered the philosophic dispute on <i>the origin of forms.</i>
+  Aristotle and scholastic philosophy after him called <i>Form</i> <!--
+  Page 170 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page170"></a>[170]</span> that
+  which is a principle of action and is found in that which acts. This
+  inward principle is either substantial, being then termed 'Soul', when it
+  is in an organic body, or accidental, and customarily termed 'Quality'.
+  The same philosopher gave to the soul the generic name of 'Entelechy' or
+  <i>Act</i>. This word 'Entelechy' apparently takes its origin from the
+  Greek word signifying 'perfect', and hence the celebrated Ermolao Barbaro
+  expressed it literally in Latin by <i>perfectihabia</i>: for Act is a
+  realization of potency. And he had no need to consult the Devil, as men
+  say he did, in order to learn that. Now the Philosopher of Stagira
+  supposes that there are two kinds of Act, the permanent act and the
+  successive act. The permanent or lasting act is nothing but the
+  Substantial or Accidental Form: the substantial form (as for example the
+  soul) is altogether permanent, at least according to my judgement, and
+  the accidental is only so for a time. But the altogether momentary act,
+  whose nature is transitory, consists in action itself. I have shown
+  elsewhere that the notion of Entelechy is not altogether to be scorned,
+  and that, being permanent, it carries with it not only a mere faculty for
+  action, but also that which is called 'force', 'effort', 'conatus', from
+  which action itself must follow if nothing prevents it. Faculty is only
+  an <i>attribute</i>, or rather sometimes a mode; but force, when it is
+  not an ingredient of substance itself (that is, force which is not
+  primitive but derivative), is a <i>quality</i>, which is distinct and
+  separable from substance. I have shown also how one may suppose that the
+  soul is a primitive force which is modified and varied by derivative
+  forces or qualities, and exercised in actions.</p>
+
+  <p>88. Now philosophers have troubled themselves exceedingly on the
+  question of the origin of substantial forms. For to say that the compound
+  of form and matter is produced and that the form is only
+  <i>comproduced</i> means nothing. The common opinion was that forms were
+  derived from the potency of matter, this being called <i>Eduction</i>.
+  That also meant in fact nothing, but it was explained in a sense by a
+  comparison with shapes: for that of a statue is produced only by removal
+  of the superfluous marble. This comparison might be valid if form
+  consisted in a mere limitation, as in the case of shape. Some have
+  thought that forms were sent from heaven, and even created expressly,
+  when bodies were produced. Julius Scaliger hinted that it was possible
+  that forms were rather derived from the active potency of the efficient
+  cause (that is to <!-- Page 171 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page171"></a>[171]</span> say, either from that of God in the case
+  of Creation or from that of other forms in the case of generation), than
+  from the passive potency of matter. And that, in the case of generation,
+  meant a return to traduction. Daniel Sennert, a famous doctor and
+  physicist at Wittenberg, cherished this opinion, particularly in relation
+  to animate bodies which are multiplied through seed. A certain Julius
+  Caesar della Galla, an Italian living in the Low Countries, and a doctor
+  of Groningen named Johan Freitag wrote with much vehemence in opposition
+  to Sennert. Johann Sperling, a professor at Wittenberg, made a defence of
+  his master, and finally came into conflict with Johann Zeisold, a
+  professor at Jena, who upheld the belief that the human soul is
+  created.</p>
+
+  <p>89. But traduction and eduction are equally inexplicable when it is a
+  question of finding the origin of the soul. It is not the same with
+  accidental forms, since they are only modifications of the substance, and
+  their origin may be explained by eduction, that is, by variation of
+  limitations, in the same way as the origin of shapes. But it is quite
+  another matter when we are concerned with the origin of a substance,
+  whose beginning and destruction are equally difficult to explain. Sennert
+  and Sperling did not venture to admit the subsistence and the
+  indestructibility of the souls of beasts or of other primitive forms,
+  although they allowed that they were indivisible and immaterial. But the
+  fact is that they confused indestructibility with immortality, whereby is
+  understood in the case of man that not only the soul but also the
+  personality subsists. In saying that the soul of man is immortal one
+  implies the subsistence of what makes the identity of the person,
+  something which retains its moral qualities, conserving the
+  <i>consciousness</i>, or the reflective inward feeling, of what it is:
+  thus it is rendered susceptible to chastisement or reward. But this
+  conservation of personality does not occur in the souls of beasts: that
+  is why I prefer to say that they are imperishable rather than to call
+  them immortal. Yet this misapprehension appears to have been the cause of
+  a great inconsistency in the doctrine of the Thomists and of other good
+  philosophers: they recognized the immateriality or indivisibility of all
+  souls, without being willing to admit their indestructibility, greatly to
+  the prejudice of the immortality of the human soul. John Scot, that is,
+  the Scotsman (which formerly signified Hibernian or Erigena), a famous
+  writer of the time of Louis the Debonair and of his sons, was for the
+  conservation of all <!-- Page 172 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page172"></a>[172]</span> souls: and I see not why there should be
+  less objection to making the atoms of Epicurus or of Gassendi endure,
+  than to affirming the subsistence of all truly simple and indivisible
+  substances, which are the sole and true atoms of Nature. And Pythagoras
+  was right in saying generally, as Ovid makes him say:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Morte carent animae</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>90. Now as I like maxims which hold good and admit of the fewest
+  exceptions possible, here is what has appeared to me most reasonable in
+  every sense on this important question. I consider that souls and simple
+  substances altogether cannot begin except by creation, or end except by
+  annihilation. Moreover, as the formation of organic animate bodies
+  appears explicable in the order of nature only when one assumes a
+  <i>preformation</i> already organic, I have thence inferred that what we
+  call generation of an animal is only a transformation and augmentation.
+  Thus, since the same body was already furnished with organs, it is to be
+  supposed that it was already animate, and that it had the same soul: so I
+  assume <i>vice versa</i>, from the conservation of the soul when once it
+  is created, that the animal is also conserved, and that apparent death is
+  only an envelopment, there being no likelihood that in the order of
+  nature souls exist entirely separated from all body, or that what does
+  not begin naturally can cease through natural forces.</p>
+
+  <p>91. Considering that so admirable an order and rules so general are
+  established in regard to animals, it does not appear reasonable that man
+  should be completely excluded from that order, and that everything in
+  relation to his soul should come about in him by miracle. Besides I have
+  pointed out repeatedly that it is of the essence of God's wisdom that all
+  should be harmonious in his works, and that nature should be parallel
+  with grace. It is thus my belief that those souls which one day shall be
+  human souls, like those of other species, have been in the seed, and in
+  the progenitors as far back as Adam, and have consequently existed since
+  the beginning of things, always in a kind of organic body. On this point
+  it seems that M. Swammerdam, Father Malebranche, M. Bayle, Mr. Pitcairne,
+  M. Hartsoeker and numerous other very able persons share my opinion. This
+  doctrine is also sufficiently confirmed by the microscope observations of
+  M. Leeuwenhoek and other good observers. But it also for divers reasons
+  appears likely <!-- Page 173 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page173"></a>[173]</span> to me that they existed then as sentient
+  or animal souls only, endowed with perception and feeling, and devoid of
+  reason. Further I believe that they remained in this state up to the time
+  of the generation of the man to whom they were to belong, but that then
+  they received reason, whether there be a natural means of raising a
+  sentient soul to the degree of a reasoning soul (a thing I find it
+  difficult to imagine) or whether God may have given reason to this soul
+  through some special operation, or (if you will) by a kind of
+  <i>transcreation</i>. This latter is easier to admit, inasmuch as
+  revelation teaches much about other forms of immediate operation by God
+  upon our souls. This explanation appears to remove the obstacles that
+  beset this matter in philosophy or theology. For the difficulty of the
+  origin of forms thus disappears completely; and besides it is much more
+  appropriate to divine justice to give the soul, already corrupted
+  <i>physically</i> or on the animal side by the sin of Adam, a new
+  perfection which is reason, than to put a reasoning soul, by creation or
+  otherwise, in a body wherein it is to be corrupted <i>morally</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>92. Now the soul being once under the domination of sin, and ready to
+  commit sin in actual fact as soon as the man is fit to exercise reason, a
+  new question arises, to wit: whether this tendency in a man who has not
+  been regenerated by baptism suffices to damn him, even though he should
+  never come to commit sin, as may happen, and happens often, whether he
+  die before reaching years of discretion or he become dull of sense before
+  he has made use of his reason. St. Gregory of Nazianzos is supposed to
+  have denied this (<i>Orat. de Baptismo</i>); but St. Augustine is for the
+  affirmative, and maintains that original sin of itself is sufficient to
+  earn the flames of hell, although this opinion is, to say the least, very
+  harsh. When I speak here of damnation or of hell, I mean pains, and not
+  mere deprivation of supreme felicity; I mean <i>poenam sensus, non
+  damni</i>. Gregory of Rimini, General of the Augustinians, with a few
+  others followed St. Augustine in opposition to the accepted opinion of
+  the Schools of his time, and for that reason he was called the torturer
+  of children, <i>tortor infantum</i>. The Schoolmen, instead of sending
+  them into the flames of hell, have assigned to them a special Limbo,
+  where they do not suffer, and are only punished by privation of the
+  beatific vision. The Revelations of St. Birgitta (as they are called),
+  much esteemed in Rome, also uphold this dogma. Salmeron and Molina, and
+  before them <!-- Page 174 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page174"></a>[174]</span> Ambrose Catharin and others, grant them a
+  certain natural bliss; and Cardinal Sfondrati, a man of learning and
+  piety, who approves this, latterly went so far as to prefer in a sense
+  their state, which is the state of happy innocence, to that of a sinner
+  saved, as we may see in his <i>Nodus Praedestinationis Solutus</i>. That,
+  however, seems to go too far. Certainly a soul truly enlightened would
+  not wish to sin, even though it could by this means obtain all imaginable
+  pleasures. But the case of choosing between sin and true bliss is simply
+  chimerical, and it is better to obtain bliss (even after repentance) than
+  to be deprived of it for ever.</p>
+
+  <p>93. Many prelates and theologians of France who are well pleased to
+  differ from Molina, and to join with St. Augustine, seem to incline
+  towards the opinion of this great doctor, who condemns to eternal flames
+  children that die in the age of innocence before having received baptism.
+  This is what appears from the letter mentioned above, written by five
+  distinguished prelates of France to Pope Innocent XII, against that
+  posthumous book by Cardinal Sfondrati. But therein they did not venture
+  to condemn the doctrine of the purely privative punishment of children
+  dying without baptism, seeing it approved by the venerable Thomas
+  Aquinas, and by other great men. I do not speak of those who are called
+  on one side Jansenists and on the other disciples of St. Augustine, for
+  they declare themselves entirely and firmly for the opinion of this
+  Father. But it must be confessed that this opinion has not sufficient
+  foundation either in reason or in Scripture, and that it is outrageously
+  harsh. M. Nicole makes rather a poor apology for it in his book on the
+  <i>Unity of the Church</i>, written to oppose M. Jurieu, although M.
+  Bayle takes his side in chapter 178 of the <i>Reply to the Questions of a
+  Provincial</i>, vol. III. M. Nicole makes use of this pretext, that there
+  are also other dogmas in the Christian religion which appear harsh. On
+  the one hand, however, that does not lead to the conclusion that these
+  instances of harshness may be multiplied without proof; and on the other
+  we must take into account that the other dogmas mentioned by M. Nicole,
+  namely original sin and eternity of punishment, are only harsh and unjust
+  to outward appearance, while the damnation of children dying without
+  actual sin and without regeneration would in truth be harsh, since it
+  would be in effect the damning of innocents. For that reason I believe
+  that the party which advocates this opinion will never altogether have
+  the upper hand in the <!-- Page 175 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page175"></a>[175]</span> Roman Church itself. Evangelical
+  theologians are accustomed to speak with fair moderation on this
+  question, and to surrender these souls to the judgement and the clemency
+  of their Creator. Nor do we know all the wonderful ways that God may
+  choose to employ for the illumination of souls.</p>
+
+  <p>94. One may say that those who condemn for original sin alone, and who
+  consequently condemn children dying unbaptized or outside the Covenant,
+  fall, in a sense, without being aware of it, into a certain attitude to
+  man's inclination and God's foreknowledge which they disapprove in
+  others. They will not have it that God should refuse his grace to those
+  whose resistance to it he foresees, nor that this expectation and this
+  tendency should cause the damnation of these persons: and yet they claim
+  that the tendency which constitutes original sin, and in which God
+  foresees that the child will sin as soon as he shall reach years of
+  discretion, suffices to damn this child beforehand. Those who maintain
+  the one and reject the other do not preserve enough uniformity and
+  connexion in their dogmas.</p>
+
+  <p>95. There is scarcely less difficulty in the matter of those who reach
+  years of discretion and plunge into sin, following the inclination of
+  corrupt nature, if they receive not the succour of the grace necessary
+  for them to stop on the edge of the precipice, or to drag themselves from
+  the abyss wherein they have fallen. For it seems hard to damn them
+  eternally for having done that which they had no power to prevent
+  themselves from doing. Those that damn even children, who are without
+  discretion, trouble themselves even less about adults, and one would say
+  that they have become callous through the very expectation of seeing
+  people suffer. But it is not the same with other theologians, and I would
+  be rather on the side of those who grant to all men a grace sufficient to
+  draw them away from evil, provided they have a sufficient tendency to
+  profit by this succour, and not to reject it voluntarily. The objection
+  is made that there has been and still is a countless multitude of men,
+  among civilized peoples and among barbarians, who have never had this
+  knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ which is necessary for those who
+  would tread the wonted paths to salvation. But without excusing them on
+  the plea of a sin purely philosophical, and without stopping at a mere
+  penalty of privation, things for which there is no opportunity of
+  discussion here, one may doubt the fact: for how do we know whether they
+  <!-- Page 176 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page176"></a>[176]</span>
+  do not receive ordinary or extraordinary succour of kinds unknown to us?
+  This maxim, <i>Quod facienti, quod in se est, non denegatur gratia
+  necessaria</i>, appears to me to have eternal truth. Thomas Aquinas,
+  Archbishop Bradwardine and others have hinted that, in regard to this,
+  something comes to pass of which we are not aware. (Thom. quest. XIV,
+  <i>De Veritate</i>, artic. XI, ad I et alibi. Bradwardine, <i>De Causa
+  Dei</i>, non procul ab initio.) And sundry theologians of great authority
+  in the Roman Church itself have taught that a sincere act of the love of
+  God above all things, when the grace of Jesus Christ arouses it, suffices
+  for salvation. Father Francis Xavier answered the Japanese that if their
+  ancestors had used well their natural light God would have given them the
+  grace necessary for salvation; and the Bishop of Geneva, Francis of
+  Sales, gives full approval to this answer (Book 4, <i>On the Love of
+  God,</i> ch. 5).</p>
+
+  <p>96. This I pointed out some time ago to the excellent M Pélisson, to
+  show him that the Roman Church, going further than the Protestants, does
+  not damn utterly those who are outside its communion, and even outside
+  Christianity, by using as its only criterion explicit faith. Nor did he
+  refute it, properly speaking, in the very kind answer he gave me, and
+  which he published in the fourth part of his <i>Reflexions</i>, also
+  doing me the honour of adding to it my letter. I offered him then for
+  consideration what a famous Portuguese theologian, by name Jacques Payva
+  Andradius, envoy to the Council of Trent, wrote concerning this, in
+  opposition to Chemnitz, during this same Council. And now, without citing
+  many other authors of eminence, I will content myself with naming Father
+  Friedrich Spee, the Jesuit, one of the most excellent in his Society, who
+  also held this common opinion upon the efficacy of the love of God, as is
+  apparent in the preface to the admirable book which he wrote in Germany
+  on the Christian virtues. He speaks of this observation as of a highly
+  important secret of piety, and expatiates with great clearness upon the
+  power of divine love to blot out sin, even without the intervention of
+  the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, provided one scorn them not, for
+  that would not at all be compatible with this love. And a very great
+  personage, whose character was one of the most lofty to be found in the
+  Roman Church, was the first to make me acquainted with it. Father Spee
+  was of a noble family of Westphalia (it may be said in passing) and he
+  died in the odour of sanctity, according <!-- Page 177 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page177"></a>[177]</span> to the testimony of
+  him who published this book in Cologne with the approval of the
+  Superiors.</p>
+
+  <p>97. The memory of this excellent man ought to be still precious to
+  persons of knowledge and good sense, because he is the author of the book
+  entitled: <i>Cautio Criminalis circa Processus contra Sagas</i>, which
+  has caused much stir, and has been translated into several languages. I
+  learnt from the Grand Elector of Mainz, Johann Philipp von Schonborn,
+  uncle of His Highness the present Elector, who walks gloriously in the
+  footsteps of that worthy predecessor, the story that follows. That Father
+  was in Franconia when there was a frenzy there for burning alleged
+  sorcerers. He accompanied even to the pyre many of them, all of whom he
+  recognized as being innocent, from their confessions and the researches
+  that he had made thereon. Therefore in spite of the danger incurred at
+  that time by one telling the truth in this matter, he resolved to compile
+  this work, without however naming himself. It bore great fruit and on
+  this matter converted that Elector, at that time still a simple canon and
+  afterwards Bishop of Würzburg, finally also Archbishop of Mainz, who, as
+  soon as he came to power, put an end to these burnings. Therein he was
+  followed by the Dukes of Brunswick, and finally by the majority of the
+  other princes and states of Germany.</p>
+
+  <p>98. This digression appeared to me to be seasonable, because that
+  writer deserves to be more widely known. Returning now to the subject I
+  make a further observation. Supposing that to-day a knowledge of Jesus
+  Christ according to the flesh is absolutely necessary to salvation, as
+  indeed it is safest to teach, it will be possible to say that God will
+  give that knowledge to all those who do, humanly speaking, that which in
+  them lies, even though God must needs give it by a miracle. Moreover, we
+  cannot know what passes in souls at the point of death; and if sundry
+  learned and serious theologians claim that children receive in baptism a
+  kind of faith, although they do not remember it afterwards when they are
+  questioned about it, why should one maintain that nothing of a like
+  nature, or even more definite, could come about in the dying, whom we
+  cannot interrogate after their death? Thus there are countless paths open
+  to God, giving him means of satisfying his justice and his goodness: and
+  the only thing one may allege against this is that we know not what way
+  he employs; which is far from being a valid objection.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 178 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page178"></a>[178]</span></p>
+
+  <p>99. Let us pass on to those who lack not power to amend, but good
+  will. They are doubtless not to be excused; but there always remains a
+  great difficulty concerning God, since it rested with him to give them
+  this same good will. He is the master of wills, the hearts of kings and
+  those of all other men are in his hand. Holy Scripture goes so far as to
+  say that God at times hardened the wicked in order to display his power
+  by punishing them. This hardening is not to be taken as meaning that God
+  inspires men with a kind of anti-grace, that is, a kind of repugnance to
+  good, or even an inclination towards evil, just as the grace that he
+  gives is an inclination towards good. It is rather that God, having
+  considered the sequence of things that he established, found it fitting,
+  for superior reasons, to permit that Pharaoh, for example, should be in
+  such <i>circumstances</i> as should increase his wickedness, and divine
+  wisdom willed to derive a good from this evil.</p>
+
+  <p>100. Thus it all often comes down to <i>circumstances</i>, which form
+  a part of the combination of things. There are countless examples of
+  small circumstances serving to convert or to pervert. Nothing is more
+  widely known than the <i>Tolle, lege</i> (Take and read) cry which St.
+  Augustine heard in a neighbouring house, when he was pondering on what
+  side he should take among the Christians divided into sects, and saying
+  to himself,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Quod vitae sectabor iter?</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>This brought him to open at random the book of the Holy Scriptures
+  which he had before him, and to read what came before his eyes: and these
+  were words which finally induced him to give up Manichaeism. The good
+  Steno, a Dane, who was titular Bishop of Titianopolis, Vicar Apostolic
+  (as they say) of Hanover and the region around, when there was a Duke
+  Regent of his religion, told us that something of that kind had happened
+  to him. He was a great anatomist and deeply versed in natural science;
+  but he unfortunately gave up research therein, and from being a great
+  physicist he became a mediocre theologian. He would almost listen to
+  nothing more about the marvels of Nature, and an express order from the
+  Pope <i>in virtute sanctae obedientiae</i> was needed to extract from him
+  the observations M. Thévenot asked of him. He told us then that what had
+  greatly helped towards inducing him to place himself on the side of the
+  Roman Church had been the voice of a lady in Florence, who had cried out
+  to him from a window: <!-- Page 179 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page179"></a>[179]</span> 'Go not on the side where you are about
+  to go, sir, go on the other side.' 'That voice struck me,' he told us,
+  'because I was just meditating upon religion.' This lady knew that he was
+  seeking a man in the house where she was, and, when she saw him making
+  his way to the other house, wished to point out where his friend's room
+  was.</p>
+
+  <p>101. Father John Davidius, the Jesuit, wrote a book entitled
+  <i>Veridicus Christianus</i>, which is like a kind of <i>Bibliomancy</i>,
+  where one takes passages at random, after the pattern of the <i>Tolle,
+  lege</i> of St. Augustine, and it is like a devotional game. But the
+  chances to which, in spite of ourselves, we are subject, play only too
+  large a part in what brings salvation to men, or removes it from them.
+  Let us imagine twin Polish children, the one taken by the Tartars, sold
+  to the Turks, brought to apostasy, plunged in impiety, dying in despair;
+  the other saved by some chance, falling then into good hands to be
+  educated properly, permeated by the soundest truths of religion,
+  exercised in the virtues that it commends to us, dying with all the
+  feelings of a good Christian. One will lament the misfortune of the
+  former, prevented perhaps by a slight circumstance from being saved like
+  his brother, and one will marvel that this slight chance should have
+  decided his fate for eternity.</p>
+
+  <p>102. Someone will perchance say that God foresaw by mediate knowledge
+  that the former would have been wicked and damned even if he had remained
+  in Poland. There are perhaps conjunctures wherein something of the kind
+  takes place. But will it therefore be said that this is a general rule,
+  and that not one of those who were damned amongst the pagans would have
+  been saved if he had been amongst Christians? Would that not be to
+  contradict our Lord, who said that Tyre and Sidon would have profited
+  better by his preaching, if they had had the good fortune to hear it,
+  than Capernaum?</p>
+
+  <p>103. But were one to admit even here this use of mediate knowledge
+  against all appearances, this knowledge still implies that God considers
+  what a man would do in such and such circumstances; and it always remains
+  true that God could have placed him in other circumstances more
+  favourable, and given him inward or outward succour capable of
+  vanquishing the most abysmal wickedness existing in any soul. I shall be
+  told that God is not bound to do so, but that is not enough; it must be
+  added that greater reasons prevent him from making all his goodness felt
+  by <!-- Page 180 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page180"></a>[180]</span> all. Thus there must needs be choice; but
+  I do not think one must seek the reason altogether in the good or bad
+  nature of men. For if with some people one assume that God, choosing the
+  plan which produces the most good, but which involves sin and damnation,
+  has been prompted by his wisdom to choose the best natures in order to
+  make them objects of his grace, this grace would not sufficiently appear
+  to be a free gift. Accordingly man will be distinguishable by a kind of
+  inborn merit, and this assumption seems remote from the principles of St.
+  Paul, and even from those of Supreme Reason.</p>
+
+  <p>104. It is true that there are reasons for God's choice, and the
+  consideration of the object, that is, the nature of man, must needs enter
+  therein; but it does not seem that this choice can be subjected to a rule
+  such as we are capable of conceiving, and such as may flatter the pride
+  of men. Some famous theologians believe that God offers more grace, and
+  in a more favourable way, to those whose resistance he foresees will be
+  less, and that he abandons the rest to their self-will. We may readily
+  suppose that this is often the case, and this expedient, among those
+  which make man distinguishable by anything favourable in his nature, is
+  the farthest removed from Pelagianism. But I would not venture,
+  notwithstanding, to make of it a universal rule. Moreover, that we may
+  not have cause to vaunt ourselves, it is necessary that we be ignorant of
+  the reasons for God's choice. Those reasons are too diverse to become
+  known to us; and it may be that God at times shows the power of his grace
+  by overcoming the most obstinate resistance, to the end that none may
+  have cause either to despair or to be puffed up. St. Paul, as it would
+  seem, had this in mind when he offered himself as an example. God, he
+  said, has had mercy upon me, to give a great example of his patience.</p>
+
+  <p>105. It may be that fundamentally all men are equally bad, and
+  consequently incapable of being distinguished the one from the other
+  through their good or less bad natural qualities; but they are not bad
+  all in the same way: for there is an inherent individual difference
+  between souls, as the Pre-established Harmony proves. Some are more or
+  less inclined towards a particular good or a particular evil, or towards
+  their opposites, all in accordance with their natural dispositions. But
+  since the general plan of the universe, chosen by God for superior
+  reasons, causes men to be in different circumstances, those who meet with
+  such as are more <!-- Page 181 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page181"></a>[181]</span> favourable to their nature will become
+  more readily the least wicked, the most virtuous, the most happy; yet it
+  will be always by aid of the influence of that inward grace which God
+  unites with the circumstances. Sometimes it even comes to pass, in the
+  progress of human life, that a more excellent nature succeeds less, for
+  lack of cultivation or opportunities. One may say that men are chosen and
+  ranged not so much according to their excellence as according to their
+  conformity with God's plan. Even so it may occur that a stone of lesser
+  quality is made use of in a building or in a group because it proves to
+  be the particular one for filling a certain gap.</p>
+
+  <p>106. But, in fine, all these attempts to find reasons, where there is
+  no need to adhere altogether to certain hypotheses, serve only to make
+  clear to us that there are a thousand ways of justifying the conduct of
+  God. All the disadvantages we see, all the obstacles we meet with, all
+  the difficulties one may raise for oneself, are no hindrance to a belief
+  founded on reason, even when it cannot stand on conclusive proof, as has
+  been shown and will later become more apparent, that there is nothing so
+  exalted as the wisdom of God, nothing so just as his judgements, nothing
+  so pure as his holiness, and nothing more vast than his goodness.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 182 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page182"></a>[182]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>ESSAYS
+ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD
+AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN
+IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>PART TWO</h3>
+
+  <p>107. Hitherto I have devoted myself to giving a full and clear
+  exposition of this whole subject: and although I have not yet spoken of
+  M. Bayle's objections in particular, I have endeavoured to anticipate
+  them, and to suggest ways of answering them. But as I have taken upon
+  myself the task of meeting them in detail, not only because there will
+  perhaps still be passages calling for elucidation, but also because his
+  arguments are usually full of wit and erudition, and serve to throw
+  greater light on this controversy, it will be well to give an account of
+  the chief objections that are dispersed through his works, and to add my
+  answers. At the beginning I observed 'that God co-operates in moral evil,
+  and in physical evil, and in each of them both morally and physically;
+  and that man co-operates therein also morally and physically in a free
+  and active way, becoming in consequence subject to blame and punishment'.
+  I have shown also that each point has its own difficulty; but the
+  greatest of these lies in maintaining that God co-operates morally in
+  moral evil, that is, in sin, without being the originator of the sin, and
+  even without being accessary thereto.</p>
+
+  <p>108. He does this by <i>permitting</i> it justly, and by
+  <i>directing</i> it wisely towards the good, as I have shown in a manner
+  that appears tolerably intelligible. But as it is here principally that
+  M. Bayle <!-- Page 183 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page183"></a>[183]</span> undertakes to discomfit those who
+  maintain that there is nothing in faith which cannot be harmonized with
+  reason, it is also here especially I must show that my dogmas are
+  fortified (to make use of his own allegory) with a rampart, even of
+  reasons, which is able to resist the fire of his strongest batteries. He
+  has ranged them against me in chapter 144 of his <i>Reply to the
+  Questions of a Provincial</i> (vol. III, p. 812), where he includes the
+  theological doctrine in seven propositions and opposes thereto nineteen
+  philosophic maxims, like so many large cannon capable of breaching my
+  rampart. Let us begin with the theological propositions.</p>
+
+  <p>109. I. 'God,' he says, 'the Being eternal and necessary, infinitely
+  good, holy, wise and powerful, possesses from all eternity a glory and a
+  bliss that can never either increase or diminish.' This proposition of M.
+  Bayle's is no less philosophical than theological. To say that God
+  possesses a 'glory' when he is alone, that depends upon the meaning of
+  the term. One may say, with some, that glory is the satisfaction one
+  finds in being aware of one's own perfections; and in this sense God
+  possesses it always. But when glory signifies that others become aware of
+  these perfections, one may say that God acquires it only when he reveals
+  himself to intelligent creatures; even though it be true that God thereby
+  gains no new good, and it is rather the rational creatures who thence
+  derive advantage, when they apprehend aright the glory of God.</p>
+
+  <p>110. II. 'He resolved freely upon the production of creatures, and he
+  chose from among an infinite number of possible beings those whom it
+  pleased him to choose, to give them existence, and to compose the
+  universe of them, while he left all the rest in nothingness.' This
+  proposition is also, just like the preceding one, in close conformity
+  with that part of philosophy which is called natural theology. One must
+  dwell a little on what is said here, that he chose the possible beings
+  'whom it pleased him to choose'. For it must be borne in mind that when I
+  say, 'that pleases me', it is as though I were saying, 'I find it good'.
+  Thus it is the ideal goodness of the object which pleases, and which
+  makes me choose it among many others which do not please or which please
+  less, that is to say, which contain less of that goodness which moves me.
+  Now it is only the genuinely good that is capable of pleasing God: and
+  consequently that which pleases God most, and which meets his choice, is
+  the best.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 184 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page184"></a>[184]</span></p>
+
+  <p>111. III. 'Human nature having been among the Beings that he willed to
+  produce, he created a man and a woman, and granted them amongst other
+  favours free will, so that they had the power to obey him; but he
+  threatened them with death if they should disobey the order that he gave
+  them to abstain from a certain fruit.' This proposition is in part
+  revealed, and should be admitted without difficulty, provided that
+  <i>free will</i> be understood properly, according to the explanation I
+  have given.</p>
+
+  <p>112. IV. 'They ate thereof nevertheless, and thenceforth they were
+  condemned, they and all their posterity, to the miseries of this life, to
+  temporal death and eternal damnation, and made subject to such a tendency
+  to sin that they abandoned themselves thereto endlessly and without
+  ceasing.' There is reason to suppose that the forbidden action by itself
+  entailed these evil results in accordance with a natural effect, and that
+  it was for that very reason, and not by a purely arbitrary decree, that
+  God had forbidden it: much as one forbids knives to children. The famous
+  Fludde or de Fluctibus, an Englishman, once wrote a book <i>De Vita,
+  Morte et Resurrectione</i> under the name of R. Otreb, wherein he
+  maintained that the fruit of the forbidden tree was a poison: but we
+  cannot enter into this detail. It suffices that God forbade a harmful
+  thing; one must not therefore suppose that God acted here simply in the
+  character of a legislator who enacts a purely positive law, or of a judge
+  who imposes and inflicts a punishment by an order of his will, without
+  any connexion between the evil of guilt and the evil of punishment. And
+  it is not necessary to suppose that God in justifiable annoyance
+  deliberately put a corruption in the soul and the body of man, by an
+  extraordinary action, in order to punish him: much as the Athenians gave
+  hemlock-juice to their criminals. M. Bayle takes the matter thus: he
+  speaks as if the original corruption had been put in the soul of the
+  first man by an order and operation of God. It is that which calls forth
+  his objection (<i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III,
+  ch. 178, p. 1218) 'that reason would not commend the monarch who, in
+  order to chastise a rebel, condemned him and his descendants to have a
+  tendency towards rebellion'. But this chastisement happens naturally to
+  the wicked, without any ordinance of a legislator, and they become
+  addicted to evil. If drunkards begot children inclined to the same vice,
+  by a natural consequence of what takes place in bodies, that would be a
+  punishment of their progenitors, <!-- Page 185 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page185"></a>[185]</span> but it would not be a
+  penalty of law. There is something comparable to this in the consequences
+  of the first man's sin. For the contemplation of divine wisdom leads us
+  to believe that the realm of nature serves that of grace; and that God as
+  an Architect has done all in a manner befitting God considered as a
+  Monarch. We do not sufficiently know the nature of the forbidden fruit,
+  or that of the action, or its effects, to judge of the details of this
+  matter: nevertheless we must do God justice so far as to believe that it
+  comprised something other than what painters depict for us.</p>
+
+  <p>113. V. 'It has pleased him by his infinite mercy to deliver a very
+  few men from this condemnation; and, leaving them exposed during this
+  life to the corruption of sin and misery, he has given them aids which
+  enable them to obtain the never-ending bliss of paradise.' Many in the
+  past have doubted, as I have already observed, whether the number of the
+  damned is so great as is generally supposed; and it appears that they
+  believed in the existence of some intermediate state between eternal
+  damnation and perfect bliss. But we have no need of these opinions, and
+  it is enough to keep to the ideas accepted in the Church. In this
+  connexion it is well to observe that this proposition of M. Bayle's is
+  conceived in accordance with the principles of sufficient grace, given to
+  all men, and sufficing them provided that they have good will. Although
+  M. Bayle holds the opposite opinion, he wished (as he states in the
+  margin) to avoid the terms that would not agree with a system of decrees
+  subsequent to the prevision of contingent events.</p>
+
+  <p>114. VI. 'He foresaw from eternity all that which should happen, he
+  ordered all things and placed them each one in its own place, and he
+  guides and controls them continually, according to his pleasure. Thus
+  nothing is done without his permission or against his will, and he can
+  prevent, as seems good to him, as much and as often as seems good to him,
+  all that does not please him, and in consequence sin, which is the thing
+  in the world that most offends him and that he most detests; and he can
+  produce in each human soul all the thoughts that he approves.' This
+  thesis is also purely philosophic, that is, recognizable by the light of
+  natural reason. It is opportune also, as one has dwelt in thesis II on
+  <i>that which pleases</i>, to dwell here upon <i>that which seems
+  good</i>, that is, upon that which God finds good to do. He can avoid or
+  put away as 'seems good to him' all 'that does not please him'.
+  Nevertheless it must be borne in mind that some objects of his aversion,
+  such as <!-- Page 186 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page186"></a>[186]</span> certain evils, and especially sin, which
+  his antecedent will repelled, could only have been rejected by his
+  consequent or decretory will, in so far as it was prompted by the rule of
+  the best, which the All-wise must choose after having taken all into
+  account. When one says 'that sin offends God most, and that he detests it
+  most', these are human ways of speaking. God cannot, properly speaking,
+  be <i>offended</i>, that is, injured, disturbed, disquieted or angered;
+  and he <i>detests</i> nothing of that which exists, in the sense that to
+  detest something is to look upon it with abomination and in a way that
+  causes us disgust, that greatly pains and distresses us; for God cannot
+  suffer either vexation, or grief or discomfort; he is always altogether
+  content and at ease. Yet these expressions in their true sense are
+  justified. The supreme goodness of God causes his antecedent will to
+  repel all evil, but moral evil more than any other: it only admits evil
+  at all for irresistible superior reasons, and with great correctives
+  which repair its ill effects to good advantage. It is true also that God
+  could produce in each human soul all the thoughts that he approves: but
+  this would be to act by miracles, more than his most perfectly conceived
+  plan admits.</p>
+
+  <p>115. VII. 'He offers grace to people that he knows are destined not to
+  accept it, and so destined by this refusal to make themselves more
+  criminal than they would be if he had not offered them that grace; he
+  assures them that it is his ardent wish that they accept it, and he does
+  not give them the grace which he knows they would accept.' It is true
+  that these people become more criminal through their refusal than if one
+  had offered them nothing, and that God knows this. Yet it is better to
+  permit their crime than to act in a way which would render God himself
+  blameworthy, and provide the criminals with some justification for the
+  complaint that it was not possible for them to do better, even though
+  they had or might have wished it. God desires that they receive such
+  grace from him as they are fit to receive, and that they accept it; and
+  he desires to give them in particular that grace whose acceptance by them
+  he foresees: but it is always by a will antecedent, detached or
+  particular, which cannot always be carried out in the general plan of
+  things. This thesis also is among the number of those which philosophy
+  establishes no less than revelation, like three others of the seven that
+  we have just stated here, the third, fourth and fifth being the only ones
+  where revelation is necessary.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 187 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page187"></a>[187]</span></p>
+
+  <p>116. Here now are the nineteen philosophic maxims which M. Bayle
+  opposes to the seven theological propositions.</p>
+
+  <p>I. 'As the infinitely perfect Being finds in himself a glory and a
+  bliss that can never either diminish or increase, his goodness alone has
+  determined him to create this universe: neither the ambition to be
+  praised, nor any interested motive of preserving or augmenting his bliss
+  and his glory, has had any part therein.' This maxim is very good:
+  praises of God do him no service, but they are of service to the men who
+  praise him, and he desired their good. Nevertheless, when one says that
+  <i>goodness</i> alone determined God to create this universe, it is well
+  to add that his <font class="sc">goodness</font> prompted him
+  <i>antecedently</i> to create and to produce all possible good; but that
+  his <font class="sc">wisdom</font> made the choice and caused him to
+  select the best <i>consequently</i>; and finally that his <font
+  class="sc">power</font> gave him the means to carry out <i>actually</i>
+  the great design which he had formed.</p>
+
+  <p>117. II. 'The goodness of the infinitely perfect Being is infinite,
+  and would not be infinite if one could conceive of a goodness greater
+  than this. This characteristic of infinity is proper also to all his
+  other perfections, to love of virtue, hatred of vice, etc., they must be
+  the greatest one can imagine. (See M. Jurieu in the first three sections
+  of the <i>Judgement on Methods</i>, where he argues constantly upon this
+  principle, as upon a primary notion. See also in Wittich, <i>De
+  Providentia Dei</i>, n. 12, these words of St. Augustine, lib. I, <i>De
+  Doctrina Christiana</i>, c. 7: "Cum cogitatur Deus, ita cogitatur, ut
+  aliquid, quo nihil melius sit atque sublimius. Et paulo post: Nec
+  quisquam inveniri potest, qui hoc Deum credat esse, quo melius aliquid
+  est.")'</p>
+
+  <p>This maxim is altogether to my liking, and I draw from it this
+  conclusion, that God does the very best possible: otherwise the exercise
+  of his goodness would be restricted, and that would be restricting his
+  <i>goodness</i> itself, if it did not prompt him to the best, if he were
+  lacking in good will. Or again it would be restricting his <i>wisdom</i>
+  and his <i>power</i>, if he lacked the knowledge necessary for discerning
+  the best and for finding the means to obtain it, or if he lacked the
+  strength necessary for employing these means. There is, however,
+  ambiguity in the assertion that love of virtue and hatred of vice are
+  infinite in God: if that were absolutely and unreservedly true, in
+  practice there would be no vice in the world. But although each one of
+  God's perfections is infinite in itself, it is exercised only in
+  proportion to the object and as the nature of things prompts it. <!--
+  Page 188 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page188"></a>[188]</span> Thus
+  love of the best in the whole carries the day over all other individual
+  inclinations or hatreds; it is the only impulse whose very exercise is
+  absolutely infinite, nothing having power to prevent God from declaring
+  himself for the best; and some vice being combined with the best possible
+  plan, God permits it.</p>
+
+  <p>118. III. 'An infinite goodness having guided the Creator in the
+  production of the world, all the characteristics of knowledge, skill,
+  power and greatness that are displayed in his work are destined for the
+  happiness of intelligent creatures. He wished to show forth his
+  perfections only to the end that creatures of this kind should find their
+  felicity in the knowledge, the admiration and the love of the Supreme
+  Being.'</p>
+
+  <p>This maxim appears to me not sufficiently exact. I grant that the
+  happiness of intelligent creatures is the principal part of God's design,
+  for they are most like him; but nevertheless I do not see how one can
+  prove that to be his sole aim. It is true that the realm of nature must
+  serve the realm of grace: but, since all is connected in God's great
+  design, we must believe that the realm of grace is also in some way
+  adapted to that of nature, so that nature preserves the utmost order and
+  beauty, to render the combination of the two the most perfect that can
+  be. And there is no reason to suppose that God, for the sake of some
+  lessening of moral evil, would reverse the whole order of nature. Each
+  perfection or imperfection in the creature has its value, but there is
+  none that has an infinite value. Thus the moral or physical good and evil
+  of rational creatures does not infinitely exceed the good and evil which
+  is simply metaphysical, namely that which lies in the perfection of the
+  other creatures; and yet one would be bound to say this if the present
+  maxim were strictly true. When God justified to the Prophet Jonah the
+  pardon that he had granted to the inhabitants of Nineveh, he even touched
+  upon the interest of the beasts who would have been involved in the ruin
+  of this great city. No substance is absolutely contemptible or absolutely
+  precious before God. And the abuse or the exaggerated extension of the
+  present maxim appears to be in part the source of the difficulties that
+  M. Bayle puts forward. It is certain that God sets greater store by a man
+  than a lion; nevertheless it can hardly be said with certainty that God
+  prefers a single man in all respects to the whole of lion-kind. Even
+  should that be so, it would by no means follow that the interest of a
+  certain number of men would prevail over the <!-- Page 189 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page189"></a>[189]</span> consideration of a
+  general disorder diffused through an infinite number of creatures. This
+  opinion would be a remnant of the old and somewhat discredited maxim,
+  that all is made solely for man.</p>
+
+  <p>119. IV. 'The benefits he imparts to the creatures that are capable of
+  felicity tend only to their happiness. He therefore does not permit that
+  these should serve to make them unhappy, and, if the wrong use that they
+  made of them were capable of destroying them, he would give them sure
+  means of always using them well. Otherwise they would not be true
+  benefits, and his goodness would be smaller than that we can conceive of
+  in another benefactor. (I mean, in a Cause that united with its gifts the
+  sure skill to make good use of them.)'</p>
+
+  <p>There already is the abuse or the ill effect of the preceding maxim.
+  It is not strictly true (though it appear plausible) that the benefits
+  God imparts to the creatures who are capable of felicity tend solely to
+  their happiness. All is connected in Nature; and if a skilled artisan, an
+  engineer, an architect, a wise politician often makes one and the same
+  thing serve several ends, if he makes a double hit with a single throw,
+  when that can be done conveniently, one may say that God, whose wisdom
+  and power are perfect, does so always. That is husbanding the ground, the
+  time, the place, the material, which make up as it were his outlay. Thus
+  God has more than one purpose in his projects. The felicity of all
+  rational creatures is one of the aims he has in view; but it is not his
+  whole aim, nor even his final aim. Therefore it happens that the
+  unhappiness of some of these creatures may come about <i>by
+  concomitance</i>, and as a result of other greater goods: this I have
+  already explained, and M. Bayle has to some extent acknowledged it. The
+  goods as such, considered in themselves, are the object of the antecedent
+  will of God. God will produce as much reason and knowledge in the
+  universe as his plan can admit. One can conceive of a mean between an
+  antecedent will altogether pure and primitive, and a consequent and final
+  will. The <i>primitive antecedent will</i> has as its object each good
+  and each evil in itself, detached from all combination, and tends to
+  advance the good and prevent the evil. The <i>mediate will</i> relates to
+  combinations, as when one attaches a good to an evil: then the will will
+  have some tendency towards this combination when the good exceeds the
+  evil therein. But the <i>final and decisive will</i> results from
+  consideration of all the goods and all the evils that enter into our
+  deliberation, it results <!-- Page 190 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page190"></a>[190]</span> from a total combination. This shows that
+  a mediate will, although it may in a sense pass as consequent in relation
+  to a pure and primitive antecedent will, must be considered antecedent in
+  relation to the final and decretory will. God gives reason to the human
+  race; misfortunes arise thence by concomitance. His pure antecedent will
+  tends towards giving reason, as a great good, and preventing the evils in
+  question. But when it is a question of the evils that accompany this gift
+  which God has made to us of reason, the compound, made up of the
+  combination of reason and of these evils, will be the object of a mediate
+  will of God, which will tend towards producing or preventing this
+  compound, according as the good or the evil prevails therein. But even
+  though it should prove that reason did more harm than good to men (which,
+  however, I do not admit), whereupon the mediate will of God would discard
+  it with all its concomitants, it might still be the case that it was more
+  in accordance with the perfection of the universe to give reason to men,
+  notwithstanding all the evil consequences which it might have with
+  reference to them. Consequently, the final will or the decree of God,
+  resulting from all the considerations he can have, would be to give it to
+  them. And, far from being subject to blame for this, he would be
+  blameworthy if he did not so. Thus the evil, or the mixture of goods and
+  evils wherein the evil prevails, happens only <i>by concomitance</i>,
+  because it is connected with greater goods that are outside this mixture.
+  This mixture, therefore, or this compound, is not to be conceived as a
+  grace or as a gift from God to us; but the good that is found mingled
+  therein will nevertheless be good. Such is God's gift of reason to those
+  who make ill use thereof. It is always a good in itself; but the
+  combination of this good with the evils that proceed from its abuse is
+  not a good with regard to those who in consequence thereof become
+  unhappy. Yet it comes to be by concomitance, because it serves a greater
+  good in relation to the universe. And it is doubtless that which prompted
+  God to give reason to those who have made it an instrument of their
+  unhappiness. Or, to put it more precisely, in accordance with my system
+  God, having found among the possible beings some rational creatures who
+  misuse their reason, gave existence to those who are included in the best
+  possible plan of the universe. Thus nothing prevents us from admitting
+  that God grants goods which turn into evil by the fault of men, this
+  often happening to men in just punishment of the misuse they had made of
+  God's <!-- Page 191 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page191"></a>[191]</span> grace. Aloysius Novarinus wrote a book
+  <i>De Occultis Dei Beneficiis</i>: one could write one <i>De Occultis Dei
+  Poenis</i>. This saying of Claudian would be in place here with regard to
+  some persons:</p>
+
+<blockquote class="b1">
+
+  <p>  <i>Tolluntur in altum,</i> <i>Ut lapsu graviore ruant</i>.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+  <p>But to say that God should not give a good which he knows an evil will
+  will abuse, when the general plan of things demands that he give it; or
+  again to say that he should give certain means for preventing it,
+  contrary to this same general order: that is to wish (as I have observed
+  already) that God himself become blameworthy in order to prevent man from
+  being so. To object, as people do here, that the goodness of God would be
+  smaller than that of another benefactor who would give a more useful
+  gift, is to overlook the fact that the goodness of a benefactor is not
+  measured by a single benefit. It may well be that a gift from a private
+  person is greater than one from a prince, but the gifts of this private
+  person all taken together will be much inferior to the prince's gifts all
+  together. Thus one can esteem fittingly the good things done by God only
+  when one considers their whole extent by relating them to the entire
+  universe. Moreover, one may say that the gifts given in the expectation
+  that they will harm are the gifts of an enemy, <span lang="el"
+  title="hechthrôn dôra adôra"
+  >&#x201B;&#x3B5;&#x3C7;&#x3B8;&#x3C1;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3B4;&#x3C9;&#x3C1;&#x3B1;
+  &#x3B1;&#x3B4;&#x3C9;&#x3C1;&#x3B1;</span>,</p>
+
+<blockquote class="b1">
+
+  <p><i>Hostibus eveniant talia dona meis.</i></p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+  <p>But that applies to when there is malice or guilt in him who gives
+  them, as there was in that Eutrapelus of whom Horace speaks, who did good
+  to people in order to give them the means of destroying themselves. His
+  design was evil, but God's design cannot be better than it is. Must God
+  spoil his system, must there be less beauty, perfection and reason in the
+  universe, because there are people who misuse reason? The common sayings
+  are in place here: <i>Abusus non tollit usum</i>; there is <i>scandalum
+  datum et scandalum acceptum</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>120. V. 'A maleficent being is very capable of heaping magnificent
+  gifts upon his enemies, when he knows that they will make thereof a use
+  that will destroy them. It therefore does not beseem the infinitely good
+  Being to give to creatures a free will, whereof, as he knows for certain,
+  they would make a use that would render them unhappy. Therefore if he
+  gives them free will he combines with it the art of using it always
+  opportunely, and permits not that <!-- Page 192 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page192"></a>[192]</span> they neglect the
+  practice of this art in any conjuncture; and if there were no sure means
+  of determining the good use of this free will, he would rather take from
+  them this faculty, than allow it to be the cause of their unhappiness.
+  That is the more manifest, as free will is a grace which he has given
+  them of his own choice and without their asking for it; so that he would
+  be more answerable for the unhappiness it would bring upon them than if
+  he had only granted it in response to their importunate prayers.'</p>
+
+  <p>What was said at the end of the remark on the preceding maxim ought to
+  be repeated here, and is sufficient to counter the present maxim.
+  Moreover, the author is still presupposing that false maxim advanced as
+  the third, stating that the happiness of rational creatures is the sole
+  aim of God. If that were so, perhaps neither sin nor unhappiness would
+  ever occur, even by concomitance. God would have chosen a sequence of
+  possibles where all these evils would be excluded. But God would fail in
+  what is due to the universe, that is, in what he owes to himself. If
+  there were only spirits they would be without the required connexion,
+  without the order of time and place. This order demands matter, movement
+  and its laws; to adjust these to spirits in the best possible way means
+  to return to our world. When one looks at things only in the mass, one
+  imagines to be practicable a thousand things that cannot properly take
+  place. To wish that God should not give free will to rational creatures
+  is to wish that there be none of these creatures; and to wish that God
+  should prevent them from misusing it is to wish that there be none but
+  these creatures alone, together with what was made for them only. If God
+  had none but these creatures in view, he would doubtless prevent them
+  from destroying themselves. One may say in a sense, however, that God has
+  given to these creatures the art of always making good use of their free
+  will, for the natural light of reason is this art. But it would be
+  necessary always to have the will to do good, and often creatures lack
+  the means of giving themselves the will they ought to have; often they
+  even lack the will to use those means which indirectly give a good will.
+  Of this I have already spoken more than once. This fault must be
+  admitted, and one must even acknowledge that God would perhaps have been
+  able to exempt creatures from that fault, since there is nothing to
+  prevent, so it seems, the existence of some whose nature it would be
+  always to have good will. But I reply that it is not necessary, and that
+  it was not feasible <!-- Page 193 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page193"></a>[193]</span> for all rational creatures to have so
+  great a perfection, and such as would bring them so close to the
+  Divinity. It may even be that that can only be made possible by a special
+  divine grace. But in this case, would it be proper for God to grant it to
+  all, that is, always to act miraculously in respect of all rational
+  creatures? Nothing would be less rational than these perpetual miracles.
+  There are degrees among creatures: the general order requires it. And it
+  appears quite consistent with the order of divine government that the
+  great privilege of strengthening in the good should be granted more
+  easily to those who had a good will when they were in a more imperfect
+  state, in the state of struggle and of pilgrimage, <i>in Ecclesia
+  militante, in statu viatorum</i>. The good angels themselves were not
+  created incapable of sin. Nevertheless I would not dare to assert that
+  there are no blessed creatures born, or such as are sinless and holy by
+  their nature. There are perhaps people who give this privilege to the
+  Blessed Virgin, since, moreover, the Roman Church to-day places her above
+  the angels. But it suffices us that the universe is very great and very
+  varied: to wish to limit it is to have little knowledge thereof. 'But',
+  M. Bayle goes on, 'God has given free will to creatures capable of
+  sinning, without their having asked him for this grace. And he who gave
+  such a gift would be more answerable for the unhappiness that it brought
+  upon those who made use of it, than if he had granted it only in response
+  to their importunate prayers.' But importunity in prayers makes no
+  difference to God; he knows better than we what we need, and he only
+  grants what serves the interest of the whole. It seems that M. Bayle here
+  makes free will consist in the faculty for sinning; yet he acknowledges
+  elsewhere that God and the Saints are free, without having this faculty.
+  However that may be, I have already shown fully that God, doing what his
+  wisdom and his goodness combined ordain, is not answerable for the evil
+  that he permits. Even men, when they do their duty, are not answerable
+  for consequences, whether they foresee them or not.</p>
+
+  <p>121. VI. 'It is as sure a means of taking a man's life to give him a
+  silk cord that one knows certainly he will make use of freely to strangle
+  himself, as to plant a few dagger thrusts in his body. One desires his
+  death not less when one makes use of the first way, than when one employs
+  the second: it even seems as though one desires it with a more malicious
+  intention, since one tends to leave to him the whole trouble and the
+  whole blame of his destruction.'</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 194 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page194"></a>[194]</span></p>
+
+  <p>Those who write treatises on Duties (De Officiis) as, for instance,
+  Cicero, St. Ambrose, Grotius, Opalenius, Sharrok, Rachelius, Pufendorf,
+  as well as the Casuists, teach that there are cases where one is not
+  obliged to return to its owner a thing deposited: for example, one will
+  not give back a dagger when one knows that he who has deposited it is
+  about to stab someone. Let us pretend that I have in my hands the fatal
+  draught that Meleager's mother will make use of to kill him; the magic
+  javelin that Cephalus will unwittingly employ to kill his Procris; the
+  horses of Theseus that will tear to pieces Hippolytus, his son: these
+  things are demanded back from me, and I am right in refusing them,
+  knowing the use that will be made of them. But how will it be if a
+  competent judge orders me to restore them, when I cannot prove to him
+  what I know of the evil consequences that restitution will have, Apollo
+  perchance having given to me, as to Cassandra, the gift of prophecy under
+  the condition that I shall not be believed? I should then be compelled to
+  make restitution, having no alternative other than my own destruction:
+  thus I cannot escape from contributing towards the evil. Another
+  comparison: Jupiter promises Semele, the Sun Phaeton, Cupid Psyche to
+  grant whatever favour the other shall ask. They swear by the Styx,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Di cujus jurare timent et fallere Numen</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>One would gladly stop, but too late, the request half heard,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i12"><i>Voluit Deus ora loquentis</i></p>
+      <p><i>Opprimere; exierat jam vox properata sub auras</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>One would gladly draw back after the request was made, making vain
+  remonstrances; but they press you, they say to you: 'Do you make oaths
+  that you will not keep?' The law of the Styx is inviolable, one must
+  needs submit to it; if one has erred in making the oath, one would err
+  more in not keeping it; the promise must be fulfilled, however harmful it
+  may be to him who exacts it. It would be ruinous to you if you did not
+  fulfil it. It seems as though the moral of these fables implies that a
+  supreme necessity may constrain one to comply with evil. God, in truth,
+  knows no other judge that can compel him to give what may turn to evil,
+  he is not like Jupiter who fears the Styx. But his own wisdom is the
+  greatest judge that he can find, there is no appeal from its judgements:
+  they are the decrees of destiny. The eternal verities, objects of <!--
+  Page 195 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page195"></a>[195]</span> his
+  wisdom, are more inviolable than the Styx. These laws and this judge do
+  not constrain: they are stronger, for they persuade. Wisdom only shows
+  God the best possible exercise of his goodness: after that, the evil that
+  occurs is an inevitable result of the best. I will add something
+  stronger: To permit the evil, as God permits it, is the greatest
+  goodness.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Si mala sustulerat, non erat ille bonus.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>One would need to have a bent towards perversity to say after this
+  that it is more malicious to leave to someone the whole trouble and the
+  whole blame of his destruction. When God does leave it to a man, it has
+  belonged to him since before his existence; it was already in the idea of
+  him as still merely possible, before the decree of God which makes him to
+  exist. Can one, then, leave it or give it to another? There is the whole
+  matter.</p>
+
+  <p>122. VII. 'A true benefactor gives promptly, and does not wait to give
+  until those he loves have suffered long miseries from the privation of
+  what he could have imparted to them at first very easily, and without
+  causing any inconvenience to himself. If the limitation of his forces
+  does not permit him to do good without inflicting pain or some other
+  inconvenience, he acquiesces in this, but only regretfully, and he never
+  employs this way of rendering service when he can render it without
+  mingling any kind of evil in his favours. If the profit one could derive
+  from the evils he inflicted could spring as easily from an unalloyed good
+  as from those evils, he would take the straight road of unalloyed good,
+  and not the indirect road that would lead from the evil to the good. If
+  he showers riches and honours, it is not to the end that those who have
+  enjoyed them, when they come to lose them, should be all the more deeply
+  afflicted in proportion to their previous experience of pleasure, and
+  that thus they should become more unhappy than the persons who have
+  always been deprived of these advantages. A malicious being would shower
+  good things at such a price upon the people for whom he had the most
+  hatred.'</p>
+
+  <p>(Compare this passage of Aristotle, <i>Rhetor.</i>, 1. 2, c. 23, p. m.
+  446: <span lang="el" title="hoion ei doiê an tis tini hina aphelomenos leipêsêi; hothen kai tout' eirêtai,"
+  >&#x201B;&#x3BF;&#x3B9;&#x3BF;&#x3BD; &#x3B5;&#x3B9;
+  &#x3B4;&#x3BF;&#x3B9;&#x3B7; &#x3B1;&#x3BD; &#x3C4;&#x3B9;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3C4;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;&#x3B9; &#x201B;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;
+  &#x3B1;&#x3C6;&#x3B5;&#x3BB;&#x3BF;&#x3BC;&#x3B5;&#x3BD;&#x3BF;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3BB;&#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3C0;&#x3B7;&#x3C3;&#x3B7;&#x3B9;&#x387;
+  &#x201B;&#x3BF;&#x3B8;&#x3B5;&#x3BD; &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3B9;
+  &#x3C4;&#x3BF;&#x3C5;&#x3C4;'
+  &#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3C1;&#x3B7;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3B9;,</span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><span lang="el" title="pollois ho daimôn ou kat' eunoian pherôn" >&#x3C0;&#x3BF;&#x3BB;&#x3BB;&#x3BF;&#x3B9;&#x3C2; &#x201B;&#x3BF; &#x3B4;&#x3B1;&#x3B9;&#x3BC;&#x3C9;&#x3BD; &#x3BF;&#x3C5; &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;' &#x3B5;&#x3C5;&#x3BD;&#x3BF;&#x3B9;&#x3B1;&#x3BD; &#x3C6;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;</span></p>
+      <p><span lang="el" title="Megala didôsin eutychêmat', all' hina" >&#x39C;&#x3B5;&#x3B3;&#x3B1;&#x3BB;&#x3B1; &#x3B4;&#x3B9;&#x3B4;&#x3C9;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3BD; &#x3B5;&#x3C5;&#x3C4;&#x3C5;&#x3C7;&#x3B7;&#x3BC;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;', &#x3B1;&#x3BB;&#x3BB;' &#x201B;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;</span></p>
+      <p><span lang="el" title="tas symphoras labôsin epiphanesteras." >&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3C2; &#x3C3;&#x3C5;&#x3BC;&#x3C6;&#x3BF;&#x3C1;&#x3B1;&#x3C2; &#x3BB;&#x3B1;&#x3B2;&#x3C9;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3BD; &#x3B5;&#x3C0;&#x3B9;&#x3C6;&#x3B1;&#x3BD;&#x3B5;&#x3C3;&#x3C4;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3B1;&#x3C2;.</span></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+<p><!-- Page 196 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page196"></a>[196]</span></p>
+
+  <p>Id est: Veluti si quis alicui aliquid det, ut (postea) hoc (ipsi)
+  erepto (ipsum) afficiat dolore. Unde etiam illud est dictum:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Bona magna multis non amicus dat Deus,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Insigniore ut rursus his privet malo.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>All these objections depend almost on the same sophism; they change
+  and mutilate the fact, they only half record things: God has care for
+  men, he loves the human race, he wishes it well, nothing so true. Yet he
+  allows men to fall, he often allows them to perish, he gives them goods
+  that tend towards their destruction; and when he makes someone happy, it
+  is after many sufferings: where is his affection, where is his goodness
+  or again where is his power? Vain objections, which suppress the main
+  point, which ignore the fact that it is of God one speaks. It is as
+  though one were speaking of a mother, a guardian, a tutor, whose
+  well-nigh only care is concerned with the upbringing, the preservation,
+  the happiness of the person in question, and who neglect their duty. God
+  takes care of the universe, he neglects nothing, he chooses what is best
+  on the whole. If in spite of all that someone is wicked and unhappy, it
+  behoved him to be so. God (so they say) could have given happiness to
+  all, he could have given it promptly and easily, and without causing
+  himself any inconvenience, for he can do all. But should he? Since he
+  does not so, it is a sign that he had to act altogether differently. If
+  we infer from this either that God only regretfully, and owing to lack of
+  power, fails to make men happy and to give the good first of all and
+  without admixture of evil, or else that he lacks the good will to give it
+  unreservedly and for good and all, then we are comparing our true God
+  with the God of Herodotus, full of envy, or with the demon of the poet
+  whose iambics Aristotle quotes, and I have just translated into Latin,
+  who gives good things in order that he may cause more affliction by
+  taking them away. That would be trifling with God in perpetual
+  anthropomorphisms, representing him as a man who must give himself up
+  completely to one particular business, whose goodness must be chiefly
+  exercised upon those objects alone which are known to us, and who lacks
+  either aptitude or good will. God is not lacking therein, he could do the
+  good that we would desire; he even wishes it, taking it separately, but
+  he must not do it in preference to other greater goods which are opposed
+  to it. Moreover, one has no cause to complain of the fact that usually
+  one <!-- Page 197 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page197"></a>[197]</span> attains salvation only through many
+  sufferings, and by bearing the cross of Jesus Christ. These evils serve
+  to make the elect imitators of their master, and to increase their
+  happiness.</p>
+
+  <p>123. VIII. 'The greatest and the most substantial glory that he who is
+  the master of others can gain is to maintain amongst them virtue, order,
+  peace, contentment of mind. The glory that he would derive from their
+  unhappiness can be nothing but a false glory.'</p>
+
+  <p>If we knew the city of God just as it is, we should see that it is the
+  most perfect state which can be devised; that virtue and happiness reign
+  there, as far as is possible, in accordance with the laws of the best;
+  that sin and unhappiness (whose entire exclusion from the nature of
+  things reasons of the supreme order did not permit), are well-nigh
+  nothing there in comparison with the good, and even are of service for
+  greater good. Now since these evils were to exist, there must needs be
+  some appointed to be subject to them, and we are those people. If it were
+  others, would there not be the same appearance of evil? Or rather, would
+  not these others be those known as We? When God derives some glory from
+  the evil through having made it serve a greater good, it was proper that
+  he should derive that glory. It is not therefore a false glory, as would
+  be that of a prince who overthrew his state in order to have the honour
+  of setting it up again.</p>
+
+  <p>124. IX. 'The way whereby that master can give proof of greatest love
+  for virtue is to cause it, if he can, to be always practised without any
+  mixture of vice. If it is easy for him to procure for his subjects this
+  advantage, and nevertheless he permits vice to raise its head, save that
+  he punishes it finally after having long tolerated it, his affection for
+  virtue is not the greatest one can conceive; it is therefore not
+  infinite.'</p>
+
+  <p>I am not yet half way through the nineteen maxims, and already I am
+  weary of refuting, and making the same answer always. M. Bayle multiplies
+  unnecessarily his so-called maxims in opposition to my dogmas. If things
+  connected together may be separated, the parts from their whole, the
+  human kind from the universe, God's attributes the one from the other,
+  power from wisdom, it may be said that God <i>can cause</i> virtue to be
+  in the world without any mixture of vice, and even that he can do so
+  <i>easily</i>. But, since he has permitted vice, it must be that that
+  order of the universe which was found preferable to every other plan
+  required it. One must believe that it is not permitted to do otherwise,
+  since <!-- Page 198 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page198"></a>[198]</span> it is not possible to do better. It is a
+  hypothetical necessity, a moral necessity, which, far from being contrary
+  to freedom, is the effect of its choice. <i>Quae rationi contraria sunt,
+  ea nec fieri a Sapiente posse credendum est</i>. The objection is made
+  here, that God's affection for virtue is therefore not the greatest which
+  can be conceived, that it is not <i>infinite</i>. To that an answer has
+  already been given on the second maxim, in the assertion that God's
+  affection for any created thing whatsoever is proportionate to the value
+  of the thing. Virtue is the noblest quality of created things, but it is
+  not the only good quality of creatures. There are innumerable others
+  which attract the inclination of God: from all these inclinations there
+  results the most possible good, and it turns out that if there were only
+  virtue, if there were only rational creatures, there would be less good.
+  Midas proved to be less rich when he had only gold. And besides, wisdom
+  must vary. To multiply one and the same thing only would be superfluity,
+  and poverty too. To have a thousand well-bound Vergils in one's library,
+  always to sing the airs from the opera of Cadmus and Hermione, to break
+  all the china in order only to have cups of gold, to have only diamond
+  buttons, to eat nothing but partridges, to drink only Hungarian or Shiraz
+  wine&mdash;would one call that reason? Nature had need of animals,
+  plants, inanimate bodies; there are in these creatures, devoid of reason,
+  marvels which serve for exercise of the reason. What would an intelligent
+  creature do if there were no unintelligent things? What would it think
+  of, if there were neither movement, nor matter, nor sense? If it had only
+  distinct thoughts it would be a God, its wisdom would be without bounds:
+  that is one of the results of my meditations. As soon as there is a
+  mixture of confused thoughts, there is sense, there is matter. For these
+  confused thoughts come from the relation of all things one to the other
+  by way of duration and extent. Thus it is that in my philosophy there is
+  no rational creature without some organic body, and there is no created
+  spirit entirely detached from matter. But these organic bodies vary no
+  less in perfection than the spirits to which they belong. Therefore,
+  since God's wisdom must have a world of bodies, a world of substances
+  capable of perception and incapable of reason; since, in short, it was
+  necessary to choose from all the things possible what produced the best
+  effect together, and since vice entered in by this door, God would not
+  have been altogether good, altogether wise if he had excluded it.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 199 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page199"></a>[199]</span></p>
+
+  <p>125. X. 'The way to evince the greatest hatred for vice is not indeed
+  to allow it to prevail for a long time and then chastise it, but to crush
+  it before its birth, that is, prevent it from showing itself anywhere. A
+  king, for example, who put his finances in such good order that no
+  malversation was ever committed, would thus display more hatred for the
+  wrong done by factionaries than if, after having suffered them to batten
+  on the blood of the people, he had them hanged.'</p>
+
+  <p>It is always the same song, it is anthropomorphism pure and simple. A
+  king should generally have nothing so much at heart as to keep his
+  subjects free from oppression. One of his greatest interests is to bring
+  good order into his finances. Nevertheless there are times when he is
+  obliged to tolerate vice and disorders. He has a great war on his hands,
+  he is in a state of exhaustion, he has no choice of generals, it is
+  necessary to humour those he has, those possessed of great authority with
+  the soldiers: a Braccio, a Sforza, a Wallenstein. He lacks money for the
+  most pressing needs, it is necessary to turn to great financiers, who
+  have an established credit, and he must at the same time connive at their
+  malversations. It is true that this unfortunate necessity arises most
+  often from previous errors. It is not the same with God: he has need of
+  no man, he commits no error, he always does the best. One cannot even
+  wish that things may go better, when one understands them: and it would
+  be a vice in the Author of things if he wished to change anything
+  whatsoever in them, if he wished to exclude the vice that was found
+  there. Is this State with perfect government, where good is willed and
+  performed as far as it is possible, where evil even serves the greatest
+  good, comparable with the State of a prince whose affairs are in ruin and
+  who escapes as best he can? Or with that of a prince who encourages
+  oppression in order to punish it, and who delights to see the little men
+  with begging bowls and the great on scaffolds?</p>
+
+  <p>126. XI. 'A ruler devoted to the interests of virtue, and to the good
+  of his subjects, takes the utmost care to ensure that they never disobey
+  his laws; and if he must needs chastise them for their disobedience, he
+  sees to it that the penalty cures them of the inclination to evil, and
+  restores in their soul a strong and constant tendency towards good: so
+  far is he from any desire that the penalty for the error should incline
+  them more and more towards evil.'</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 200 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page200"></a>[200]</span></p>
+
+  <p>To make men better, God does all that is due, and even all that can be
+  done on his side without detriment to what is due. The most usual aim of
+  punishment is amendment; but it is not the sole aim, nor that which God
+  always intends. I have said a word on that above. Original sin, which
+  disposes men towards evil, is not merely a penalty for the first sin; it
+  is a natural consequence thereof. On that too a word has been said, in
+  the course of an observation on the fourth theological proposition. It is
+  like drunkenness, which is a penalty for excess in drinking and is at the
+  same time a natural consequence that easily leads to new sins.</p>
+
+  <p>127. XII. 'To permit the evil that one could prevent is not to care
+  whether it be committed or not, or is even to wish that it be
+  committed.'</p>
+
+  <p>By no means. How many times do men permit evils which they could
+  prevent if they turned all their efforts in that direction? But other
+  more important cares prevent them from doing so. One will rarely resolve
+  upon adjusting irregularities in the coinage while one is involved in a
+  great war. And the action of an English Parliament in this direction a
+  little before the Peace of Ryswyck will be rather praised than imitated.
+  Can one conclude from this that the State has no anxiety about this
+  irregularity, or even that it desires it? God has a far stronger reason,
+  and one far more worthy of him, for tolerating evils. Not only does he
+  derive from them greater goods, but he finds them connected with the
+  greatest goods of all those that are possible: so that it would be a
+  fault not to permit them.</p>
+
+  <p>128. XIII. 'It is a very great fault in those who govern, if they do
+  not care whether there be disorder in their States or not. The fault is
+  still greater if they wish and even desire disorder there. If by hidden
+  and indirect, but infallible, ways they stirred up a sedition in their
+  States to bring them to the brink of ruin, in order to gain for
+  themselves the glory of showing that they have the courage and the
+  prudence necessary for saving a great kingdom on the point of perishing,
+  they would be most deserving of condemnation. But if they stirred up this
+  sedition because there were no other means than that, of averting the
+  total ruin of their subjects and of strengthening on new foundations, and
+  for several centuries, the happiness of nations, one must needs lament
+  the unfortunate necessity (see above, pp. <a href="#page146">146</a>, <a
+  href="#page147">147</a>, what has been said of the <!-- Page 201 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page201"></a>[201]</span> force of necessity) to
+  which they were reduced, and praise them for the use that they made
+  thereof.'</p>
+
+  <p>This maxim, with divers others set forth here, is not applicable to
+  the government of God. Not to mention the fact that it is only the
+  disorders of a very small part of his kingdom which are brought up in
+  objection, it is untrue that he has no anxiety about evils, that he
+  desires them, that he brings them into being, to have the glory of
+  allaying them. God wills order and good; but it happens sometimes that
+  what is disorder in the part is order in the whole. I have already stated
+  this legal axiom: <i>Incivile est nisi tota lege inspecta judicare</i>.
+  The permission of evils comes from a kind of moral necessity: God is
+  constrained to this by his wisdom and by his goodness; <i>this necessity
+  is happy</i>, whereas that of the prince spoken of in the maxim is
+  <i>unhappy</i>. His State is one of the most corrupt; and the government
+  of God is the best State possible.</p>
+
+  <p>129. XIV. 'The permission of a certain evil is only excusable when one
+  cannot remedy it without introducing a greater evil; but it cannot be
+  excusable in those who have in hand a remedy more efficacious against
+  this evil, and against all the other evils that could spring from the
+  suppression of this one.'</p>
+
+  <p>The maxim is true, but it cannot be brought forward against the
+  government of God. Supreme reason constrains him to permit the evil. If
+  God chose what would not be the best absolutely and in all, that would be
+  a greater evil than all the individual evils which he could prevent by
+  this means. This wrong choice would destroy his wisdom and his
+  goodness.</p>
+
+  <p>130. XV. 'The Being infinitely powerful, Creator of matter and of
+  spirits, makes whatever he wills of this matter and these spirits. There
+  is no situation or shape that he cannot communicate to spirits. If he
+  then permitted a physical or a moral evil, this would not be for the
+  reason that otherwise some other still greater physical or moral evil
+  would be altogether inevitable. None of those reasons for the mixture of
+  good and evil which are founded on the limitation of the forces of
+  benefactors can apply to him.'</p>
+
+  <p>It is true that God makes of matter and of spirits whatever he wills;
+  but he is like a good sculptor, who will make from his block of marble
+  only that which he judges to be the best, and who judges well. God makes
+  of matter the most excellent of all possible machines; he makes of
+  spirits the most excellent of all governments conceivable; and over and
+  above all that, he establishes for <!-- Page 202 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page202"></a>[202]</span> their union the most
+  perfect of all harmonies, according to the system I have proposed. Now
+  since physical evil and moral evil occur in this perfect work, one must
+  conclude (contrary to M. Bayle's assurance here) that <i>otherwise a
+  still greater evil would have been altogether inevitable</i>. This great
+  evil would be that God would have chosen ill if he had chosen otherwise
+  than he has chosen. It is true that God is infinitely powerful; but his
+  power is indeterminate, goodness and wisdom combined determine him to
+  produce the best. M. Bayle makes elsewhere an objection which is peculiar
+  to him, which he derives from the opinions of the modern Cartesians. They
+  say that God could have given to souls what thoughts he would, without
+  making them depend upon any relation to the body: by this means souls
+  would be spared a great number of evils which only spring from
+  derangement of the body. More will be said of this later; now it is
+  sufficient to bear in mind that God cannot establish a system
+  ill-connected and full of dissonances. It is to some extent the nature of
+  souls to represent bodies.</p>
+
+  <p>131. XVI. 'One is just as much the cause of an event when one brings
+  it about in moral ways, as when one brings it about in physical ways. A
+  Minister of State, who, without going out of his study, and simply by
+  utilizing the passions of the leaders of a faction, overthrew all their
+  plots, would thus be bringing about the ruin of this faction, no less
+  than if he destroyed it by a surprise attack.'</p>
+
+  <p>I have nothing to say against this maxim. Evil is always attributed to
+  moral causes, and not always to physical causes. Here I observe simply
+  that if I could not prevent the sin of others except by committing a sin
+  myself, I should be justified in permitting it, and I should not be
+  accessary thereto, or its moral cause. In God, every fault would
+  represent a sin; it would be even more than sin, for it would destroy
+  Divinity. And it would be a great fault in him not to choose the best. I
+  have said so many times. He would then prevent sin by something worse
+  than all sins.</p>
+
+  <p>132. XVII. 'It is all the same whether one employ a necessary cause,
+  or employ a free cause while choosing the moments when one knows it to be
+  determined. If I imagine that gunpowder has the power to ignite or not to
+  ignite when fire touches it, and if I know for certain that it will be
+  disposed to ignite at eight o'clock in the morning, I shall be just as
+  much the cause of its effects if I apply the fire to it at that hour, as
+  I should be in assuming, as is <!-- Page 203 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page203"></a>[203]</span> the case, that it is a necessary cause.
+  For where I am concerned it would no longer be a free cause. I should be
+  catching it at the moment when I knew it to be necessitated by its own
+  choice. It is impossible for a being to be free or indifferent with
+  regard to that to which it is already determined, and at the time when it
+  is determined thereto. All that which exists exists of necessity while it
+  exists. <span lang="el" title="To einai to on hotan êi, kai to mê einai hotan mê êi, anankê."
+  >&#x3A4;&#x3BF; &#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;&#x3B9; &#x3C4;&#x3BF;
+  &#x3BF;&#x3BD; &#x201B;&#x3BF;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3BD; &#x3B7;&#x3B9;,
+  &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3B9; &#x3C4;&#x3BF; &#x3BC;&#x3B7;
+  &#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;&#x3B9; &#x201B;&#x3BF;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3BC;&#x3B7; &#x3B7;&#x3B9;,
+  &#x3B1;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;&#x3B3;&#x3BA;&#x3B7;.</span> "Necesse est id quod
+  est, quando est, esse; et id quod non est, quando non est, non esse":
+  Arist., <i>De Interpret.</i>, cap. 9. The Nominalists have adopted this
+  maxim of Aristotle. Scotus and sundry other Schoolmen appear to reject
+  it, but fundamentally their distinctions come to the same thing. See the
+  Jesuits of Coimbra on this passage from Aristotle, p. 380 <i>et
+  seq.</i>)'</p>
+
+  <p>This maxim may pass also; I would wish only to change something in the
+  phraseology. I would not take 'free' and 'indifferent' for one and the
+  same thing, and would not place 'free' and 'determined' in antithesis.
+  One is never altogether indifferent with an indifference of equipoise;
+  one is always more inclined and consequently more determined on one side
+  than on another: but one is never necessitated to the choice that one
+  makes. I mean here a <i>necessity</i> absolute and metaphysical; for it
+  must be admitted that God, that wisdom, is prompted to the best by a
+  <i>moral</i> necessity. It must be admitted also that one is necessitated
+  to the choice by a hypothetical necessity, when one actually makes the
+  choice; and even before one is necessitated thereto by the very truth of
+  the futurition, since one will do it. These hypothetical necessities do
+  no harm. I have spoken sufficiently on this point already.</p>
+
+  <p>133. XVIII. 'When a whole great people has become guilty of rebellion,
+  it is not showing clemency to pardon the hundred thousandth part, and to
+  kill all the rest, not excepting even babes and sucklings.'</p>
+
+  <p>It seems to be assumed here that there are a hundred thousand times
+  more damned than saved, and that children dying unbaptized are included
+  among the former. Both these points are disputed, and especially the
+  damnation of these children. I have spoken of this above. M. Bayle urges
+  the same objection elsewhere (<i>Reply to the Questions of a
+  Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 178, p. 1223): 'We see clearly', he says,
+  'that the Sovereign who wishes to exercise both justice and clemency when
+  a city has revolted must be content with the punishment of a small number
+  of <!-- Page 204 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page204"></a>[204]</span> mutineers, and pardon all the rest. For
+  if the number of those who are chastised is as a thousand to one, in
+  comparison with those whom he freely pardons, he cannot be accounted
+  mild, but, on the contrary, cruel. He would assuredly be accounted an
+  abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration, and if he
+  eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would prefer
+  death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to take revenge
+  were more responsible for his severities than the desire to turn to the
+  service of the common weal the penalty that he would inflict on almost
+  all the rebels. Criminals who are executed are considered to expiate
+  their crimes so completely by the loss of their life, that the public
+  requires nothing more, and is indignant when executioners are clumsy.
+  These would be stoned if they were known deliberately to give repeated
+  strokes of the axe; and the judges who are present at the execution would
+  not be immune from danger if they were thought to take pleasure in this
+  evil sport of the executioners, and to have surreptitiously urged them to
+  practise it.' (Note that this is not to be understood as strictly
+  universal. There are cases where the people approve of the slow killing
+  of certain criminals, as when Francis I thus put to death some persons
+  accused of heresy after the notorious Placards of 1534. No pity was shown
+  to Ravaillac, who was tortured in divers horrible ways. See the <i>French
+  Mercury</i>, vol. I, fol. m., 455 <i>et seq.</i> See also Pierre Matthieu
+  in his <i>History of the Death of Henry IV</i>; and do not forget what he
+  says on page m. 99 concerning the discussion by the judges with regard to
+  the torture of this parricide.) 'Finally it is an exceptionally notorious
+  fact that Rulers who should be guided by St. Paul, I mean who should
+  condemn to the extreme penalty all those whom he condemns to eternal
+  death, would be accounted enemies of the human kind and destroyers of
+  their communities. It is incontestable that their laws, far from being
+  fitted, in accordance with the aim of legislators, to uphold society,
+  would be its complete ruin. (Apply here these words of Pliny the Younger,
+  <i>Epist.</i>, 22, lib. 8: Mandemus memoriae quod vir mitissimus, et ob
+  hoc quoque maximus, Thrasea crebro dicere solebat, Qui vitia odit,
+  homines odit.)' He adds that it was said of the laws of Draco, an
+  Athenian lawgiver, that they had not been written with ink, but with
+  blood, because they punished all sins with the extreme penalty, and
+  because damnation is a penalty even worse than death. But it must be
+  borne in mind that <!-- Page 205 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page205"></a>[205]</span> damnation is a consequence of sin. Thus I
+  once answered a friend, who raised as an objection the disproportion
+  existing between an eternal punishment and a limited crime, that there is
+  no injustice when the continuation of the punishment is only a result of
+  the continuation of the sin. I will speak further on this point later. As
+  for the number of the damned, even though it should be incomparably
+  greater among men than the number of the saved, that would not preclude
+  the possibility that in the universe the happy creatures infinitely
+  outnumber those who are unhappy. Such examples as that of a prince who
+  punishes only the leaders of rebels or of a general who has a regiment
+  decimated, are of no importance here. Self-interest compels the prince
+  and the general to pardon the guilty, even though they should remain
+  wicked. God only pardons those who become better: he can distinguish
+  them; and this severity is more consistent with perfect justice. But if
+  anyone asks why God gives not to all the grace of conversion, the
+  question is of a different nature, having no relation to the present
+  maxim. I have already answered it in a sense, not in order to find God's
+  reasons, but to show that he cannot lack such, and that there are no
+  opposing reasons of any validity. Moreover, we know that sometimes whole
+  cities are destroyed and the inhabitants put to the sword, to inspire
+  terror in the rest. That may serve to shorten a great war or a rebellion,
+  and would mean a saving of blood through the shedding of it: there is no
+  decimation there. We cannot assert, indeed, that the wicked of our globe
+  are punished so severely in order to intimidate the inhabitants of the
+  other globes and to make them better. Yet an abundance of reasons in the
+  universal harmony which are unknown to us, because we know not
+  sufficiently the extent of the city of God, nor the form of the general
+  republic of spirits, nor even the whole architecture of bodies, may
+  produce the same effect.</p>
+
+  <p>134. XIX. 'Those physicians who chose, among many remedies capable of
+  curing a sick man, whereof divers were such as they well knew he would
+  take with enjoyment, precisely that one which they knew he would refuse
+  to take, would vainly urge and pray him not to refuse it; we should still
+  have just cause for thinking that they had no desire to cure him: for if
+  they wished to do so, they would choose for him among those good
+  medicines one which they knew he would willingly swallow. If, moreover,
+  they knew that rejection of the remedy they offered him would augment his
+  <!-- Page 206 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page206"></a>[206]</span>
+  sickness to the point of making it fatal, one could not help saying that,
+  despite all their exhortations, they must certainly be desirous of the
+  sick man's death.'</p>
+
+  <p>God wishes to save all men: that means that he would save them if men
+  themselves did not prevent it, and did not refuse to receive his grace;
+  and he is not bound or prompted by reason always to overcome their evil
+  will. He does so sometimes nevertheless, when superior reasons allow of
+  it, and when his consequent and decretory will, which results from all
+  his reasons, makes him resolve upon the election of a certain number of
+  men. He gives aids to all for their conversion and for perseverance, and
+  these aids suffice in those who have good will, but they do not always
+  suffice to give good will. Men obtain this good will either through
+  particular aids or through circumstances which cause the success of the
+  general aids. God cannot refrain from offering other remedies which he
+  knows men will reject, bringing upon themselves all the greater guilt:
+  but shall one wish that God be unjust in order that man may be less
+  criminal? Moreover, the grace that does not serve the one may serve the
+  other, and indeed always serves the totality of God's plan, which is the
+  best possible in conception. Shall God not give the rain, because there
+  are low-lying places which will be thereby incommoded? Shall the sun not
+  shine as much as it should for the world in general, because there are
+  places which will be too much dried up in consequence? In short, all
+  these comparisons, spoken of in these maxims that M. Bayle has just
+  given, of a physician, a benefactor, a minister of State, a prince, are
+  exceedingly lame, because it is well known what their duties are and what
+  can and ought to be the object of their cares: they have scarce more than
+  the one affair, and they often fail therein through negligence or malice.
+  God's object has in it something infinite, his cares embrace the
+  universe: what we know thereof is almost nothing, and we desire to gauge
+  his wisdom and his goodness by our knowledge. What temerity, or rather
+  what absurdity! The objections are on false assumptions; it is senseless
+  to pass judgement on the point of law when one does not know the matter
+  of fact. To say with St. Paul, <i>O altitudo divitiarum et
+  sapientiae,</i> is not renouncing reason, it is rather employing the
+  reasons that we know, for they teach us that immensity of God whereof the
+  Apostle speaks. But therein we confess our ignorance of the facts, and we
+  acknowledge, moreover, before we see it, that <!-- Page 207 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page207"></a>[207]</span> God does all the best
+  possible, in accordance with the infinite wisdom which guides his
+  actions. It is true that we have already before our eyes proofs and tests
+  of this, when we see something entire, some whole complete in itself, and
+  isolated, so to speak, among the works of God. Such a whole, shaped as it
+  were by the hand of God, is a plant, an animal, a man. We cannot wonder
+  enough at the beauty and the contrivance of its structure. But when we
+  see some broken bone, some piece of animal's flesh, some sprig of a
+  plant, there appears to be nothing but confusion, unless an excellent
+  anatomist observe it: and even he would recognize nothing therein if he
+  had not before seen like pieces attached to their whole. It is the same
+  with the government of God: that which we have been able to see hitherto
+  is not a large enough piece for recognition of the beauty and the order
+  of the whole. Thus the very nature of things implies that this order in
+  the Divine City, which we see not yet here on earth, should be an object
+  of our faith, of our hope, of our confidence in God. If there are any who
+  think otherwise, so much the worse for them, they are malcontents in the
+  State of the greatest and the best of all monarchs; and they are wrong
+  not to take advantage of the examples he has given them of his wisdom and
+  his infinite goodness, whereby he reveals himself as being not only
+  wonderful, but also worthy of love beyond all things.</p>
+
+  <p>135. I hope it will be found that nothing of what is comprised in the
+  nineteen maxims of M. Bayle, which we have just considered, has been left
+  without a necessary answer. It is likely that, having often before
+  meditated on this subject, he will have put there all his strongest
+  convictions touching the moral cause of moral evil. There are, however,
+  still sundry passages here and there in his works which it will be well
+  not to pass over in silence. Very often he exaggerates the difficulty
+  which he assumes with regard to freeing God from the imputation of sin.
+  He observes <i>(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>, ch. 161, p.
+  1024) that Molina, if he reconciled free will with foreknowledge, did not
+  reconcile the goodness and the holiness of God with sin. He praises the
+  sincerity of those who bluntly declare (as he claims Piscator did) that
+  everything is to be traced back to the will of God, and who maintain that
+  God could not but be just, even though he were the author of sin, even
+  though he condemned innocence. And on the other side, or in other
+  passages, he seems to show more approval <!-- Page 208 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page208"></a>[208]</span> of the opinions of
+  those who preserve God's goodness at the expense of his greatness, as
+  Plutarch does in his book against the Stoics. 'It was more reasonable',
+  he says, 'to say' (with the Epicureans) 'that innumerable parts' (or
+  atoms flying about at haphazard through an infinite space) 'by their
+  force prevailed over the weakness of Jupiter and, in spite of him and
+  against his nature and will, did many bad and irrational things, than to
+  agree that there is neither confusion nor wickedness but he is the author
+  thereof.' What may be said for both these parties, Stoics and Epicureans,
+  appears to have led M. Bayle to the <span lang="el" title="epechein"
+  >&#x3B5;&#x3C0;&#x3B5;&#x3C7;&#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;</span> of the
+  Pyrrhonians, the suspension of his judgement in respect of reason, so
+  long as faith is set apart; and to that he professes sincere
+  submission.</p>
+
+  <p>136. Pursuing his arguments, however, he has gone as far as attempting
+  almost to revive and reinforce those of the disciples of Manes, a Persian
+  heretic of the third century after Christ, or of a certain Paul, chief of
+  the Manichaeans in Armenia in the seventh century, from whom they were
+  named Paulicians. All these heretics renewed what an ancient philosopher
+  of Upper Asia, known under the name of Zoroaster, had taught, so it is
+  said, of two intelligent principles of all things, the one good, the
+  other bad, a dogma that had perhaps come from the Indians. Among them
+  numbers of people still cling to their error, one that is exceedingly
+  prone to overtake human ignorance and superstition, since very many
+  barbarous peoples, even in America, have been deluded by it, without
+  having had need of philosophy. The Slavs (according to Helmold) had their
+  Zernebog or black God. The Greeks and Romans, wise as they seem to be,
+  had a Vejovis or Anti-Jupiter, otherwise called Pluto, and numerous other
+  maleficent divinities. The Goddess Nemesis took pleasure in abasing those
+  who were too fortunate; and Herodotus in some passages hints at his
+  belief that all Divinity is envious; which, however, is not in harmony
+  with the doctrine of the two principles.</p>
+
+  <p>137. Plutarch, in his treatise <i>On Isis and Osiris</i>, knows of no
+  writer more ancient than Zoroaster the magician, as he calls him, that is
+  likely to have taught the two principles. Trogus or Justin makes him a
+  King of the Bactrians, who was conquered by Ninus or Semiramis; he
+  attributes to him the knowledge of astronomy and the invention of magic.
+  But this magic was apparently the religion of the fire-worshippers: and
+  it appears that he looked upon <!-- Page 209 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page209"></a>[209]</span> light and heat as the good principle,
+  while he added the evil, that is to say, opacity, darkness, cold. Pliny
+  cites the testimony of a certain Hermippus, an interpreter of Zoroaster's
+  books, according to whom Zoroaster was a disciple in the art of magic to
+  one named Azonacus; unless indeed this be a corruption of Oromases, of
+  whom I shall speak presently, and whom Plato in the <i>Alcibiades</i>
+  names as the father of Zoroaster. Modern Orientals give the name Zerdust
+  to him whom the Greeks named Zoroaster; he is regarded as corresponding
+  to Mercury, because with some nations Wednesday <i>(mercredi)</i> takes
+  its name from him. It is difficult to disentangle the story of Zoroaster
+  and know exactly when he lived. Suidas puts him five hundred years before
+  the taking of Troy. Some Ancients cited by Pliny and Plutarch took it to
+  be ten times as far back. But Xanthus the Lydian (in the preface to
+  Diogenes Laertius) put him only six hundred years before the expedition
+  of Xerxes. Plato declares in the same passage, as M. Bayle observes, that
+  the magic of Zoroaster was nothing but the study of religion. Mr. Hyde in
+  his book on the religion of the ancient Persians tries to justify this
+  magic, and to clear it not only of the crime of impiety but also of
+  idolatry. Fire-worship prevailed among the Persians and the Chaldaeans
+  also; it is thought that Abraham left it when he departed from Ur of the
+  Chaldees. Mithras was the sun and he was also the God of the Persians;
+  and according to Ovid's account horses were offered in sacrifice to
+  him,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Placat equo Persis radiis Hyperiona cinctum,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Ne detur celeri victima tarda Deo.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>But Mr. Hyde believes that they only made use of the sun and fire in
+  their worship as symbols of the Divinity. It may be necessary to
+  distinguish, as elsewhere, between the Wise and the Multitude. There are
+  in the splendid ruins of Persepolis or of Tschelminaar (which means forty
+  columns) sculptured representations of their ceremonies. An ambassador of
+  Holland had had them sketched at very great cost by a painter, who had
+  devoted a considerable time to the task: but by some chance or other
+  these sketches fell into the hands of a well-known traveller, M. Chardin,
+  according to what he tells us himself. It would be a pity if they were
+  lost. These ruins are one of the most ancient and most beautiful
+  monuments of the earth; and in this respect I wonder at such lack of
+  curiosity in a century so curious as ours.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 210 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page210"></a>[210]</span></p>
+
+  <p>138. The ancient Greeks and the modern Orientals agree in saying that
+  Zoroaster called the good God Oromazes, or rather Oromasdes, and the evil
+  God Arimanius. When I pondered on the fact that great princes of Upper
+  Asia had the name of Hormisdas and that Irminius or Herminius was the
+  name of a god or ancient hero of the Scythian Celts, that is, of the
+  Germani, it occurred to me that this Arimanius or Irminius might have
+  been a great conqueror of very ancient time coming from the west, just as
+  Genghis Khan and Tamburlaine were later, coming from the east. Arimanius
+  would therefore have come from the north-west, that is, from Germania and
+  Sarmatia, through the territory of the Alani and Massagetae, to raid the
+  dominions of one Ormisdas, a great king in Upper Asia, just as other
+  Scythians did in the days of Cyaxares, King of the Medes, according to
+  the account given by Herodotus. The monarch governing civilized peoples,
+  and working to defend them against the barbarians, would have gone down
+  to posterity, amongst the same peoples, as the good god; but the chief of
+  these devastators will have become the symbol of the evil principle: that
+  is altogether reasonable. It appears from this same mythology that these
+  two princes contended for long, but that neither of them was victorious.
+  Thus they both held their own, just as the two principles shared the
+  empire of the world according to the hypothesis attributed to
+  Zoroaster.</p>
+
+  <p>139. It remains to be proved that an ancient god or hero of the
+  Germani was called Herman, Arimanius or Irminius. Tacitus relates that
+  the three tribes which composed Germania, the Ingaevones, the Istaevones
+  and the Herminones or Hermiones, were thus named from the three sons of
+  Mannus. Whether that be true or not, he wished in any case to indicate
+  that there was a hero named Herminius, from whom he was told the
+  Herminones were named. Herminones, Hermenner, Hermunduri all mean the
+  same, that is, Soldiers. Even in the Dark Ages Arimanni were <i>viri
+  militares,</i> and there is <i>feudum Arimandiae</i> in Lombard law.</p>
+
+  <p>140. I have shown elsewhere that apparently the name of one part of
+  Germania was given to the whole, and that from these Herminones or
+  Hermunduri all the Teutonic peoples were named <i>Hermanni</i> or
+  <i>Germani</i>. The difference between these two words is only in the
+  force of the aspiration: there is the same difference of initial letter
+  between the <i>Germani</i> of the Latins and <i>Hermanos</i> of the
+  Spaniards, or in the <i>Gammarus</i> of the Latins and the <i>Hummer</i>
+  (that is, <!-- Page 211 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page211"></a>[211]</span> marine crayfish) of the Low Germans.
+  Besides it is very usual for one part of a nation to give the name to the
+  whole: so all the Germani were called Alemanni by the French, and yet
+  this, according to the old nomenclature, only applied to the Suabians and
+  the Swiss. Although Tacitus did not actually know the origin of the name
+  of the Germani, he said something which supports my opinion, when he
+  observed that it was a name which inspired terror, taken or given <i>ob
+  metum</i>. In fact it signifies a warrior: <i>Heer</i>, <i>Hari</i> is
+  army, whence comes <i>Hariban</i>, or 'call to Haro', that is, a general
+  order to be with the army, since corrupted into <i>Arrièreban</i>. Thus
+  Hariman or Ariman, German <i>Guerre-man</i>, is a soldier. For as
+  <i>Hari</i>, <i>Heer</i> means army, so <i>Wehr</i> signifies arms,
+  <i>Wehren</i> to fight, to make war, the word <i>Guerre</i>,
+  <i>Guerra</i> coming doubtless from the same source. I have already
+  spoken of the <i>feudum Arimandiae</i>: not only did Herminones or
+  Germani signify the same, but also that ancient Herman, so-called son of
+  Mannus, appears to have been given this name as being pre-eminently a
+  warrior.</p>
+
+  <p>141. Now it is not the passage in Tacitus only which indicates for us
+  this god or hero: we cannot doubt the existence of one of this name among
+  these peoples, since Charlemagne found and destroyed near the Weser the
+  column called <i>Irminsäule</i>, erected in honour of this god. And that
+  combined with the passage in Tacitus leaves us with the conclusion that
+  it was not that famous Arminius who was an enemy of the Romans, but a
+  much greater and more ancient hero, that this cult concerned. Arminius
+  bore the same name as those who are called Hermann to-day. Arminius was
+  not great enough, nor fortunate enough, nor well enough known throughout
+  Germania to attain to the honour of a public cult, even at the hands of
+  remote tribes, like the Saxons, who came long after him into the country
+  of the Cherusci. And our Arminius, taken by the Asiatics for the evil
+  God, provides ample confirmation of my opinion. For in these matters
+  conjectures confirm one another without any logical circle, when their
+  foundations tend towards one and the same end.</p>
+
+  <p>142. It is not beyond belief that the Hermes (that is, Mercury) of the
+  Greeks is the same Herminius or Arimanius. He may have been an inventor
+  or promoter of the arts and of a slightly more civilized life among his
+  own people and in the countries where he held supremacy, while amongst
+  his enemies he was looked upon as the author of confusion. Who knows but
+  that he may have <!-- Page 212 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page212"></a>[212]</span> penetrated even into Egypt, like the
+  Scythians who in pursuit of Sesostris came nearly so far. Theut, Menes
+  and Hermes were known and revered in Egypt. They might have been Tuiscon,
+  his son Mannus and Herman, son of Mannus, according to the genealogy of
+  Tacitus. Menes is held to be the most ancient king of the Egyptians;
+  'Theut' was with them a name for Mercury. At least Theut or Tuiscon, from
+  whom Tacitus derives the descent of the Germani, and from whom the
+  Teutons, <i>Tuitsche</i> (that is, Germani) even to-day have their name,
+  is the same as that <i>Teutates</i> who according to Lucan was worshipped
+  by the Gauls, and whom Caesar took <i>pro Dite Patre</i>, for Pluto,
+  because of the resemblance between his Latin name and that of <i>Teut</i>
+  or <i>Thiet</i>, <i>Titan</i>, <i>Theodon</i>; this in ancient times
+  signified men, people, and also an excellent man (like the word 'baron'),
+  in short, a prince. There are authorities for all these significations:
+  but one must not delay over this point. Herr Otto Sperling, who is well
+  known for various learned writings, but has many more in readiness to
+  appear, in a special dissertation has treated the question of this
+  Teutates, God of the Celts. Some observations which I imparted to him on
+  that subject have been published, with his reply, in the <i>Literary News
+  of the Baltic Sea</i>. He interprets this passage from Lucan somewhat
+  otherwise than I do:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Teutates, pollensque feris altaribus Hesus,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Et Tamaris Scythicae non mitior ara Dianae.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>Hesus was, it appears, the God of War, who was called Ares by the
+  Greeks and Erich by the ancient Germani, whence still remains
+  <i>Erichtag</i>, Tuesday. The letters R and S, which are produced by the
+  same organ, are easily interchanged, for instance: <i>Moor</i> and
+  <i>Moos</i>, <i>Geren</i> and <i>Gesen</i>, <i>Er war</i> and <i>Er
+  was</i>, <i>Fer</i>, <i>Hierro</i>, <i>Eiron</i>, <i>Eisen</i>. Likewise
+  <i>Papisius</i>, <i>Valesius</i>, <i>Fusius</i>, instead of
+  <i>Papirius</i>, <i>Valerius</i>, <i>Furius</i>, with the ancient Romans.
+  As for Taramis or perhaps Taranis, one knows that <i>Taran</i> was the
+  thunder, or the God of Thunder, with the ancient Celts, called
+  <i>Thor</i> by the Germani of the north; whence the English have
+  preserved the name 'Thursday', <i>jeudi</i>, <i>diem Jovis</i>. And the
+  passage from Lucan means that the altar of Taran, God of the Celts, was
+  not less cruel than that of Diana in Tauris: <i>Taranis aram non mitiorem
+  ara Dianae Scythicae fuisse</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>143. It is also not impossible that there was a time when the <!--
+  Page 213 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page213"></a>[213]</span>
+  western or Celtic princes made themselves masters of Greece, of Egypt and
+  a good part of Asia, and that their cult remained in those countries.
+  When one considers with what rapidity the Huns, the Saracens and the
+  Tartars gained possession of a great part of our continent one will be
+  the less surprised at this; and it is confirmed by the great number of
+  words in the Greek and German tongues which correspond so closely.
+  Callimachus, in a hymn in honour of Apollo, seems to imply that the Celts
+  who attacked the Temple at Delphi, under their Brennus, or chief, were
+  descendants of the ancient Titans and Giants who made war on Jupiter and
+  the other gods, that is to say, on the Princes of Asia and of Greece. It
+  may be that Jupiter is himself descended from the Titans or Theodons,
+  that is, from the earlier Celto-Scythian princes; and the material
+  collected by the late Abbé de la Charmoye in his <i>Celtic Origins</i>
+  conforms to that possibility. Yet there are opinions on other matters in
+  this work by this learned writer which to me do not appear probable,
+  especially when he excludes the Germani from the number of the Celts, not
+  having recalled sufficiently the facts given by ancient writers and not
+  being sufficiently aware of the relation between the ancient Gallic and
+  Germanic tongues. Now the so-called Giants, who wished to scale the
+  heavens, were new Celts who followed the path of their ancestors; and
+  Jupiter, although of their kindred, as it were, was constrained to resist
+  them. Just so did the Visigoths established in Gallic territory resist,
+  together with the Romans, other peoples of Germania and Scythia, who
+  succeeded them under Attila their leader, he being at that time in
+  control of the Scythian, Sarmatic and Germanic tribes from the frontiers
+  of Persia up to the Rhine. But the pleasure one feels when one thinks to
+  find in the mythologies of the gods some trace of the old history of
+  fabulous times has perhaps carried me too far, and I know not whether I
+  shall have been any more successful than Goropius Becanus, Schrieckius,
+  Herr Rudbeck and the Abbe de la Charmoye.</p>
+
+  <p>144. Let us return to Zoroaster, who led us to Oromasdes and
+  Arimanius, the sources of good and evil, and let us assume that he looked
+  upon them as two eternal principles opposed to each other, although there
+  is reason to doubt this assumption. It is thought that Marcion, disciple
+  of Cerdon, was of this opinion before Manes. M. Bayle acknowledges that
+  these men used lamentable arguments; but he thinks that they did not
+  sufficiently <!-- Page 214 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page214"></a>[214]</span> recognize their advantages or know how to
+  apply their principal instrument, which was the difficulty over the
+  origin of evil. He believes that an able man on their side would have
+  thoroughly embarrassed the orthodox, and it seems as though he himself,
+  failing any other, wished to undertake a task so unnecessary in the
+  opinion of many people. 'All the hypotheses' (he says, <i>Dictionary</i>,
+  v., 'Marcion', p. 2039) 'that Christians have established parry but
+  poorly the blows aimed at them: they all triumph when they act on the
+  offensive; but they lose their whole advantage when they have to sustain
+  the attack.' He confesses that the 'Dualists' (as with Mr. Hyde he calls
+  them), that is, the champions of two principles, would soon have been
+  routed by <i>a priori</i> reasons, taken from the nature of God; but he
+  thinks that they triumph in their turn when one comes to the <i>a
+  posteriori</i> reasons, which are taken from the existence of evil.</p>
+
+  <p>145. He treats of the matter with abundant detail in his
+  <i>Dictionary</i>, article 'Manichaeans', p. 2025, which we must examine
+  a little, in order to throw greater light upon this subject: 'The surest
+  and clearest ideas of order teach us', he says, 'that a Being who exists
+  through himself, who is necessary, who is eternal, must be single,
+  infinite, all powerful, and endowed with all kinds of perfections.' This
+  argument deserves to have been developed more completely. 'Now it is
+  necessary to see', he goes on, 'if the phenomena of nature can be
+  conveniently explained by the hypothesis of one single principle.' I have
+  explained it sufficiently by showing that there are cases where some
+  disorder in the part is necessary for producing the greatest order in the
+  whole. But it appears that M. Bayle asks a little too much: he wishes for
+  a detailed exposition of how evil is connected with the best possible
+  scheme for the universe. That would be a complete explanation of the
+  phenomena: but I do not undertake to give it; nor am I bound to do so,
+  for there is no obligation to do that which is impossible for us in our
+  existing state. It is sufficient for me to point out that there is
+  nothing to prevent the connexion of a certain individual evil with what
+  is the best on the whole. This incomplete explanation, leaving something
+  to be discovered in the life to come, is sufficient for answering the
+  objections, though not for a comprehension of the matter.</p>
+
+  <p>146. 'The heavens and all the rest of the universe', adds M. Bayle,
+  'preach the glory, the power, the oneness of God.' Thence <!-- Page 215
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page215"></a>[215]</span> the
+  conclusion should have been drawn that this is the case (as I have
+  already observed above) because there is seen in these objects something
+  entire and isolated, so to speak. Every time we see such a work of God,
+  we find it so perfect that we must wonder at the contrivance and the
+  beauty thereof: but when we do not see an entire work, when we only look
+  upon scraps and fragments, it is no wonder if the good order is not
+  evident there. Our planetary system composes such an isolated work, which
+  is complete also when it is taken by itself; each plant, each animal,
+  each man furnishes one such work, to a certain point of perfection: one
+  recognizes therein the wonderful contrivance of the author. But the human
+  kind, so far as it is known to us, is only a fragment, only a small
+  portion of the City of God or of the republic of Spirits, which has an
+  extent too great for us, and whereof we know too little, to be able to
+  observe the wonderful order therein. 'Man alone,' says M. Bayle, 'that
+  masterpiece of his Creator among things visible, man alone, I say, gives
+  rise to great objections with regard to the oneness of God.' Claudian
+  made the same observation, unburdening his heart in these well-known
+  lines:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Saepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem</i>, etc.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>But the harmony existing in all the rest allows of a strong
+  presumption that it would exist also in the government of men, and
+  generally in that of Spirits, if the whole were known to us. One must
+  judge the works of God as wisely as Socrates judged those of Heraclitus
+  in these words: What I have understood thereof pleases me; I think that
+  the rest would please me no less if I understood it.</p>
+
+  <p>147. Here is another particular reason for the disorder apparent in
+  that which concerns man. It is that God, in giving him intelligence, has
+  presented him with an image of the Divinity. He leaves him to himself, in
+  a sense, in his small department, <i>ut Spartam quam nactus est
+  ornet</i>. He enters there only in a secret way, for he supplies being,
+  force, life, reason, without showing himself. It is there that free will
+  plays its game: and God makes game (so to speak) of these little Gods
+  that he has thought good to produce, as we make game of children who
+  follow pursuits which we secretly encourage or hinder according as it
+  pleases us. Thus man is there like a little god in his own world or
+  <i>Microcosm</i>, which he governs <!-- Page 216 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page216"></a>[216]</span> after his own fashion:
+  he sometimes performs wonders therein, and his art often imitates
+  nature.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Jupiter in parvo cum cerneret aethera vitro,</i></p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>Risit et ad Superos talia dicta dedit:</i></p>
+      <p><i>Huccine mortalis progressa potentia, Divi?</i></p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>Jam meus in fragili luditur orbe labor.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Jura poli rerumque fidem legesque Deorum</i></p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>Cuncta Syracusius transtulit arte Senex.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Quid falso insontem tonitru Salmonea miror?</i></p>
+      <p class="i2"><i>Aemula Naturae est parva reperta manus.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>But he also commits great errors, because he abandons himself to the
+  passions, and because God abandons him to his own way. God punishes him
+  also for such errors, now like a father or tutor, training or chastising
+  children, now like a just judge, punishing those who forsake him: and
+  evil comes to pass most frequently when these intelligences or their
+  small worlds come into collision. Man finds himself the worse for this,
+  in proportion to his fault; but God, by a wonderful art, turns all the
+  errors of these little worlds to the greater adornment of his great
+  world. It is as in those devices of perspective, where certain beautiful
+  designs look like mere confusion until one restores them to the right
+  angle of vision or one views them by means of a certain glass or mirror.
+  It is by placing and using them properly that one makes them serve as
+  adornment for a room. Thus the apparent deformities of our little worlds
+  combine to become beauties in the great world, and have nothing in them
+  which is opposed to the oneness of an infinitely perfect universal
+  principle: on the contrary, they increase our wonder at the wisdom of him
+  who makes evil serve the greater good.</p>
+
+  <p>148. M. Bayle continues: 'that man is wicked and miserable; that there
+  are everywhere prisons and hospitals; that history is simply a collection
+  of the crimes and calamities of the human race.' I think that there is
+  exaggeration in that: there is incomparably more good than evil in the
+  life of men, as there are incomparably more houses than prisons. With
+  regard to virtue and vice, a certain mediocrity prevails. Machiavelli has
+  already observed that there are few very wicked and very good men, and
+  that this causes the failure of many great enterprises. I find it a great
+  fault in historians that they keep their mind on the evil more <!-- Page
+  217 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page217"></a>[217]</span> than on
+  the good. The chief end of history, as also of poetry, should be to teach
+  prudence and virtue by examples, and then to display vice in such a way
+  as to create aversion to it and to prompt men to avoid it, or serve
+  towards that end.</p>
+
+  <p>149. M. Bayle avows: 'that one finds everywhere both moral good and
+  physical good, some examples of virtue, some examples of happiness, and
+  that this is what makes the difficulty. For if there were only wicked and
+  unhappy people', he says, 'there would be no need to resort to the
+  hypothesis of the two principles.' I wonder that this admirable man could
+  have evinced so great an inclination towards this opinion of the two
+  principles; and I am surprised at his not having taken into account that
+  this romance of human life, which makes the universal history of the
+  human race, lay fully devised in the divine understanding, with
+  innumerable others, and that the will of God only decreed its existence
+  because this sequence of events was to be most in keeping with the rest
+  of things, to bring forth the best result. And these apparent faults in
+  the whole world, these spots on a Sun whereof ours is but a ray, rather
+  enhance its beauty than diminish it, contributing towards that end by
+  obtaining a greater good. There are in truth two principles, but they are
+  both in God, to wit, his understanding and his will. The understanding
+  furnishes the principle of evil, without being sullied by it, without
+  being evil; it represents natures as they exist in the eternal verities;
+  it contains within it the reason wherefore evil is permitted: but the
+  will tends only towards good. Let us add a third principle, namely power;
+  it precedes even understanding and will, but it operates as the one
+  displays it and as the other requires it.</p>
+
+  <p>150. Some (like Campanella) have called these three perfections of God
+  the three primordialities. Many have even believed that there was therein
+  a secret connexion with the Holy Trinity: that power relates to the
+  Father, that is, to the source of Divinity, wisdom to the Eternal Word,
+  which is called <i>logos</i> by the most sublime of the Evangelists, and
+  will or Love to the Holy Spirit. Well-nigh all the expressions or
+  comparisons derived from the nature of the intelligent substance tend
+  that way.</p>
+
+  <p>151. It seems to me that if M. Bayle had taken into account what I
+  have just said of the principles of things, he would have answered his
+  own questions, or at the least he would not have continued to ask, as he
+  does in these which follow: 'If man is the work <!-- Page 218 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page218"></a>[218]</span> of a single principle
+  supremely good, supremely holy, supremely powerful, can he be subject to
+  diseases, to cold, heat, hunger, thirst, pain, grief? Can he have so many
+  evil tendencies? Can he commit so many crimes? Can supreme goodness
+  produce an unhappy creature? Shall not supreme power, united to an
+  infinite goodness, shower blessings upon its work, and shall it not
+  banish all that might offend or grieve?' Prudentius in his
+  <i>Hamartigenia</i> presented the same difficulty:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Si non vult Deus esse malum, cur non vetat? inquit.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Non refert auctor fuerit, factorve malorum.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Anne opera in vitium sceleris pulcherrima verti,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Cum possit prohibere, sinat; quod si velit omnes</i></p>
+      <p><i>Innocuos agere Omnipotens, ne sancta voluntas</i></p>
+      <p><i>Degeneret, facto nec se manus inquinet ullo?</i></p>
+      <p><i>Condidit ergo malum Dominus, quod spectat ab alto,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Et patitur fierique probat, tanquam ipse crearit.</i></p>
+      <p><i>Ipse creavit enim, quod si discludere possit,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Non abolet, longoque sinit grassarier usu.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>But I have already answered that sufficiently. Man is himself the
+  source of his evils: just as he is, he was in the divine idea. God,
+  prompted by essential reasons of wisdom, decreed that he should pass into
+  existence just as he is. M. Bayle would perchance have perceived this
+  origin of evil in the form in which I demonstrate it here, if he had
+  herein combined the wisdom of God with his power, his goodness and his
+  holiness. I will add, in passing, that his <i>holiness</i> is nothing
+  other than the highest degree of goodness, just as the crime which is its
+  opposite is the worst of all evil.</p>
+
+  <p>152. M. Bayle places the Greek philosopher Melissus, champion of the
+  oneness of the first principle (and perhaps even of the oneness of
+  substance) in conflict with Zoroaster, as with the first originator of
+  duality. Zoroaster admits that the hypothesis of Melissus is more
+  consistent with order and <i>a priori</i> reasons, but he denies its
+  conformity with experience and <i>a posteriori</i> reasons. 'I surpass
+  you', he said, 'in the explanation of phenomena, which is the principal
+  mark of a good system.' But, in my opinion, it is not a very good
+  explanation of a phenomenon to assign to it an <i>ad hoc</i> principle:
+  to evil, a <i>principium maleficum</i>, to cold, a <i>primum
+  frigidum</i>; there is nothing so easy and nothing so dull. It is
+  well-nigh as if someone were to say that the <!-- Page 219 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page219"></a>[219]</span> Peripatetics surpass
+  the new mathematicians in the explanation of the phenomena of the stars,
+  by giving them <i>ad hoc</i> intelligences to guide them. According to
+  that, it is quite easy to conceive why the planets make their way with
+  such precision; whereas there is need of much geometry and reflexion to
+  understand how from the gravity of the planets, which bears them towards
+  the sun, combined with some whirlwind which carries them along, or with
+  their own motive force, can spring the elliptic movement of Kepler, which
+  satisfies appearances so well. A man incapable of relishing deep
+  speculations will at first applaud the Peripatetics and will treat our
+  mathematicians as dreamers. Some old Galenist will do the same with
+  regard to the faculties of the Schoolmen: he will admit a chylific, a
+  chymific and a sanguific, and he will assign one of these <i>ad hoc</i>
+  to each operation; he will think he has worked wonders, and will laugh at
+  what he will call the chimeras of the moderns, who claim to explain
+  through mechanical structure what passes in the body of an animal.</p>
+
+  <p>153. The explanation of the cause of evil by a particular principle,
+  <i>per principium maleficum</i>, is of the same nature. Evil needs no
+  such explanation, any more than do cold and darkness: there is neither
+  <i>primum frigidum</i> nor principle of darkness. Evil itself comes only
+  from privation; the positive enters therein only by concomitance, as the
+  active enters by concomitance into cold. We see that water in freezing is
+  capable of breaking a gun-barrel wherein it is confined; and yet cold is
+  a certain privation of force, it only comes from the diminution of a
+  movement which separates the particles of fluids. When this separating
+  motion becomes weakened in the water by the cold, the particles of
+  compressed air concealed in the water collect; and, becoming larger, they
+  become more capable of acting outwards through their buoyancy. The
+  resistance which the surfaces of the proportions of air meet in the
+  water, and which opposes the force exerted by these portions towards
+  dilation, is far less, and consequently the effect of the air greater, in
+  large air-bubbles than in small, even though these small bubbles combined
+  should form as great a mass as the large. For the resistances, that is,
+  the surfaces, increase by the <i>square</i>, and the forces, that is, the
+  contents or the volumes of the spheres of compressed air, increase by the
+  <i>cube</i>, of their diameters. Thus it is <i>by accident</i> that
+  privation involves action and force. I have already shown how privation
+  is enough to cause error and malice, and <!-- Page 220 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page220"></a>[220]</span> how God is prompted to
+  permit them, despite that there be no malignity in him. Evil comes from
+  privation; the positive and action spring from it by accident, as force
+  springs from cold.</p>
+
+  <p>154. The statement that M. Bayle attributes to the Paulicians, p.
+  2323, is not conclusive, to wit, that free will must come from two
+  principles, to the end that it may have power to turn towards good and
+  towards evil: for, being simple in itself, it should rather have come
+  from a neutral principle if this argument held good. But free will tends
+  towards good, and if it meets with evil it is by accident, for the reason
+  that this evil is concealed beneath the good, and masked, as it were.
+  These words which Ovid ascribes to Medea,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4"><i>Video meliora proboque,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Deteriora sequor</i>,</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>imply that the morally good is mastered by the agreeably good, which
+  makes more impression on souls when they are disturbed by the
+  passions.</p>
+
+  <p>155. Furthermore, M. Bayle himself supplies Melissus with a good
+  answer; but a little later he disputes it. Here are his words, p. 2025:
+  'If Melissus consults the notions of order, he will answer that man was
+  not wicked when God made him; he will say that man received from God a
+  happy state, but that not having followed the light of conscience, which
+  in accordance with the intention of its author should have guided him
+  along the path of virtue, he has become wicked, and has deserved that God
+  the supremely good should make him feel the effects of his anger. It is
+  therefore not God who is the cause of moral evil: but he is the cause of
+  physical evil, that is, of the punishment of moral evil. And this
+  punishment, far from being incompatible with the supremely good
+  principle, of necessity emanates from that one of its attributes, I mean
+  its justice, which is not less essential to it than its goodness. This
+  answer, the most reasonable that Melissus can give, is fundamentally good
+  and sound, but it may be disputed by something more specious and more
+  dazzling. For indeed Zoroaster objects that the infinitely good principle
+  ought to have created man not only without actual evil, but also without
+  the inclination towards evil; that God, having foreseen sin with all its
+  consequences, ought to have prevented it; that he ought to have impelled
+  man to moral good, and not to have allowed him any force for tending
+  towards crime.' That is quite easy to say, but it is not <!-- Page 221
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page221"></a>[221]</span> practicable
+  if one follows the principles of order: it could not have been
+  accomplished without perpetual miracles. Ignorance, error and malice
+  follow one another naturally in animals made as we are: should this
+  species, then, have been missing in the universe? I have no doubt but
+  that it is too important there, despite all its weaknesses, for God to
+  have consented to its abolition.</p>
+
+  <p>156. M. Bayle, in the article entitled 'Paulicians' inserted by him in
+  his <i>Dictionary</i>, follows up the pronouncements he made in the
+  article on the Manichaeans. According to him (p. 2330, lit. H) the
+  orthodox seem to admit two first principles, in making the devil the
+  originator of sin. M. Becker, a former minister of Amsterdam, author of
+  the book entitled <i>The World Bewitched</i>, has made use of this idea
+  in order to demonstrate that one should not assign such power and
+  authority to the Devil as would allow of his comparison with God. Therein
+  he is right: but he pushes the conclusions too far. And the author of the
+  book entitled <span lang="el" title="Apokatastasis Pantôn"
+  >&#x391;&#x3C0;&#x3BF;&#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3C3;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3A0;&#x3B1;&#x3BD;&#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;</span> believes that if the
+  Devil had never been vanquished and despoiled, if he had always kept his
+  prey, if the title of invincible had belonged to him, that would have
+  done injury to the glory of God. But it is a poor advantage to keep those
+  whom one has led astray in order to share their punishment for ever. And
+  as for the cause of evil, it is true that the Devil is the author of sin.
+  But the origin of sin comes from farther away, its source is in the
+  original imperfection of creatures: that renders them capable of sinning,
+  and there are circumstances in the sequence of things which cause this
+  power to evince itself in action.</p>
+
+  <p>157. The devils were angels like the rest before their fall, and it is
+  thought that their leader was one of the chief among angels; but
+  Scripture is not explicit enough on that point. The passage of the
+  Apocalypse that speaks of the struggle with the Dragon, as of a vision,
+  leaves much in doubt, and does not sufficiently develop a subject which
+  by the other sacred writers is hardly mentioned. It is not in place here
+  to enter into this discussion, and one must still admit that the common
+  opinion agrees best with the sacred text. M. Bayle examines some replies
+  of St. Basil, of Lactantius and others on the origin of evil. As,
+  however, they are concerned with physical evil, I postpone discussion
+  thereof, and I will proceed with the examination of the difficulties over
+  the moral cause of moral evil, which arise in several passages of the
+  works of our gifted author.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 222 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page222"></a>[222]</span></p>
+
+  <p>158. He disputes the <i>permission</i> of this evil, he would wish one
+  to admit that God <i>wills</i> it. He quotes these words of Calvin (on
+  Genesis, ch. 3): 'The ears of some are offended when one says that God
+  willed it. But I ask you, what else is the permission of him who is
+  entitled to forbid, or rather who has the thing in his own hands, but an
+  act of will?' M. Bayle explains these words of Calvin, and those which
+  precede them, as if he admitted that God willed the fall of Adam, not in
+  so far as it was a crime, but under some other conception that is unknown
+  to us. He quotes casuists who are somewhat lax, who say that a son can
+  desire the death of his father, not in so far as it is an evil for
+  himself but in so far as it is a good for his heirs <i>(Reply to the
+  Questions of a Provincial</i>, ch. 147, p. 850). It seems to me that
+  Calvin only says that God willed man's fall for some reason unknown to
+  us. In the main, when it is a question of a decisive will, that is, of a
+  decree, these distinctions are useless: one wills the action with all its
+  qualities, if it is true that one wills it. But when it is a crime, God
+  can only will the permission of it: the crime is neither an end nor a
+  means, it is only a <i>conditio sine qua non</i>; thus it is not the
+  object of a direct will, as I have already demonstrated above. God cannot
+  prevent it without acting against what he owes to himself, without doing
+  something that would be worse than the crime of man, without violating
+  the rule of the best; and that would be to destroy divinity, as I have
+  already observed. God is therefore bound by a moral necessity, which is
+  in himself, to permit moral evil in creatures. There is precisely the
+  case wherein the will of a wise mind is only permissive. I have already
+  said this: he is bound to permit the crime of others when he cannot
+  prevent it without himself failing in that which he owes to himself.</p>
+
+  <p>159. 'But among all these infinite combinations', says M. Bayle (p.
+  853), 'it pleased God to choose one wherein Adam was to sin, and by his
+  decree he made it, in preference to all the others, the plan that should
+  come to pass.' Very good; that is speaking my language; so long as one
+  applies it to the combinations which compose the whole universe. 'You
+  will therefore never make us understand', he adds, 'how God did not will
+  that Eve and Adam should sin, since he rejected all the combinations
+  wherein they would not have sinned.' But the thing is in general very
+  easy to understand, from all that I have just said. This combination that
+  makes the whole universe is the best; God therefore could not <!-- Page
+  223 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page223"></a>[223]</span> refrain
+  from choosing it without incurring a lapse, and rather than incur such, a
+  thing altogether inappropriate to him, he permits the lapse or the sin of
+  man which is involved in this combination.</p>
+
+  <p>160. M. Jacquelot, with other able men, does not differ in opinion
+  from me, when for example he says, p. 186 of his treatise on the
+  <i>Conformity of Faith with Reason</i>: 'Those who are puzzled by these
+  difficulties seem to be too limited in their outlook, and to wish to
+  reduce all God's designs to their own interests. When God formed the
+  universe, his whole prospect was himself and his own glory, so that if we
+  had knowledge of all creatures, of their diverse combinations and of
+  their different relations, we should understand without difficulty that
+  the universe corresponds perfectly to the infinite wisdom of the
+  Almighty.' He says elsewhere (p. 232): 'Supposing the impossible, that
+  God could not prevent the wrong use of free will without destroying it,
+  it will be agreed that since his wisdom and his glory determined him to
+  form free creatures this powerful reason must have prevailed over the
+  grievous consequences which their freedom might have.' I have endeavoured
+  to develop this still further through <i>the reason of the best and the
+  moral necessity</i> which led God to make this choice, despite the sin of
+  some creatures which is involved therein. I think that I have cut down to
+  the root of the difficulty; nevertheless I am well pleased, for the sake
+  of throwing more light on the matter, to apply my principle of solution
+  to the peculiar difficulties of M. Bayle.</p>
+
+  <p>161. Here is one, set forth in these terms (ch. 148, p. 856): 'Would
+  it in a prince be a mark of his kindness: 1. To give to a hundred
+  messengers as much money as is needed for a journey of two hundred
+  leagues? 2. To promise a recompense to all those who should finish the
+  journey without having borrowed anything, and to threaten with
+  imprisonment all those whom their money should not have sufficed? 3. To
+  make choice of a hundred persons, of whom he would know for certain that
+  there were but two who should earn the recompense, the ninety-eight
+  others being destined to find on the way either a mistress or a gamester
+  or some other thing which would make them incur expenses, and which he
+  would himself have been at pains to dispose in certain places along their
+  path? 4. To imprison actually ninety-eight of these messengers on the
+  moment of their return? Is it not abundantly evident that he would have
+  no kindness for them, and that on the contrary he would intend for them,
+  not the proposed recompense, <!-- Page 224 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page224"></a>[224]</span> but prison? They would deserve it,
+  certainly; but he who had wished them to deserve it and placed them in
+  the sure way towards deserving it, should he be worthy of being called
+  kind, on the pretext that he had recompensed the two others?' It would
+  doubtless not be on that account that he earned the title of 'kind'. Yet
+  other circumstances may contribute, which would avail to render him
+  worthy of praise for having employed this artifice in order to know those
+  people, and to make trial of them; just as Gideon made use of some
+  extraordinary means of choosing the most valiant and the least squeamish
+  among his soldiers. And even if the prince were to know already the
+  disposition of all these messengers, may he not put them to this test in
+  order to make them known also to the others? Even though these reasons be
+  not applicable to God, they make it clear, nevertheless, that an action
+  like that of this prince may appear preposterous when it is detached from
+  the circumstances indicating its cause. All the more must one deem that
+  God has acted well, and that we should see this if we fully knew of all
+  that he has done.</p>
+
+  <p>162. M. Descartes, in a letter to the Princess Elizabeth (vol. 1,
+  letter 10) has made use of another comparison to reconcile human freedom
+  with the omnipotence of God. 'He imagines a monarch who has forbidden
+  duels, and who, knowing for certain that two noblemen, if they meet, will
+  fight, takes sure steps to bring about their meeting. They meet indeed,
+  they fight: their disobedience of the law is an effect of their free
+  will, they are punishable. What a king can do in such a case (he adds)
+  concerning some free actions of his subjects, God, who has infinite
+  foreknowledge and power, certainly does concerning all those of men.
+  Before he sent us into this world he knew exactly what all the tendencies
+  of our will would be: he has endued us therewith, he also has disposed
+  all other things that are outside us, to cause such and such objects to
+  present themselves to our senses at such and such a time. He knew that as
+  a result of this our free will would determine us toward some particular
+  thing, and he has willed it thus; but he has not for that willed to
+  constrain our free will thereto. In this king one may distinguish two
+  different degrees of will, the one whereby he willed that these noblemen
+  should fight, since he brought about their meeting, and the other whereby
+  he did not will it, since he forbade duels. Even so theologians
+  distinguish in God an absolute and independent will, whereby he wills
+  that all things be done <!-- Page 225 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page225"></a>[225]</span> just as they are done, and another which
+  is relative, and which concerns the merit or demerit of men, whereby he
+  wills that his Laws be obeyed' (Descartes, letter 10 of vol. 1, pp. 51,
+  52. Compare with that the quotation made by M. Arnauld, vol. 2, p. 288
+  <i>et seqq</i>. of his <i>Reflexions on the System of Malebranche</i>,
+  from Thomas Aquinas, on the antecedent and consequent will of God).</p>
+
+  <p>163. Here is M. Bayle's reply to that (<i>Reply to the Questions of a
+  Provincial</i>, ch. 154, p. 943): 'This great philosopher is much
+  mistaken, it seems to me. There would not be in this monarch any degree
+  of will, either small or great, that these two noblemen should obey the
+  law, and not fight. He would will entirely and solely that they should
+  fight. That would not exculpate them, they would only follow their
+  passion, they would be unaware that they conformed to the will of their
+  sovereign: but he would be in truth the moral cause of their encounter,
+  and he would not more entirely wish it supposing he were to inspire them
+  with the desire or to give them the order for it. Imagine to yourself two
+  princes each of whom wishes his eldest son to poison himself. One employs
+  constraint, the other contents himself with secretly causing a grief that
+  he knows will be sufficient to induce his son to poison himself. Will you
+  be doubtful whether the will of the latter is less complete than the will
+  of the former? M. Descartes is therefore assuming an unreal fact and does
+  not at all solve the difficulty.'</p>
+
+  <p>164. One must confess that M. Descartes speaks somewhat crudely of the
+  will of God in regard to evil in saying not only that God knew that our
+  free will would determine us toward some particular thing, but also
+  <i>that he also wished it</i>, albeit he did not will to constrain the
+  will thereto. He speaks no less harshly in the eighth letter of the same
+  volume, saying that not the slightest thought enters into the mind of a
+  man which God does not <i>will</i>, and has not willed from all eternity,
+  to enter there. Calvin never said anything harsher; and all that can only
+  be excused if it is to be understood of a permissive will. M. Descartes'
+  solution amounts to the distinction between the will expressed in the
+  sign and the will expressive of the good pleasure (<i>inter voluntatem
+  signi et beneplaciti</i>) which the moderns have taken from the Schoolmen
+  as regards the terms, but to which they have given a meaning not usual
+  among the ancients. It is true that God may command something and yet not
+  will that it be done, as when he commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son:
+  he willed the obedience, and he did not <!-- Page 226 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page226"></a>[226]</span> will the action. But
+  when God commands the virtuous action and forbids the sin, he wills
+  indeed that which he ordains, but it is only by an antecedent will, as I
+  have explained more than once.</p>
+
+  <p>165. M. Descartes' comparison is therefore not satisfactory; but it
+  may be made so. One must make some change in the facts, inventing some
+  reason to oblige the prince to cause or permit the two enemies to meet.
+  They must, for instance, be together in the army or in other obligatory
+  functions, a circumstance the prince himself cannot hinder without
+  endangering his State. For example, the absence of either of them might
+  be responsible for the disappearance of innumerable persons of his party
+  from the army or cause grumbling among the soldiers and give rise to some
+  great disturbance. In this case, therefore, one may say that the prince
+  does not will the duel: he knows of it, but he permits it
+  notwithstanding, for he prefers permitting the sin of others to
+  committing one himself. Thus this corrected comparison may serve,
+  provided that one observe the difference between God and the prince. The
+  prince is forced into this permission by his powerlessness; a more
+  powerful monarch would have no need of all these considerations; but God,
+  who has power to do all that is possible, only permits sin because it is
+  absolutely impossible to anyone at all to do better. The prince's action
+  is peradventure not free from sorrow and regret. This regret is due to
+  his imperfection, of which he is sensible; therein lies displeasure. God
+  is incapable of such a feeling and finds, moreover, no cause therefor; he
+  is infinitely conscious of his own perfection, and it may even be said
+  that the imperfection in creatures taken individually changes for him
+  into perfection in relation to the whole, and that it is an added glory
+  for the Creator. What more can one wish, when one possesses a boundless
+  wisdom and when one is as powerful as one is wise; when one can do all
+  and when one has the best?</p>
+
+  <p>166. Having once understood these things, we are hardened
+  sufficiently, so it seems to me, against the strongest and most spirited
+  objections. I have not concealed them: but there are some we shall merely
+  touch upon, because they are too odious. The Remonstrants and M. Bayle
+  (<i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 152, end
+  page 919) quote St. Augustine, saying, '<i>crudelem esse misericordiam
+  velle aliquem miserum esse ut eius miserearis</i>': in the same sense is
+  cited Seneca <i>De Benef.</i>, L. 6, c. 36, 37. I confess that one would
+  have some reason to urge that against those who <!-- Page 227 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page227"></a>[227]</span> believed that God has
+  no other cause for permitting sin than the design to have something
+  wherewith to exercise punitive justice against the majority of men, and
+  his mercy towards a small number of elect. But it must be considered that
+  God had reasons for his permission of sin, more worthy of him and more
+  profound in relation to us. Someone has dared to compare God's course of
+  action with that of a Caligula, who has his edicts written in so small a
+  hand and has them placarded in so high a place that it is not possible to
+  read them; with that of a mother who neglects her daughter's honour in
+  order to attain her own selfish ends; with that of Queen Catherine de
+  Medicis, who is said to have abetted the love-affairs of her ladies in
+  order to learn of the intrigues of the great; and even with that of
+  Tiberius, who arranged, through the extraordinary services of the
+  executioner, that the law forbidding the subjection of a virgin to
+  capital punishment should no longer apply to the case of Sejanus's
+  daughter. This last comparison was proposed by Peter Bertius, then an
+  Armenian, but finally a member of the Roman communion. And a scandalous
+  comparison has been made between God and Tiberius, which is related at
+  length by Andreas Caroli in his <i>Memorabilia Ecclesiastica</i> of the
+  last century, as M. Bayle observes. Bertius used it against the
+  Gomarists. I think that arguments of this kind are only valid against
+  those who maintain that justice is an arbitrary thing in relation to God;
+  or that he has a despotic power which can go so far as being able to
+  condemn innocents; or, in short, that good is not the motive of his
+  actions.</p>
+
+  <p>167. At that same time an ingenious satire was composed against the
+  Gomarists, entitled <i>Fur praedestinatus, de gepredestineerdedief</i>,
+  wherein there is introduced a thief condemned to be hanged, who
+  attributes to God all the evil he has done; who believes himself
+  predestined to salvation notwithstanding his wicked actions; who imagines
+  that this belief is sufficient for him, and who defeats by arguments
+  <i>ad hominem</i> a Counter-remonstrant minister called to prepare him
+  for death: but this thief is finally converted by an old pastor who had
+  been dismissed for his Arminianism, whom the gaoler, in pity for the
+  criminal and for the weakness of the minister, had brought to him
+  secretly. Replies were made to this lampoon, but replies to satires never
+  please as much as the satires themselves. M. Bayle (<i>Reply to the
+  Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 154, p. 938) says that this
+  book was printed in England in the <!-- Page 228 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page228"></a>[228]</span> time of Cromwell, and
+  he appears not to have been informed that it was only a translation of
+  the much older original Flemish. He adds that Dr. George Kendal wrote a
+  confutation of it at Oxford in the year 1657, under the title of <i>Fur
+  pro Tribunali</i>, and that the dialogue is there inserted. This dialogue
+  presupposes, contrary to the truth, that the Counter-remonstrants make
+  God the cause of evil, and teach a kind of predestination in the
+  Mahometan manner according to which it does not matter whether one does
+  good or evil, and the assumption that one is predestined assures the
+  fact. They by no means go so far. Nevertheless it is true that there are
+  among them some Supralapsarians and others who find it hard to declare
+  themselves in clear terms upon the justice of God and the principles of
+  piety and morals in man. For they imagine despotism in God, and demand
+  that man be convinced, without reason, of the absolute certainty of his
+  election, a course that is liable to have dangerous consequences. But all
+  those who acknowledge that God produces the best plan, having chosen it
+  from among all possible ideas of the universe; that he there finds man
+  inclined by the original imperfection of creatures to misuse his free
+  will and to plunge into misery; that God prevents the sin and the misery
+  in so far as the perfection of the universe, which is an emanation from
+  his, may permit it: those, I say, show forth more clearly that God's
+  intention is the one most right and holy in the world; that the creature
+  alone is guilty, that his original limitation or imperfection is the
+  source of his wickedness, that his evil will is the sole cause of his
+  misery; that one cannot be destined to salvation without also being
+  destined to the holiness of the children of God, and that all hope of
+  election one can have can only be founded upon the good will infused into
+  one's heart by the grace of God.</p>
+
+  <p>168. <i>Metaphysical considerations</i> also are brought up against my
+  explanation of the moral cause of moral evil; but they will trouble me
+  less since I have dismissed the objections derived from moral reasons,
+  which were more impressive. These metaphysical considerations concern the
+  nature of the <i>possible</i> and of the <i>necessary</i>; they go
+  against my fundamental assumption that God has chosen the best of all
+  possible worlds. There are philosophers who have maintained that there is
+  nothing possible except that which actually happens. These are those same
+  people who thought or could have thought that all is necessary
+  unconditionally. Some <!-- Page 229 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page229"></a>[229]</span> were of this opinion because they
+  admitted a brute and blind necessity in the cause of the existence of
+  things: and it is these I have most reason for opposing. But there are
+  others who are mistaken only because they misuse terms. They confuse
+  moral necessity with metaphysical necessity: they imagine that since God
+  cannot help acting for the best he is thus deprived of freedom, and
+  things are endued with that necessity which philosophers and theologians
+  endeavour to avoid. With these writers my dispute is only one of words,
+  provided they admit in very deed that God chooses and does the best. But
+  there are others who go further, they think that God could have done
+  better. This is an opinion which must be rejected: for although it does
+  not altogether deprive God of wisdom and goodness, as do the advocates of
+  blind necessity, it sets bounds thereto, thus derogating from God's
+  supreme perfection.</p>
+
+  <p>169. The question of the <i>possibility of things that do not
+  happen</i> has already been examined by the ancients. It appears that
+  Epicurus, to preserve freedom and to avoid an absolute necessity,
+  maintained, after Aristotle, that contingent futurities were not
+  susceptible of determinate truth. For if it was true yesterday that I
+  should write to-day, it could therefore not fail to happen, it was
+  already necessary; and, for the same reason, it was from all eternity.
+  Thus all that which happens is necessary, and it is impossible for
+  anything different to come to pass. But since that is not so it would
+  follow, according to him, that contingent futurities have no determinate
+  truth. To uphold this opinion, Epicurus went so far as to deny the first
+  and the greatest principle of the truths of reason, he denied that every
+  assertion was either true or false. Here is the way they confounded him:
+  'You deny that it was true yesterday that I should write to-day; it was
+  therefore false.' The good man, not being able to admit this conclusion,
+  was obliged to say that it was neither true nor false. After that, he
+  needs no refutation, and Chrysippus might have spared himself the trouble
+  he took to prove the great principle of contradictories, following the
+  account by Cicero in his book <i>De Fato</i>: 'Contendit omnes nervos
+  Chrysippus ut persuadeat omne <span lang="el" title="Axiôma"
+  >&#x391;&#x3BE;&#x3B9;&#x3C9;&#x3BC;&#x3B1;</span> aut verum esse aut
+  falsum. Ut enim Epicurus veretur ne si hoc concesserit, concedendum sit,
+  fato fieri quaecunque fiant; si enim alterum ex aeternitate verum sit,
+  esse id etiam certum; si certum, etiam necessarium; ita et necessitatem
+  et fatum confirmari putat; sic Chrysippus metuit ne non, si non <!-- Page
+  230 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page230"></a>[230]</span>
+  obtinuerit omne quod enuncietur aut verum esse aut falsum, omnia fato
+  fieri possint ex causis aeternis rerum futurarum.' M. Bayle observes
+  (<i>Dictionary</i>, article 'Epicurus', let. T, p. 1141) 'that neither of
+  these two great philosophers [Epicurus and Chrysippus] understood that
+  the truth of this maxim, every proposition is true or false, is
+  independent of what is called <i>fatum</i>: it could not therefore serve
+  as proof of the existence of the <i>fatum</i>, as Chrysippus maintained
+  and as Epicurus feared. Chrysippus could not have conceded, without
+  damaging his own position, that there are propositions which are neither
+  true nor false. But he gained nothing by asserting the contrary: for,
+  whether there be free causes or not, it is equally true that this
+  proposition, The Grand Mogul will go hunting to-morrow, is true or false.
+  Men rightly regarded as ridiculous this speech of Tiresias: All that I
+  shall say will happen or not, for great Apollo confers on me the faculty
+  of prophesying. If, assuming the impossible, there were no God, it would
+  yet be certain that everything the greatest fool in the world should
+  predict would happen or would not happen. That is what neither Chrysippus
+  nor Epicurus has taken into consideration.' Cicero, lib. I, <i>De Nat.
+  Deorum</i>, with regard to the evasions of the Epicureans expressed the
+  sound opinion (as M. Bayle observes towards the end of the same page)
+  that it would be much less shameful to admit that one cannot answer one's
+  opponent, than to have recourse to such answers. Yet we shall see that M.
+  Bayle himself confused the certain with the necessary, when he maintained
+  that the choice of the best rendered things necessary.</p>
+
+  <p>170. Let us come now to the possibility of things that do not happen,
+  and I will give the very words of M. Bayle, albeit they are somewhat
+  discursive. This is what he says on the matter in his <i>Dictionary</i>
+  (article 'Chrysippus', let. S, p. 929): 'The celebrated dispute on things
+  possible and things impossible owed its origin to the doctrine of the
+  Stoics concerning fate. The question was to know whether, among the
+  things which have never been and never will be, there are some possible;
+  or whether all that is not, all that has never been, all that will never
+  be, was impossible. A famous dialectician of the Megaric Sect, named
+  Diodorus, gave a negative answer to the first of these two questions and
+  an affirmative to the second; but Chrysippus vehemently opposed him. Here
+  are two passages of Cicero (epist. 4, lib. 9, <i>Ad Familiar.</i>):
+  "<span lang="el" title="peri dynatôn" >&#x3C0;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3B9;
+  &#x3B4;&#x3C5;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;</span> me scito <span
+  lang="el" title="kata Diodôron krinein" >&#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;
+  &#x394;&#x3B9;&#x3BF;&#x3B4;&#x3C9;&#x3C1;&#x3BF;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3BA;&#x3C1;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;&#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;</span>. Quapropter si
+  <!-- Page 231 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page231"></a>[231]</span>
+  venturus es, scito necesse esse te venire. Sin autem non es, <span
+  lang="el" title="tôn adynatôn" >&#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3B1;&#x3B4;&#x3C5;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;</span> est te
+  venire. Nunc vide utra te <span lang="el" title="krisis"
+  >&#x3BA;&#x3C1;&#x3B9;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3C2;</span> magis delectet, <span
+  lang="el" title="Chrysippeia"
+  >&#x3A7;&#x3C1;&#x3C5;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3C0;&#x3C0;&#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3B1;</span>
+  ne, an haec; quam noster Diodorus [a Stoic who for a long time had lived
+  in Cicero's house] non concoquebat." This is quoted from a letter that
+  Cicero wrote to Varro. He sets forth more comprehensively the whole state
+  of the question, in the little book <i>De Fato</i>. I am going to quote a
+  few pieces (Cic., <i>De Fato</i>, p. m. 65): "Vigila, Chrysippe, ne tuam
+  causam, in qua tibi cum Diodoro valente Dialectico magna luctatio est,
+  deseras ... omne ergo quod falsum dicitur in futuro, id fieri non potest.
+  At hoc, Chrysippe, minime vis, maximeque tibi de hoc ipso cum Diodoro
+  certamen est. Ille enim id solum fieri posse dicit, quod aut sit verum,
+  aut futurum sit verum; et quicquid futurum sit, id dicit fieri necesse
+  esse; et quicquid non sit futurum, id negat fieri posse. Tu etiam quae
+  non sint futura, posse fieri dicis, ut frangi hanc gemmam, etiamsi id
+  nunquam futurum sit: neque necesse fuisse Cypselum regnare Corinthi,
+  quamquam id millesimo ante anno Apollinis Oraculo editum esset.... Placet
+  Diodoro, id solum fieri posse, quod aut verum sit, aut verum futurum sit:
+  qui locus attingit hanc quaestionem, nihil fieri, quod non necesse
+  fuerit; et quicquid fieri possit, id aut esse jam, aut futurum esse: nec
+  magis commutari ex veris in falsa ea posse quae futura sunt, quam ea quae
+  facta sunt: sed in factis immutabilitatem apparere; in futuris quibusdam,
+  quia non apparent, ne inesse quidem videri: ut in eo qui mortifero morbo
+  urgeatur, verum sit, hic morietur hoc morbo: at hoc idem si vere dicatur
+  in eo, in quo tanta vis morbi non appareat, nihilominus futurum sit. Ita
+  fit ut commutatio ex vero in falsum, ne in futuro quidem ulla fieri
+  possit." Cicero makes it clear enough that Chrysippus often found himself
+  in difficulties in this dispute, and that is no matter for astonishment:
+  for the course he had chosen was not bound up with his dogma of fate,
+  and, if he had known how, or had dared, to reason consistently, he would
+  readily have adopted the whole hypothesis of Diodorus. We have seen
+  already that the freedom he assigned to the soul, and his comparison of
+  the cylinder, did not preclude the possibility that in reality all the
+  acts of the human will were unavoidable consequences of fate. Hence it
+  follows that everything which does not happen is impossible, and that
+  there is nothing possible but that which actually comes to pass. Plutarch
+  (<i>De Stoicor. Repugn.</i>, pp. 1053, 1054) discomfits him completely,
+  on that point as well <!-- Page 232 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page232"></a>[232]</span> as on the dispute with Diodorus, and
+  maintains that his opinion on possibility is altogether contrary to the
+  doctrine of <i>fatum</i>. Observe that the most eminent Stoics had
+  written on this matter without following the same path. Arrian (in
+  <i>Epict.</i>, lib. 2, c. 29, p. m. 166) named four of them, who are
+  Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Archidemus and Antipater. He evinces great scorn
+  for this dispute; and M. Menage need not have cited him as a writer who
+  had spoken in commendation of the work of Chrysippus <span lang="el"
+  title="peri dynatôn" >&#x3C0;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3B9;
+  &#x3B4;&#x3C5;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;</span> ("citatur
+  honorifice apud Arrianum", Menag. in <i>Laert.</i>, I, 7, 341) for
+  assuredly these words, "<span lang="el" title="gegraphe de kai Chrysippos thaumastôs"
+  >&#x3B3;&#x3B5;&#x3B3;&#x3C1;&#x3B1;&#x3C6;&#x3B5; &#x3B4;&#x3B5;
+  &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3B9;
+  &#x3A7;&#x3C1;&#x3C5;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3C0;&#x3C0;&#x3BF;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3B8;&#x3B1;&#x3C5;&#x3BC;&#x3B1;&#x3C3;&#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3C2;</span>,
+  etc., de his rebus mira scripsit Chrysippus", etc., are not in that
+  connexion a eulogy. That is shown by the passages immediately before and
+  after it. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (<i>De Collocat. Verbor.</i>, c. 17,
+  p. m. 11) mentions two treatises by Chrysippus, wherein, under a title
+  that promised something different, much of the logicians' territory had
+  been explored. The work was entitled "<span lang="el" title="peri tês syntaxeôs tôn tou logou merôn"
+  >&#x3C0;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3B9; &#x3C4;&#x3B7;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3C3;&#x3C5;&#x3BD;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3BE;&#x3B5;&#x3C9;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD; &#x3C4;&#x3BF;&#x3C5;
+  &#x3BB;&#x3BF;&#x3B3;&#x3BF;&#x3C5;
+  &#x3BC;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;</span>, de partium orationis
+  collocatione", and treated only of propositions true and false, possible
+  and impossible, contingent and equivocal, etc., matter that our Schoolmen
+  have pounded down and reduced to its essence. Take note that Chrysippus
+  recognized that past things were necessarily true, which Cleanthes had
+  not been willing to admit. (Arrian, <i>ubi supra</i>, p. m. 165.) "<span
+  lang="el" title="Ou pan de parelêlythos alêthes anankaion esti, kathaper hoi peri Kleanthên pheresthai dokousi"
+  >&#x39F;&#x3C5; &#x3C0;&#x3B1;&#x3BD; &#x3B4;&#x3B5;
+  &#x3C0;&#x3B1;&#x3C1;&#x3B5;&#x3BB;&#x3B7;&#x3BB;&#x3C5;&#x3B8;&#x3BF;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3B1;&#x3BB;&#x3B7;&#x3B8;&#x3B5;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3B1;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;&#x3B3;&#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3B9;&#x3BF;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3B5;&#x3C3;&#x3C4;&#x3B9;,
+  &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3B8;&#x3B1;&#x3C0;&#x3B5;&#x3C1; &#x201B;&#x3BF;&#x3B9;
+  &#x3C0;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3B9;
+  &#x39A;&#x3BB;&#x3B5;&#x3B1;&#x3BD;&#x3B8;&#x3B7;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3C6;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3B5;&#x3C3;&#x3B8;&#x3B1;&#x3B9;
+  &#x3B4;&#x3BF;&#x3BA;&#x3BF;&#x3C5;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;</span>. Non omne
+  praeteritum ex necessitate verum est, ut illi qui Cleanthem sequuntur
+  sentiunt." We have already seen (p. 562, col. 2) that Abélard is alleged
+  to have taught a doctrine which resembles that of Diodorus. I think that
+  the Stoics pledged themselves to give a wider range to possible things
+  than to future things, for the purpose of mitigating the odious and
+  frightful conclusions which were drawn from their dogma of fatality.'</p>
+
+  <p>It is sufficiently evident that Cicero when writing to Varro the words
+  that have just been quoted (lib. 9, Ep. 4, <i>Ad Familiar.</i>) had not
+  enough comprehension of the effect of Diodorus's opinion, since he found
+  it preferable. He presents tolerably well in his book <i>De Fato</i> the
+  opinions of those writers, but it is a pity that he has not always added
+  the reasons which they employed. Plutarch in his treatise on the
+  contradictions of the Stoics and M. Bayle are both surprised that
+  Chrysippus was not of the same opinion as Diodorus, since he favours
+  fatality. But Chrysippus and even his master <!-- Page 233 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page233"></a>[233]</span> Cleanthes were on that
+  point more reasonable than is supposed. That will be seen as we proceed.
+  It is open to question whether the past is more necessary than the
+  future. Cleanthes held the opinion that it is. The objection is raised
+  that it is necessary <i>ex hypothesi</i> for the future to happen, as it
+  is necessary <i>ex hypothesi</i> for the past to have happened. But there
+  is this difference, that it is not possible to act on the past state,
+  that would be a contradiction; but it is possible to produce some effect
+  on the future. Yet the hypothetical necessity of both is the same: the
+  one cannot be changed, the other will not be; and once that is past, it
+  will not be possible for it to be changed either.</p>
+
+  <p>171. The famous Pierre Abélard expressed an opinion resembling that of
+  Diodorus in the statement that God can do only that which he does. It was
+  the third of the fourteen propositions taken from his works which were
+  censured at the Council of Sens. It had been taken from the third book of
+  his <i>Introduction to Theology</i>, where he treats especially of the
+  power of God. The reason he gave for his statement was that God can do
+  only that which he wills. Now God cannot will to do anything other than
+  that which he does, because, of necessity, he must will whatever is
+  fitting. Hence it follows that all that which he does not, is not
+  fitting, that he cannot will to do it, and consequently that he cannot do
+  it. Abélard admits himself that this opinion is peculiar to him, that
+  hardly anyone shares in it, that it seems contrary to the doctrine of the
+  saints and to reason and derogatory to the greatness of God. It appears
+  that this author was a little too much inclined to speak and to think
+  differently from others: for in reality this was only a dispute about
+  words: he was changing the use of terms. Power and will are different
+  faculties, whose objects also are different; it is confusing them to say
+  that God can do only that which he wills. On the contrary, among various
+  possibles, he wills only that which he finds the best. For all possibles
+  are regarded as objects of power, but actual and existing things are
+  regarded as the objects of his decretory will. Abélard himself
+  acknowledged it. He raises this objection for himself: a reprobate can be
+  saved; but he can only be saved if God saves him. God can therefore save
+  him, and consequently do something that he does not. Abélard answers that
+  it may indeed be said that this man can be saved in respect of the
+  possibility of human nature, which is capable of salvation: but that it
+  may not be said that God can save him in respect of God <!-- Page 234
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page234"></a>[234]</span> himself,
+  because it is impossible that God should do that which he must not do.
+  But Abélard admits that it may very well be said in a sense, speaking
+  absolutely and setting aside the assumption of reprobation, that such an
+  one who is reprobate can be saved, and that thus often that which God
+  does not can be done. He could therefore have spoken like the rest, who
+  mean nothing different when they say that God can save this man, and that
+  he can do that which he does not.</p>
+
+  <p>172. The so-called necessity of Wyclif, which was condemned by the
+  Council of Constance, seems to arise simply from this same
+  misunderstanding. I think that men of talent do wrong to truth and to
+  themselves when, without reason, they bring into use new and displeasing
+  expressions. In our own time the celebrated Mr. Hobbes supported this
+  same opinion, that what does not happen is impossible. He proves it by
+  the statement that all the conditions requisite for a thing that shall
+  not exist (<i>omnia rei non futurae requisita</i>) are never found
+  together, and that the thing cannot exist otherwise. But who does not see
+  that that only proves a hypothetical impossibility? It is true that a
+  thing cannot exist when a requisite condition for it is lacking. But as
+  we claim to be able to say that the thing can exist although it does not
+  exist, we claim in the same way to be able to say that the requisite
+  conditions can exist although they do not exist. Thus Mr. Hobbes's
+  argument leaves the matter where it is. The opinion which was held
+  concerning Mr. Hobbes, that he taught an absolute necessity of all
+  things, brought upon him much discredit, and would have done him harm
+  even had it been his only error.</p>
+
+  <p>173. Spinoza went further: he appears to have explicitly taught a
+  blind necessity, having denied to the Author of Things understanding and
+  will, and assuming that good and perfection relate to us only, and not to
+  him. It is true that Spinoza's opinion on this subject is somewhat
+  obscure: for he grants God thought, after having divested him of
+  understanding, <i>cogitationem, non intellectum concedit Deo</i>. There
+  are even passages where he relents on the question of necessity.
+  Nevertheless, as far as one can understand him, he acknowledges no
+  goodness in God, properly speaking, and he teaches that all things exist
+  through the necessity of the divine nature, without any act of choice by
+  God. We will not waste time here in refuting an opinion so bad, and
+  indeed so inexplicable. My own opinion is founded on the nature of the
+  possibles, that is, <!-- Page 235 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page235"></a>[235]</span> of things that imply no contradiction. I
+  do not think that a Spinozist will say that all the romances one can
+  imagine exist actually now, or have existed, or will still exist in some
+  place in the universe. Yet one cannot deny that romances such as those of
+  Mademoiselle de Scudéry, or as <i>Octavia</i>, are possible. Let us
+  therefore bring up against him these words of M. Bayle, which please me
+  well, on page 390, 'It is to-day', he says, 'a great embarrassment for
+  the Spinozists to see that, according to their hypothesis, it was as
+  impossible from all eternity that Spinoza, for instance, should not die
+  at The Hague, as it is impossible for two and two to make six. They are
+  well aware that it is a necessary conclusion from their doctrine, and a
+  conclusion which disheartens, affrights, and stirs the mind to revolt,
+  because of the absurdity it involves, diametrically opposed to common
+  sense. They are not well pleased that one should know they are subverting
+  a maxim so universal and so evident as this one: All that which implies
+  contradiction is impossible, and all that which implies no contradiction
+  is possible.'</p>
+
+  <p>174. One may say of M. Bayle, 'ubi bene, nemo melius', although one
+  cannot say of him what was said of Origen, 'ubi male, nemo pejus'. I will
+  only add that what has just been indicated as a maxim is in fact the
+  definition of the <i>possible</i> and the <i>impossible</i>. M. Bayle,
+  however, adds here towards the end a remark which somewhat spoils his
+  eminently reasonable statement. 'Now what contradiction would there be if
+  Spinoza had died in Leyden? Would Nature then have been less perfect,
+  less wise, less powerful?' He confuses here what is impossible because it
+  implies contradiction with what cannot happen because it is not meet to
+  be chosen. It is true that there would have been no contradiction in the
+  supposition that Spinoza died in Leyden and not at The Hague; there would
+  have been nothing so possible: the matter was therefore indifferent in
+  respect of the power of God. But one must not suppose that any event,
+  however small it be, can be regarded as indifferent in respect of his
+  wisdom and his goodness. Jesus Christ has said divinely well that
+  everything is numbered, even to the hairs of our head. Thus the wisdom of
+  God did not permit that this event whereof M. Bayle speaks should happen
+  otherwise than it happened, not as if by itself it would have been more
+  deserving of choice, but on account of its connexion with that entire
+  sequence of the universe which deserved to be given preference. To say
+  that what has already happened was of no interest to the wisdom of <!--
+  Page 236 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page236"></a>[236]</span> God,
+  and thence to infer that it is therefore not necessary, is to make a
+  false assumption and argue incorrectly to a true conclusion. It is
+  confusing what is necessary by moral necessity, that is, according to the
+  principle of Wisdom and Goodness, with what is so by metaphysical and
+  brute necessity, which occurs when the contrary implies contradiction.
+  Spinoza, moreover, sought a metaphysical necessity in events. He did not
+  think that God was determined by his goodness and by his perfection
+  (which this author treated as chimeras in relation to the universe), but
+  by the necessity of his nature; just as the semicircle is bound to
+  enclose only right angles, without either knowing or willing this. For
+  Euclid demonstrated that all angles enclosed between two straight lines
+  drawn from the extremities of the diameter towards a point on the
+  circumference of the circle are of necessity right angles, and that the
+  contrary implies contradiction.</p>
+
+  <p>175. There are people who have gone to the other extreme: under the
+  pretext of freeing the divine nature from the yoke of necessity they
+  wished to regard it as altogether indifferent, with an indifference of
+  equipoise. They did not take into account that just as metaphysical
+  necessity is preposterous in relation to God's actions <i>ad extra</i>,
+  so moral necessity is worthy of him. It is a happy necessity which
+  obliges wisdom to do good, whereas indifference with regard to good and
+  evil would indicate a lack of goodness or of wisdom. And besides, the
+  indifference which would keep the will in a perfect equipoise would
+  itself be a chimera, as has been already shown: it would offend against
+  the great principle of the determinant reason.</p>
+
+  <p>176. Those who believe that God established good and evil by an
+  arbitrary decree are adopting that strange idea of mere indifference, and
+  other absurdities still stranger. They deprive God of the designation
+  <i>good</i>: for what cause could one have to praise him for what he
+  does, if in doing something quite different he would have done equally
+  well? And I have very often been surprised that divers Supralapsarian
+  theologians, as for instance Samuel Rutherford, a Professor of Theology
+  in Scotland, who wrote when the controversies with the Remonstrants were
+  at their height, could have been deluded by so strange an idea.
+  Rutherford (in his <i>Exercitationes Apologeticae pro Gratia</i>) says
+  positively that nothing is unjust or morally bad in God's eyes before he
+  has forbidden it: thus without this prohibition it would be a matter of
+  <!-- Page 237 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page237"></a>[237]</span>
+  indifference whether one murdered or saved a man, loved God or hated him,
+  praised or blasphemed him. Nothing is so unreasonable as that. One may
+  teach that God established good and evil by a positive law, or one may
+  assert that there was something good and just before his decree, but that
+  he is not required to conform to it, and that nothing prevents him from
+  acting unjustly and from perhaps condemning innocence: but it all comes
+  to the same thing, offering almost equal dishonour to God. For if justice
+  was established arbitrarily and without any cause, if God came upon it by
+  a kind of hazard, as when one draws lots, his goodness and his wisdom are
+  not manifested in it, and there is nothing at all to attach him to it. If
+  it is by a purely arbitrary decree, without any reason, that he has
+  established or created what we call justice and goodness, then he can
+  annul them or change their nature. Thus one would have no reason to
+  assume that he will observe them always, as it would be possible to say
+  he will observe them on the assumption that they are founded on reasons.
+  The same would hold good more or less if his justice were different from
+  ours, if (for example) it were written in his code that it is just to
+  make the innocent eternally unhappy. According to these principles also,
+  nothing would compel God to keep his word or would assure us of its
+  fulfilment. For why should the law of justice, which states that
+  reasonable promises must be kept, be more inviolable for him than any
+  other laws?</p>
+
+  <p>177. All these three dogmas, albeit a little different from one
+  another, namely, (1) that the nature of justice is arbitrary, (2) that it
+  is fixed, but it is not certain that God will observe it, and finally (3)
+  that the justice we know is not that which he observes, destroy the
+  confidence in God that gives us tranquillity, and the love of God that
+  makes our happiness. There is nothing to prevent such a God from behaving
+  as a tyrant and an enemy of honest folk, and from taking pleasure in that
+  which we call evil. Why should he not, then, just as well be the evil
+  principle of the Manichaeans as the single good principle of the
+  orthodox? At least he would be neutral and, as it were, suspended between
+  the two, or even sometimes the one and sometimes the other. That would be
+  as if someone were to say that Oromasdes and Arimanius reign in turns,
+  according to which of the two is the stronger or the more adroit. It is
+  like the saying of a certain Moghul woman. She, so it seems, having heard
+  it said that formerly under Genghis Khan and his <!-- Page 238 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page238"></a>[238]</span> successors her nation
+  had had dominion over most of the North and East, told the Muscovites
+  recently, when M. Isbrand went to China on behalf of the Czar, through
+  the country of those Tartars, that the god of the Moghuls had been driven
+  from Heaven, but that one day he would take his own place again. The true
+  God is always the same: natural religion itself demands that he be
+  essentially as good and wise as he is powerful. It is scarcely more
+  contrary to reason and piety to say that God acts without cognition, than
+  to maintain that he has cognition which does not find the eternal rules
+  of goodness and of justice among its objects, or again to say that he has
+  a will such as heeds not these rules.</p>
+
+  <p>178. Some theologians who have written of God's right over creatures
+  appear to have conceded to him an unrestricted right, an arbitrary and
+  despotic power. They thought that would be placing divinity on the most
+  exalted level that may be imagined for it, and that it would abase the
+  creature before the Creator to such an extent that the Creator is bound
+  by no laws of any kind with respect to the creature. There are passages
+  from Twiss, Rutherford and some other Supralapsarians which imply that
+  God cannot sin whatever he may do, because he is subject to no law. M.
+  Bayle himself considers that this doctrine is monstrous and contrary to
+  the holiness of God (<i>Dictionary</i>, v. 'Paulicians', p. 2332 <i>in
+  initio</i>); but I suppose that the intention of some of these writers
+  was less bad than it seems to be. Apparently they meant by the term
+  right, <span lang="el" title="anypeuthynian"
+  >&#x3B1;&#x3BD;&#x3C5;&#x3C0;&#x3B5;&#x3C5;&#x3B8;&#x3C5;&#x3BD;&#x3B9;&#x3B1;&#x3BD;</span>,
+  a state wherein one is responsible to none for one's actions. But they
+  will not have denied that God owes to himself what goodness and justice
+  demand of him. On that matter one may see M. Amyraut's <i>Apology for
+  Calvin</i>: it is true that Calvin appears orthodox on this subject, and
+  that he is by no means one of the extreme Supralapsarians.</p>
+
+  <p>179. Thus, when M. Bayle says somewhere that St. Paul extricates
+  himself from predestination only through the consideration of God's
+  absolute right, and the incomprehensibility of his ways, it is implied
+  that, if one understood them, one would find them consistent with
+  justice, God not being able to use his power otherwise. St. Paul himself
+  says that it is a <i>depth</i>, but a depth of wisdom (<i>altitudo
+  sapientiae</i>), and <i>justice</i> is included in <i>the goodness of the
+  All-wise</i>. I find that M. Bayle speaks very well elsewhere on the
+  application of our notions of goodness to the actions of God (<i>Reply to
+  the Questions of a Provincial</i>, ch. 81, p. 139): 'One must not assert
+  <!-- Page 239 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page239"></a>[239]</span>
+  here', he says, 'that the goodness of the infinite Being is not subject
+  to the same rules as the goodness of the creature. For if there is in God
+  an attribute that can be called goodness, the marks of goodness in
+  general must apply to him. Now when we reduce goodness to the most
+  general abstraction, we find therein the will to do good. Divide and
+  subdivide into as many kinds as you shall please this general goodness,
+  into infinite goodness, finite goodness, kingly goodness, goodness of a
+  father, goodness of a husband, goodness of a master, you will find in
+  each, as an inseparable attribute, the will to do good.'</p>
+
+  <p>180. I find also that M. Bayle combats admirably the opinion of those
+  who assert that goodness and justice depend solely upon the arbitrary
+  choice of God; who suppose, moreover, that if God had been determined by
+  the goodness of things themselves to act, he would be entirely subjected
+  to necessity in his actions, a state incompatible with freedom. That is
+  confusing metaphysical necessity with moral necessity. Here is what M.
+  Bayle says in objection to this error (<i>Reply</i>, ch. 89, p. 203):
+  'The consequence of this doctrine will be, that before God resolved upon
+  creating the world he saw nothing better in virtue than in vice, and that
+  his ideas did not show him that virtue was more worthy of his love than
+  vice. That leaves no distinction between natural right and positive
+  right; there will no longer be anything unalterable or inevitable in
+  morals; it will have been just as possible for God to command people to
+  be vicious as to command them to be virtuous; and one will have no
+  certainty that the moral laws will not one day be abrogated, as the
+  ceremonial laws of the Jews were. This, in a word, leads us straight to
+  the belief that God was the free author, not only of goodness and of
+  virtue, but also of truth and of the essence of things. That is what
+  certain of the Cartesians assert, and I confess that their opinion (see
+  the Continuation of <i>Divers Thoughts on the Comet</i>, p. 554) might be
+  of some avail in certain circumstances. Yet it is open to dispute for so
+  many reasons, and subject to consequences so troublesome (see chapter 152
+  of the same Continuation) that there are scarcely any extremes it were
+  not better to suffer rather than plunge into that one. It opens the door
+  to the most exaggerated Pyrrhonism: for it leads to the assertion that
+  this proposition, three and three make six, is only true where and during
+  the time when it pleases God; that it is perhaps false in some parts of
+  the universe; and that perhaps it will be so among <!-- Page 240 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page240"></a>[240]</span> men in the coming
+  year. All that depends on the free will of God could have been limited to
+  certain places and certain times, like the Judaic ceremonies. This
+  conclusion will be extended to all the laws of the Decalogue, if the
+  actions they command are in their nature divested of all goodness to the
+  same degree as the actions they forbid.'</p>
+
+  <p>181. To say that God, having resolved to create man just as he is,
+  could not but have required of him piety, sobriety, justice and chastity,
+  because it is impossible that the disorders capable of overthrowing or
+  disturbing his work can please him, that is to revert in effect to the
+  common opinion. Virtues are virtues only because they serve perfection or
+  prevent the imperfection of those who are virtuous, or even of those who
+  have to do with them. And they have that power by their nature and by the
+  nature of rational creatures, before God decrees to create them. To hold
+  a different opinion would be as if someone were to say that the rules of
+  proportion and harmony are arbitrary with regard to musicians because
+  they occur in music only when one has resolved to sing or to play some
+  instrument. But that is exactly what is meant by being essential to good
+  music: for those rules belong to it already in the ideal state, even when
+  none yet thinks of singing, since it is known that they must of necessity
+  belong to it as soon as one shall sing. In the same way virtues belong to
+  the ideal state of the rational creature before God decrees to create it;
+  and it is for that very reason we maintain that virtues are good by their
+  nature.</p>
+
+  <p>182. M. Bayle has inserted a special chapter in his Continuation of
+  <i>Divers Thoughts on the Comet</i> (it is chapter 152) where he shows
+  'that the Christian Doctors teach that there are things which are just
+  antecedently to God's decrees'. Some theologians of the Augsburg
+  Confession censured some of the Reformed who appeared to be of a
+  different opinion; and this error was regarded as if it were a
+  consequence of the absolute decree, which doctrine seems to exempt the
+  will of God from any kind of reason, <i>ubi stat pro ratione
+  voluntas</i>. But, as I have observed already on various occasions,
+  Calvin himself acknowledged that the decrees of God are in conformity
+  with justice and wisdom, although the reasons that might prove this
+  conformity in detail are unknown to us. Thus, according to him, the rules
+  of goodness and of justice are anterior to the decrees of God. M. Bayle,
+  in the same place, quotes a passage from the celebrated M. Turretin which
+  draws a <!-- Page 241 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page241"></a>[241]</span> distinction between natural divine laws
+  and positive divine laws. Moral laws are of the first kind and ceremonial
+  of the second. Samuel Desmarests, a celebrated theologian formerly at
+  Groningen, and Herr Strinesius, who is still at Frankfort on the Oder,
+  advocated this same distinction; and I think that it is the opinion most
+  widely accepted even among the Reformed. Thomas Aquinas and all the
+  Thomists were of the same opinion, with the bulk of the Schoolmen and the
+  theologians of the Roman Church. The Casuists also held to that idea: I
+  count Grotius among the most eminent of them, and he was followed in this
+  point by his commentators. Herr Pufendorf appeared to be of a different
+  opinion, which he insisted on maintaining in the face of censure from
+  some theologians; but he need not be taken into account, not having
+  advanced far enough in subjects of this kind. He makes a vigorous protest
+  against the absolute decree, in his <i>Fecialis divinus</i>, and yet he
+  approves what is worst in the opinions of the champions of this decree,
+  and without which this decree (as others of the Reformed explain) becomes
+  endurable. Aristotle was very orthodox on this matter of justice, and the
+  Schoolmen followed him: they distinguish, just as Cicero and the Jurists
+  do, between perpetual right, which is binding on all and everywhere, and
+  positive right, which is only for certain times and certain peoples. I
+  once read with enjoyment the <i>Euthyphro</i> of Plato, who makes
+  Socrates uphold the truth on that point, and M. Bayle has called
+  attention to the same passage.</p>
+
+  <p>183. M. Bayle himself upholds this truth with considerable force in a
+  certain passage, which it will be well to quote here in its entirety,
+  long as it is (vol. II of the Continuation of <i>Divers Thoughts on the
+  Comet</i>, ch. 152, p. 771 <i>seqq.</i>): 'According to the teaching of
+  countless writers of importance', he says, 'there is in nature and in the
+  essence of certain things a moral good or evil that precedes the divine
+  decree. They prove this doctrine principally through the frightful
+  consequences that attend the opposite dogma. Thus from the proposition
+  that to do wrong to no man would be a good action, not in itself but by
+  an arbitrary dispensation of God's will, it would follow that God could
+  have given to man a law directly opposed at all points to the
+  commandments of the Decalogue. That is horrifying. But here is a more
+  direct proof, one derived from metaphysics. One thing is certain, that
+  the existence of God is not an effect of his will. He exists not because
+  he wills his <!-- Page 242 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page242"></a>[242]</span> existence, but through the necessity of
+  his infinite nature. His power and his knowledge exist through the same
+  necessity. He is all-powerful, he knows all things, not because he wills
+  it thus, but because these are attributes necessarily identified with
+  him. The dominion of his will relates only to the exercise of his power,
+  he gives effect outside himself only to that which he wills, and he
+  leaves all the rest in the state of mere possibility. Thence it comes
+  that this dominion extends only over the existence of creatures, and not
+  over their essential being. God was able to create matter, a man, a
+  circle, or leave them in nothingness, but he was not able to produce them
+  without giving them their essential properties. He had of necessity to
+  make man a rational animal and to give the round shape to a circle,
+  since, according to his eternal ideas, independent of the free decrees of
+  his will, the essence of man lay in the properties of being animal and
+  rational, and since the essence of the circle lay in having a
+  circumference equally distant from the centre as to all its parts. This
+  is what has caused the Christian philosophers to acknowledge that the
+  essences of things are eternal, and that there are propositions of
+  eternal truth; consequently that the essences of things and the truth of
+  the first principles are immutable. That is to be understood not only of
+  theoretical but also of practical first principles, and of all the
+  propositions that contain the true definition of creatures. These
+  essences and these truths emanate from the same necessity of nature as
+  the knowledge of God. Since therefore it is by the nature of things that
+  God exists, that he is all-powerful, and that he has perfect knowledge of
+  all things, it is also by the nature of things that matter, the triangle,
+  man and certain actions of man, etc., have such and such properties
+  essentially. God saw from all eternity and in all necessity the essential
+  relations of numbers, and the identity of the subject and predicate in
+  the propositions that contain the essence of each thing. He saw likewise
+  that the term just is included in these propositions: to esteem what is
+  estimable, be grateful to one's benefactor, fulfil the conditions of a
+  contract, and so on, with many others relating to morals. One is
+  therefore justified in saying that the precepts of natural law assume the
+  reasonableness and justice of that which is enjoined, and that it would
+  be man's duty to practise what they contain even though God should have
+  been so indulgent as to ordain nothing in that respect. Pray observe that
+  in going back with our visionary thoughts to that ideal moment <!-- Page
+  243 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page243"></a>[243]</span> when God
+  has yet decreed nothing, we find in the ideas of God the principles of
+  morals under terms that imply an obligation. We understand these maxims
+  as certain, and derived from the eternal and immutable order: it beseems
+  the rational creature to conform to reason; a rational creature
+  conforming to reason is to be commended, but not conforming thereto is
+  blameworthy. You would not dare to deny that these truths impose upon man
+  a duty in relation to all acts which are in conformity with strict
+  reason, such as these: one must esteem all that is estimable; render good
+  for good; do wrong to no man; honour one's father; render to every man
+  that which is his due, etc. Now since by the very nature of things, and
+  before the divine laws, the truths of morality impose upon man certain
+  duties, Thomas Aquinas and Grotius were justified in saying that if there
+  were no God we should nevertheless be obliged to conform to natural law.
+  Others have said that even supposing all rational beings in existence
+  were to perish, true propositions would remain true. Cajetan maintained
+  that if he remained alone in the universe, all other things without any
+  exception having been destroyed, the knowledge that he had of the nature
+  of a rose would nevertheless subsist.'</p>
+
+  <p>184. The late Jacob Thomasius, a celebrated Professor at Leipzig, made
+  the apt observation in his elucidations of the philosophic rules of
+  Daniel Stahl, a Jena professor, that it is not advisable to go altogether
+  beyond God, and that one must not say, with some Scotists, that the
+  eternal verities would exist even though there were no understanding, not
+  even that of God. For it is, in my judgement, the divine understanding
+  which gives reality to the eternal verities, albeit God's will have no
+  part therein. All reality must be founded on something existent. It is
+  true that an atheist may be a geometrician: but if there were no God,
+  geometry would have no object. And without God, not only would there be
+  nothing existent, but there would be nothing possible. That, however,
+  does not hinder those who do not see the connexion of all things one with
+  another and with God from being able to understand certain sciences,
+  without knowing their first source, which is in God. Aristotle, although
+  he also scarcely knew that source, nevertheless said something of the
+  same kind which was very apposite. He acknowledged that the principles of
+  individual forms of knowledge depend on a superior knowledge which gives
+  the reason for them; and this superior knowledge must <!-- Page 244
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page244"></a>[244]</span> have being,
+  and consequently God, the source of being, for its object. Herr Dreier of
+  Königsberg has aptly observed that the true metaphysics which Aristotle
+  sought, and which he called <span lang="el" title="tên zêtoumenên"
+  >&#x3C4;&#x3B7;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3B6;&#x3B7;&#x3C4;&#x3BF;&#x3C5;&#x3BC;&#x3B5;&#x3BD;&#x3B7;&#x3BD;</span>,
+  his <i>desideratum</i>, was theology.</p>
+
+  <p>185. Yet the same M. Bayle, who says so much that is admirable in
+  order to prove that the rules of goodness and justice, and the eternal
+  verities in general, exist by their nature, and not by an arbitrary
+  choice of God, has spoken very hesitatingly about them in another passage
+  (Continuation of <i>Divers Thoughts on the Comet</i>, vol. II, ch. 114,
+  towards the end). After having given an account of the opinion of M.
+  Descartes and a section of his followers, who maintain that God is the
+  free cause of truths and of essences, he adds (p. 554): 'I have done all
+  that I could to gain true understanding of this dogma and to find the
+  solution of the difficulties surrounding it. I confess to you quite
+  simply that I still cannot properly fathom it. That does not discourage
+  me; I suppose, as other philosophers in other cases have supposed, that
+  time will unfold the meaning of this noble paradox. I wish that Father
+  Malebranche had thought fit to defend it, but he took other measures.' Is
+  it possible that the enjoyment of doubt can have such influence upon a
+  gifted man as to make him wish and hope for the power to believe that two
+  contradictories never exist together for the sole reason that God forbade
+  them to, and, moreover, that God could have issued them an order to
+  ensure that they always walked together? There is indeed a noble paradox!
+  Father Malebranche showed great wisdom in taking other measures.</p>
+
+  <p>186. I cannot even imagine that M. Descartes can have been quite
+  seriously of this opinion, although he had adherents who found this easy
+  to believe, and would in all simplicity follow him where he only made
+  pretence to go. It was apparently one of his tricks, one of his
+  philosophic feints: he prepared for himself some loophole, as when for
+  instance he discovered a trick for denying the movement of the earth,
+  while he was a Copernican in the strictest sense. I suspect that he had
+  in mind here another extraordinary manner of speaking, of his own
+  invention, which was to say that affirmations and negations, and acts of
+  inner judgement in general, are operations of the will. Through this
+  artifice the eternal verities, which until the time of Descartes had been
+  named an object of the divine understanding, suddenly became an object of
+  God's will. Now the acts of his will are free, therefore God is the <!--
+  Page 245 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page245"></a>[245]</span> free
+  cause of the verities. That is the outcome of the matter. <i>Spectatum
+  admissi.</i> A slight change in the meaning of terms has caused all this
+  commotion. But if the affirmations of necessary truths were actions of
+  the will of the most perfect mind, these actions would be anything but
+  free, for there is nothing to choose. It seems that M. Descartes did not
+  declare himself sufficiently on the nature of freedom, and that his
+  conception of it was somewhat unusual: for he extended it so far that he
+  even held the affirmations of necessary truths to be free in God. That
+  was preserving only the name of freedom.</p>
+
+  <p>187. M. Bayle, who with others conceives this to be a freedom of
+  indifference, that God had had to establish (for instance) the truths of
+  numbers, and to ordain that three times three made nine, whereas he could
+  have commanded them to make ten, imagines in this strange opinion,
+  supposing it were possible to defend it, some kind of advantage gained
+  against the Stratonists. Strato was one of the leaders of the School of
+  Aristotle, and the successor of Theophrastus; he maintained (according to
+  Cicero's account) that this world had been formed such as it is by Nature
+  or by a necessary cause devoid of cognition. I admit that that might be
+  so, if God had so preformed matter as to cause such an effect by the laws
+  of motion alone. But without God there would not even have been any
+  reason for existence, and still less for any particular existence of
+  things: thus Strato's system is not to be feared.</p>
+
+  <p>188. Nevertheless M. Bayle is in difficulties over this: he will not
+  admit plastic natures devoid of cognition, which Mr. Cudworth and others
+  had introduced, for fear that the modern Stratonists, that is, the
+  Spinozists, take advantage of it. This has involved him in disputes with
+  M. le Clerc. Under the influence of this error, that a non-intelligent
+  cause can produce nothing where contrivance appears, he is far from
+  conceding to me that <i>preformation</i> which produces naturally the
+  organs of animals, and <i>the system of a harmony pre-established by
+  God</i> in bodies, to make them respond in accordance with their own laws
+  to the thoughts and the wills of souls. But it ought to have been taken
+  into account that this non-intelligent cause, which produces such
+  beautiful things in the grains and seeds of plants and animals, and
+  effects the actions of bodies as the will ordains them, was formed by the
+  hand of God: and God is infinitely more skilful than a watchmaker, who
+  himself <!-- Page 246 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page246"></a>[246]</span> makes machines and automata that are
+  capable of producing as wonderful effects as if they possessed
+  intelligence.</p>
+
+  <p>189. Now to come to M. Bayle's apprehensions concerning the
+  Stratonists, in case one should admit truths that are not dependent upon
+  the will of God: he seems to fear lest they may take advantage against us
+  of the perfect regularity of the eternal verities. Since this regularity
+  springs only from the nature and necessity of things, without being
+  directed by any cognition, M. Bayle fears that one might with Strato
+  thence infer that the world also could have become regular through a
+  blind necessity. But it is easy to answer that. In the region of the
+  eternal verities are found all the possibles, and consequently the
+  regular as well as the irregular: there must be a reason accounting for
+  the preference for order and regularity, and this reason can only be
+  found in understanding. Moreover these very truths can have no existence
+  without an understanding to take cognizance of them; for they would not
+  exist if there were no divine understanding wherein they are realized, so
+  to speak. Hence Strato does not attain his end, which is to exclude
+  cognition from that which enters into the origin of things.</p>
+
+  <p>190. The difficulty that M. Bayle has imagined in connexion with
+  Strato seems a little too subtle and far-fetched. That is termed:
+  <i>timere, ubi non est timor</i>. He makes another difficulty, which has
+  just as slight a foundation, namely, that God would be subjected to a
+  kind of <i>fatum</i>. Here are his words (p. 555): 'If they are
+  propositions of eternal truth, which are such by their nature and not by
+  God's institution, if they are not true by a free decree of his will, but
+  if on the contrary he has recognized them as true of necessity, because
+  such was their nature, there is a kind of <i>fatum</i> to which he is
+  subjected; there is an absolutely insurmountable natural necessity.
+  Thence comes also the result that the divine understanding in the
+  infinity of its ideas has always and at the outset hit upon their perfect
+  conformity with their objects, without the guidance of any cognition; for
+  it would be a contradiction to say that any exemplary cause had served as
+  a plan for the acts of God's understanding. One would never that way find
+  eternal ideas or any first intelligence. One must say, then, that a
+  nature which exists of necessity always finds its way, without any need
+  for it to be shown. How then shall we overcome the obstinacy of a
+  Stratonist?'</p>
+
+  <p>191. But again it is easy to answer. This so-called <i>fatum</i>,
+  which <!-- Page 247 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page247"></a>[247]</span> binds even the Divinity, is nothing but
+  God's own nature, his own understanding, which furnishes the rules for
+  his wisdom and his goodness; it is a happy necessity, without which he
+  would be neither good nor wise. Is it to be desired that God should not
+  be bound to be perfect and happy? Is our condition, which renders us
+  liable to fail, worth envying? And should we not be well pleased to
+  exchange it for sinlessness, if that depended upon us? One must be indeed
+  weary of life to desire the freedom to destroy oneself and to pity the
+  Divinity for not having that freedom. M. Bayle himself reasons thus
+  elsewhere against those who laud to the skies an extravagant freedom
+  which they assume in the will, when they would make the will independent
+  of reason.</p>
+
+  <p>192. Moreover, M. Bayle wonders 'that the divine understanding in the
+  infinity of its ideas always and at the outset hits upon their perfect
+  conformity with their objects, without the guidance of any cognition'.
+  This objection is null and void. Every distinct idea is, through its
+  distinctness, in conformity with its object, and in God there are
+  distinct ideas only. At first, moreover, the object exists nowhere; but
+  when it comes into existence, it will be formed according to this idea.
+  Besides, M. Bayle knows very well that the divine understanding has no
+  need of time for seeing the connexion of things. All trains of reasoning
+  are in God in a transcendent form, and they preserve an order amongst
+  them in his understanding, as well as in ours: but with him it is only an
+  order and a <i>priority of nature</i>, whereas with us there is a
+  <i>priority of time</i>. It is therefore not to be wondered at that he
+  who penetrates all things at one stroke should always strike true at the
+  outset; and it must not be said that he succeeds without the guidance of
+  any cognition. On the contrary, it is because his knowledge is perfect
+  that his voluntary actions are also perfect.</p>
+
+  <p>193. Up to now I have shown that the Will of God is not independent of
+  the rules of Wisdom, although indeed it is a matter for surprise that one
+  should have been constrained to argue about it, and to do battle for a
+  truth so great and so well established. But it is hardly less surprising
+  that there should be people who believe that God only half observes these
+  rules, and does not choose the best, although his wisdom causes him to
+  recognize it; and, in a word, that there should be writers who hold that
+  God could have done better. That is more or less the error of the famous
+  Alfonso, King of Castile, who was elected King of the Romans by certain
+  <!-- Page 248 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page248"></a>[248]</span>
+  Electors, and originated the astronomical tables that bear his name. This
+  prince is reported to have said that if God in making the world had
+  consulted him he would have given God good advice. Apparently the
+  Ptolemaic system, which prevailed at that time, was displeasing to him.
+  He believed therefore that something better planned could have been made,
+  and he was right. But if he had known the system of Copernicus, with the
+  discoveries of Kepler, now extended by knowledge of the gravity of the
+  planets, he would indeed have confessed that the contrivance of the true
+  system is marvellous. We see, therefore, that here the question concerned
+  the more or less only; Alfonso maintained that better could have been
+  done, and his opinion was censured by everyone.</p>
+
+  <p>194. Yet philosophers and theologians dare to support dogmatically
+  such a belief; and I have many times wondered that gifted and pious
+  persons should have been capable of setting bounds to the goodness and
+  the perfection of God. For to assert that he knows what is best, that he
+  can do it and that he does it not, is to avow that it rested with his
+  will only to make the world better than it is; but that is what one calls
+  lacking goodness. It is acting against that axiom already quoted:
+  <i>Minus bonum habet rationem mali</i>. If some adduce experience to
+  prove that God could have done better, they set themselves up as
+  ridiculous critics of his works. To such will be given the answer given
+  to all those who criticize God's course of action, and who from this same
+  assumption, that is, the alleged defects of the world, would infer that
+  there is an evil God, or at least a God neutral between good and evil.
+  And if we hold the same opinion as King Alfonso, we shall, I say, receive
+  this answer: You have known the world only since the day before
+  yesterday, you see scarce farther than your nose, and you carp at the
+  world. Wait until you know more of the world and consider therein
+  especially the parts which present a complete whole (as do organic
+  bodies); and you will find there a contrivance and a beauty transcending
+  all imagination. Let us thence draw conclusions as to the wisdom and the
+  goodness of the author of things, even in things that we know not. We
+  find in the universe some things which are not pleasing to us; but let us
+  be aware that it is not made for us alone. It is nevertheless made for us
+  if we are wise: it will serve us if we use it for our service; we shall
+  be happy in it if we wish to be.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 249 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page249"></a>[249]</span></p>
+
+  <p>195. Someone will say that it is impossible to produce the best,
+  because there is no perfect creature, and that it is always possible to
+  produce one which would be more perfect. I answer that what can be said
+  of a creature or of a particular substance, which can always be surpassed
+  by another, is not to be applied to the universe, which, since it must
+  extend through all future eternity, is an infinity. Moreover, there is an
+  infinite number of creatures in the smallest particle of matter, because
+  of the actual division of the <i>continuum</i> to infinity. And infinity,
+  that is to say, the accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is,
+  properly speaking, not a whole any more than the infinite number itself,
+  whereof one cannot say whether it is even or uneven. That is just what
+  serves to confute those who make of the world a God, or who think of God
+  as the Soul of the world; for the world or the universe cannot be
+  regarded as an animal or as a substance.</p>
+
+  <p>196. It is therefore not a question of a creature, but of the
+  universe; and the adversary will be obliged to maintain that one possible
+  universe may be better than the other, to infinity; but there he would be
+  mistaken, and it is that which he cannot prove. If this opinion were
+  true, it would follow that God had not produced any universe at all: for
+  he is incapable of acting without reason, and that would be even acting
+  against reason. It is as if one were to suppose that God had decreed to
+  make a material sphere, with no reason for making it of any particular
+  size. This decree would be useless, it would carry with it that which
+  would prevent its effect. It would be quite another matter if God decreed
+  to draw from a given point one straight line to another given straight
+  line, without any determination of the angle, either in the decree or in
+  its circumstances. For in this case the determination would spring from
+  the nature of the thing, the line would be perpendicular, and the angle
+  would be right, since that is all that is determined and distinguishable.
+  It is thus one must think of the creation of the best of all possible
+  universes, all the more since God not only decrees to create a universe,
+  but decrees also to create the best of all. For God decrees nothing
+  without knowledge, and he makes no separate decrees, which would be
+  nothing but antecedent acts of will: and these we have sufficiently
+  explained, distinguishing them from genuine decrees.</p>
+
+  <p>197. M. Diroys, whom I knew in Rome, theologian to Cardinal d'Estrées,
+  wrote a book entitled <i>Proofs and Assumptions in Favour of</i> <!--
+  Page 250 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page250"></a>[250]</span>
+  <i>the Christian Religion</i>, published in Paris in the year 1683. M.
+  Bayle (<i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 165,
+  p. 1058) recounts this objection brought up by M. Diroys: 'There is one
+  more difficulty', he says, 'which it is no less important to meet than
+  those given earlier, since it causes more trouble to those who judge
+  goods and evils by considerations founded on the purest and most lofty
+  maxims. This is that God being the supreme wisdom and goodness, it seems
+  to them that he ought to do all things as wise and virtuous persons would
+  wish them to be done, following the rules of wisdom and of goodness which
+  God has imprinted in them, and as they would be obliged themselves to do
+  these things if they depended upon them. Thus, seeing that the affairs of
+  the world do not go so well as, in their opinion, they might go, and as
+  they would go if they interfered themselves, they conclude that God, who
+  is infinitely better and wiser than they, or rather wisdom and goodness
+  itself, does not concern himself with these affairs.'</p>
+
+  <p>198. M. Diroys makes some apt remarks concerning this, which I will
+  not repeat, since I have sufficiently answered the objection in more than
+  one passage, and that has been the chief end of all my discourse. But he
+  makes one assertion with which I cannot agree. He claims that the
+  objection proves too much. One must again quote his own words with M.
+  Bayle, p. 1059: 'If it does not behove the supreme Wisdom and Goodness to
+  fail to do what is best and most perfect, it follows that all Beings are
+  eternally, immutably and essentially as perfect and as good as they can
+  be, since nothing can change except by passing either from a state less
+  good to a better, or from a better to a less good. Now that cannot happen
+  if it does not behove God to fail to do that which is best and most
+  perfect, when he can do it. It will therefore be necessary that all
+  beings be eternally and essentially filled with a knowledge and a virtue
+  as perfect as God can give them. Now all that which is eternally and
+  essentially as perfect as God can make it proceeds essentially from him;
+  in a word, is eternally and essentially good as he is, and consequently
+  it is God, as he is. That is the bearing of this maxim, that it is
+  repugnant to supreme justice and goodness not to make things as good and
+  perfect as they can be. For it is essential to essential wisdom and
+  goodness to banish all that is repugnant to it altogether. One must
+  therefore assert as a primary truth concerning the conduct of God in
+  relation to creatures that there is nothing repugnant to this goodness
+  and this wisdom in <!-- Page 251 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page251"></a>[251]</span> making things less perfect than they
+  could be, or in permitting the goods that it has produced either
+  completely to cease to be or to change and deteriorate. For it causes no
+  offence to God that there should be other Beings than he, that is beings
+  who can be not what they are, and do not what they do or do what they do
+  not.'</p>
+
+  <p>199. M. Bayle calls this answer paltry, but I find his
+  counter-objection involved. M. Bayle will have those who are for the two
+  principles to take their stand chiefly on the assumption of the supreme
+  freedom of God: for if he were compelled to produce all that which he
+  can, he would produce also sins and sorrows. Thus the Dualists could from
+  the existence of evil conclude nothing contrary to the oneness of the
+  principle, if this principle were as much inclined to evil as to good.
+  There M. Bayle carries the notion of freedom too far: for even though God
+  be supremely free, it does not follow that he maintains an indifference
+  of equipoise: and even though he be inclined to act, it does not follow
+  that he is compelled by this inclination to produce all that which he
+  can. He will produce only that which he wills, for his inclination
+  prompts him to good. I admit the supreme freedom of God, but I do not
+  confuse it with indifference of equipoise, as if he could act without
+  reason. M. Diroys therefore imagines that the Dualists, in their
+  insistence that the single good principle produce no evil, ask too much;
+  for by the same reason, according to M. Diroys, they ought also to ask
+  that he should produce the greatest good, the less good being a kind of
+  evil. I hold that the Dualists are wrong in respect of the first point,
+  and that they would be right in respect of the second, where M. Diroys
+  blames them without cause; or rather that one can reconcile the evil, or
+  the less good, in some parts with the best in the whole. If the Dualists
+  demanded that God should do the best, they would not be demanding too
+  much. They are mistaken rather in claiming that the best in the whole
+  should be free from evil in the parts, and that therefore what God has
+  made is not the best.</p>
+
+  <p>200. But M. Diroys maintains that if God always produces the best he
+  will produce other Gods; otherwise each substance that he produced would
+  not be the best nor the most perfect. But he is mistaken, through not
+  taking into account the order and connexion of things. If each substance
+  taken separately were perfect, all would be alike; which is neither
+  fitting nor possible. If they <!-- Page 252 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page252"></a>[252]</span> were Gods, it would not have been
+  possible to produce them. The best system of things will therefore not
+  contain Gods; it will always be a system of bodies (that is, things
+  arranged according to time and place) and of souls which represent and
+  are aware of bodies, and in accordance with which bodies are in great
+  measure directed. So, as the design of a building may be the best of all
+  in respect of its purpose, of expense and of circumstances; and as an
+  arrangement of some figured representations of bodies which is given to
+  you may be the best that one can find, it is easy to imagine likewise
+  that a structure of the universe may be the best of all, without becoming
+  a god. The connexion and order of things brings it about that the body of
+  every animal and of every plant is composed of other animals and of other
+  plants, or of other living and organic beings; consequently there is
+  subordination, and one body, one substance serves the other: thus their
+  perfection cannot be equal.</p>
+
+  <p>201. M. Bayle thinks (p. 1063) that M. Diroys has confused two
+  different propositions. According to the one, God must do all things as
+  wise and virtuous persons would wish that they should be done, by the
+  rules of wisdom and of goodness that God has imprinted in them, and as
+  they would be obliged themselves to do them if those things depended upon
+  them. The other is that it is not consistent with supreme wisdom and
+  goodness to fail to do what is best and most perfect. M. Diroys (in M.
+  Bayle's opinion) sets up the first proposition as an objection for
+  himself, and replies to the second. But therein he is justified, as it
+  seems to me. For these two propositions are connected, the second is a
+  result of the first: to do less good than one could is to be lacking in
+  wisdom or in goodness. To be the best, and to be desired by those who are
+  most virtuous and wise, comes to the same thing. And it may be said that,
+  if we could understand the structure and the economy of the universe, we
+  should find that it is made and directed as the wisest and most virtuous
+  could wish it, since God cannot fail to do thus. This necessity
+  nevertheless is only of a moral nature: and I admit that if God were
+  forced by a metaphysical necessity to produce that which he makes, he
+  would produce all the possibles, or nothing; and in this sense M. Bayle's
+  conclusion would be fully correct. But as all the possibles are not
+  compatible together in one and the same world-sequence, for that very
+  reason all the possibles cannot be produced, and it must be said that God
+  is not <!-- Page 253 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page253"></a>[253]</span> forced, metaphysically speaking, into the
+  creation of this world. One may say that as soon as God has decreed to
+  create something there is a struggle between all the possibles, all of
+  them laying claim to existence, and that those which, being united,
+  produce most reality, most perfection, most significance carry the day.
+  It is true that all this struggle can only be ideal, that is to say, it
+  can only be a conflict of reasons in the most perfect understanding,
+  which cannot fail to act in the most perfect way, and consequently to
+  choose the best. Yet God is bound by a moral necessity, to make things in
+  such a manner that there can be nothing better: otherwise not only would
+  others have cause to criticize what he makes, but, more than that, he
+  would not himself be satisfied with his work, he would blame himself for
+  its imperfection; and that conflicts with the supreme felicity of the
+  divine nature. This perpetual sense of his own fault or imperfection
+  would be to him an inevitable source of grief, as M. Bayle says on
+  another occasion (p.953).</p>
+
+  <p>202. M. Diroys' argument contains a false assumption, in his statement
+  that nothing can change except by passing from a state less good to a
+  better or from a better to a less good; and that thus, if God makes the
+  best, what he has produced cannot be changed: it would be an eternal
+  substance, a god. But I do not see why a thing cannot change its kind in
+  relation to good or evil, without changing its degree. In the transition
+  from enjoyment of music to enjoyment of painting, or <i>vice versa</i>
+  from the pleasure of the eyes to that of the ears, the degree of
+  enjoyment may remain the same, the latter gaining no advantage over the
+  former save that of novelty. If the quadrature of the circle should come
+  to pass or (what is the same thing) the circulature of the square, that
+  is, if the circle were changed into a square of the same size, or the
+  square into a circle, it would be difficult to say, on the whole, without
+  having regard to some special use, whether one would have gained or lost.
+  Thus the best may be changed into another which neither yields to it nor
+  surpasses it: but there will always be an order among them, and that the
+  best order possible. Taking the whole sequence of things, the best has no
+  equal; but one part of the sequence may be equalled by another part of
+  the same sequence. Besides it might be said that the whole sequence of
+  things to infinity may be the best possible, although what exists all
+  through the universe in each portion of time be not the best. It <!--
+  Page 254 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page254"></a>[254]</span>
+  might be therefore that the universe became even better and better, if
+  the nature of things were such that it was not permitted to attain to the
+  best all at once. But these are problems of which it is hard for us to
+  judge.</p>
+
+  <p>203. M. Bayle says (p. 1064) that the question whether God could have
+  made things more perfect than he made them is also very difficult, and
+  that the reasons for and against are very strong. But it is, so it seems
+  to me, as if one were to question whether God's actions are consistent
+  with the most perfect wisdom and the greatest goodness. It is a very
+  strange thing, that by changing the terms a little one throws doubt upon
+  what is, if properly understood, as clear as anything can be. The reasons
+  to the contrary have no force, being founded only on the semblance of
+  defects; and M. Bayle's objection, which tends to prove that the law of
+  the best would impose upon God a true metaphysical necessity, is only an
+  illusion that springs from the misuse of terms. M. Bayle formerly held a
+  different opinion, when he commended that of Father Malebranche, which
+  was akin to mine on this subject. But M. Arnauld having written in
+  opposition to Father Malebranche, M. Bayle altered his opinion; and I
+  suppose that his tendency towards doubt, which increased in him with the
+  years, was conducive to that result. M. Arnauld was doubtless a great
+  man, and his authority has great weight: he made sundry good observations
+  in his writings against Father Malebranche, but he was not justified in
+  contesting those of his statements that were akin to mine on the rule of
+  the best.</p>
+
+  <p>204. The excellent author of <i>The Search for Truth</i>, having
+  passed from philosophy to theology, published finally an admirable
+  treatise on Nature and Grace. Here he showed in his way (as M. Bayle
+  explained in his <i>Divers Thoughts on the Comet</i>, ch. 234) that the
+  events which spring from the enforcement of general laws are not the
+  object of a particular will of God. It is true that when one wills a
+  thing one wills also in a sense everything that is necessarily attached
+  to it, and in consequence God cannot will general laws without also
+  willing in a sense all the particular effects that must of necessity be
+  derived from them. But it is always true that these particular events are
+  not willed for their own sake, and that is what is meant by the
+  expression that they are not willed by a <i>particular</i> and direct
+  <i>will</i>. There is no doubt that when God resolved to act outside
+  himself, he made choice of a manner of action which <!-- Page 255
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page255"></a>[255]</span> should be
+  worthy of the supremely perfect Being, that is, which should be
+  infinitely simple and uniform, but yet of an infinite productivity. One
+  may even suppose that this manner of action by <i>general acts of
+  will</i> appeared to him preferable&mdash;although there must thence
+  result some superfluous events (and even bad if they are taken
+  separately, that is my own addition)&mdash;to another manner more
+  composed and more regular; such is Father Malebranche's opinion. Nothing
+  is more appropriate than this assumption (according to the opinion of M.
+  Bayle, when he wrote his <i>Divers Thoughts on the Comet</i>) to solve a
+  thousand difficulties which are brought up against divine providence: 'To
+  ask God', he says, 'why he has made things which serve to render men more
+  wicked, that would be to ask why God has carried out his plan (which can
+  only be of infinite beauty) by the simplest and most uniform methods, and
+  why, by a complexity of decrees that would unceasingly cut across one
+  another, he has not prevented the wrong use of man's free will.' He adds
+  'that miracles being particular acts of will must have an end worthy of
+  God'.</p>
+
+  <p>205. On these foundations he makes some good reflexions (ch. 231)
+  concerning the injustice of those who complain of the prosperity of the
+  wicked. 'I shall have no scruples', he says, 'about saying that all those
+  who are surprised at the prosperity of the wicked have pondered very
+  little upon the nature of God, and that they have reduced the obligations
+  of a cause which directs all things, to the scope of a providence
+  altogether subordinate; and that is small-minded. What then! Should God,
+  after having made free causes and necessary causes, in a mixture
+  infinitely well fitted to show forth the wonders of his infinite wisdom,
+  have established laws consistent with the nature of free causes, but so
+  lacking in firmness that the slightest trouble that came upon a man would
+  overthrow them entirely, to the ruin of human freedom? A mere city
+  governor will become an object of ridicule if he changes his regulations
+  and orders as often as someone is pleased to murmur against him. And
+  shall God, whose laws concern a good so universal that all of the world
+  that is visible to us perchance enters into it as no more than a trifling
+  accessary, be bound to depart from his laws, because they to-day
+  displease the one and to-morrow the other? Or again because a
+  superstitious person, deeming wrongly that a monstrosity presages
+  something deadly, proceeds from his error to a criminal sacrifice? Or
+  because a good <!-- Page 256 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page256"></a>[256]</span> soul, who yet does not value virtue
+  highly enough to believe that to have none is punishment enough in
+  itself, is shocked that a wicked man should become rich and enjoy
+  vigorous health? Can one form any falser notions of a universal
+  providence? Everyone agrees that this law of nature, the strong prevails
+  over the weak, has been very wisely laid down, and that it would be
+  absurd to maintain that when a stone falls on a fragile vase which is the
+  delight of its owner, God should depart from this law in order to spare
+  that owner vexation. Should one then not confess that it is just as
+  absurd to maintain that God must depart from the same law to prevent a
+  wicked man from growing rich at the expense of a good man? The more the
+  wicked man sets himself above the promptings of conscience and of honour,
+  the more does he exceed the good man in strength, so that if he comes to
+  grips with the good man he must, according to the course of nature, ruin
+  him. If, moreover, they are both engaged in the business of finance, the
+  wicked man must, according to the same course of nature, grow richer than
+  the good man, just as a fierce fire consumes more wood than a fire of
+  straw. Those who would wish sickness for a wicked man are sometimes as
+  unfair as those who would wish that a stone falling on a glass should not
+  break it: for his organs being arranged as they are, neither the food
+  that he takes nor the air that he breathes can, according to natural
+  laws, be detrimental to his health. Therefore those who complain about
+  his health complain of God's failure to violate the laws which he has
+  established. And in this they are all the more unfair because, through
+  combinations and concatenations which were in the power of God alone, it
+  happens often enough that the course of nature brings about the
+  punishment of sin.'</p>
+
+  <p>206. It is a thousand pities that M. Bayle so soon quitted the way he
+  had so auspiciously begun, of reasoning on behalf of providence: for his
+  work would have been fruitful, and in saying fine things he would have
+  said good things as well. I agree with Father Malebranche that God does
+  things in the way most worthy of him. But I go a little further than he,
+  with regard to 'general and particular acts of will'. As God can do
+  nothing without reasons, even when he acts miraculously, it follows that
+  he has no will about individual events but what results from some general
+  truth or will. Thus I would say that God never has a <i>particular
+  will</i> such as this Father implies, that is to say, <i>a particular
+  primitive will</i>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 257 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page257"></a>[257]</span></p>
+
+  <p>207. I think even that miracles have nothing to distinguish them from
+  other events in this regard: for reasons of an order superior to that of
+  Nature prompt God to perform them. Thus I would not say, with this
+  Father, that God departs from general laws whenever order requires it: he
+  departs from one law only for another law more applicable, and what order
+  requires cannot fail to be in conformity with the rule of order, which is
+  one of the general laws. The distinguishing mark of miracles (taken in
+  the strictest sense) is that they cannot be accounted for by the natures
+  of created things. That is why, should God make a general law causing
+  bodies to be attracted the one to the other, he could only achieve its
+  operation by perpetual miracles. And likewise, if God willed that the
+  organs of human bodies should conform to the will of the soul, according
+  to the <i>system of occasional causes</i>, this law also would come into
+  operation only through perpetual miracles.</p>
+
+  <p>208. Thus one must suppose that, among the general rules which are not
+  absolutely necessary, God chooses those which are the most natural, which
+  it is easiest to explain, and which also are of greatest service for the
+  explanation of other things. That is doubtless the conclusion most
+  excellent and most pleasing; and even though the System of
+  Pre-established Harmony were not necessary otherwise, because it banishes
+  superfluous miracles, God would have chosen it as being the most
+  harmonious. The ways of God are those most simple and uniform: for he
+  chooses rules that least restrict one another. They are also the most
+  <i>productive</i> in proportion to the <i>simplicity of ways and
+  means</i>. It is as if one said that a certain house was the best that
+  could have been constructed at a certain cost. One may, indeed, reduce
+  these two conditions, simplicity and productivity, to a single advantage,
+  which is to produce as much perfection as is possible: thus Father
+  Malebranche's system in this point amounts to the same as mine. Even if
+  the effect were assumed to be greater, but the process less simple, I
+  think one might say that, when all is said and done, the effect itself
+  would be less great, taking into account not only the final effect but
+  also the mediate effect. For the wisest mind so acts, as far as it is
+  possible, that the <i>means</i> are also in a sense <i>ends</i>, that is,
+  they are desirable not only on account of what they do, but on account of
+  what they are. The more intricate processes take up too much ground, too
+  much space, too much place, too much time that might have been better
+  employed.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 258 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page258"></a>[258]</span></p>
+
+  <p>209. Now since everything resolves itself into this greatest
+  perfection, we return to my law of the best. For perfection includes not
+  only the <i>moral good</i> and the <i>physical good</i> of intelligent
+  creatures, but also the good which is purely <i>metaphysical</i>, and
+  concerns also creatures devoid of reason. It follows that the evil that
+  is in rational creatures happens only by concomitance, not by antecedent
+  will but by a consequent will, as being involved in the best possible
+  plan; and the metaphysical good which includes everything makes it
+  necessary sometimes to admit physical evil and moral evil, as I have
+  already explained more than once. It so happens that the ancient Stoics
+  were not far removed from this system. M. Bayle remarked upon this
+  himself in his <i>Dictionary</i> in the article on 'Chrysippus', rem. T.
+  It is of importance to give his own words, in order sometimes to face him
+  with his own objections and to bring him back to the fine sentiments that
+  he had formerly pronounced: 'Chrysippus', he says (p. 930), 'in his work
+  on Providence examined amongst other questions this one: Did the nature
+  of things, or the providence that made the world and the human kind, make
+  also the diseases to which men are subject? He answers that the chief
+  design of Nature was not to make them sickly, that would not be in
+  keeping with the cause of all good; but Nature, in preparing and
+  producing many great things excellently ordered and of great usefulness,
+  found that some drawbacks came as a result, and thus these were not in
+  conformity with the original design and purpose; they came about as a
+  sequel to the work, they existed only as consequences. For the formation
+  of the human body, Chrysippus said, the finest idea as well as the very
+  utility of the work demanded that the head should be composed of a tissue
+  of thin, fine bones; but because of that it was bound to have the
+  disadvantage of not being able to resist blows. Nature made health, and
+  at the same time it was necessary by a kind of concomitance that the
+  source of diseases should be opened up. The same thing applies with
+  regard to virtue; the direct action of Nature, which brought it forth,
+  produced by a counter stroke the brood of vices. I have not translated
+  literally, for which reason I give here the actual Latin of Aulus
+  Gellius, for the benefit of those who understand that language (Aul.
+  Gellius, lib. 6, cap. 1): "Idem Chrysippus in eod. lib. (quarto, <span
+  lang="el" title="peri pronoias" >&#x3C0;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3B9;
+  &#x3C0;&#x3C1;&#x3BF;&#x3BD;&#x3BF;&#x3B9;&#x3B1;&#x3C2;</span>) tractat
+  consideratque, dignumque esse id quaeri putat, <span lang="el" title="ei hai tôn anthrôpôn nosoi kata physin gignontai"
+  >&#x3B5;&#x3B9; &#x201B;&#x3B1;&#x3B9; &#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3B1;&#x3BD;&#x3B8;&#x3C1;&#x3C9;&#x3C0;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3BD;&#x3BF;&#x3C3;&#x3BF;&#x3B9; &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;
+  &#x3C6;&#x3C5;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3B3;&#x3B9;&#x3B3;&#x3BD;&#x3BF;&#x3BD;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;&#x3B9;</span>.
+  Id est, naturane ipsa rerum, vel <!-- Page 259 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page259"></a>[259]</span> providentia quae
+  compagem hanc mundi et genus hominum fecit, morbos quoque et debilitates
+  et aegritudines corporum, quas patiuntur homines, fecerit. Existimat
+  autem non fuisse hoc principale naturae consilium, ut faceret homines
+  morbis obnoxios. Nunquam enim hoc convenisse naturae auctori parentique
+  rerum omnium bonarum. Sed quum multa, inquit, atque magna gigneret,
+  pareretque aptissima et utilissima, alia quoque simul agnata sunt
+  incommoda iis ipsis, quae faciebat, cohaerentia: eaque non per naturam,
+  sed per sequelas quasdam necessarias facta dicit, quod ipse appellat
+  <span lang="el" title="kata parakolouthêsin"
+  >&#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;&#x3B1;
+  &#x3C0;&#x3B1;&#x3C1;&#x3B1;&#x3BA;&#x3BF;&#x3BB;&#x3BF;&#x3C5;&#x3B8;&#x3B7;&#x3C3;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;</span>.
+  Sicut, inquit, quum corpora hominum natura fingeret, ratio subtilior et
+  utilitas ipsa operis postulavit ut tenuissimis minutisque ossiculis caput
+  compingeret. Sed hanc utilitatem rei majoris alia quaedam incommoditas
+  extrinsecus consecuta est, ut fieret caput tenuiter munitum et ictibus
+  offensionibusque parvis fragile. Proinde morbi quoque et aegritudines
+  partae sunt, dum salus paritur. Sic Hercle, inquit, dum virtus hominibus
+  per consilium naturae gignitur, vitia ibidem per affinitatem contrariam
+  nata sunt." I do not think that a pagan could have said anything more
+  reasonable, considering his ignorance of the first man's fall, the
+  knowledge of which has only reached us through revelation, and which
+  indeed is the true cause of our miseries. If we had sundry like extracts
+  from the works of Chrysippus, or rather if we had his works, we should
+  have a more favourable idea than we have of the beauty of his
+  genius.'</p>
+
+  <p>210. Let us now see the reverse of the medal in the altered M. Bayle.
+  After having quoted in his <i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>
+  (vol. III, ch. 155, p. 962) these words of M. Jacquelot, which are much
+  to my liking: 'To change the order of the universe is something of
+  infinitely greater consequence than the prosperity of a good man,' he
+  adds: 'This thought has something dazzling about it: Father Malebranche
+  has placed it in the best possible light; and he has persuaded some of
+  his readers that a system which is simple and very productive is more
+  consistent with God's wisdom than a system more composite and less
+  productive in proportion, but more capable of averting irregularities. M.
+  Bayle was one of those who believed that Father Malebranche in that way
+  gave a wonderful solution.' (It is M. Bayle himself speaking.) 'But it is
+  almost impossible to be satisfied with it after having read M. Arnauld's
+  books against this system, and after having contemplated the vast and
+  boundless idea of the supremely <!-- Page 260 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page260"></a>[260]</span> perfect Being. This idea shows us that
+  nothing is easier for God than to follow a plan which is simple,
+  productive, regular and opportune for all creatures simultaneously.'</p>
+
+  <p>211. While I was in France I showed to M. Arnauld a dialogue I had
+  composed in Latin on the cause of evil and the justice of God; it was not
+  only before his disputes with Father Malebranche, but even before the
+  book on <i>The Search for Truth</i> appeared. That principle which I
+  uphold here, namely that sin had been permitted because it had been
+  involved in the best plan for the universe, was already applied there;
+  and M. Arnauld did not seem to be startled by it. But the slight
+  contentions which he has since had with Father Malebranche have given him
+  cause to examine this subject with closer attention, and to be more
+  severe in his judgement thereof. Yet I am not altogether pleased with M.
+  Bayle's manner of expression here on this subject, and I am not of the
+  opinion 'that a more composite and less productive plan might be more
+  capable of averting irregularities'. Rules are the expression of general
+  will: the more one observes rules, the more regularity there is;
+  simplicity and productivity are the aim of rules. I shall be met with the
+  objection that a uniform system will be free from irregularities. I
+  answer that it would be an irregularity to be too uniform, that would
+  offend against the rules of harmony. <i>Et citharoedus Ridetur chorda qui
+  semper oberrat eadem</i>. I believe therefore that God can follow a
+  simple, productive, regular plan; but I do not believe that the best and
+  the most regular is always opportune for all creatures simultaneously;
+  and I judge <i>a posteriori</i>, for the plan chosen by God is not so. I
+  have, however, also shown this <i>a priori</i> in examples taken from
+  mathematics, and I will presently give another here. An Origenist who
+  maintains that all rational creatures become happy in the end will be
+  still easier to satisfy. He will say, in imitation of St. Paul's saying
+  about the sufferings of this life, that those which are finite are not
+  worthy to be compared with eternal bliss.</p>
+
+  <p>212. What is deceptive in this subject, as I have already observed, is
+  that one feels an inclination to believe that what is the best in the
+  whole is also the best possible in each part. One reasons thus in
+  geometry, when it is a question <i>de maximis et minimis</i>. If the road
+  from A to B that one proposes to take is the shortest possible, and if
+  this road passes by C, then the road from A to C, part of the first, must
+  also be the shortest possible. But the inference from <!-- Page 261
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page261"></a>[261]</span>
+  <i>quantity</i> to <i>quality</i> is not always right, any more than that
+  which is drawn from equals to similars. For <i>equals</i> are those whose
+  quantity is the same, and <i>similars</i> are those not differing
+  according to qualities. The late Herr Sturm, a famous mathematician in
+  Altorf, while in Holland in his youth published there a small book under
+  the title of <i>Euclides Catholicus</i>. Here he endeavoured to give
+  exact and general rules in subjects not mathematical, being encouraged in
+  the task by the late Herr Erhard Weigel, who had been his tutor. In this
+  book he transfers to similars what Euclid had said of equals, and he
+  formulates this axiom: <i>Si similibus addas similia, tota sunt
+  similia</i>. But so many limitations were necessary to justify this new
+  rule, that it would have been better, in my opinion, to enounce it at the
+  outset with a reservation, by saying, <i>Si similibus similia addas
+  similiter, tota sunt similia</i>. Moreover, geometricians often require
+  <i>non tantum similia, sed et similiter posita</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>213. This difference between quantity and quality appears also in our
+  case. The part of the shortest way between two extreme points is also the
+  shortest way between the extreme points of this part; but the part of the
+  best Whole is not of necessity the best that one could have made of this
+  part. For the part of a beautiful thing is not always beautiful, since it
+  can be extracted from the whole, or marked out within the whole, in an
+  irregular manner. If goodness and beauty always lay in something absolute
+  and uniform, such as extension, matter, gold, water, and other bodies
+  assumed to be homogeneous or similar, one must say that the part of the
+  good and the beautiful would be beautiful and good like the whole, since
+  it would always have resemblance to the whole: but this is not the case
+  in things that have mutual relations. An example taken from geometry will
+  be appropriate to explain my idea.</p>
+
+  <p>214. There is a kind of geometry which Herr Jung of Hamburg, one of
+  the most admirable men of his time, called 'empiric'. It makes use of
+  conclusive experiments and proves various propositions of Euclid, but
+  especially those which concern the equality of two figures, by cutting
+  the one in pieces, and putting the pieces together again to make the
+  other. In this manner, by cutting carefully in parts the squares on the
+  two sides of the right-angled triangle, and arranging these parts
+  carefully, one makes from them the square on the hypotenuse; that is
+  demonstrating empirically the 47th proposition of the first book of
+  Euclid. Now supposing that some of these pieces taken from the two
+  smaller <!-- Page 262 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page262"></a>[262]</span> squares are lost, something will be
+  lacking in the large square that is to be formed from them; and this
+  defective combination, far from pleasing, will be disagreeably ugly. If
+  then the pieces that remained, composing the faulty combination, were
+  taken separately without any regard to the large square to whose
+  formation they ought to contribute, one would group them together quite
+  differently to make a tolerably good combination. But as soon as the lost
+  pieces are retrieved and the gap in the faulty combination is filled,
+  there will ensue a beautiful and regular thing, the complete large
+  square: this perfect combination will be far more beautiful than the
+  tolerably good combination which had been made from the pieces one had
+  not mislaid alone. The perfect combination corresponds to the universe in
+  its entirety, and the faulty combination that is a part of the perfect
+  one corresponds to some part of the universe, where we find defects which
+  the Author of things has allowed, because otherwise, if he had wished to
+  re-shape this faulty part and make thereof a tolerably good combination,
+  the whole would not then have been so beautiful. For the parts of the
+  faulty combination, grouped better to make a tolerably good combination,
+  could not have been used properly to form the whole and perfect
+  combination. Thomas Aquinas had an inkling of these things when he said:
+  <i>ad prudentem gubernatorem pertinet, negligere aliquem defectum
+  bonitatis in parte, ut faciat augmentum bonitatis in toto</i> (Thom.,
+  <i>Contra Gentiles</i>, lib. 2, c. 71). Thomas Gatacre, in his Notes on
+  the book of Marcus Aurelius (lib. 5, cap. 8, with M. Bayle), cites also
+  passages from authors who say that the evil of the parts is often the
+  good of the whole.</p>
+
+  <p>215. Let us return to M. Bayle's illustrations. He imagines a prince
+  (p. 963) who is having a city built, and who, in bad taste, aims rather
+  at airs of magnificence therein, and a bold and unusual style of
+  architecture, than at the provision of conveniences of all kinds for the
+  inhabitants. But if this prince has true magnanimity he will prefer the
+  convenient to the magnificent architecture. That is M. Bayle's judgement.
+  I consider, however, that there are cases where one will justifiably
+  prefer beauty of construction in a palace to the convenience of a few
+  domestics. But I admit that the construction would be bad, however
+  beautiful it might be, if it were a cause of diseases to the inhabitants;
+  provided it was possible to make one that would be better, taking into
+  account beauty, convenience and health all together. It may be, indeed,
+  that one cannot <!-- Page 263 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page263"></a>[263]</span> have all these advantages at once. Thus,
+  supposing one wished to build on the northern and more bracing side of
+  the mountain, if the castle were then bound to be of an unendurable
+  construction, one would prefer to make it face southward.</p>
+
+  <p>216. M. Bayle raises the further objection, that it is true that our
+  legislators can never invent regulations such as are convenient for all
+  individuals, 'Nulla lex satis commoda omnibus est; id modo quaeritur, si
+  majori parti et in summam prodest. (Cato apud Livium, L. 34, circa
+  init.)' But the reason is that the limited condition of their knowledge
+  compels them to cling to laws which, when all is taken into account, are
+  more advantageous than harmful. Nothing of all that can apply to God, who
+  is as infinite in power and understanding as in goodness and true
+  greatness. I answer that since God chooses the best possible, one cannot
+  tax him with any limitation of his perfections; and in the universe not
+  only does the good exceed the evil, but also the evil serves to augment
+  the good.</p>
+
+  <p>217. He observes also that the Stoics derived a blasphemy from this
+  principle, saying that evils must be endured with patience, or that they
+  were necessary, not only to the well-being and completeness of the
+  universe, but also to the felicity, perfection and conservation of God,
+  who directs it. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius gave expression to that in
+  the eighth chapter of the fifth book of his <i>Meditations</i>. 'Duplici
+  ratione', he says, 'diligas oportet, quidquid evenerit tibi; altera quod
+  tibi natum et tibi coordinatum et ad te quodammodo affectum est; altera
+  quod universi gubernatori prosperitatis et consummationis atque adeo
+  permansionis ipsius procurandae (<span lang="el" title="tês euodias kai tês synteleias kai tês symmonês autês"
+  >&#x3C4;&#x3B7;&#x3C2; &#x3B5;&#x3C5;&#x3BF;&#x3B4;&#x3B9;&#x3B1;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3B9; &#x3C4;&#x3B7;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3C3;&#x3C5;&#x3BD;&#x3C4;&#x3B5;&#x3BB;&#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3B1;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3B9; &#x3C4;&#x3B7;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3C3;&#x3C5;&#x3BC;&#x3BC;&#x3BF;&#x3BD;&#x3B7;&#x3C2;
+  &#x3B1;&#x3C5;&#x3C4;&#x3B7;&#x3C2;</span>) ex parte causa est.' This
+  precept is not the most reasonable of those stated by that great emperor.
+  A <i>diligas oportet</i> (<span lang="el" title="stergein chrê"
+  >&#x3C3;&#x3C4;&#x3B5;&#x3C1;&#x3B3;&#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3C7;&#x3C1;&#x3B7;</span>) is of no avail; a thing does not become
+  pleasing just because it is necessary, and because it is destined for or
+  attached to someone: and what for me would be an evil would not cease to
+  be such because it would be my master's good, unless this good reflected
+  back on me. One good thing among others in the universe is that the
+  general good becomes in reality the individual good of those who love the
+  Author of all good. But the principal error of this emperor and of the
+  Stoics was their assumption that the good of the universe must please God
+  himself, because they imagined God as the soul of the world. This error
+  has nothing in <!-- Page 264 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page264"></a>[264]</span> common with my dogma, according to which
+  God is <i>Intelligentia extramundana</i>, as Martianus Capella calls him,
+  or rather <i>supramundana</i>. Further, he acts to do good, and not to
+  receive it. <i>Melius est dare quam accipere</i>; his bliss is ever
+  perfect and can receive no increase, either from within or from
+  without.</p>
+
+  <p>218. I come now to the principal objection M. Bayle, after M. Arnauld,
+  brings up against me. It is complicated: they maintain that God would be
+  under compulsion, that he would act of necessity, if he were bound to
+  create the best; or at least that he would have been lacking in power if
+  he could not have found a better expedient for excluding sins and other
+  evils. That is in effect denying that this universe is the best, and that
+  God is bound to insist upon the best. I have met this objection
+  adequately in more than one passage: I have proved that God cannot fail
+  to produce the best; and from that assumption it follows that the evils
+  we experience could not have been reasonably excluded from the universe,
+  since they are there. Let us see, however, what these two excellent men
+  bring up, or rather let us see what M. Bayle's objection is, for he
+  professes to have profited by the arguments of M. Arnauld.</p>
+
+  <p>219. 'Would it be possible', he says, <i>Reply to the Questions of a
+  Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 158, p. 890, 'that a nature whose goodness,
+  holiness, wisdom, knowledge and power are infinite, who loves virtue
+  supremely, and hates vice supremely, as our clear and distinct idea of
+  him shows us, and as well-nigh every page of Scripture assures us, could
+  have found in virtue no means fitting and suited for his ends? Would it
+  be possible that vice alone had offered him this means? One would have
+  thought on the contrary that nothing beseemed this nature more than to
+  establish virtue in his work to the exclusion of all vice.' M. Bayle here
+  exaggerates things. I agree that some vice was connected with the best
+  plan of the universe, but I do not agree with him that God could not find
+  in virtue any means suited for his ends. This objection would have been
+  valid if there were no virtue, if vice took its place everywhere. He will
+  say it suffices that vice prevails and that virtue is trifling in
+  comparison. But I am far from agreeing with him there, and I think that
+  in reality, properly speaking, there is incomparably more moral good than
+  moral evil in rational creatures; and of these we have knowledge of but
+  few.</p>
+
+  <p>220. This evil is not even so great in men as it is declared to be.
+  <!-- Page 265 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page265"></a>[265]</span>
+  It is only people of a malicious disposition or those who have become
+  somewhat misanthropic through misfortunes, like Lucian's Timon, who find
+  wickedness everywhere, and who poison the best actions by the
+  interpretations they give to them. I speak of those who do it in all
+  seriousness, to draw thence evil conclusions, by which their conduct is
+  tainted; for there are some who only do it to show off their own acumen.
+  People have found that fault in Tacitus, and that again is the criticism
+  M. Descartes (in one of his letters) makes of Mr. Hobbes's book <i>De
+  Cive</i>, of which only a few copies had at that time been printed for
+  distribution among friends, but to which some notes by the author were
+  added in the second edition which we have. For although M. Descartes
+  acknowledges that this book is by a man of talent, he observes therein
+  some very dangerous principles and maxims, in the assumption there made
+  that all men are wicked, or the provision of them with motives for being
+  so. The late Herr Jacob Thomasius said in his admirable <i>Tables of
+  Practical Philosophy</i> that the <span lang="el" title="prôton pseudos"
+  >&#x3C0;&#x3C1;&#x3C9;&#x3C4;&#x3BF;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3C8;&#x3B5;&#x3C5;&#x3B4;&#x3BF;&#x3C2;</span>, the primary cause of
+  errors in this book by Mr. Hobbes, was that he took <i>statum legalem pro
+  naturali</i>, that is to say that the corrupt state served him as a gauge
+  and rule, whereas it is the state most befitting human nature which
+  Aristotle had had in view. For according to Aristotle, that is termed
+  <i>natural</i> which conforms most closely to the perfection of the
+  nature of the thing; but Mr. Hobbes applies the term <i>natural state</i>
+  to that which has least art, perhaps not taking into account that human
+  nature in its perfection carries art with it. But the question of name,
+  that is to say, of what may be called natural, would not be of great
+  importance were it not that Aristotle and Hobbes fastened upon it the
+  notion of natural right, each one following his own signification. I have
+  said here already that I found in the book on the Falsity of human
+  Virtues the same defect as M. Descartes found in Mr. Hobbes's <i>De
+  Cive</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>221. But even if we assume that vice exceeds virtue in the human kind,
+  as it is assumed the number of the damned exceeds that of the elect, it
+  by no means follows that vice and misery exceed virtue and happiness in
+  the universe: one should rather believe the opposite, because the City of
+  God must be the most perfect of all possible states, since it was formed
+  and is perpetually governed by the greatest and best of all Monarchs.
+  This answer confirms the observation I made earlier, when speaking of the
+  conformity of faith with reason, namely, that one of the greatest <!--
+  Page 266 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page266"></a>[266]</span>
+  sources of fallacy in the objections is the confusion of the apparent
+  with the real. And here by the apparent I mean not simply such as would
+  result from an exact discussion of facts, but that which has been derived
+  from the small extent of our experiences. It would be senseless to try to
+  bring up appearances so imperfect, and having such slight foundation, in
+  opposition to the proofs of reason and the revelations of faith.</p>
+
+  <p>222. Finally, I have already observed that love of virtue and hatred
+  of vice, which tend in an undefined way to bring virtue into existence
+  and to prevent the existence of vice, are only antecedent acts of will,
+  such as is the will to bring about the happiness of all men and to save
+  them from misery. These acts of antecedent will make up only a portion of
+  all the antecedent will of God taken together, whose result forms the
+  consequent will, or the decree to create the best. Through this decree it
+  is that love for virtue and for the happiness of rational creatures,
+  which is undefined in itself and goes as far as is possible, receives
+  some slight limitations, on account of the heed that must be paid to good
+  in general. Thus one must understand that God loves virtue supremely and
+  hates vice supremely, and that nevertheless some vice is to be
+  permitted.</p>
+
+  <p>223. M. Arnauld and M. Bayle appear to maintain that this method of
+  explaining things and of establishing a best among all the plans for the
+  universe, one such as may not be surpassed by any other, sets a limit to
+  God's power. 'Have you considered', says M. Arnauld to Father Malebranche
+  (in his <i>Reflexions on the New System of Nature and Grace</i>, vol. II,
+  p. 385), 'that in making such assumptions you take it upon yourself to
+  subvert the first article of the creed, whereby we make profession of
+  believing in God the Father Almighty?' He had said already (p. 362): 'Can
+  one maintain, without trying to blind oneself, that a course of action
+  which could not fail to have this grievous result, namely, that the
+  majority of men perish, bears the stamp of God's goodness more than a
+  different course of action, which would have caused, if God had followed
+  it, the salvation of all men?' And, as M. Jacquelot does not differ from
+  the principles I have just laid down, M. Bayle raises like objections in
+  his case (<i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch.
+  151, p. 900): 'If one adopts such explanations', he says, 'one sees
+  oneself constrained to renounce the most obvious notions on the nature of
+  the supremely perfect Being. These teach us that all things not implying
+  contradiction <!-- Page 267 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page267"></a>[267]</span> are possible for him, that consequently
+  it is possible for him to save people whom he does not save: for what
+  contradiction would result supposing the number of the elect were greater
+  than it is? They teach us besides that, since he is supremely happy, he
+  has no will which he cannot carry out. How, then, shall we understand
+  that he wills to save all men and that he cannot do so? We sought some
+  light to help us out of the perplexities we feel in comparing the idea of
+  God with the state of the human kind, and lo! we are given elucidations
+  that cast us into darkness more dense.'</p>
+
+  <p>224. All these obstacles vanish before the exposition I have just
+  given. I agree with M. Bayle's principle, and it is also mine, that
+  everything implying no contradiction is possible. But as for me, holding
+  as I do that God did the best that was possible, or that he could not
+  have done better than he has done, deeming also that to pass any other
+  judgement upon his work in its entirety would be to wrong his goodness or
+  his wisdom, I must say that to make something which surpasses in goodness
+  the best itself, that indeed would imply contradiction. That would be as
+  if someone maintained that God could draw from one point to another a
+  line shorter than the straight line, and accused those who deny this of
+  subverting the article of faith whereby we believe in God the Father
+  Almighty.</p>
+
+  <p>225. The infinity of possibles, however great it may be, is no greater
+  than that of the wisdom of God, who knows all possibles. One may even say
+  that if this wisdom does not exceed the possibles extensively, since the
+  objects of the understanding cannot go beyond the possible, which in a
+  sense is alone intelligible, it exceeds them intensively, by reason of
+  the infinitely infinite combinations it makes thereof, and its many
+  deliberations concerning them. The wisdom of God, not content with
+  embracing all the possibles, penetrates them, compares them, weighs them
+  one against the other, to estimate their degrees of perfection or
+  imperfection, the strong and the weak, the good and the evil. It goes
+  even beyond the finite combinations, it makes of them an infinity of
+  infinites, that is to say, an infinity of possible sequences of the
+  universe, each of which contains an infinity of creatures. By this means
+  the divine Wisdom distributes all the possibles it had already
+  contemplated separately, into so many universal systems which it further
+  compares the one with the other. The result of all these comparisons and
+  deliberations is the choice of the best from <!-- Page 268 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page268"></a>[268]</span> among all these
+  possible systems, which wisdom makes in order to satisfy goodness
+  completely; and such is precisely the plan of the universe as it is.
+  Moreover, all these operations of the divine understanding, although they
+  have among them an order and a priority of nature, always take place
+  together, no priority of time existing among them.</p>
+
+  <p>226. The careful consideration of these things will, I hope, induce a
+  different idea of the greatness of the divine perfections, and especially
+  of the wisdom and goodness of God, from any that can exist in the minds
+  of those who make God act at random, without cause or reason. And I do
+  not see how they could avoid falling into an opinion so strange, unless
+  they acknowledged that there are reasons for God's choice, and that these
+  reasons are derived from his goodness: whence it follows of necessity
+  that what was chosen had the advantage of goodness over what was not
+  chosen, and consequently that it is the best of all the possibles. The
+  best cannot be surpassed in goodness, and it is no restriction of the
+  power of God to say that he cannot do the impossible. Is it possible,
+  said M. Bayle, that there is no better plan than that one which God
+  carried out? One answers that it is very possible and indeed necessary,
+  namely that there is none: otherwise God would have preferred it.</p>
+
+  <p>227. It seems to me that I have proved sufficiently that among all the
+  possible plans of the universe there is one better than all the rest, and
+  that God has not failed to choose it. But M. Bayle claims to infer thence
+  that God is therefore not free. This is how he speaks on that question
+  (<i>ubi supra</i>, ch. 151, p. 899): 'I thought to argue with a man who
+  assumed as I do that the goodness and the power of God are infinite, as
+  well as his wisdom; and now I see that in reality this man assumes that
+  God's goodness and power are enclosed within rather narrow bounds.' As to
+  that, the objection has already been met: I set no bounds to God's power,
+  since I recognize that it extends <i>ad maximum, ad omnia</i>, to all
+  that implies no contradiction; and I set none to his goodness, since it
+  attains to the best, <i>ad optimum</i>. But M. Bayle goes on: 'There is
+  therefore no freedom in God; he is compelled by his wisdom to create, and
+  then to create precisely such a work, and finally to create it precisely
+  in such ways. These are three servitudes which form a more than Stoic
+  <i>fatum</i>, and which render impossible all that is not within their
+  sphere. It seems that, according to this system, God could <!-- Page 269
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page269"></a>[269]</span> have said,
+  even before shaping his decrees: I cannot save such and such a man, nor
+  condemn such and such another, <i>quippe vetor fatis</i>, my wisdom
+  permits it not.'</p>
+
+  <p>228. I answer that it is goodness which prompts God to create with the
+  purpose of communicating himself; and this same goodness combined with
+  wisdom prompts him to create the best: a best that includes the whole
+  sequence, the effect and the process. It prompts him thereto without
+  compelling him, for it does not render impossible that which it does not
+  cause him to choose. To call that <i>fatum</i> is taking it in a good
+  sense, which is not contrary to freedom: <i>fatum</i> comes from
+  <i>fari</i>, to speak, to pronounce; it signifies a judgement, a decree
+  of God, the award of his wisdom. To say that one cannot do a thing,
+  simply because one does not will it, is to misuse terms. The wise mind
+  wills only the good: is it then a servitude when the will acts in
+  accordance with wisdom? And can one be less a slave than to act by one's
+  own choice in accordance with the most perfect reason? Aristotle used to
+  say that that man is in a natural servitude (<i>natura servus</i>) who
+  lacks guidance, who has need of being directed. Slavery comes from
+  without, it leads to that which offends, and especially to that which
+  offends with reason: the force of others and our own passions enslave us.
+  God is never moved by anything outside himself, nor is he subject to
+  inward passions, and he is never led to that which can cause him offence.
+  It appears, therefore, that M. Bayle gives odious names to the best
+  things in the world, and turns our ideas upside-down, applying the term
+  slavery to the state of the greatest and most perfect freedom.</p>
+
+  <p>229. He had also said not long before (ch. 151, p. 891): 'If virtue,
+  or any other good at all, had been as appropriate as vice for the
+  Creator's ends, vice would not have been given preference; it must
+  therefore have been the only means that the Creator could have used; it
+  was therefore employed purely of necessity. As therefore he loves his
+  glory, not with a freedom of indifference, but by necessity, he must by
+  necessity love all the means without which he could not manifest his
+  glory. Now if vice, as vice, was the only means of attaining to this end,
+  it will follow that God of necessity loves vice as vice, a thought which
+  can only inspire us with horror; and he has revealed quite the contrary
+  to us.' He observes at the same time that certain doctors among the
+  Supralapsarians (like Rutherford, for example) denied that God wills sin
+  as sin, whilst <!-- Page 270 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page270"></a>[270]</span> they admitted that he wills sin
+  permissively in so far as it is punishable and pardonable. But he urges
+  in objection, that an action is only punishable and pardonable in so far
+  as it is vicious.</p>
+
+  <p>230. M. Bayle makes a false assumption in these words that we have
+  just read, and draws from them false conclusions. It is not true that God
+  loves his glory by necessity, if thereby it is understood that he is led
+  by necessity to acquire his glory through his creatures. For if that were
+  so, he would acquire his glory always and everywhere. The decree to
+  create is free: God is prompted to all good; the good, and even the best,
+  inclines him to act; but it does not compel him, for his choice creates
+  no impossibility in that which is distinct from the best; it causes no
+  implication of contradiction in that which God refrains from doing. There
+  is therefore in God a freedom that is exempt not only from constraint but
+  also from necessity. I mean this in respect of metaphysical necessity;
+  for it is a moral necessity that the wisest should be bound to choose the
+  best. It is the same with the means which God chooses to attain his
+  glory. And as for vice, it has been shown in preceding pages that it is
+  not an object of God's decree as <i>means</i>, but as <i>conditio sine
+  qua non</i>, and that for that reason alone it is permitted. One is even
+  less justified in saying that vice is <i>the only means</i>; it would be
+  at most one of the means, but one of the least among innumerable
+  others.</p>
+
+  <p>231. 'Another frightful consequence,' M. Bayle goes on, 'the fatality
+  of all things, ensues: God will not have been free to arrange events in a
+  different way, since the means he chose to show forth his glory was the
+  only means befitting his wisdom.' This so-called fatality or necessity is
+  only moral, as I have just shown: it does not affect freedom; on the
+  contrary, it assumes the best use thereof; it does not render impossible
+  the objects set aside by God's choice. 'What, then, will become', he
+  adds, 'of man's free will? Will there not have been necessity and
+  fatality for Adam to sin? For if he had not sinned, he would have
+  overthrown the sole plan that God had of necessity created.' That is
+  again a misuse of terms. Adam sinning freely was seen of God among the
+  ideas of the possibles, and God decreed to admit him into existence as he
+  saw him. This decree does not change the nature of the objects: it does
+  not render necessary that which was contingent in itself, or impossible
+  that which was possible.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 271 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page271"></a>[271]</span></p>
+
+  <p>232. M. Bayle goes on (p. 892): 'The subtle Scotus asserts with much
+  discernment that if God had no freedom of indifference no creature could
+  have this kind of freedom.' I agree provided it is not meant as an
+  indifference of equipoise, where there is no reason inclining more to one
+  side than the other. M. Bayle acknowledges (farther on in chapter 168, p.
+  1111) that what is termed indifference does not exclude prevenient
+  inclinations and pleasures. It suffices therefore that there be no
+  metaphysical necessity in the action which is termed free, that is to
+  say, it suffices that a choice be made between several courses
+  possible.</p>
+
+  <p>233. He goes on again in the said chapter 157, p. 893: 'If God is not
+  determined to create the world by a free motion of his goodness, but by
+  the interests of his glory, which he loves by necessity, and which is the
+  only thing he loves, for it is not different from his substance; and if
+  the love that he has for himself has compelled him to show forth his
+  glory through the most fitting means, and if the fall of man was this
+  same means, it is evident that this fall happened entirely by necessity
+  and that the obedience of Eve and Adam to God's commands was impossible.'
+  Still the same error. The love that God bears to himself is essential to
+  him, but the love for his glory, or the will to acquire his glory, is not
+  so by any means: the love he has for himself did not impel him by
+  necessity to actions without; they were free; and since there were
+  possible plans whereby the first parents should not sin, their sin was
+  therefore not necessary. Finally, I say in effect what M. Bayle
+  acknowledges here, 'that God resolved to create the world by a free
+  motion of his goodness'; and I add that this same motion prompted him to
+  the best.</p>
+
+  <p>234. The same answer holds good against this statement of M. Bayle's
+  (ch. 165, p. 1071): 'The means most appropriate for attaining an end is
+  of necessity one alone' (that is very well said, at least for the cases
+  where God has chosen). 'Therefore if God was prompted irresistibly to
+  employ this means, he employed it by necessity.' (He was certainly
+  prompted thereto, he was determined, or rather he determined himself
+  thereto: but that which is certain is not always necessary, or altogether
+  irresistible; the thing might have gone otherwise, but that did not
+  happen, and with good reason. God chose between different courses all
+  possible: thus, metaphysically speaking, he could have chosen or done
+  what was not the best; but he could not morally speaking have done so.
+  <!-- Page 272 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page272"></a>[272]</span>
+  Let us make use of a comparison from geometry. The best way from one
+  point to another (leaving out of account obstacles and other
+  considerations accidental to the medium) is one alone: it is that one
+  which passes by the shortest line, which is the straight line. Yet there
+  are innumerable ways from one point to another. There is therefore no
+  necessity which binds me to go by the straight line; but as soon as I
+  choose the best, I am determined to go that way, although this is only a
+  moral necessity in the wise. That is why the following conclusions fail.)
+  'Therefore he could only do that which he did. Therefore that which has
+  not happened or will never happen is absolutely impossible.' (These
+  conclusions fail, I say: for since there are many things which have never
+  happened and never will happen, and which nevertheless are clearly
+  conceivable, and imply no contradiction, how can one say they are
+  altogether impossible? M. Bayle has refuted that himself in a passage
+  opposing the Spinozists, which I have already quoted here, and he has
+  frequently acknowledged that there is nothing impossible except that
+  which implies contradiction: now he changes style and terminology.)
+  'Therefore Adam's perseverance in innocence was always impossible;
+  therefore his fall was altogether inevitable, and even antecedently to
+  God's decree, for it implied contradiction that God should be able to
+  will a thing opposed to his wisdom: it is, after all, the same thing to
+  say, that it is impossible for God, as to say, God could do it, if he so
+  willed, but he cannot will it.' (It is misusing terms in a sense to say
+  here: one can will, one will will; 'can' here concerns the actions that
+  one does will. Nevertheless it implies no contradiction that God should
+  will&mdash;directly or permissively&mdash;a thing not implying
+  contradiction, and in this sense it is permitted to say that God can will
+  it.)</p>
+
+  <p>235. In a word, when one speaks of the <i>possibility</i> of a thing
+  it is not a question of the causes that can bring about or prevent its
+  actual existence: otherwise one would change the nature of the terms, and
+  render useless the distinction between the possible and the actual. This
+  Abelard did, and Wyclif appears to have done after him, in consequence of
+  which they fell needlessly into unsuitable and disagreeable expressions.
+  That is why, when one asks if a thing is possible or necessary, and
+  brings in the consideration of what God wills or chooses, one alters the
+  issue. For God chooses among the possibles, and for that very reason he
+  chooses freely, <!-- Page 273 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page273"></a>[273]</span> and is not compelled; there would be
+  neither choice nor freedom if there were but one course possible.</p>
+
+  <p>236. One must also answer M. Bayle's syllogisms, so as to neglect none
+  of the objections of a man so gifted: they occur in Chapter 151 of his
+  <i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i> (vol. III, pp. 900,
+  901).</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;">FIRST SYLLOGISM</p>
+
+  <p>'God can will nothing that is opposed to the necessary love which he
+  has for his wisdom.</p>
+
+  <p>'Now the salvation of all men is opposed to the necessary love which
+  God has for his wisdom.</p>
+
+  <p>'Therefore God cannot will the salvation of all men.'</p>
+
+  <p>The major is self-evident, for one can do nothing whereof the opposite
+  is necessary. But the minor cannot be accepted, for, albeit God loves his
+  wisdom of necessity, the actions whereto his wisdom prompts him cannot
+  but be free, and the objects whereto his wisdom does not prompt him do
+  not cease to be possible. Moreover, his wisdom has prompted him to will
+  the salvation of all men, but not by a consequent and decretory will. Yet
+  this consequent will, being only a result of free antecedent acts of
+  will, cannot fail to be free also.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;">SECOND SYLLOGISM</p>
+
+  <p>'The work most worthy of God's wisdom involves amongst other things
+  the sin of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of men.</p>
+
+  <p>'Now God wills of necessity the work most worthy of his wisdom.</p>
+
+  <p>'He wills therefore of necessity the work that involves amongst other
+  things the sin of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of
+  men.'</p>
+
+  <p>The major holds good, but the minor I deny. The decrees of God are
+  always free, even though God be always prompted thereto by reasons which
+  lie in the intention towards good: for to be morally compelled by wisdom,
+  to be bound by the consideration of good, is to be free; it is not
+  compulsion in the metaphysical sense. And metaphysical necessity alone,
+  as I have observed so many times, is opposed to freedom.</p>
+
+  <p>238. I shall not examine the syllogisms that M. Bayle urges in
+  objection in the following chapter (Ch. 152), against the system of the
+  Supralapsarians, and particularly against the oration made by <!-- Page
+  274 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page274"></a>[274]</span> Theodore
+  de Bèze at the Conference of Montbéliard in the year 1586. This
+  conference also only served to increase the acrimony of the parties. 'God
+  created the World to his glory: his glory is not known (according to
+  Bèze), if his mercy and his justice are not declared; for this cause
+  simply by his grace he decreed for some men life eternal, and for others
+  by a just judgement eternal damnation. Mercy presupposes misery, justice
+  presupposes guilt.' (He might have added that misery also supposes
+  guilt.) 'Nevertheless God being good, indeed goodness itself, he created
+  man good and righteous, but unstable, and capable of sinning of his own
+  free will. Man did not fall at random or rashly, or through causes
+  ordained by some other God, as the Manichaeans hold, but by the
+  providence of God; in such a way notwithstanding, that God was not
+  involved in the fault, inasmuch as man was not constrained to sin.'</p>
+
+  <p>239. This system is not of the best conceived: it is not well fitted
+  to show forth the wisdom, the goodness and the justice of God; and
+  happily it is almost abandoned to-day. If there were not other more
+  profound reasons capable of inducing God to permit guilt, the source of
+  misery, there would be neither guilt nor misery in the world, for the
+  reasons alleged here do not suffice. He would declare his mercy better in
+  preventing misery, and he would declare his justice better in preventing
+  guilt, in advancing virtue, in recompensing it. Besides, one does not see
+  how he who not only causes a man to be capable of falling, but who so
+  disposes circumstances that they contribute towards causing his fall, is
+  not culpable, if there are no other reasons compelling him thereto. But
+  when one considers that God, altogether good and wise, must have produced
+  all the virtue, goodness, happiness whereof the best plan of the universe
+  is capable, and that often an evil in some parts may serve the greater
+  good of the whole, one readily concludes that God may have given room for
+  unhappiness, and even permitted guilt, as he has done, without deserving
+  to be blamed. It is the only remedy that supplies what all systems lack,
+  however they arrange the decrees. These thoughts have already been
+  favoured by St. Augustine, and one may say of Eve what the poet said of
+  the hand of Mucius Scaevola:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Si non errasset, fecerat illa minus</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>240. I find that the famous English prelate who wrote an ingenious
+  book on the origin of evil, some passages of which were <!-- Page 275
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page275"></a>[275]</span> disputed by
+  M. Bayle in the second volume of his <i>Reply to the Questions of a
+  Provincial</i>, while disagreeing with some of the opinions that I have
+  upheld here and appearing to resort sometimes to a despotic power, as if
+  the will of God did not follow the rules of wisdom in relation to good or
+  evil, but decreed arbitrarily that such and such a thing must be
+  considered good or evil; and as if even the will of the creature, in so
+  far as it is free, did not choose because the object appears good to him,
+  but by a purely arbitrary determination, independent of the
+  representation of the object; this bishop, I say, in other passages
+  nevertheless says things which seem more in favour of my doctrine than of
+  what appears contrary thereto in his own. He says that what an infinitely
+  wise and free cause has chosen is better than what it has not chosen. Is
+  not that recognizing that goodness is the object and the reason of his
+  choice? In this sense one will here aptly say:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Sic placuit superis; quaerere plura, nefas</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+<p><!-- Page 276 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page276"></a>[276]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>ESSAYS
+ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD
+AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN
+IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>PART THREE</h3>
+
+  <p>241. Now at last I have disposed of the cause of moral evil;
+  <i>physical evil</i>, that is, sorrows, sufferings, miseries, will be
+  less troublesome to explain, since these are results of moral evil.
+  <i>Poena est malum passionis, quod infligitur ob malum actionis</i>,
+  according to Grotius. One suffers because one has acted; one suffers evil
+  because one does evil.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2"><i>Nostrorum causa malorum</i></p>
+      <p><i>Nos sumus</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>It is true that one often suffers through the evil actions of others;
+  but when one has no part in the offence one must look upon it as a
+  certainty that these sufferings prepare for us a greater happiness. The
+  question of <i>physical evil</i>, that is, of the origin of sufferings,
+  has difficulties in common with that of the origin of <i>metaphysical
+  evil</i>, examples whereof are furnished by the monstrosities and other
+  apparent irregularities of the universe. But one must believe that even
+  sufferings and monstrosities are part of order; and it is well to bear in
+  mind not only that it was better to admit these defects and these
+  monstrosities than to violate general laws, as Father Malebranche
+  sometimes argues, but also that these very monstrosities are in the
+  rules, and are in conformity with general acts of will, though we be not
+  capable of discerning this conformity. <!-- Page 277 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page277"></a>[277]</span> It is just as
+  sometimes there are appearances of irregularity in mathematics which
+  issue finally in a great order when one has finally got to the bottom of
+  them: that is why I have already in this work observed that according to
+  my principles all individual events, without exception, are consequences
+  of general acts of will.</p>
+
+  <p>242. It should be no cause for astonishment that I endeavour to
+  elucidate these things by comparisons taken from pure mathematics, where
+  everything proceeds in order, and where it is possible to fathom them by
+  a close contemplation which grants us an enjoyment, so to speak, of the
+  vision of the ideas of God. One may propose a succession or series of
+  numbers perfectly irregular to all appearance, where the numbers increase
+  and diminish variably without the emergence of any order; and yet he who
+  knows the key to the formula, and who understands the origin and the
+  structure of this succession of numbers, will be able to give a rule
+  which, being properly understood, will show that the series is perfectly
+  regular, and that it even has excellent properties. One may make this
+  still more evident in lines. A line may have twists and turns, ups and
+  downs, points of reflexion and points of inflexion, interruptions and
+  other variations, so that one sees neither rhyme nor reason therein,
+  especially when taking into account only a portion of the line; and yet
+  it may be that one can give its equation and construction, wherein a
+  geometrician would find the reason and the fittingness of all these
+  so-called irregularities. That is how we must look upon the
+  irregularities constituted by monstrosities and other so-called defects
+  in the universe.</p>
+
+  <p>243. In this sense one may apply that fine adage of St. Bernard (Ep.
+  276, Ad Eugen., III): 'Ordinatissimum est, minus interdum ordinate fieri
+  aliquid.' It belongs to the great order that there should be some small
+  disorder. One may even say that this small disorder is apparent only in
+  the whole, and it is not even apparent when one considers the happiness
+  of those who walk in the ways of order.</p>
+
+  <p>244. When I mention monstrosities I include numerous other apparent
+  defects besides. We are acquainted with hardly anything but the surface
+  of our globe; we scarce penetrate into its interior beyond a few hundred
+  fathoms. That which we find in this crust of the globe appears to be the
+  effect of some great upheavals. It seems that this globe was once on
+  fire, and that the rocks forming the base of this crust of the earth are
+  scoria remaining from a great <!-- Page 278 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page278"></a>[278]</span> fusion. In their entrails are found metal
+  and mineral products, which closely resemble those emanating from our
+  furnaces: and the entire sea may be a kind of <i>oleum per deliquium</i>,
+  just as tartaric oil forms in a damp place. For when the earth's surface
+  cooled after the great conflagration the moisture that the fire had
+  driven into the air fell back upon the earth, washed its surface and
+  dissolved and absorbed the solid salt that was left in the cinders,
+  finally filling up this great cavity in the surface of our globe, to form
+  the ocean filled with salt water.</p>
+
+  <p>245. But, after the fire, one must conclude that earth and water made
+  ravages no less. It may be that the crust formed by the cooling, having
+  below it great cavities, fell in, so that we live only on ruins, as among
+  others Thomas Burnet, Chaplain to the late King of Great Britain, aptly
+  observed. Sundry deluges and inundations have left deposits, whereof
+  traces and remains are found which show that the sea was in places that
+  to-day are most remote from it. But these upheavals ceased at last, and
+  the globe assumed the shape that we see. Moses hints at these changes in
+  few words: the separation of light from darkness indicates the melting
+  caused by the fire; and the separation of the moist from the dry marks
+  the effects of inundations. But who does not see that these disorders
+  have served to bring things to the point where they now are, that we owe
+  to them our riches and our comforts, and that through their agency this
+  globe became fit for cultivation by us. These disorders passed into
+  order. The disorders, real or apparent, that we see from afar are
+  sunspots and comets; but we do not know what uses they supply, nor the
+  rules prevailing therein. Time was when the planets were held to be
+  wandering stars: now their motion is found to be regular. Peradventure it
+  is the same with the comets: posterity will know.</p>
+
+  <p>246. One does not include among the disorders inequality of
+  conditions, and M. Jacquelot is justified in asking those who would have
+  everything equally perfect, why rocks are not crowned with leaves and
+  flowers? why ants are not peacocks? And if there must needs be equality
+  everywhere, the poor man would serve notice of appeal against the rich,
+  the servant against the master. The pipes of an organ must not be of
+  equal size. M. Bayle will say that there is a difference between a
+  privation of good and a disorder; between a disorder in inanimate things,
+  which is purely metaphysical, and a disorder in rational creatures, which
+  is composed of crime and <!-- Page 279 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page279"></a>[279]</span> sufferings. He is right in making a
+  distinction between them, and I am right in combining them. God does not
+  neglect inanimate things: they do not feel, but God feels for them. He
+  does not neglect animals: they have not intelligence, but God has it for
+  them. He would reproach himself for the slightest actual defect there
+  were in the universe, even though it were perceived of none.</p>
+
+  <p>247. It seems M. Bayle does not approve any comparison between the
+  disorders which may exist in inanimate things and those which trouble the
+  peace and happiness of rational creatures; nor would he agree to our
+  justifying the permission of vice on the pretext of the care that must be
+  taken to avoid disturbing the laws of motion. One might thence conclude,
+  according to him (posthumous Reply to M. Jacquelot, p. 183), 'that God
+  created the world only to display his infinite skill in architecture and
+  mechanics, whilst his property of goodness and love of virtue took no
+  part in the construction of this great work. This God would pride himself
+  only on skill; he would prefer to let the whole human kind perish rather
+  than suffer some atoms to go faster or more slowly than general laws
+  require.' M. Bayle would not have made this antithesis if he had been
+  informed on the system of general harmony which I assume, which states
+  that the realm of efficient causes and that of final causes are parallel
+  to each other; that God has no less the quality of the best monarch than
+  that of the greatest architect; that matter is so disposed that the laws
+  of motion serve as the best guidance for spirits; and that consequently
+  it will prove that he has attained the utmost good possible, provided one
+  reckon the metaphysical, physical and moral goods together.</p>
+
+  <p>248. But (M. Bayle will say) God having power to avert innumerable
+  evils by one small miracle, why did he not employ it? He gives so much
+  extraordinary help to fallen men; but slight help of such a kind given to
+  Eve would have prevented her fall and rendered the temptation of the
+  serpent ineffective. I have sufficiently met objections of this sort with
+  this general answer, that God ought not to make choice of another
+  universe since he has chosen the best, and has only made use of the
+  miracles necessary thereto. I had answered M. Bayle that miracles change
+  the natural order of the universe. He replies, that that is an illusion,
+  and that the miracle of the wedding at Cana (for instance) made no change
+  in the air of the room, except that instead of receiving <!-- Page 280
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page280"></a>[280]</span> into its
+  pores some corpuscles of water, it received corpuscles of wine. But one
+  must bear in mind that once the best plan of things has been chosen
+  nothing can be changed therein.</p>
+
+  <p>249. As for miracles (concerning which I have already said something
+  in this work), they are perhaps not all of one and the same kind: there
+  are many, to all appearances, which God brings about through the ministry
+  of invisible substances, such as the angels, as Father Malebranche also
+  believes. These angels or these substances act according to the ordinary
+  laws of their nature, being combined with bodies more rarefied and more
+  vigorous than those we have at our command. And such miracles are only so
+  by comparison, and in relation to us; just as our works would be
+  considered miraculous amongst animals if they were capable of remarking
+  upon them. The changing of water into wine might be a miracle of this
+  kind. But the Creation, the Incarnation and some other actions of God
+  exceed all the power of creatures and are truly miracles, or indeed
+  Mysteries. If, nevertheless, the changing of water into wine at Cana was
+  a miracle of the highest kind, God would have thereby changed the whole
+  course of the universe, because of the connexion of bodies; or else he
+  would have been bound to prevent this connexion miraculously also, and
+  cause the bodies not concerned in the miracle to act as if no miracle had
+  happened. After the miracle was over, it would have been necessary to
+  restore all things in those very bodies concerned to the state they would
+  have reached without the miracle: whereafter all would have returned to
+  its original course. Thus this miracle demanded more than at first
+  appears.</p>
+
+  <p>250. As for physical evil in creatures, to wit their sufferings, M.
+  Bayle contends vigorously against those who endeavour to justify by means
+  of particular reasons the course of action pursued by God in regard to
+  this. Here I set aside the sufferings of animals, and I see that M. Bayle
+  insists chiefly on those of men, perhaps because he thinks that brute
+  beasts have no feeling. It is on account of the injustice there would be
+  in the sufferings of beasts that divers Cartesians wished to prove that
+  they are only machines, <i>quoniam sub Deo justo nemo innocens miser
+  est</i>: it is impossible that an innocent creature should be unhappy
+  under such a master as God. The principle is good, but I do not think it
+  warrants the inference that beasts have no feeling, because I think that,
+  properly speaking, perception is not sufficient to cause misery if it is
+  not accompanied <!-- Page 281 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page281"></a>[281]</span> by reflexion. It is the same with
+  happiness: without reflexion there is none.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>O fortunatos nimium, sua qui bona norint!</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>One cannot reasonably doubt the existence of pain among animals; but
+  it seems as if their pleasures and their pains are not so keen as they
+  are in man: for animals, since they do not reflect, are susceptible
+  neither to the grief that accompanies pain, nor to the joy that
+  accompanies pleasure. Men are sometimes in a state approaching that of
+  the beasts, when they act almost on instinct alone and simply on the
+  impressions made by the experience of the senses: and, in this state,
+  their pleasures and their pains are very slight.</p>
+
+  <p>251. But let us pass from the beasts and return to rational creatures.
+  It is with regard to them that M. Bayle discusses this question: whether
+  there is more physical evil than physical good in the world? (<i>Reply to
+  the Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. II, ch. 75.) To settle it aright,
+  one must explain wherein these goods and evils lie. We are agreed that
+  physical evil is simply displeasure and under that heading I include
+  pain, grief, and every other kind of discomfort. But does physical good
+  lie solely in pleasure? M. Bayle appears to be of this opinion; but I
+  consider that it lies also in a middle state, such as that of health. One
+  is well enough when one has no ill; it is a degree of wisdom to have no
+  folly:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4"><i>Sapientia prima est,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Stultitia caruisse</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>In the same way one is worthy of praise when one cannot with justice
+  be blamed:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Si non culpabor, sat mihi laudis erit</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>That being the case, all the sensations not unpleasing to us, all the
+  exercises of our powers that do not incommode us, and whose prevention
+  would incommode us, are physical goods, even when they cause us no
+  pleasure; for privation of them is a physical evil. Besides we only
+  perceive the good of health, and other like goods, when we are deprived
+  of them. On those terms I would dare to maintain that even in this life
+  goods exceed evils, that our comforts exceed our discomforts, and that M.
+  Descartes was justified in writing (vol. I, Letter 9) 'that natural
+  reason teaches us that we have more goods than evils in this life'.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 282 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page282"></a>[282]</span></p>
+
+  <p>252. It must be added that pleasures enjoyed too often and to excess
+  would be a very great evil. There are some which Hippocrates compared to
+  the falling sickness, and Scioppius doubtless only made pretence of
+  envying the sparrows in order to be agreeably playful in a learned and
+  far from playful work. Highly seasoned foods are injurious to health and
+  impair the niceness of a delicate sense; and in general bodily pleasures
+  are a kind of expenditure of the spirit, though they be made good in some
+  better than in others.</p>
+
+  <p>253. As proof, however, that the evil exceeds the good is quoted the
+  instance of M. de la Motte le Vayer (Letter 134), who would not have been
+  willing to return to the world, supposing he had had to play the same
+  part as providence had already assigned to him. But I have already said
+  that I think one would accept the proposal of him who could re-knot the
+  thread of Fate if a new part were promised to us, even though it should
+  not be better than the first. Thus from M. de la Motte le Vayer's saying
+  it does not follow that he would not have wished for the part he had
+  already played, provided it had been new, as M. Bayle seems to take
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>254. The pleasures of the mind are the purest, and of greatest service
+  in making joy endure. Cardan, when already an old man, was so content
+  with his state that he protested solemnly that he would not exchange it
+  for the state of the richest of young men who at the same time was
+  ignorant. M. de la Motte le Vayer quotes the saying himself without
+  criticizing it. Knowledge has doubtless charms which cannot be conceived
+  by those who have not tasted them. I do not mean a mere knowledge of
+  facts without that of reasons, but knowledge like that of Cardan, who
+  with all his faults was a great man, and would have been incomparable
+  without those faults.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas!</i></p>
+      <p><i>Ille metus omnes et inexorabile fatum</i></p>
+      <p><i>Subjecit pedibus.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>It is no small thing to be content with God and with the universe, not
+  to fear what destiny has in store for us, nor to complain of what befalls
+  us. Acquaintance with true principles gives us this advantage, quite
+  other than that the Stoics and the Epicureans derived from their
+  philosophy. There is as much difference <!-- Page 283 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page283"></a>[283]</span> between true morality
+  and theirs as there is between joy and patience: for their tranquillity
+  was founded only on necessity, while ours must rest upon the perfection
+  and beauty of things, upon our own happiness.</p>
+
+  <p>255. What, then, shall we say of bodily sufferings? May they not be
+  sufficiently acute to disturb the sage's tranquillity? Aristotle assents;
+  the Stoics were of a different opinion, and even the Epicureans likewise.
+  M. Descartes revived the doctrine of these philosophers; he says in the
+  letter just quoted: 'that even amid the worst misfortunes and the most
+  overwhelming sufferings one may always be content, if only one knows how
+  to exercise reason'. M. Bayle says concerning this (<i>Reply to the
+  Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 157, p. 991) 'that it is
+  saying nothing, that it is prescribing for us a remedy whose preparation
+  hardly anyone understands'. I hold that the thing is not impossible, and
+  that men could attain it by dint of meditation and practice. For apart
+  from the true martyrs and those who have been aided in wonderful wise
+  from on high, there have been counterfeits who imitated them. That
+  Spanish slave who killed the Carthaginian governor in order to avenge his
+  master and who evinced great joy in his deed, even in the greatest
+  tortures, may shame the philosophers. Why should not one go as far as he?
+  One may say of an advantage, as of a disadvantage:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Cuivis potest accidere, quod cuiquam potest</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>256. But even to-day entire tribes, such as the Hurons, the Iroquois,
+  the Galibis and other peoples of America teach us a great lesson on this
+  matter: one cannot read without astonishment of the intrepidity and
+  well-nigh insensibility wherewith they brave their enemies, who roast
+  them over a slow fire and eat them by slices. If such people could retain
+  their physical superiority and their courage, and combine them with our
+  acquirements, they would surpass us in every way,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Extat ut in mediis turris aprica casis</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>They would be, in comparison with us, as a giant to a dwarf, a
+  mountain to a hill:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Quantus Eryx, et quantus Athos, gaudetque nivali</i></p>
+      <p><i>Vertice se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+<p><!-- Page 284 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page284"></a>[284]</span></p>
+
+  <p>257. All that which is effected by a wonderful vigour of body and mind
+  in these savages, who persist obstinately in the strangest point of
+  honour, might be acquired in our case by training, by well-seasoned
+  mortifications, by an overmastering joy founded on reason, by great
+  practice in preserving a certain presence of mind in the midst of the
+  distractions and impressions most liable to disturb it. Something of this
+  kind is related of the ancient Assassins, subjects and pupils of the Old
+  Man or rather the Seigneur (<i>Senior</i>) of the Mountain. Such a school
+  (for a better purpose) would be good for missionaries who would wish to
+  return to Japan. The Gymnosophists of the ancient Indians had perhaps
+  something resembling this, and that Calanus, who provided for Alexander
+  the Great the spectacle of his burning alive, had doubtless been
+  encouraged by the great examples of his masters and trained by great
+  sufferings not to fear pain. The wives of these same Indians, who even
+  to-day ask to be burned with the bodies of their husbands, seem still to
+  keep something of the courage of those ancient philosophers of their
+  country. I do not expect that there should straightway be founded a
+  religious order whose purpose would be to exalt man to that high pitch of
+  perfection: such people would be too much above the rest, and too
+  formidable for the authorities. As it rarely happens that people are
+  exposed to extremes where such great strength of mind would be needed,
+  one will scarce think of providing for it at the expense of our usual
+  comforts, albeit incomparably more would be gained than lost thereby.</p>
+
+  <p>258. Nevertheless the very fact that one has no need of that great
+  remedy is a proof that the good already exceeds the evil. Euripides also
+  said:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><span lang="el" title="pleiô ta chrêsta tôn kakôn einai brotois" >&#x3C0;&#x3BB;&#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3C9; &#x3C4;&#x3B1; &#x3C7;&#x3C1;&#x3B7;&#x3C3;&#x3C4;&#x3B1; &#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD; &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3BA;&#x3C9;&#x3BD; &#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;&#x3B1;&#x3B9; &#x3B2;&#x3C1;&#x3BF;&#x3C4;&#x3BF;&#x3B9;&#x3C2;</span>.</p>
+      <p><i>Mala nostra longe judico vinci a bonis.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>Homer and divers other poets were of another mind, and men in general
+  agree with them. The reason for this is that the evil arouses our
+  attention rather than the good: but this same reason proves that the evil
+  is more rare. One must therefore not credit the petulant expressions of
+  Pliny, who would have it that Nature is a stepmother, and who maintains
+  that man is the most unhappy and most vain of all creatures. These two
+  epithets do not agree: one is not so very unhappy, when one is full of
+  oneself. It is true <!-- Page 285 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page285"></a>[285]</span> that men hold human nature only too much
+  in contempt, apparently because they see no other creatures capable of
+  arousing their emulation; but they have all too much self-esteem, and
+  individually are but too easily satisfied. I therefore agree with Meric
+  Casaubon, who in his notes on the Xenophanes of Diogenes Laertius praises
+  exceedingly the admirable sentiments of Euripides, going so far as to
+  credit him with having said things <i>quae spirant</i> <span lang="el"
+  title="theopneuston"
+  >&#x3B8;&#x3B5;&#x3BF;&#x3C0;&#x3BD;&#x3B5;&#x3C5;&#x3C3;&#x3C4;&#x3BF;&#x3BD;</span>
+  <i>pectus</i>. Seneca (Lib. 4, c. 5, <i>De Benefic.</i>) speaks
+  eloquently of the blessings Nature has heaped upon us. M. Bayle in his
+  <i>Dictionary</i>, article 'Xenophanes', brings up sundry authorities
+  against this, and among others that of the poet Diphilus in the
+  Collections of Stobaeus, whose Greek might be thus expressed in
+  Latin:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Fortuna cyathis bibere nos datis jubens,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Infundit uno terna pro bono mala.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>259. M. Bayle believes that if it were a question only of the evil of
+  guilt, or of moral evil among men, the case would soon be terminated to
+  the advantage of Pliny, and Euripides would lose his action. To that I am
+  not opposed; our vices doubtless exceed our virtues, and this is the
+  effect of original sin. It is nevertheless true that also on that point
+  men in general exaggerate things, and that even some theologians
+  disparage man so much that they wrong the providence of the Author of
+  mankind. That is why I am not in favour of those who thought to do great
+  honour to our religion by saying that the virtues of the pagans were only
+  <i>splendida peccata</i>, splendid vices. It is a sally of St.
+  Augustine's which has no foundation in holy Scripture, and which offends
+  reason. But here we are only discussing a physical good and evil, and one
+  must compare in detail the prosperities and the adversities of this life.
+  M. Bayle would wish almost to set aside the consideration of health; he
+  likens it to the rarefied bodies, which are scarcely felt, like air, for
+  example; but he likens pain to the bodies that have much density and much
+  weight in slight volume. But pain itself makes us aware of the importance
+  of health when we are bereft of it. I have already observed that excess
+  of physical pleasures would be a real evil, and the matter ought not to
+  be otherwise; it is too important for the spirit to be free. Lactantius
+  (<i>Divin. Instit.</i>, lib. 3, cap. 18) had said that men are so
+  squeamish that they complain of the slightest ill, as if it swallowed up
+  all the goods they have enjoyed. M. Bayle says, concerning this, that the
+  very fact that <!-- Page 286 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page286"></a>[286]</span> men have this feeling warrants the
+  judgement that they are in evil case, since it is feeling which measures
+  the extent of good or evil. But I answer that present feeling is anything
+  rather than the true measure of good and evil past and future. I grant
+  that one is in evil case while one makes these peevish reflexions; but
+  that does not exclude a previous state of well-being, nor imply that,
+  everything reckoned in and all allowance made, the good does not exceed
+  the evil.</p>
+
+  <p>260. I do not wonder that the pagans, dissatisfied with their gods,
+  made complaints against Prometheus and Epimetheus for having forged so
+  weak an animal as man. Nor do I wonder that they acclaimed the fable of
+  old Silenus, foster-father of Bacchus, who was seized by King Midas, and
+  as the price of his deliverance taught him that ostensibly fine maxim
+  that the first and the greatest of goods was not to be born, and the
+  second, to depart from this life with dispatch (Cic., <i>Tuscul.</i>,
+  lib. 1). Plato believed that souls had been in a happier state, and many
+  of the ancients, amongst others Cicero in his Consolation (according to
+  the account of Lactantius), believed that for their sins they were
+  confined in bodies as in a prison. They rendered thus a reason for our
+  ills, and asserted their prejudices against human life: for there is no
+  such thing as a beautiful prison. But quite apart from the consideration
+  that, even according to these same pagans, the evils of this life would
+  be counterbalanced and exceeded by the goods of past and future lives, I
+  make bold to say that we shall find, upon unbiassed scrutiny of the
+  facts, that taking all in all human life is in general tolerable. And
+  adding thereto the motives of religion, we shall be content with the
+  order God has set therein. Moreover, for a better judgement of our goods
+  and our evils, it will be well to read Cardan, <i>De Utilitate ex
+  Adversis Capienda</i>, and Novarini, <i>De Occultis Dei
+  Beneficiis</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>261. M. Bayle dilates upon the misfortunes of the great, who are
+  thought to be the most fortunate: the constant experience of the fair
+  aspect of their condition renders them unaware of good, but greatly aware
+  of evil. Someone will say: so much the worse for them; if they know not
+  how to enjoy the advantages of nature and fortune, is that the fault of
+  either? There are nevertheless great men possessed of more wisdom, who
+  know how to profit by the favours God has shown them, who are easily
+  consoled for their misfortunes, and who even turn their own faults to
+  account. M. <!-- Page 287 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page287"></a>[287]</span> Bayle pays no heed to that: he prefers to
+  listen to Pliny, who thinks that Augustus, one of the princes most
+  favoured by fortune, experienced at least as much evil as good. I admit
+  that he found great causes of trouble in his family and that remorse for
+  having crushed the Republic may have tormented him; but I think that he
+  was too wise to grieve over the former, and that Maecenas apparently made
+  him understand that Rome had need of a master. Had not Augustus been
+  converted on this point, Vergil would never have said of a lost soul:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Vendidit hic auro patriam Dominumque potentem</i></p>
+      <p><i>Imposuit, fixit leges pretio atque refixit.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>Augustus would have thought that he and Caesar were alluded to in
+  these lines, which speak of a master given to a free state. But there is
+  every indication that he applied it just as little to his dominion, which
+  he regarded as compatible with liberty and as a necessary remedy for
+  public evils, as the princes of to-day apply to themselves the words used
+  of the kings censured in M. de Cambray's <i>Telemachus</i>. Each one
+  considers himself within his rights. Tacitus, an unbiassed writer,
+  justifies Augustus in two words, at the beginning of his <i>Annals</i>.
+  But Augustus was better able than anyone to judge of his good fortune. He
+  appears to have died content, as may be inferred from a proof he gave of
+  contentedness with his life: for in dying he repeated to his friends a
+  line in Greek, which has the signification of that <i>Plaudite</i> that
+  was wont to be spoken at the conclusion of a well-acted play. Suetonius
+  quotes it:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><span lang="el" title="Dote kroton kai pantes hymeis meta charas ktypêsate." >&#x394;&#x3BF;&#x3C4;&#x3B5; &#x3BA;&#x3C1;&#x3BF;&#x3C4;&#x3BF;&#x3BD; &#x3BA;&#x3B1;&#x3B9; &#x3C0;&#x3B1;&#x3BD;&#x3C4;&#x3B5;&#x3C2; &#x201B;&#x3C5;&#x3BC;&#x3B5;&#x3B9;&#x3C2; &#x3BC;&#x3B5;&#x3C4;&#x3B1; &#x3C7;&#x3B1;&#x3C1;&#x3B1;&#x3C2; &#x3BA;&#x3C4;&#x3C5;&#x3C0;&#x3B7;&#x3C3;&#x3B1;&#x3C4;&#x3B5;.</span></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>262. But even though there should have fallen to the lot of the human
+  kind more evil than good, it is enough where God is concerned that there
+  is incomparably more good than evil in the universe. Rabbi Maimonides
+  (whose merit is not sufficiently recognized in the statement that he is
+  the first of the Rabbis to have ceased talking nonsense) also gave wise
+  judgement on this question of the predominance of good over evil in the
+  world. Here is what he says in his <i>Doctor Perplexorum</i> (cap. 12, p.
+  3): 'There arise often in the hearts of ill-instructed persons thoughts
+  which persuade them there is more evil than good in the world: and one
+  often finds in the poems and songs of the pagans that it is as it were a
+  miracle when something good comes to pass, whereas <!-- Page 288 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page288"></a>[288]</span> evils are usual and
+  constant. This error has taken hold not of the common herd only, those
+  very persons who wish to be considered wise have been beguiled thereby. A
+  celebrated writer named Alrasi, in his <i>Sepher Elohuth</i>, or
+  Theosophy, amongst other absurdities has stated that there are more evils
+  than goods, and that upon comparison of the recreations and the pleasures
+  man enjoys in times of tranquillity with the pains, the torments, the
+  troubles, faults, cares, griefs and afflictions whereby he is overwhelmed
+  our life would prove to be a great evil, and an actual penalty inflicted
+  upon us to punish us.' Maimonides adds that the cause of their
+  extravagant error is their supposition that Nature was made for them
+  only, and that they hold of no account what is separate from their
+  person; whence they infer that when something unpleasing to them occurs
+  all goes ill in the universe.</p>
+
+  <p>263. M. Bayle says that this observation of Maimonides is not to the
+  point, because the question is whether among men evil exceeds good. But,
+  upon consideration of the Rabbi's words, I find that the question he
+  formulates is general, and that he wished to refute those who decide it
+  on one particular motive derived from the evils of the human race, as if
+  all had been made for man; and it seems as though the author whom he
+  refutes spoke also of good and evil in general. Maimonides is right in
+  saying that if one took into account the littleness of man in relation to
+  the universe one would comprehend clearly that the predominance of evil,
+  even though it prevailed among men, need not on that account occur among
+  the angels, nor among the heavenly bodies, nor among the elements and
+  inanimate compounds, nor among many kinds of animals. I have shown
+  elsewhere that in supposing that the number of the damned exceeds that of
+  the saved (a supposition which is nevertheless not altogether certain)
+  one might admit that there is more evil than good in respect of the human
+  kind known to us. But I pointed out that that neither precludes the
+  existence of incomparably more good than evil, both moral and physical,
+  in rational creatures in general, nor prevents the city of God, which
+  contains all creatures, from being the most perfect state. So also on
+  consideration of the metaphysical good and evil which is in all
+  substances, whether endowed with or devoid of intelligence, and which
+  taken in such scope would include physical good and moral good, one must
+  say that the universe, such as it actually is, must be the best of all
+  systems.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 289 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page289"></a>[289]</span></p>
+
+  <p>264. Moreover, M. Bayle will not have it that our transgression should
+  have anything to do with the consideration of our sufferings. He is right
+  when it is simply a matter of appraising these sufferings; but the case
+  is not the same when one asks whether they should be ascribed to God,
+  this indeed being the principal cause of M. Bayle's difficulties when he
+  places reason or experience in opposition to religion. I know that he is
+  wont to say that it is of no avail to resort to our free will, since his
+  objections tend also to prove that the misuse of free will must no less
+  be laid to the account of God, who has permitted it and who has
+  co-operated therein. He states it as a maxim that for one difficulty more
+  or less one must not abandon a system. This he advances especially in
+  favour of the methods of the strict and the dogma of the Supralapsarians.
+  For he supposes that one can subscribe to their opinion, although he
+  leaves all the difficulties in their entirety, because the other systems,
+  albeit they put an end to some of the difficulties, cannot meet them all.
+  I hold that the true system I have expounded satisfies all. Nevertheless,
+  even were that not so, I confess that I cannot relish this maxim of M.
+  Bayle's, and I should prefer a system which would remove a great portion
+  of the difficulties, to one which would meet none of them. And the
+  consideration of the wickedness of men, which brings upon them well-nigh
+  all their misfortunes, shows at least that they have no right to
+  complain. No justice need trouble itself over the origin of a scoundrel's
+  wickedness when it is only a question of punishing him: it is quite
+  another matter when it is a question of prevention. One knows well that
+  disposition, upbringing, conversation, and often chance itself, have much
+  share in that origin: is the man any the less deserving of
+  punishment?</p>
+
+  <p>265. I confess that there still remains another difficulty. If God is
+  not bound to account to the wicked for their wickedness, it seems as if
+  he owes to himself, and to those who honour him and love him,
+  justification for his course of action with regard to the permission of
+  vice and crime. But God has already given that satisfaction, as far as it
+  is needed here on earth: by granting us the light of reason he has
+  bestowed upon us the means whereby we may meet all difficulties. I hope
+  that I have made it plain in this discourse, and have elucidated the
+  matter in the preceding portion of these Essays, almost as far as it can
+  be done through general arguments. Thereafter, the permission of sin
+  being justified, the <!-- Page 290 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page290"></a>[290]</span> other evils that are a consequence
+  thereof present no further difficulty. Thus also I am justified in
+  restricting myself here to the evil of guilt to account for the evil of
+  punishment, as Holy Scripture does, and likewise well-nigh all the
+  Fathers of the Church and the Preachers. And, to the end that none may
+  say that is only good <i>per la predica</i>, it is enough to consider
+  that, after the solutions I have given, nothing must seem more right or
+  more exact than this method. For God, having found already among things
+  possible, before his actual decrees, man misusing his freedom and
+  bringing upon himself his misfortune, yet could not avoid admitting him
+  into existence, because the general plan required this. Wherefore it will
+  no longer be necessary to say with M. Jurieu that one must dogmatize like
+  St. Augustine and preach like Pelagius.</p>
+
+  <p>266. This method, deriving the evil of punishment from the evil of
+  guilt, cannot be open to censure, and serves especially to account for
+  the greatest physical evil, which is damnation. Ernst Sonner, sometime
+  Professor of Philosophy at Altorf (a university established in the
+  territory of the free city of Nuremberg), who was considered an excellent
+  Aristotelian, but was finally recognized as being secretly a Socinian,
+  had composed a little discourse entitled: <i>Demonstration against the
+  Eternity of Punishment</i>. It was founded on this somewhat trite
+  principle, that there is no proportion between an infinite punishment and
+  a finite guilt. It was conveyed to me, printed (so it seemed) in Holland;
+  and I replied that there was one thing to be considered which had escaped
+  the late Herr Sonner: namely that it was enough to say that the duration
+  of the guilt caused the duration of the penalty. Since the damned
+  remained wicked they could not be withdrawn from their misery; and thus
+  one need not, in order to justify the continuation of their sufferings,
+  assume that sin has become of infinite weight through the infinite nature
+  of the object offended, who is God. This thesis I had not explored enough
+  to pass judgement thereon. I know that the general opinion of the
+  Schoolmen, according to the Master of the Sentences, is that in the other
+  life there is neither merit nor demerit; but I do not think that, taken
+  literally, it can pass for an article of faith. Herr Fecht, a famous
+  theologian at Rostock, well refuted that in his book on <i>The State of
+  the Damned</i>. It is quite wrong, he says (§ 59); God cannot change his
+  nature; justice is essential to him; death has closed the door of grace,
+  but not that of justice.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 291 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page291"></a>[291]</span></p>
+
+  <p>267. I have observed that sundry able theologians have accounted for
+  the duration of the pains of the damned as I have just done. Johann
+  Gerhard, a famous theologian of the Augsburg Confession (in <i>Locis
+  Theol.</i>, loco de Inferno, § 60), brings forward amongst other
+  arguments that the damned have still an evil will and lack the grace that
+  could render it good. Zacharias Ursinus, a theologian of Heidelberg, who
+  follows Calvin, having formulated this question (in his treatise <i>De
+  Fide</i>) why sin merits an eternal punishment, advances first the common
+  reason, that the person offended is infinite, and then also this second
+  reason, <i>quod non cessante peccato non potest cessare poena</i>. And
+  the Jesuit Father Drexler says in his book entitled <i>Nicetas, or
+  Incontinence Overcome</i> (book 2, ch. 11, § 9): 'Nec mirum damnatos
+  semper torqueri, continue blasphemant, et sic quasi semper peccant,
+  semper ergo plectuntur.' He declares and approves the same reason in his
+  work on <i>Eternity</i> (book 2, ch. 15) saying: 'Sunt qui dicant, nec
+  displicet responsum: scelerati in locis infernis semper peccant, ideo
+  semper puniuntur.' And he indicates thereby that this opinion is very
+  common among learned men in the Roman Church. He alleges, it is true,
+  another more subtle reason, derived from Pope Gregory the Great (lib. 4,
+  Dial. c. 44), that the damned are punished eternally because God foresaw
+  by a kind of <i>mediate knowledge</i> that they would always have sinned
+  if they had always lived upon earth. But it is a hypothesis very much
+  open to question. Herr Fecht quotes also various eminent Protestant
+  theologians for Herr Gerhard's opinion, although he mentions also some
+  who think differently.</p>
+
+  <p>268. M. Bayle himself in various places has supplied me with passages
+  from two able theologians of his party, which have some reference to
+  these statements of mine. M. Jurieu in his book on the <i>Unity of the
+  Church</i>, in opposition to that written by M. Nicole on the same
+  subject, gives the opinion (p. 379) 'that reason tells us that a creature
+  which cannot cease to be criminal can also not cease to be miserable'. M.
+  Jacquelot in his book on <i>The Conformity of Faith with Reason</i> (p.
+  220) is of opinion 'that the damned must remain eternally deprived of the
+  glory of the blessed, and that this deprivation might well be the origin
+  and the cause of all their pains, through the reflexions these unhappy
+  creatures make upon their crimes which have deprived them of an eternal
+  bliss. One knows what burning regrets, what pain envy causes to those who
+  see themselves deprived of a good, of a notable honour which had <!--
+  Page 292 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page292"></a>[292]</span> been
+  offered to them, and which they rejected, especially when they see others
+  invested with it.' This position is a little different from that of M.
+  Jurieu, but both agree in this sentiment, that the damned are themselves
+  the cause of the continuation of their torments. M. le Clerc's Origenist
+  does not entirely differ from this opinion when he says in the <i>Select
+  Library</i> (vol. 7, p. 341): 'God, who foresaw that man would fall, does
+  not condemn him on that account, but only because, although he has the
+  power to recover himself, he yet does not do so, that is, he freely
+  retains his evil ways to the end of his life.' If he carries this
+  reasoning on beyond this life, he will ascribe the continuation of the
+  pains of the wicked to the continuation of their guilt.</p>
+
+  <p>269. M. Bayle says (<i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>, ch.
+  175, p. 1188) 'that this dogma of the Origenist is heretical, in that it
+  teaches that damnation is not founded simply on sin, but on voluntary
+  impenitence': but is not this voluntary impenitence a continuation of
+  sin? I would not simply say, however, that it is because man, having the
+  power to recover himself, does not; and would wish to add that it is
+  because man does not take advantage of the succour of grace to aid him to
+  recover himself. But after this life, though one assume that the succour
+  ceases, there is always in the man who sins, even when he is damned, a
+  freedom which renders him culpable, and a power, albeit remote, of
+  recovering himself, even though it should never pass into action. And
+  there is no reason why one may not say that this degree of freedom,
+  exempt from necessity, but not exempt from certainty, remains in the
+  damned as well as in the blessed. Moreover, the damned have no need of a
+  succour that is needed in this life, for they know only too well what one
+  must believe here.</p>
+
+  <p>270. The illustrious prelate of the Anglican Church who published
+  recently a book on the origin of evil, concerning which M. Bayle made
+  some observations in the second volume of his <i>Reply</i>, speaks with
+  much subtlety about the pains of the damned. This prelate's opinion is
+  presented (according to the author of the <i>Nouvelles de la République
+  des Lettres</i>, June 1703) as if he made 'of the damned just so many
+  madmen who will feel their miseries acutely, but who will nevertheless
+  congratulate themselves on their own behaviour, and who will rather
+  choose to be, and to be that which they are, than not to be at all. They
+  will love their state, unhappy as it will be, even as angry people,
+  lovers, the ambitious, <!-- Page 293 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page293"></a>[293]</span> the envious take pleasure in the very
+  things that only augment their misery. Furthermore the ungodly will have
+  so accustomed their mind to wrong judgements that they will henceforth
+  never make any other kind, and will perpetually pass from one error into
+  another. They will not be able to refrain from desiring perpetually
+  things whose enjoyment will be denied them, and, being deprived of which,
+  they will fall into inconceivable despair, while experience can never
+  make them wiser for the future. For by their own fault they will have
+  altogether corrupted their understanding, and will have rendered it
+  incapable of passing a sound judgement on any matter.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="sect271">271</a>. The ancients already imagined that the
+  Devil dwells remote from God voluntarily, in the midst of his torments,
+  and that he is unwilling to redeem himself by an act of submission. They
+  invented a tale that an anchorite in a vision received a promise from God
+  that he would receive into grace the Prince of the bad angels if he would
+  acknowledge his fault; but that the devil rebuffed this mediator in a
+  strange manner. At the least, the theologians usually agree that the
+  devils and the damned hate God and blaspheme him; and such a state cannot
+  but be followed by continuation of misery. Concerning that, one may read
+  the learned treatise of Herr Fecht on the <i>State of the Damned</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>272. There were times when the belief was held that it was not
+  impossible for a lost soul to be delivered. The story told of Pope
+  Gregory the Great is well known, how by his prayers he had withdrawn from
+  hell the soul of the Emperor Trajan, whose goodness was so renowned that
+  to new emperors the wish was offered that they should surpass Augustus in
+  good fortune and Trajan in goodness. It was this that won for the latter
+  the pity of the Holy Father. God acceded to his prayers (it is said), but
+  he forbade him to make the like prayers in future. According to this
+  fable, the prayers of St. Gregory had the force of the remedies of
+  Aesculapius, who recalled Hippolytus from Hades; and, if he had continued
+  to make such prayers, God would have waxed wroth, like Jupiter in
+  Vergil:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>At pater omnipotens aliquem indignatus ab umbris</i></p>
+      <p><i>Mortalem infernis ad lumina surgere vitae,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Ipse repertorem medicinae talis et artis</i></p>
+      <p><i>Fulmine Phoebigenam Stygias detrusit ad undas.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+<p><!-- Page 294 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page294"></a>[294]</span></p>
+
+  <p>Godescalc, a monk of the ninth century, who set at variance the
+  theologians of his day, and even those of our day, maintained that the
+  reprobate should pray God to render their pains more bearable; but one is
+  never justified in believing oneself reprobate so long as one is alive.
+  The passage in the Mass for the dead is more reasonable: it asks for the
+  abatement of the torments of the damned, and, according to the hypothesis
+  that I have just stated, one must wish for them <i>meliorem mentem</i>.
+  Origen having applied the passage from Psalm lxxvii, verse 10: God will
+  not forget to be gracious, neither will he shut up his loving-kindness in
+  displeasure, St. Augustine replies <i>(Enchirid.</i>, c. 112) that it is
+  possible that the pains of the damned last eternally, and that they may
+  nevertheless be mitigated. If the text implied that, the abatement would,
+  as regards its duration, go on to infinity; and yet that abatement would,
+  as regards its extent, have a <i>non plus ultra</i>. Even so there are
+  asymptote figures in geometry where an infinite length makes only a
+  finite progress in breadth. If the parable of the wicked rich man
+  represented the state of a definitely lost soul, the hypothesis which
+  makes these souls so mad and so wicked would be groundless. But the
+  charity towards his brothers attributed to him in the parable does not
+  seem to be consistent with that degree of wickedness which is ascribed to
+  the damned. St. Gregory the Great (IX <i>Mor.</i>, 39) thinks that the
+  rich man was afraid lest their damnation should increase his: but it
+  seems as though this fear is not sufficiently consistent with the
+  disposition of a perfectly wicked will. Bonaventura, on the Master of the
+  Sentences, says that the wicked rich man would have desired to see
+  everyone damned; but since that was not to be, he desired the salvation
+  of his brothers rather than that of the rest. This reply is by no means
+  sound. On the contrary, the mission of Lazarus that he desired would have
+  served to save many people; and he who takes so much pleasure in the
+  damnation of others that he desires it for everyone will perhaps desire
+  that damnation for some more than others; but, generally speaking, he
+  will have no inclination to gain salvation for anyone. However that may
+  be, one must admit that all this detail is problematical, God having
+  revealed to us all that is needed to put us in fear of the greatest of
+  misfortunes, and not what is needed for our understanding thereof.</p>
+
+  <p>273. Now since it is henceforth permitted to have recourse to the
+  misuse of free will, and to evil will, in order to account for other <!--
+  Page 295 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page295"></a>[295]</span>
+  evils, since the divine permission of this misuse is plainly enough
+  justified, the ordinary system of the theologians meets with
+  justification at the same time. Now we can seek with confidence <i>the
+  origin of evil in the freedom of creatures</i>. The first wickedness is
+  well known to us, it is that of the Devil and his angels: the Devil
+  sinneth from the beginning, and for this purpose the Son of God was
+  manifested, that he might destroy the works of the Devil (1 John iii. 8).
+  The Devil is the father of wickedness, he was a murderer from the
+  beginning, and abode not in the truth (John viii. 44). And therefore God
+  spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Hell, and
+  delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgement (2
+  Pet. ii. 4). And the angels which kept not their own habitation, he hath
+  reserved in <i>eternal</i> (that is to say everlasting) chains under
+  darkness unto the judgement of the great day (Jude i. 6). Whence it is
+  easy to observe that one of these two letters must have been seen by the
+  author of the other.</p>
+
+  <p>274. It seems as if the author of the Apocalypse wished to throw light
+  upon what the other canonical writers had left obscure: he gives us an
+  account of a battle that took place in Heaven. Michael and his angels
+  fought against the Dragon, and the Dragon fought and his angels. 'But
+  they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And
+  the great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and
+  Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: and he was cast out into the
+  earth, and his angels were cast out with him' (Rev. xii. 7, 8, 9). For
+  although this account is placed after the flight of the woman into the
+  wilderness, and it may have been intended to indicate thereby some
+  revulsion favourable to the Church, it appears as though the author's
+  design was to show simultaneously the old fall of the first enemy and a
+  new fall of a new enemy.</p>
+
+  <p>275. Lying or wickedness springs from the Devil's own nature, <span
+  lang="el" title="ek tôn idiôn" >&#x3B5;&#x3BA; &#x3C4;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;
+  &#x3B9;&#x3B4;&#x3B9;&#x3C9;&#x3BD;</span> from his will, because it was
+  written in the book of the eternal verities, which contains the things
+  possible before any decree of God, that this creature would freely turn
+  toward evil if it were created. It is the same with Eve and Adam; they
+  sinned freely, albeit the Devil tempted them. God gives the wicked over
+  to a reprobate mind (Rom. i. 28), abandoning them to themselves and
+  denying them a grace which he owes them not, and indeed ought to deny to
+  them.</p>
+
+  <p>276. It is said in the Scriptures that God hardeneth (Exod. iv. <!--
+  Page 296 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page296"></a>[296]</span> 21
+  and vii. 3; Isa. lxiii. 17); that God sendeth a lying spirit (1 Kings
+  xxii. 23); strong delusion that they should believe a lie (2 Thess. ii.
+  11); that he deceived the prophet (Ezek. xiv. 9); that he commanded
+  Shimei to curse (2 Sam xvi. 10); that the children of Eli hearkened not
+  unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them (1 Sam.
+  ii. 25); that the Lord took away Job's substance, even although that was
+  done through the malice of brigands (Job i. 21); that he raised up
+  Pharaoh, to show his power in him (Exod. ix. 19; Rom. ix. 17) that he is
+  like a potter who maketh a vessel unto dishonour (Rom. ix. 21); that he
+  hideth the truth from the wise and prudent (Matt. xi. 25); that he
+  speaketh in parables unto them that are without, that seeing they may see
+  and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest at
+  any time they might be converted, and their sins might be forgiven them
+  (Mark iv. 12; Luke viii. 10); that Jesus was delivered by the determinate
+  counsel and foreknowledge of God (Acts ii. 23); that Pontius Pilate and
+  Herod with the Gentiles and the people of Israel did that which the hand
+  and the counsel of God had determined before to be done (Acts iv. 27,
+  28); that it was of the Lord to harden the hearts of the enemy, that they
+  should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly,
+  and that they might have no favour (Joshua xi. 20); that the Lord mingled
+  a perverse spirit in the midst of Egypt, and caused it to err in all its
+  works, like a drunken man (Isa. xix. 14); that Rehoboam hearkened not
+  unto the word of the people, for the cause was from the Lord (1 Kings
+  xii. 15); that he turned the hearts of the Egyptians to hate his people
+  (Ps. cv. 25). But all these and other like expressions suggest only that
+  the things God has done are used as occasion for ignorance, error, malice
+  and evil deeds, and contribute thereto, God indeed foreseeing this, and
+  intending to use it for his ends, since superior reasons of perfect
+  wisdom have determined him to permit these evils, and even to co-operate
+  therein. 'Sed non sineret bonus fieri male, nisi omnipotens etiam de malo
+  posset facere bene', in St. Augustine's words. But this has been
+  expounded more fully in the preceding part.</p>
+
+  <p>277. God made man in his image (Gen. i. 26); he made him upright
+  (Eccles. vii. 29). But also he made him free. Man has behaved badly, he
+  has fallen; but there remains still a certain freedom after the fall.
+  Moses said as from God: 'I call heaven and earth to record this day
+  against you, that I have set before you life <!-- Page 297 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page297"></a>[297]</span> and death, blessing
+  and cursing; therefore choose life' (Deut. xxx. 19). 'Thus saith the
+  Lord: Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death'
+  (Jer. xxi. 8). He has left man in the power of his counsel, giving him
+  his ordinances and his commandments. 'If thou wilt, thou shalt keep the
+  commandments' (or they shall keep thee). 'He hath set before thee fire
+  and water, to stretch forth thine hand to whichever thou wilt' (Sirach
+  xv. 14, 15, 16). Fallen and unregenerate man is under the domination of
+  sin and of Satan, because it pleases him so to be; he is a voluntary
+  slave through his evil lust. Thus it is that free will and will in
+  bondage are one and the same thing.</p>
+
+  <p>278. 'Let no man say, I am tempted of God'; 'but every man is tempted,
+  when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed' (Jas. i. 13, 14). And
+  Satan contributes thereto. He 'blindeth the minds of them which believe
+  not' (2 Cor. iv. 4). But man is delivered up to the Devil by his covetous
+  desire: the pleasure he finds in evil is the bait that hooks him. Plato
+  has said so already, and Cicero repeats it: 'Plato voluptatem dicebat
+  escam malorum.' Grace sets over against it a greater pleasure, as St.
+  Augustine observed. All <i>pleasure</i> is a feeling of some perfection;
+  one <i>loves</i> an object in proportion as one feels its perfections;
+  nothing surpasses the divine perfections. Whence it follows that charity
+  and love of God give the greatest pleasure that can be conceived, in that
+  proportion in which one is penetrated by these feelings, which are not
+  common among men, busied and taken up as men are with the objects that
+  are concerned with their passions.</p>
+
+  <p>279. Now as our corruption is not altogether invincible and as we do
+  not necessarily sin even when we are under the bondage of sin, it must
+  likewise be said that we are not aided invincibly; and, however
+  efficacious divine grace may be, there is justification for saying that
+  one can resist it. But when it indeed proves victorious, it is certain
+  and infallible beforehand that one will yield to its allurements, whether
+  it have its strength of itself or whether it find a way to triumph
+  through the congruity of circumstances. Thus one must always distinguish
+  between the infallible and the necessary.</p>
+
+  <p>280. The system of those who call themselves Disciples of St.
+  Augustine is not far removed from this, provided one exclude certain
+  obnoxious things, whether in the expressions or in the dogmas themselves.
+  In the <i>expressions</i> I find that it is principally the <!-- Page 298
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page298"></a>[298]</span> use of terms
+  like 'necessary' or 'contingent', 'possible' or 'impossible', which
+  sometimes gives a handle and causes much ado. That is why, as Herr
+  Löscher the younger aptly observed in a learned dissertation on the
+  <i>Paroxysms of the Absolute Decree</i>, Luther desired, in his book
+  <i>On the Will in Bondage</i>, to find a word more fitting for that which
+  he wished to express than the word necessity. Speaking generally, it
+  appears more reasonable and more fitting to say that obedience to God's
+  precepts is always <i>possible</i>, even for the unregenerate; that the
+  grace of God is always <i>resistible</i>, even in those most holy, and
+  that <i>freedom</i> is exempt not only from <i>constraint</i> but also
+  from <i>necessity</i>, although it be never without infallible
+  <i>certainty</i> or without inclining <i>determination</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>281. Nevertheless there is on the other hand a sense wherein it would
+  be permitted to say, in certain conjunctures, that the <i>power</i> to do
+  good is often lacking, even in the just; that sins are often
+  <i>necessary</i>, even in the regenerate; that it is <i>impossible</i>
+  sometimes for one not to sin; that grace is <i>irresistible</i>; that
+  freedom is not exempt from <i>necessity</i>. But these expressions are
+  less exact and less pleasing in the circumstances that prevail about us
+  to-day. They are also in general more open to misuse; and moreover they
+  savour somewhat of the speech of the people, where terms are employed
+  with great latitude. There are, however, circumstances which render them
+  acceptable and even serviceable. It is the case that sacred and orthodox
+  writers, and even the holy Scriptures, have made use of expressions on
+  both sides, and no real contradiction has arisen, any more than between
+  St. Paul and St. James, or any error on either side that might be
+  attributable to the ambiguity of the terms. One is so well accustomed to
+  these various ways of speaking that often one is put to it to say
+  precisely which sense is the more ordinary and the more natural, and even
+  that more intended by the author (<i>quis sensus magis naturalis, obvius,
+  intentus</i>). For the same writer has different aims in different
+  passages, and the same ways of speaking are more or less accepted or
+  acceptable before or after the decision of some great man or of some
+  authority that one respects and follows. As a result of this one may well
+  authorize or ban, as opportunity arises and at certain times, certain
+  expressions; but it makes no difference to the sense, or to the content
+  of faith, if sufficient explanations of the terms are not added.</p>
+
+  <p>282. It is therefore only necessary to understand fully some
+  distinctions, such as that I have very often urged between the <!-- Page
+  299 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page299"></a>[299]</span> necessary
+  and the certain, and between metaphysical necessity and moral necessity.
+  It is the same with possibility and impossibility, since the event whose
+  opposite is possible is contingent, even as that whose opposite is
+  impossible is necessary. A distinction is rightly drawn also between a
+  proximate potency and a remote potency; and, according to these different
+  senses, one says now that a thing may be and now that it may not be. It
+  may be said in a certain sense that it is necessary that the blessed
+  should not sin; that the devils and the damned should sin; that God
+  himself should choose the best; that man should follow the course which
+  after all attracts him most. But this necessity is not opposed to
+  contingency; it is not of the kind called logical, geometrical or
+  metaphysical, whose opposite implies contradiction. M. Nicole has made
+  use somewhere of a comparison which is not amiss. It is considered
+  impossible that a wise and serious magistrate, who has not taken leave of
+  his senses, should publicly commit some outrageous action, as it would
+  be, for instance, to run about the streets naked in order to make people
+  laugh. It is the same, in a sense, with the blessed; they are still less
+  capable of sinning, and the necessity that forbids them to sin is of the
+  same kind. Finally I also hold that 'will' is a term as equivocal as
+  potency and necessity. For I have already observed that those who employ
+  this axiom, that one does not fail to do what one wills when one can, and
+  who thence infer that God therefore does not will the salvation of all,
+  imply a <i>decretory will</i>. Only in that sense can one support this
+  proposition, that wisdom never wills what it knows to be among the things
+  that shall not happen. On the other hand, one may say, taking will in a
+  sense more general and more in conformity with customary use, that the
+  wise will is <i>inclined</i> antecedently to all good, although it
+  <i>decrees</i> finally to do that which is most fitting. Thus one would
+  be very wrong to deny to God the serious and strong inclination to save
+  all men, which Holy Scripture attributes to him; or even to attribute to
+  him an original distaste which diverts him from the salvation of a number
+  of persons, <i>odium antecedaneum</i>. One should rather maintain that
+  the wise mind tends towards all good, as good, in proportion to his
+  knowledge and his power, but that he only produces the best that can be
+  achieved. Those who admit that, and yet deny to God the antecedent will
+  to save all men, are wrong only in their misuse of the term, provided
+  that they acknowledge, besides, that God gives <!-- Page 300 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page300"></a>[300]</span> to all help sufficient
+  to enable them to win salvation if only they have the will to avail
+  themselves thereof.</p>
+
+  <p>283. In the <i>dogmas</i> themselves held by the Disciples of St.
+  Augustine I cannot approve the damnation of unregenerate children, nor in
+  general damnation resulting from original sin alone. Nor can I believe
+  that God condemns those who are without the necessary light. One may
+  believe, with many theologians, that men receive more aid than we are
+  aware of, were it only when they are at the point of death. It does not
+  appear necessary either that all those who are saved should always be
+  saved through a grace efficacious of itself, independently of
+  circumstances. Also I consider it unnecessary to say that all the virtues
+  of the pagans were false or that all their actions were sins; though it
+  be true that what does not spring from faith, or from the uprightness of
+  the soul before God, is infected with sin, at least virtually. Finally I
+  hold that God cannot act as if at random by an absolutely absolute
+  decree, or by a will independent of reasonable motives. And I am
+  persuaded that he is always actuated, in the dispensation of his grace,
+  by reasons wherein the nature of the objects participates. Otherwise he
+  would not act in accordance with wisdom. I grant nevertheless that these
+  reasons are not of necessity bound up with the good or the less evil
+  natural qualities of men, as if God gave his grace only according to
+  these good qualities. Yet I hold, as I have explained already here, that
+  these qualities are taken into consideration like all the other
+  circumstances, since nothing can be neglected in the designs of supreme
+  wisdom.</p>
+
+  <p>284. Save for these points, and some few others, where St. Augustine
+  appears obscure or even repellent, it seems as though one can conform to
+  his system. He states that from the substance of God only a God can
+  proceed, and that thus the creature is derived from nothingness
+  (Augustine <i>De Lib. Arb.</i>, lib. 1, c. 2). That is what makes the
+  creature imperfect, faulty and corruptible (<i>De Genesi ad Lit.</i>, c.
+  15, <i>Contra Epistolam Manichaei</i>, c. 36). Evil comes not from
+  nature, but from evil will (Augustine, in the whole book <i>On the Nature
+  of Good</i>). God can command nothing that would be impossible.
+  'Firmissime creditur Deum justum et bonum impossibilia non potuisse
+  praecipere' (<i>Lib. de Nat. et Grat.</i>, c. 43, p. 69). Nemo peccat in
+  eo, quod caveri non potest (lib. 3, <i>De Lib. Arb.</i>, c. 16, 17,
+  <i>lib.</i> 1 <i>Retract.</i> c. 11, 13, 15). Under a just God, none can
+  be unhappy who deserves not so to be, 'neque sub Deo justo <!-- Page 301
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page301"></a>[301]</span> miser esse
+  quisquam, nisi mereatur, potest' (lib. 1, c. 39). Free will cannot carry
+  out God's commands without the aid of grace (<i>Ep. ad Hilar.
+  Caesaraugustan.</i>). We know that grace is not given according to
+  deserts (Ep. 106, 107, 120). Man in the state of innocence had the aid
+  necessary to enable him to do good if he wished; but the wish depended on
+  free will, 'habebat adjutorium, per quod posset, et sine quo non vellet,
+  sed non adjutorium quo vellet' (<i>Lib. de Corrept.</i>, c. 11 et c. 10,
+  12). God let angels and men try what they could do by their free will,
+  and after that what his grace and his justice could achieve (ibid., c.
+  10, 11, 12). Sin turned man away from God, to turn him towards creatures
+  (lib. 1, qu. 2, <i>Ad Simplicium</i>). To take pleasure in sinning is the
+  freedom of a slave (<i>Enchirid.</i>, c. 103). 'Liberum arbitrium usque
+  adeo in peccatore non periit, ut per illud peccent maxime omnes, qui cum
+  delectatione peccant' (lib. 1, <i>Ad Bonifac.</i>, c. 2, 3).</p>
+
+  <p>285. God said to Moses: 'I will be gracious to whom I will be
+  gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy' (Exod. xxxiii.
+  19). 'So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but
+  of God that sheweth mercy' (Rom. ix. 15, 16). That does not prevent all
+  those who have good will, and who persevere therein, from being saved.
+  But God gives them the willing and the doing. 'Therefore hath he mercy on
+  whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth' (Rom. ix. 18).
+  And yet the same Apostle says that God willeth that all men should be
+  saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth; which I would not
+  interpret in accordance with some passages of St. Augustine, as if it
+  signified that no men are saved except those whose salvation he wills, or
+  as if he would save <i>non singulos generum, sed genera singulorum</i>.
+  But I would rather say that there is none whose salvation he willeth not,
+  in so far as this is permitted by greater reasons. For these bring it
+  about that God only saves those who accept the faith he has offered to
+  them and who surrender themselves thereto by the grace he has given them,
+  in accordance with what was consistent with the plan of his works in its
+  entirety, than which none can be better conceived.</p>
+
+  <p>286. As for predestination to salvation, it includes also, according
+  to St. Augustine, the ordinance of the means that shall lead to
+  salvation. 'Praedestinatio sanctorum nihil aliud est, quam praescientia
+  et praeparatio beneficiorum Dei, quibus certissime liberantur quicunque
+  liberantur' (<i>Lib. de Persev.</i>, c. 14). He does <!-- Page 302
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page302"></a>[302]</span> not then
+  understand it there as an absolute decree; he maintains that there is a
+  grace which is not rejected by any hardened heart, because it is given in
+  order to remove especially the hardness of hearts (<i>Lib. de
+  Praedest.</i>, c. 8; <i>Lib. de Grat.</i>, c. 13, 14). I do not find,
+  however, that St. Augustine conveys sufficiently that this grace, which
+  subdues the heart, is always efficacious of itself. And one might perhaps
+  have asserted without offence to him that the same degree of inward grace
+  is victorious in the one, where it is aided by outward circumstances, but
+  not in the other.</p>
+
+  <p>287. Will is proportionate to the sense we have of the good, and
+  follows the sense which prevails. 'Si utrumque tantundem diligimus, nihil
+  horum dabimus. Item: Quod amplius nos delectat, secundum id operemur
+  necesse est' (in c. 5, <i>Ad Gal.</i>). I have explained already how,
+  despite all that, we have indeed a great power over our will. St.
+  Augustine takes it somewhat differently, and in a way that does not go
+  far, when he says that nothing is so much within our power as the action
+  of our will. And he gives a reason which is almost tautological: for (he
+  says) this action is ready at the moment when we will. 'Nihil tam in
+  nostra potestate est, quam ipsa voluntas, ea enim mox ut volumus praesto
+  est' (lib. 3, <i>De Lib. Arb.</i>, c. 3; lib. 5, <i>De Civ. Dei</i>, c.
+  10). But that only means that we will when we will, and not that we will
+  that which we wish to will. There is more reason for saying with him:
+  '<i>aut voluntas non est, aut libera dicenda est</i>' (d. 1, 3, c. 3);
+  and that what inclines the will towards good infallibly, or certainly,
+  does not prevent it from being free. 'Perquam absurdum est, ut ideo
+  dicamus non pertinere ad voluntatem [libertatem] nostram, quod beati esse
+  volumus, quia id omnino nolle non possumus, nescio qua bona constrictione
+  naturae. Nec dicere audemus ideo Deum non voluntatem [libertatem], sed
+  necessitatem habere justitiae, quia non potest velle peccare. Certe Deus
+  ipse numquid quia peccare non potest, ideo liberum arbitrium habere
+  negandus est?' (<i>De Nat. et Grat.</i>, c. 46, 47, 48, 49). He also says
+  aptly, that God gives the first good impulse, but that afterwards man
+  acts also. 'Aguntur ut agant, non ut ipsi nihil agant' (<i>De
+  Corrept.</i>, c. 2).</p>
+
+  <p>288. I have proved that free will is the proximate cause of the evil
+  of guilt, and consequently of the evil of punishment; although it is true
+  that the original imperfection of creatures, which is already presented
+  in the eternal ideas, is the first and most remote <!-- Page 303 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page303"></a>[303]</span> cause. M. Bayle
+  nevertheless always disputes this use of the notion of free will; he will
+  not have the cause of evil ascribed to it. One must listen to his
+  objections, but first it will be well to throw further light on the
+  nature of freedom. I have shown that freedom, according to the definition
+  required in the schools of theology, consists in intelligence, which
+  involves a clear knowledge of the object of deliberation, in spontaneity,
+  whereby we determine, and in contingency, that is, in the exclusion of
+  logical or metaphysical necessity. Intelligence is, as it were, the soul
+  of freedom, and the rest is as its body and foundation. The free
+  substance is self-determining and that according to the motive of good
+  perceived by the understanding, which inclines it without compelling it:
+  and all the conditions of freedom are comprised in these few words. It is
+  nevertheless well to point out that the imperfection present in our
+  knowledge and our spontaneity, and the infallible determination that is
+  involved in our contingency, destroy neither freedom nor contingency.</p>
+
+  <p>289. Our knowledge is of two kinds, distinct or confused. Distinct
+  knowledge, or <i>intelligence</i>, occurs in the actual use of reason;
+  but the senses supply us with confused thoughts. And we may say that we
+  are immune from bondage in so far as we act with a distinct knowledge,
+  but that we are the slaves of passion in so far as our perceptions are
+  confused. In this sense we have not all the freedom of spirit that were
+  to be desired, and we may say with St. Augustine that being subject to
+  sin we have the freedom of a slave. Yet a slave, slave as he is,
+  nevertheless has freedom to choose according to the state wherein he is,
+  although more often than not he is under the stern necessity of choosing
+  between two evils, because a superior force prevents him from attaining
+  the goods whereto he aspires. That which in a slave is effected by bonds
+  and constraint in us is effected by passions, whose violence is sweet,
+  but none the less pernicious. In truth we will only that which pleases
+  us: but unhappily what pleases us now is often a real evil, which would
+  displease us if we had the eyes of the understanding open. Nevertheless
+  that evil state of the slave, which is also our own, does not prevent us,
+  any more than him, from making a free choice of that which pleases us
+  most, in the state to which we are reduced, in proportion to our present
+  strength and knowledge.</p>
+
+  <p>290. As for spontaneity, it belongs to us in so far as we have within
+  us the source of our actions, as Aristotle rightly conceived. <!-- Page
+  304 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page304"></a>[304]</span> The
+  impressions of external things often, indeed, divert us from our path,
+  and it was commonly believed that, at least in this respect, some of the
+  sources of our actions were outside ourselves. I admit that one is bound
+  to speak thus, adapting oneself to the popular mode of expression, as one
+  may, in a certain sense, without doing violence to truth. But when it is
+  a question of expressing oneself accurately I maintain that our
+  spontaneity suffers no exception and that external things have no
+  physical influence upon us, I mean in the strictly philosophical
+  sense.</p>
+
+  <p>291. For better understanding of this point, one must know that true
+  spontaneity is common to us and all simple substances, and that in the
+  intelligent or free substance this becomes a mastery over its actions.
+  That cannot be better explained than by the System of Pre-established
+  Harmony, which I indeed propounded some years ago. There I pointed out
+  that by nature every simple substance has perception, and that its
+  individuality consists in the perpetual law which brings about the
+  sequence of perceptions that are assigned to it, springing naturally from
+  one another, to represent the body that is allotted to it, and through
+  its instrumentality the entire universe, in accordance with the point of
+  view proper to this simple substance and without its needing to receive
+  any physical influence from the body. Even so the body also for its part
+  adapts itself to the wishes of the soul by its own laws, and consequently
+  only obeys it according to the promptings of these laws. Whence it
+  follows that the soul has in itself a perfect spontaneity, so that it
+  depends only upon God and upon itself in its actions.</p>
+
+  <p>292. As this system was not known formerly, other ways were sought for
+  emerging from this labyrinth, and the Cartesians themselves were in
+  difficulties over the subject of free will. They were no longer satisfied
+  by the 'faculties' of the Schoolmen, and they considered that all the
+  actions of the soul appear to be determined by what comes from without,
+  according to the impressions of the senses, and that, ultimately, all is
+  controlled in the universe by the providence of God. Thence arose
+  naturally the objection that there is therefore no freedom. To that M.
+  Descartes replied that we are assured of God's providence by reason; but
+  that we are likewise assured of our freedom by experience thereof within
+  ourselves; and that we must believe in both, even though we see not how
+  it is possible to reconcile them.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 305 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page305"></a>[305]</span></p>
+
+  <p>293. That was cutting the Gordian knot, and answering the conclusion
+  of an argument not by refuting it but by opposing thereto a contrary
+  argument. Which procedure does not conform to the laws for philosophical
+  disputes. Notwithstanding, most of the Cartesians contented themselves
+  with this, albeit the inward experience they adduce does not prove their
+  assertion, as M. Bayle has clearly shown. M. Regis (<i>Philos.</i>, vol.
+  1, Metaph., book 2, part 2, c. 22) thus paraphrases M. Descartes'
+  doctrine: 'Most philosophers', he says, 'have fallen into error. Some,
+  not being able to understand the relation existing between free actions
+  and the providence of God, have denied that God was the first efficient
+  cause of free will: but that is sacrilegious. The others, not being able
+  to apprehend the relation between God's efficacy and free actions, have
+  denied that man was endowed with freedom: and that is a blasphemy. The
+  mean to be found between these two extremes is to say' (id. ibid., p.
+  485) 'that, even though we were not able to understand all the relations
+  existing between freedom and God's providence, we should nevertheless be
+  bound to acknowledge that we are free and dependent upon God. For both
+  these truths are equally known, the one through experience, and the other
+  through reason; and prudence forbids one to abandon truths whereof one is
+  assured, under the pretext that one cannot apprehend all the relations
+  existing between them and other truths well known.'</p>
+
+  <p>294. M. Bayle here remarks pertinently in the margin, 'that these
+  expressions of M. Regis fail to point out that we are aware of relations
+  between man's actions and God's providence, such as appear to us to be
+  incompatible with our freedom.' He adds that these expressions are
+  over-circumspect, weakening the statement of the problem. 'Authors
+  assume', he says, 'that the difficulty arises solely from our lack of
+  enlightenment; whereas they ought to say that it arises in the main from
+  the enlightenment which we have, and cannot reconcile' (in M. Bayle's
+  opinion) 'with our Mysteries.' That is exactly what I said at the
+  beginning of this work, that if the Mysteries were irreconcilable with
+  reason, and if there were unanswerable objections, far from finding the
+  mystery incomprehensible, we should comprehend that it was false. It is
+  true that here there is no question of a mystery, but only of natural
+  religion.</p>
+
+  <p>295. This is how M. Bayle combats those inward experiences, <!-- Page
+  306 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page306"></a>[306]</span> whereon
+  the Cartesians make freedom rest: but he begins by reflexions with which
+  I cannot agree. 'Those who do not make profound examination', he says
+  (<i>Dictionary</i>, art. 'Helen.', lit. <span lang="el" title="TD"
+  >&#x3A4;&#x394;</span>), 'of that which passes within them easily
+  persuade themselves that they are free, and that, if their will prompts
+  them to evil, it is their fault, it is through a choice whereof they are
+  the masters. Those who judge otherwise are persons who have studied with
+  care the springs and the circumstances of their actions, and who have
+  thought over the progress of their soul's impulses. Those persons usually
+  have doubts about their free will, and even come to persuade themselves
+  that their reason and mind are slaves, without power to resist the force
+  that carries them along where they would not go. It was principally
+  persons of this kind who ascribed to the gods the cause of their evil
+  deeds.'</p>
+
+  <p>296. These words remind me of those of Chancellor Bacon, who says that
+  a little philosophy inclineth us away from God, but that depth in
+  philosophy bringeth men's minds about to him. It is the same with those
+  who reflect upon their actions: it appears to them at first that all we
+  do is only impulsion from others, and that all we apprehend comes from
+  without through the senses, and is traced upon the void of our mind
+  <i>tanquam in tabula rasa</i>. But more profound meditation shows us that
+  all (even perceptions and passions) comes to us from our own inner being,
+  with complete spontaneity.</p>
+
+  <p>297. Yet M. Bayle cites poets who pretend to exonerate men by laying
+  the blame upon the gods. Medea in Ovid speaks thus:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4"><i>Frustra, Medea, repugnas,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Nescio quid Deus obstat, ait.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>And a little later Ovid makes her add:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque Cupido,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Mens aliud suadet; video meliora proboque,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Deteriora sequor</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>But one could set against that a passage from Vergil, who makes Nisus
+  say with far more reason:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Di ne hunc ardorem mentibus addunt,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Euryale, an sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido?</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>298. Herr Wittich seems to have thought that in reality our
+  independence is only apparent. For in his <i>Diss. de providentia Dei
+  <!-- Page 307 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page307"></a>[307]</span>
+  actuali</i> (n. 61) he makes free will consist in our being inclined
+  towards the objects that present themselves to our soul for affirmation
+  or denial, love or hate, in such a way that we <i>do not feel</i> we are
+  being determined by any outward force. He adds that it is when God
+  himself causes our volitions that we act with most freedom; and that the
+  more efficacious and powerful God's action is upon us, the more we are
+  masters of our actions. 'Quia enim Deus operatur ipsum velle, quo
+  efficacius operatur, eo magis volumus; quod autem, cum volumus, facimus,
+  id maxime habemus in nostra potestate.' It is true that when God causes a
+  volition in us he causes a free action. But it seems to me that the
+  question here is not of the universal cause or of that production of our
+  will which is proper to it in so far as it is a created effect, whose
+  positive elements are actually created continually through God's
+  co-operation, like all other absolute reality of things. We are concerned
+  here with the reasons for willing, and the means God uses when he gives
+  us a good will or permits us to have an evil will. It is always we who
+  produce it, good or evil, for it is our action: but there are always
+  reasons that make us act, without impairing either our spontaneity or our
+  freedom. Grace does no more than give impressions which are conducive to
+  making will operate through fitting motives, such as would be an
+  attention, <i>a dic cur hic</i>, a prevenient pleasure. And it is quite
+  evident that that does not interfere with freedom, any more than could a
+  friend who gives counsel and furnishes motives. Thus Herr Wittich has not
+  supplied an answer to the question, any more than M. Bayle, and recourse
+  to God is of no avail here.</p>
+
+  <p>299. But let me give another much more reasonable passage from the
+  same M. Bayle, where he disputes with greater force the so-called lively
+  sense of freedom, which according to the Cartesians is a proof of
+  freedom. His words are indeed full of wit, and worthy of consideration,
+  and occur in the <i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i> (vol. III,
+  ch. 140, p. 761 <i>seqq.</i>). Here they are: 'By the clear and distinct
+  sense we have of our existence we do not discern whether we exist through
+  ourselves or derive our being from another. We discern that only by
+  reflexion, that is, through meditation upon our powerlessness in the
+  matter of conserving ourselves as much as we would, and of freeing
+  ourselves from dependence upon the beings that surround us, etc. It is
+  indeed certain that the pagans (the same must be said of the Socinians,
+  since they deny <!-- Page 308 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page308"></a>[308]</span> the creation) never attained to the
+  knowledge of that true dogma that we were created from nothing, and that
+  we are derived from nothingness at every moment of our continuance. They
+  therefore thought erroneously that all substances in the universe exist
+  of themselves and can never be reduced to nothing, and that thus they
+  depend upon no other thing save in respect of their modifications, which
+  are liable to be destroyed by the action of an external cause. Does not
+  this error spring from the fact that we are unconscious of the creative
+  action which conserves us, and that we are only conscious of our
+  existence? That we are conscious of it, I say, in such a way that we
+  should for ever remain ignorant of the cause of our being if other
+  knowledge did not aid us? Let us say also, that the clear and distinct
+  sense we have of the acts of our will cannot make us discern whether we
+  give them ourselves to ourselves or receive them from that same cause
+  which gives us existence. We must have recourse to reflexion or to
+  meditation in order to effect this discrimination. Now I assert that one
+  can never by purely philosophical meditations arrive at an established
+  certainty that we are the efficient cause of our volitions: for every
+  person who makes due investigation will recognize clearly, that if we
+  were only passive subjects with regard to will we should have the same
+  sensations of experience as we have when we think that we are free.
+  Assume, for the sake of argument, that God so ordered the laws of the
+  union between soul and body that all the modalities of the soul, without
+  a single exception, are of necessity linked together with the
+  interposition of the modalities of the brain. You will then understand
+  that nothing will happen to us except that of which we are conscious:
+  there will be in our soul the same sequence of thoughts from the
+  perception of objects of the senses, which is its first step, up to the
+  most definite volitions, which are its final step. There will be in this
+  sequence the consciousness of ideas, that of affirmations, that of
+  irresolutions, that of velleities and that of volitions. For whether the
+  act of willing be impressed upon us by an external cause or we bring it
+  about ourselves, it will be equally true that we will, and that we feel
+  that we will. Moreover, as this external cause can blend as much pleasure
+  as it will with the volition which it impresses upon us, we shall be able
+  to feel at times that the acts of our will please us infinitely, and that
+  they lead us according to the bent of our strongest inclinations. We
+  shall feel no constraint; you know the maxim: <i>voluntas non <!-- Page
+  309 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page309"></a>[309]</span> potest
+  cogi</i>. Do you not clearly understand that a weather-vane, always
+  having communicated to it simultaneously (in such a way, however, that
+  priority of nature or, if one will, a real momentary priority, should
+  attach to the desire for motion) movement towards a certain point on the
+  horizon, and the wish to turn in that direction, would be persuaded that
+  it moved of itself to fulfil the desires which it conceived? I assume
+  that it would not know that there were winds, or that an external cause
+  changed everything simultaneously, both its situation and its desires.
+  That is the state we are in by our nature: we know not whether an
+  invisible cause makes us pass sufficiently from one thought to another.
+  It is therefore natural that men are persuaded that they determine their
+  own acts. But it remains to be discovered whether they are mistaken in
+  that, as in countless other things they affirm by a kind of instinct and
+  without having made use of philosophic meditation. Since therefore there
+  are two hypotheses as to what takes place in man: the one that he is only
+  a passive subject, the other that he has active virtues, one cannot in
+  reason prefer the second to the first, so long as one can only adduce
+  proofs of feeling. For we should feel with an equal force that we wish
+  this or that, whether all our volitions were imprinted upon our soul by
+  an exterior and invisible cause, or we formed them ourselves.'</p>
+
+  <p>300. There are here excellent arguments, which are valid against the
+  usual systems; but they fail in respect of the System of Pre-established
+  Harmony, which takes us further than we were able to go formerly. M.
+  Bayle asserts, for instance, 'that by purely philosophical meditations
+  one can never attain to an established certainty that we are the
+  efficient cause of our volitions'. But this is a point which I do not
+  concede to him: for the establishment of this system demonstrates beyond
+  a doubt that in the course of nature each substance is the sole cause of
+  all its actions, and that it is free of all physical influence from every
+  other substance, save the customary co-operation of God. And this system
+  shows that our spontaneity is real, and not only apparent, as Herr
+  Wittich believed it to be. M. Bayle asserts also on the same reasons (ch.
+  170, p. 1132) that if there were a <i>fatum Astrologicum</i> this would
+  not destroy freedom; and I would concede that to him, if freedom
+  consisted only in an apparent spontaneity.</p>
+
+  <p>301. The spontaneity of our actions can therefore no longer be
+  questioned; and Aristotle has defined it well, saying that an <!-- Page
+  310 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page310"></a>[310]</span> action is
+  <i>spontaneous</i> when its source is in him who acts. 'Spontaneum est,
+  cujus principium est in agente.' Thus it is that our actions and our
+  wills depend entirely upon us. It is true that we are not directly the
+  masters of our will, although we be its cause; for we do not choose
+  volitions, as we choose our actions by our volitions. Yet we have a
+  certain power also over our will, because we can contribute indirectly
+  towards willing another time that which we would fain will now, as I have
+  here already shown: that, however, is no <i>velleity</i>, properly
+  speaking. There also we have a mastery, individual and even perceptible,
+  over our actions and our wills, resulting from a combination of
+  spontaneity with intelligence.</p>
+
+  <p>302. Up to this point I have expounded the two conditions of freedom
+  mentioned by Aristotle, that is, <i>spontaneity</i> and
+  <i>intelligence</i>, which are found united in us in deliberation,
+  whereas beasts lack the second condition. But the Schoolmen demand yet a
+  third, which they call <i>indifference</i>. And indeed one must admit it,
+  if indifference signifies as much as 'contingency'; for I have already
+  said here that freedom must exclude an absolute and metaphysical or
+  logical necessity. But, as I have declared more than once, this
+  indifference, this contingency, this non-necessity, if I may venture so
+  to speak, which is a characteristic attribute of freedom, does not
+  prevent one from having stronger inclinations towards the course one
+  chooses; nor does it by any means require that one be absolutely and
+  equally indifferent towards the two opposing courses.</p>
+
+  <p>303. I therefore admit indifference only in the one sense, implying
+  the same as contingency, or non-necessity. But, as I have declared more
+  than once, I do not admit an indifference of equipoise, and I do not
+  think that one ever chooses when one is absolutely indifferent. Such a
+  choice would be, as it were, mere chance, without determining reason,
+  whether apparent or hidden. But such a chance, such an absolute and
+  actual fortuity, is a chimera which never occurs in nature. All wise men
+  are agreed that chance is only an apparent thing, like fortune: only
+  ignorance of causes gives rise to it. But if there were such a vague
+  indifference, or rather if we were to choose without having anything to
+  prompt us to the choice, chance would then be something actual,
+  resembling what, according to Epicurus, took place in that little
+  deviation of the atoms, occurring without cause or reason. Epicurus had
+  <!-- Page 311 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page311"></a>[311]</span>
+  introduced it in order to evade necessity, and Cicero with good reason
+  ridiculed it.</p>
+
+  <p>304. This deviation had a final cause in the mind of Epicurus, his aim
+  being to free us from fate; but it can have no efficient cause in the
+  nature of things, it is one of the most impossible of chimeras. M. Bayle
+  himself refutes it admirably, as we shall see presently. And yet it is
+  surprising that he appears to admit elsewhere himself something of like
+  nature with this supposed deviation: here is what he says, when speaking
+  of Buridan's ass (<i>Dictionary</i>, art. 'Buridan', lit. 13): 'Those who
+  advocate free will properly so called admit in man a power of
+  determining, either to the right hand or the left, even when the motives
+  are perfectly uniform on the side of each of the two opposing objects.
+  For they maintain that our soul can say, without having any reason other
+  than that of using its freedom: "I prefer this to that, although I see
+  nothing more worthy of my choice in the one than the other".'</p>
+
+  <p>305. All those who admit a free will properly so called will not for
+  that reason concede to M. Bayle this determination springing from an
+  indeterminate cause. St. Augustine and the Thomists believe that all is
+  determined. And one sees that their opponents resort also to the
+  circumstances which contribute to our choice. Experience by no means
+  approves the chimera of an indifference of equipoise; and one can employ
+  here the argument that M. Bayle himself employed against the Cartesians'
+  manner of proving freedom by the lively sense of our independence. For
+  although I do not always see the reason for an inclination which makes me
+  choose between two apparently uniform courses, there will always be some
+  impression, however imperceptible, that determines us. The mere desire to
+  make use of one's freedom has no effect of specifying, or determining us
+  to the choice of one course or the other.</p>
+
+  <p>306. M. Bayle goes on: 'There are at the very least two ways whereby
+  man can extricate himself from the snares of equipoise. One, which I have
+  already mentioned, is for a man to flatter himself with the pleasing
+  fancy that he is master in his own house, and that he does not depend
+  upon objects.' This way is blocked: for all that one might wish to play
+  master in one's own house, that has no determining effect, nor does it
+  favour one course more than the other. M. Bayle goes on: 'He would make
+  this Act: I will prefer <!-- Page 312 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page312"></a>[312]</span> this to that, because it pleases me to
+  behave thus.' But these words, 'because it pleases me', 'because such is
+  my pleasure', imply already a leaning towards 'the object that
+  pleases'.</p>
+
+  <p>307. There is therefore no justification for continuing thus: 'And so
+  that which determined him would not be taken from the object; the motive
+  would be derived only from the ideas men have of their own perfections,
+  or of their natural faculties. The other way is that of the lot or
+  chance: the short straw would decide.' This way has an outlet, but it
+  does not reach the goal: it would alter the issue, for in such a case it
+  is not man who decides. Or again if one maintains that it is still the
+  man who decides by lot, man himself is no longer in equipoise, because
+  the lot is not, and the man has attached himself to it. There are always
+  reasons in Nature which cause that which happens by chance or through the
+  lot. I am somewhat surprised that a mind so shrewd as M. Bayle's could
+  have allowed itself to be so misled on this point. I have set out
+  elsewhere the true rejoinder to the Buridan sophism: it is that the case
+  of perfect equipoise is impossible, since the universe can never be
+  halved, so as to make all impressions equivalent on both sides.</p>
+
+  <p>308. Let us see what M. Bayle himself says elsewhere against the
+  chimerical or absolutely undefined indifference. Cicero had said (in his
+  book <i>De Fato</i>) that Carneades had found something more subtle than
+  the deviation of atoms, attributing the cause of a so-called absolutely
+  undefined indifference to the voluntary motions of souls, because these
+  motions have no need of an external cause, coming as they do from our
+  nature. But M. Bayle (<i>Dictionary</i>, art. 'Epicurus', p. 1143) aptly
+  replies that all that which springs from the nature of a thing is
+  determined: thus determination always remains, and Carneades' evasion is
+  of no avail.</p>
+
+  <p>309. He shows elsewhere (<i>Reply to the Questions of a
+  Provincial</i>, ch. 90, l. 2, p. 229) 'that a freedom far removed from
+  this so-called equipoise is incomparably more beneficial. I mean', he
+  says, 'a freedom such as may always follow the judgements of the mind,
+  and such as cannot resist objects clearly recognized as good. I know of
+  no people who do not agree that truth clearly recognized necessitates'
+  (determines rather, unless one speak of a moral necessity) 'the assent of
+  the soul; experience teaches us that. In the schools they teach
+  constantly that as the true is the object of <!-- Page 313 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page313"></a>[313]</span> the understanding, so
+  the good is the object of the will. So likewise they teach that as the
+  understanding can never affirm anything save that which is shown to it
+  under the semblance of truth, the will can never love anything which to
+  it does not appear to be good. One never believes the false as such, and
+  one never loves evil as evil. There is in the understanding a natural
+  determination towards the true in general, and towards each individual
+  truth clearly recognized. There is in the will a natural determination
+  towards good in general; whence many philosophers conclude that from the
+  moment when individual goods are clearly recognized by us we are of
+  necessity compelled to love them. The understanding suspends its actions
+  only when its objects show themselves obscurely, so that there is cause
+  for doubt as to whether they are false or true. That leads many persons
+  to the conclusion that the will remains in equipoise only when the soul
+  is uncertain whether the object presented to it is a good with regard to
+  it; but that also, the moment the soul decides in the affirmative, it of
+  necessity clings to that object until other judgements of the mind
+  determine it otherwise. Those who expound freedom in this fashion think
+  to find therein plentiful enough material for merit or demerit. For they
+  assume that these judgements of the mind proceed from a free attention of
+  the soul in examining the objects, comparing them together, and
+  discriminating between them. I must not forget that there are very
+  learned men' (such as Bellarmine, lib. 3, <i>De Gratia et Libero
+  Arbitrio</i>, c. 8, et 9, and Cameron, in <i>Responsione ad Epistolam
+  Viri Docti, id est Episcopii</i>) 'who maintain with very cogent reasons
+  that the will always of necessity follows the last practical act of the
+  understanding.'</p>
+
+  <p>310. One must make some observations on this discourse. A very clear
+  recognition of the best <i>determines</i> the will; but it does not
+  necessitate it, properly speaking. One must always distinguish between
+  the necessary and the certain or infallible, as I have already observed
+  more than once, and distinguish metaphysical necessity from moral
+  necessity. I think also that it is only God's will which always follows
+  the judgements of the understanding: all intelligent creatures are
+  subject to some passions, or to perceptions at least, that are not
+  composed entirely of what I call <i>adequate ideas</i>. And although in
+  the blessed these passions always tend towards the true good, by virtue
+  of the laws of Nature and the system of things pre-established in
+  relation to them, yet this <!-- Page 314 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page314"></a>[314]</span> does not always happen in such a way that
+  they have a perfect knowledge of that good. It is the same with them as
+  with us, who do not always understand the reason for our instincts. The
+  angels and the blessed are created beings, even as we are, in whom there
+  is always some confused perception mingled with distinct knowledge.
+  Suarez said something similar concerning them. He thinks (<i>Treatise on
+  Prayer</i>, book I, ch. 11) that God has so ordered things beforehand
+  that their prayers, when they are made with a full will, always succeed:
+  that is an example of a pre-established harmony. As for us, in addition
+  to the judgement of the understanding, of which we have an express
+  knowledge, there are mingled therewith confused perceptions of the
+  senses, and these beget passions and even imperceptible inclinations, of
+  which we are not always aware. These movements often thwart the judgement
+  of the practical understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>311. As for the parallel between the relation of the understanding to
+  the true and that of the will to the good, one must know that a clear and
+  distinct perception of a truth contains within it actually the
+  affirmation of this truth: thus the understanding is necessitated in that
+  direction. But whatever perception one may have of the good, the effort
+  to act in accordance with the judgement, which in my opinion forms the
+  essence of the will, is distinct from it. Thus, since there is need of
+  time to raise this effort to its climax, it may be suspended, and even
+  changed, by a new perception or inclination which passes athwart it,
+  which diverts the mind from it, and which even causes it sometimes to
+  make a contrary judgement. Hence it comes that our soul has so many means
+  of resisting the truth which it knows, and that the passage from mind to
+  heart is so long. Especially is this so when the understanding to a great
+  extent proceeds only by faint <i>thoughts</i>, which have only slight
+  power to affect, as I have explained elsewhere. Thus the connexion
+  between judgement and will is not so necessary as one might think.</p>
+
+  <p>312. M. Bayle goes on to say, with truth (p. 221): 'Indeed, it cannot
+  be a fault in man's soul that it has no freedom of indifference as
+  regards good in general. It would be rather a disorder, an inordinate
+  imperfection, if one could say truthfully: It is all one to me whether I
+  am happy or unhappy; I have no more determination to love the good than
+  to hate it; I can do both equally. Now if it is a praiseworthy and
+  advantageous quality to be determinate <!-- Page 315 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page315"></a>[315]</span> as regards good in
+  general, it cannot be a fault if one is necessitated as regards each
+  individual good recognized plainly as for our good. It seems even as
+  though it were a necessary conclusion, that if the soul has no freedom of
+  indifference as regards good in general, it also has none in respect of
+  particular goods which after due examination it judges to be goods in
+  relation to it. What should we think of a soul which, having formed that
+  judgement, had, and prided itself on having, the power not to love these
+  goods, and even to hate them, and which said: I recognize clearly that
+  these are goods for me, I have all the enlightenment necessary on that
+  point; nevertheless I will not love them, I will hate them; my decision
+  is made, I act upon it; it is not that any reason' (that is, any other
+  reason than that which is founded upon 'Such is my good pleasure') 'urges
+  me thereto, but it pleases me so to behave: what should we think, I say,
+  of such a soul? Should we not find it more imperfect and more unhappy
+  than if it had not this freedom of indifference?</p>
+
+  <p>313. 'Not only does the doctrine that subjects the will to the final
+  acts of the understanding give a more favourable idea of the state of the
+  soul, but it shows also that it is easier to lead man to happiness along
+  that road than along the road of indifference. It will suffice to
+  enlighten his mind upon his true interests, and straightway his will will
+  comply with the judgements that reason shall have pronounced. But if he
+  has a freedom independent of reason and of the quality of objects clearly
+  recognized, he will be the most intractable of all animals, and it will
+  never be possible to rely upon making him choose the right course. All
+  the counsels, all the arguments in the world may prove unavailing; you
+  will give him explanations, you will convince his mind, and yet his will
+  will play the haughty madam and remain motionless as a rock. Vergil,
+  <i>Aen</i>., lib. 6, v. 470:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Non magis incepto vultum sermone movetur,</i></p>
+      <p><i>Quam si dura silex, aut stet Marpesia cautes</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>A caprice, an empty whim will make her stiffen against reasons of all
+  kinds; it will not please her to love her clearly recognized good, it
+  will please her to hate it. Do you consider such a faculty, sir, to be
+  the richest present God can have made to man, and the sole instrument of
+  our happiness? Is it not rather an obstacle to our felicity? Is there
+  cause for boasting in being able to say: "I have <!-- Page 316 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page316"></a>[316]</span> scorned all the
+  judgements of my reason, and I have followed an altogether different
+  path, simply from considerations of my own good pleasure?" With what
+  regrets would one not be torn, in that case, if the determination made
+  had an ill result? Such a freedom would therefore be more harmful than
+  profitable to men, because the understanding would not present all the
+  goodness of the objects clearly enough to deprive the will of the power
+  of rejection. It would be therefore infinitely better for man to be
+  always of necessity determined by the judgement of the understanding,
+  than to permit the will to suspend its action. For by this means it would
+  achieve its aim with greater ease and certainty.'</p>
+
+  <p>314. Upon this discourse I make the further observation, that it is
+  very true that a freedom of indifference, undefined and without any
+  determining reason, would be as harmful, and even objectionable, as it is
+  impracticable and chimerical. The man who wished to behave thus, or at
+  the least appear to be acting without due cause, would most certainly be
+  looked upon as irrational. But it is very true also that the thing is
+  impossible, when it is taken strictly in accordance with the assumption.
+  As soon as one tries to give an example of it one misses one's aim and
+  stumbles upon the case of a man who, while he does not come to a decision
+  without cause, does so rather under the influence of inclination or
+  passion than of judgement. As soon as one says: 'I scorn the judgements
+  of my reason simply from considerations of my own good pleasure, it
+  pleases me to behave thus', it is as if one were to say: I prefer my
+  inclination to my interest, my pleasure to my profit.</p>
+
+  <p>315. Even so some capricious man, fancying that it is ignominious for
+  him to follow the advice of his friends or his servants, might prefer the
+  satisfaction of contradicting them to the profit he could derive from
+  their counsel. It may happen, however, that in a matter of small moment a
+  wise man acts irregularly and against his own interest in order to thwart
+  another who tries to restrain him or direct him, or that he may
+  disconcert those who watch his steps. It is even well at times to imitate
+  Brutus by concealing one's wit, and even to feign madness, as David did
+  before the King of the Philistines.</p>
+
+  <p>316. M. Bayle admirably supplements his remarks with the object of
+  showing that to act against the judgement of the understanding would be a
+  great imperfection. He observes (p. 225) that, <!-- Page 317 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page317"></a>[317]</span> even according to the
+  Molinists, 'the understanding which does its <font class="sc">duty</font>
+  well indicates that which is <font class="sc">the best</font>'. He
+  introduces God (ch. 91, p. 227) saying to our first parents in the Garden
+  of Eden: 'I have given you my knowledge, the faculty of judging things,
+  and full power to dispose your wills. I shall give you instructions and
+  orders; but the free will that I have bestowed upon you is of such a
+  nature that you have equal power (according to circumstances) to obey me
+  and to disobey me. You will be tempted: if you make a good use of your
+  freedom you will be happy; and if you use it ill you will be unhappy. It
+  is for you to see if you wish to ask of me, as a new grace, either that I
+  permit you to abuse your freedom when you shall make resolve to do so, or
+  that I prevent you from doing so. Consider carefully, I give you four and
+  twenty hours. Do you not clearly understand' (adds M. Bayle) 'that their
+  reason, which had not yet been obscured by sin, would have made them
+  conclude that they must ask God, as the crowning point of the favours
+  wherewith he had honoured them, not to permit them to destroy themselves
+  by an ill use of their powers? And must one not admit that if Adam,
+  through wrongly making it a point of honour to order his own goings, had
+  refused a divine direction that would have safeguarded his happiness, he
+  would have been the prototype of all such as Phaeton and Icarus? He would
+  have been well-nigh as ungodly as the Ajax of Sophocles, who wished to
+  conquer without the aid of the gods, and who said that the most craven
+  would put their enemies to flight with such aid.'</p>
+
+  <p>317. M. Bayle also shows (ch. 80) that one congratulates oneself no
+  less, or even takes more credit to oneself, for having been aided from
+  above, than for owing one's happiness to one's own choice. And if one
+  does well through having preferred a tumultuous instinct, which arose
+  suddenly, to reasons maturely considered, one feels an extraordinary joy
+  in this; for one assumes that either God, or our Guardian Angel, or
+  something or other which one pictures to oneself under the vague name of
+  <i>good luck</i> has impelled us thereto. Indeed, Sulla and Caesar
+  boasted more of their good luck than of their prudence. The pagans, and
+  particularly the poets (Homer especially), determined their heroes' acts
+  by divine promptings. The hero of the <i>Aeneid</i> proceeds only under
+  the direction of a God. It was very great praise offered to the Emperors
+  if one said that they were victorious both through their <!-- Page 318
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page318"></a>[318]</span> troops and
+  through their gods whom they lent to their generals: 'Te copias, te
+  consilium et tuos praebente Divos,' said Horace. The generals fought
+  under the auspices of the Emperors, as if trusting to the Emperor's good
+  luck, for subordinate officers had no rights regarding the auspices. One
+  takes credit to oneself for being a favourite of heaven, one rates
+  oneself more highly for the possession of good fortune than of talent.
+  There are no people that think themselves more fortunate than the
+  mystics, who imagine that they keep still while God acts within them.</p>
+
+  <p>318. 'On the other hand', M. Bayle adds (ch. 83), 'a Stoic
+  philosopher, who attaches to everything an inevitable necessity, is as
+  susceptible as another man to the pleasure of having chosen well. And
+  every man of sense will find that, far from taking pleasure in the
+  thought of having deliberated long and finally chosen the most honourable
+  course, one feels incredible satisfaction in persuading oneself that one
+  is so firmly rooted in the love of virtue that without the slightest
+  resistance one would repel a temptation. A man to whom is suggested the
+  doing of a deed contrary to his duty, his honour and his conscience, who
+  answers forthwith that he is incapable of such a crime, and who is
+  certainly not capable of it, is far more contented with himself than if
+  he asked for time to consider it, and were for some hours in a state of
+  indecision as to which course to take. One is on many occasions regretful
+  over not being able to make up one's mind between two courses, and one
+  would be well pleased that the counsel of a good friend, or some succour
+  from above, should impel us to make a good choice.' All that demonstrates
+  for us the advantage a determinate judgement has over that vague
+  indifference which leaves us in uncertainty. But indeed I have proved
+  sufficiently that only ignorance or passion has power to keep us in
+  doubt, and have thus given the reason why God is never in doubt. The
+  nearer one comes to him, the more perfect is freedom, and the more it is
+  determined by the good and by reason. The character of Cato, of whom
+  Velleius said that it was impossible for him to perform a dishonourable
+  action, will always be preferred to that of a man who is capable of
+  wavering.</p>
+
+  <p>319. I have been well pleased to present and to support these
+  arguments of M. Bayle against vague indifference, as much for the
+  elucidation of the subject as to confront him with himself, and to
+  demonstrate that he ought therefore not to complain of the <!-- Page 319
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page319"></a>[319]</span> alleged
+  necessity imposed upon God, of choosing the best way that is possible.
+  For either God will act through a vague indifference and at random, or
+  again he will act on caprice or through some other passion, or finally he
+  must act through a prevailing inclination of reason which prompts him to
+  the best. But passions, which come from the confused perception of an
+  apparent good, cannot occur in God; and vague indifference is something
+  chimerical. It is therefore only the strongest reason that can regulate
+  God's choice. It is an imperfection in our freedom that makes us capable
+  of choosing evil instead of good, a greater evil instead of the lesser
+  evil, the lesser good instead of the greater good. That arises from the
+  appearances of good and evil, which deceive us; whereas God is always
+  prompted to the true and the greatest good, that is, to the absolutely
+  true good, which he cannot fail to know.</p>
+
+  <p>320. This false idea of freedom, conceived by those who, not content
+  with exempting it, I do not say from constraint, but from necessity
+  itself, would also exempt it from certainty and determination, that is,
+  from reason and perfection, nevertheless pleased some Schoolmen, people
+  who often become entangled in their own subtleties, and take the straw of
+  terms for the grain of things. They assume some chimerical notion, whence
+  they think to derive some use, and which they endeavour to maintain by
+  quibblings. Complete indifference is of this nature: to concede it to the
+  will is to grant it a privilege of the kind that some Cartesians and some
+  mystics find in the divine nature, of being able to do the impossible, to
+  produce absurdities, to cause two contradictory propositions to be true
+  simultaneously. To claim that a determination comes from a complete
+  indifference absolutely indeterminate is to claim that it comes naturally
+  from nothing. Let it be assumed that God does not give this
+  determination: it has accordingly no fountainhead in the soul, nor in the
+  body, nor in circumstances, since all is assumed to be indeterminate; and
+  yet there it is, appearing and existing without preparation, nothing
+  making ready for it, no angel, not even God himself, being able to see or
+  to show how it exists. That would be not only the emergence of something
+  from nothing, but its emergence thence <i>of itself</i>. This doctrine
+  introduces something as preposterous as the theory already mentioned, of
+  the deviation of atoms, whereby Epicurus asserted that one of these small
+  bodies, going in a straight line, would turn aside all at <!-- Page 320
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page320"></a>[320]</span> once from its
+  path, without any reason, simply because the will so commands. Take note
+  moreover that he resorted to that only to justify this alleged freedom of
+  complete indifference, a chimerical notion which appears to be of very
+  ancient origin; and one may with good reason say: <i>Chimaera Chimaeram
+  parit</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>321. This is the way Signor Marchetti has expressed it in his
+  admirable translation of Lucretius into Italian verse, which has not yet
+  been published (Book 2):</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Mà ch'i principii poi non corran punto</i></p>
+      <p><i>Della lor dritta via, chi veder puote?</i></p>
+      <p><i>Sì finalmente ogni lor moto sempre</i></p>
+      <p><i>Insieme s'aggruppa, e dall' antico</i></p>
+      <p><i>Sempre con ordin certo il nuovo nasce;</i></p>
+      <p><i>Ne tracciando i primi semi, fanno</i></p>
+      <p><i>Di moto un tal principio, il qual poi rompa</i></p>
+      <p><i>I decreti del fato, acciò non segua</i></p>
+      <p><i>L'una causa dell' altra in infinito;</i></p>
+      <p><i>Onde han questa, dich' io</i>, del fato sciolta</p>
+      <p>Libera voluntà, <i>per cui ciascuno</i></p>
+      <p><i>Va dove più l'agrada? I moti ancora</i></p>
+      <p><i>Si declinan sovente, e non in tempo</i></p>
+      <p><i>Certo, ne certa region, mà solo</i></p>
+      <p><i>Quando e dove commanda il nostro arbitrio;</i></p>
+      <p><i>Poiche senz' alcun dubbio à queste cose</i></p>
+      <p><i>Dà sol principio il voler proprio, e quindi</i></p>
+      <p><i>Van poi scorrendo per le membra i moti.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>It is comical that a man like Epicurus, after having discarded the
+  gods and all incorporeal substances, could have supposed that the will,
+  which he himself takes as composed of atoms, could have had control over
+  the atoms, and diverted them from their path, without its being possible
+  for one to say how.</p>
+
+  <p>322. Carneades, not going so far back as to the atoms, claimed to find
+  at once in the soul of man the reason for the so-called vague
+  indifference, assuming as reason for the thing just that for which
+  Epicurus sought a reason. Carneades gained nothing thereby, except that
+  he more easily deceived careless people, in transferring the absurdity
+  from one subject, where it is somewhat too evident, to another subject
+  where it is easier to confuse matters, that is to say, from the body to
+  the soul. For most philosophers <!-- Page 321 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page321"></a>[321]</span> had not very distinct notions of the
+  nature of the soul. Epicurus, who composed it of atoms, was at least
+  right in seeking the origin of its determination in that which he
+  believed to be the origin of the soul itself. That is why Cicero and M.
+  Bayle were wrong to find so much fault with him, and to be indulgent
+  towards, and even praise, Carneades, who is no less irrational. I do not
+  understand how M. Bayle, who was so clear-sighted, was thus satisfied by
+  a disguised absurdity, even to the extent of calling it the greatest
+  effort the human mind can make on this matter. It is as if the soul,
+  which is the seat of reason, were more capable than the body of acting
+  without being determined by some reason or cause, internal or external;
+  or as if the great principle which states that nothing comes to pass
+  without cause only related to the body.</p>
+
+  <p>323. It is true that the Form or the Soul has this advantage over
+  matter, that it is the source of action, having within itself the
+  principle of motion or of change, in a word, <span lang="el" title="to autokinêton"
+  >&#x3C4;&#x3BF;
+  &#x3B1;&#x3C5;&#x3C4;&#x3BF;&#x3BA;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;&#x3B7;&#x3C4;&#x3BF;&#x3BD;</span>,
+  as Plato calls it; whereas matter is simply passive, and has need of
+  being impelled to act, <i>agitur, ut agat</i>. But if the soul is active
+  of itself (as it indeed is), for that very reason it is not of itself
+  absolutely indifferent to the action, like matter, and it must find in
+  itself a ground of determination. According to the System of
+  Pre-established Harmony the soul finds in itself, and in its ideal nature
+  anterior to existence, the reasons for its determinations, adjusted to
+  all that shall surround it. That way it was determined from all eternity
+  in its state of mere possibility to act freely, as it does, when it
+  attains to existence.</p>
+
+  <p>324. M. Bayle himself remarks aptly that freedom of indifference (such
+  as must be admitted) does not exclude inclinations and does not demand
+  equipoise. He demonstrates amply enough (<i>Reply to the Questions of a
+  Provincial</i>, ch. 139, p. 748 <i>seqq</i>.) that the soul may be
+  compared to a balance, where reasons and inclinations take the place of
+  weights. According to him, one can explain what passes in our resolutions
+  by the hypothesis that the will of man is like a balance which is at rest
+  when the weights of its two pans are equal, and which always inclines
+  either to one side or the other according to which of the pans is the
+  more heavily laden. A new reason makes a heavier weight, a new idea
+  shines more brightly than the old; the fear of a heavy penalty prevails
+  over some pleasure; when two passions dispute the ground, it is always
+  the stronger which gains the mastery, unless the other be <!-- Page 322
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page322"></a>[322]</span> assisted by
+  reason or by some other contributing passion. When one flings away
+  merchandise in order to save oneself, the action, which the Schoolmen
+  call mixed, is voluntary and free; and yet love of life indubitably
+  prevails over love of possessions. Grief arises from remembrance of lost
+  possessions, and one has all the greater difficulty in making one's
+  resolve, the nearer the approach to even weight in the opposing reasons,
+  as also we see that the balance is determined more promptly when there is
+  a great difference between the weights.</p>
+
+  <p>325. Nevertheless, as very often there are divers courses to choose
+  from, one might, instead of the balance, compare the soul with a force
+  which puts forth effort on various sides simultaneously, but which acts
+  only at the spot where action is easiest or there is least resistance.
+  For instance, air if it is compressed too firmly in a glass vessel will
+  break it in order to escape. It puts forth effort at every part, but
+  finally flings itself upon the weakest. Thus do the inclinations of the
+  soul extend over all the goods that present themselves: they are
+  antecedent acts of will; but the consequent will, which is their result,
+  is determined in the direction of that which touches most closely.</p>
+
+  <p>326. This ascendancy of inclinations, however, does not prevent man
+  from being master in his own domain, provided that he knows how to make
+  use of his power. His dominion is that of reason: he has only to prepare
+  himself in good time to resist the passions, and he will be capable of
+  checking the vehemence of the most furious. Let us assume that Augustus,
+  about to give orders for putting to death Fabius Maximus, acts, as is his
+  wont, upon the advice a philosopher had given him, to recite the Greek
+  alphabet before doing anything in the first heat of his anger: this
+  reflexion will be capable of saving the life of Fabius and the glory of
+  Augustus. But without some fortunate reflexion, which one owes sometimes
+  to a special divine mercy, or without some skill acquired beforehand,
+  like that of Augustus, calculated to make us reflect fittingly as to time
+  and place, passion will prevail over reason. The driver is master over
+  the horses if he controls them as he should, and as he can; but there are
+  occasions when he becomes negligent, and then for a time he will have to
+  let go the reins:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Fertur equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>327. One must admit that there is always within us enough <!-- Page
+  323 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page323"></a>[323]</span> power
+  over our will, but we do not always bethink ourselves of employing it.
+  That shows, as I have observed more than once, that the power of the soul
+  over its inclinations is a control which can only be exercised in an
+  <i>indirect</i> manner, almost as Bellarmine would have had the Popes
+  exercise rights over the temporal power of kings. In truth, the external
+  actions that do not exceed our powers depend absolutely upon our will;
+  but our volitions depend upon our will only through certain artful twists
+  which give us means of suspending our resolutions, or of changing them.
+  We are masters in our own house, not as God is in the world, he having
+  but to speak, but as a wise prince is in his dominions or as a good
+  father of a family is in his home. M. Bayle sometimes takes the matter
+  differently, as though we must have, in order to boast of a free will, an
+  absolute power over ourselves, independent of reasons and of means. But
+  even God has not such a power, and must not have in this sense, in
+  relation to his will: he cannot change his nature, nor act otherwise than
+  according to method; and how could man transform himself all of a sudden?
+  I have already said God's dominion, the dominion of wisdom, is that of
+  reason. It is only God, however, who always wills what is most to be
+  desired, and consequently he has no need of the power to change his will.
+  328. If the soul is mistress in its own house (says M. Bayle, p. 753) it
+  has only to will, and straightway that vexation and pain which is
+  attendant upon victory over the passions will vanish away. For this
+  effect it would suffice, in his opinion, to give oneself indifference to
+  the objects of the passions (p. 758). Why, then, do men not give
+  themselves this indifference (he says), if they are masters in their own
+  house? But this objection is exactly as if I were to ask why a father of
+  a family does not give himself gold when he has need thereof? He can
+  acquire some, but through skill, and not, as in the age of the fairies,
+  or of King Midas, through a mere command of the will or by his touch. It
+  would not suffice to be master in one's own house; one must be master of
+  all things in order to give oneself all that one wishes; for one does not
+  find everything in one's own house. Working thus upon oneself, one must
+  do as in working upon something else; one must have knowledge of the
+  constitution and the qualities of one's object, and adapt one's
+  operations thereto. It is therefore not in a moment and by a mere act of
+  the will that one corrects oneself, and that one acquires a better
+  will.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 324 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page324"></a>[324]</span></p>
+
+  <p>329. Nevertheless it is well to observe that the vexations and pains
+  attendant upon victory over the passions in some people turn into
+  pleasure, through the great satisfaction they find in the lively sense of
+  the force of their mind, and of the divine grace. Ascetics and true
+  mystics can speak of this from experience; and even a true philosopher
+  can say something thereof. One can attain to that happy state, and it is
+  one of the principal means the soul can use to strengthen its
+  dominion.</p>
+
+  <p>330. If the Scotists and the Molinists appear to favour vague
+  indifference (appear, I say, for I doubt whether they do so in reality,
+  once they have learnt to know it), the Thomists and the disciples of
+  Augustine are for predetermination. For one must have either the one or
+  the other. Thomas Aquinas is a writer who is accustomed to reason on
+  sound principles, and the subtle Scotus, seeking to contradict him, often
+  obscures matters instead of throwing light upon them. The Thomists as a
+  general rule follow their master, and do not admit that the soul makes
+  its resolve without the existence of some predetermination which
+  contributes thereto. But the predetermination of the new Thomists is not
+  perhaps exactly that which one needs. Durand de Saint-Pourçain, who often
+  enough formed a party of his own, and who opposed the idea of the special
+  co-operation of God, was nevertheless in favour of a certain
+  predetermination. He believed that God saw in the state of the soul, and
+  of its surroundings, the reason for his determinations.</p>
+
+  <p>331. The ancient Stoics were in that almost of the same opinion as the
+  Thomists. They were at the same time in favour of determination and
+  against necessity, although they have been accused of attaching necessity
+  to everything. Cicero says in his book <i>De Fato</i> that Democritus,
+  Heraclitus, Empedocles and Aristotle believed that fate implied
+  necessity; that others were opposed to that (he means perhaps Epicurus
+  and the Academicians); and that Chrysippus sought a middle course. I
+  think that Cicero is mistaken as regards Aristotle, who fully recognized
+  contingency and freedom, and went even too far, saying (inadvertently, as
+  I think) that propositions on contingent futurities had no determinate
+  truth; on which point he was justifiably abandoned by most of the
+  Schoolmen. Even Cleanthes, the teacher of Chrysippus, although he upheld
+  the determinate truth of future events, denied their necessity. Had the
+  Schoolmen, so fully convinced of this <!-- Page 325 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page325"></a>[325]</span> determination of
+  contingent futurities (as were for instance the Fathers of Coimbra,
+  authors of a famous Course of Philosophy), seen the connexion between
+  things in the form wherein the System of General Harmony proclaims it,
+  they would have judged that one cannot admit preliminary certainty, or
+  determination of futurition, without admitting a predetermination of the
+  thing in its causes and in its reasons.</p>
+
+  <p>332. Cicero has endeavoured to expound for us the middle course taken
+  by Chrysippus; but Justus Lipsius observed, in his <i>Stoic
+  Philosophy</i>, that the passage from Cicero was mutilated, and that
+  Aulus Gellius has preserved for us the whole argument of the Stoic
+  philosopher (<i>Noct. Att.</i>, lib. 6, c. 2). Here it is in epitome.
+  Fate is the inevitable and eternal connexion of all events. Against this
+  is urged in objection, that it follows that the acts of the will would be
+  necessary, and that criminals, being coerced into evil, should not be
+  punished. Chrysippus answers that evil springs from the original
+  constitution of souls, which forms part of the destined sequence; that
+  souls which are of a good natural disposition offer stronger resistance
+  to the impressions of external causes; but that those whose natural
+  defects had not been corrected by discipline allowed themselves to be
+  perverted. Next he distinguishes (according to Cicero) between principal
+  causes and accessary causes, and uses the comparison of a cylinder, whose
+  rotatory force and speed or ease in motion comes chiefly from its shape,
+  whereas it would be retarded by any roughness in formation. Nevertheless
+  it has need of impulsion, even as the soul needs to be acted upon by the
+  objects of the senses, and receives this impression according to its own
+  constitution.</p>
+
+  <p>333. Cicero considers that Chrysippus becomes so confused that,
+  whether he will or no, he confirms the necessity of fate. M. Bayle is
+  almost of the same opinion (<i>Dictionary</i>, art. 'Chrysippus', lit.
+  H). He says that this philosopher does not get out of the bog, since the
+  cylinder is regular or uneven according to what the craftsman has made
+  it; and thus God, providence, fate will be the causes of evil in such a
+  way as to render it necessary. Justus Lipsius answers that, according to
+  the Stoics, evil came from matter. That is (to my mind) as if he had said
+  that the stone on which the craftsman worked was sometimes too rough and
+  too irregular to produce a good cylinder. M. Bayle cites against
+  Chrysippus the fragments of Onomaus and Diogenianus that <!-- Page 326
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page326"></a>[326]</span> Eusebius has
+  preserved for us in the <i>Praeparatio Evangelica</i> (lib. 6, c. 7, 8);
+  and above all he relies upon Plutarch's refutation in his book against
+  the Stoics, quoted art. 'Paulicians', lit. G. But this refutation does
+  not amount to very much. Plutarch maintains that it would be better to
+  deny power to God than to impute to him the permission of evils; and he
+  will not admit that evil may serve a greater good. I have already shown,
+  on the contrary, that God cannot but be all-powerful, even though he can
+  do no better than produce the best, which includes the permission of
+  evil. Moreover, I have pointed out repeatedly that what is to the
+  disadvantage of a part taken separately may serve the perfection of the
+  whole.</p>
+
+  <p>334. Chrysippus had already made an observation to this effect, not
+  only in his fourth book on Providence, as given by Aulus Gellius (lib. 6,
+  c. 1) where he asserts that evil serves to bring the good to notice (a
+  reason which is not sufficient here), but still better when he applies
+  the comparison of a stage play, in his second book on Nature (as Plutarch
+  quotes it himself). There he says that there are sometimes portions in a
+  comedy which are of no worth in themselves and which nevertheless lend
+  grace to the whole poem. He calls these portions epigrams or
+  inscriptions. We have not enough acquaintance with the nature of the
+  ancient comedy for full understanding of this passage from Chrysippus;
+  but since Plutarch assents to the fact, there is reason to believe that
+  this comparison was not a poor one. Plutarch replies in the first place
+  that the world is not like a play to provide entertainment. But that is a
+  poor answer: the comparison lies in this point alone, that one bad part
+  may make the whole better. He replies secondly that this bad passage is
+  only a small part of the comedy, whereas human life swarms with evils.
+  This reply is of no value either: for he ought to have taken into account
+  that what we know is also a very small part of the universe.</p>
+
+  <p>335. But let us return to the cylinder of Chrysippus. He is right in
+  saying that vice springs from the original constitution of some minds. He
+  was met with the objection that God formed them, and he could only reply
+  by pointing to the imperfection of matter, which did not permit God to do
+  better. This reply is of no value, for matter in itself is indifferent to
+  all forms, and God made it. Evil springs rather from the <i>Forms</i>
+  themselves in their detached state, that is, from the ideas that God has
+  not produced by an act <!-- Page 327 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page327"></a>[327]</span> of his will, any more than he thus
+  produced numbers and figures, and all possible essences which one must
+  regard as eternal and necessary; for they are in the ideal region of the
+  possibles, that is, in the divine understanding. God is therefore not the
+  author of essences in so far as they are only possibilities. But there is
+  nothing actual to which he has not decreed and given existence; and he
+  has permitted evil because it is involved in the best plan existing in
+  the region of possibles, a plan which supreme wisdom could not fail to
+  choose. This notion satisfies at once the wisdom, the power and the
+  goodness of God, and yet leaves a way open for the entrance of evil. God
+  gives perfection to creatures in so far as it is possible in the
+  universe. One gives a turn to the cylinder, but any roughness in its
+  shape restricts the swiftness of its motion. This comparison made by
+  Chrysippus does not greatly differ from mine, which was taken from a
+  laden boat that is carried along by the river current, its pace becoming
+  slower as the load grows heavier. These comparisons tend towards the same
+  end; and that shows that if we were sufficiently informed concerning the
+  opinions of ancient philosophers, we should find therein more reason than
+  is supposed.</p>
+
+  <p>336. M. Bayle himself commends the passage from Chrysippus (art.
+  'Chrysippus', lit. T) that Aulus Gellius quotes in the same place, where
+  this philosopher maintains that evil has come <i>by concomitance.</i>
+  That also is made clear by my system. For I have demonstrated that the
+  evil which God permitted was not an object of his will, as an end or a
+  means, but simply as a condition, since it had to be involved in the
+  best. Yet one must confess that the cylinder of Chrysippus does not
+  answer the objection of necessity. He ought to have added, in the first
+  place, that it is by the free choice of God that some of the possibles
+  exist; secondly, that rational creatures act freely also, in accordance
+  with their original nature, which existed already in the eternal ideas;
+  and lastly, that the motive power of good inclines the will without
+  compelling it.</p>
+
+  <p>337. The advantage of freedom which is in the creature without doubt
+  exists to an eminent degree in God. That must be understood in so far as
+  it is genuinely an advantage and in so far as it presupposes no
+  imperfection. For to be able to make a mistake and go astray is a
+  disadvantage, and to have control over the passions is in truth an
+  advantage, but one that presupposes an imperfection, <!-- Page 328
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page328"></a>[328]</span> namely
+  passion itself, of which God is incapable. Scotus was justified in saying
+  that if God were not free and exempt from necessity, no creature would be
+  so. But God is incapable of being indeterminate in anything whatsoever:
+  he cannot be ignorant, he cannot doubt, he cannot suspend his judgement;
+  his will is always decided, and it can only be decided by the best. God
+  can never have a primitive particular will, that is, independent of laws
+  or general acts of will; such a thing would be unreasonable. He cannot
+  determine upon Adam, Peter, Judas or any individual without the existence
+  of a reason for this determination; and this reason leads of necessity to
+  some general enunciation. The wise mind always acts <i>according to
+  principles</i>; always <i>according to rules</i>, and never <i>according
+  to exceptions</i>, save when the rules come into collision through
+  opposing tendencies, where the strongest carries the day: or else, either
+  they will stop one another or some third course will emerge as a result.
+  In all these cases one rule serves as an exception to the other, and
+  there are never any <i>original exceptions</i> with one who always acts
+  in a regular way.</p>
+
+  <p>338. If there are people who believe that election and reprobation are
+  accomplished on God's part by a despotic absolute power, not only without
+  any apparent reason but actually without any reason, even a concealed
+  one, they maintain an opinion that destroys alike the nature of things
+  and the divine perfections. Such an <i>absolutely absolute decree</i> (so
+  to speak) would be without doubt insupportable. But Luther and Calvin
+  were far from such a belief: the former hopes that the life to come will
+  make us comprehend the just reasons of God's choice; and the latter
+  protests explicitly that these reasons are just and holy, although they
+  be unknown to us. I have already in that connexion quoted Calvin's
+  treatise on predestination, and here are the actual words: 'God before
+  the fall of Adam had reflected upon what he had to do, and that for
+  causes concealed from us.... It is evident therefore that he had just
+  causes for the reprobation of some of mankind, but causes to us <font
+  class="sc">unknown</font>.'</p>
+
+  <p>339. This truth, that all God does is reasonable and cannot be better
+  done, strikes at the outset every man of good sense, and extorts, so to
+  speak, his approbation. And yet the most subtle of philosophers have a
+  fatal propensity for offending sometimes without observing it, during the
+  course and in the heat of disputes, against the first principles of good
+  sense, when these are shrouded <!-- Page 329 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page329"></a>[329]</span> in terms that disguise them. We have here
+  already seen how the excellent M. Bayle, with all his shrewdness, has
+  nevertheless combated this principle which I have just indicated, and
+  which is a sure consequence of the supreme perfection of God. He thought
+  to defend in that way the cause of God and to exempt him from an
+  imaginary necessity, by leaving him the freedom to choose from among
+  various goods the least. I have already spoken of M. Diroys and others
+  who have also been deluded by this strange opinion, one that is far too
+  commonly accepted. Those who uphold it do not observe that it implies a
+  wish to preserve for, or rather bestow upon, God a false freedom, which
+  is the freedom to act unreasonably. That is rendering his works subject
+  to correction, and making it impossible for us to say or even to hope
+  that anything reasonable can be said upon the permission of evil.</p>
+
+  <p>340. This error has much impaired M. Bayle's arguments, and has barred
+  his way of escape from many perplexities. That appears again in relation
+  to the laws of the realm of Nature: he believes them to be arbitrary and
+  indifferent, and he objects that God could better have attained his end
+  in the realm of grace if he had not clung to these laws, if he had more
+  often dispensed with their observance, or even if he had made others. He
+  believed this especially with regard to the law of the union between the
+  soul and the body. For he is persuaded, with the modern Cartesians, that
+  the ideas of the perceptible qualities that God gives (according to them)
+  to the soul, occasioned by movements of the body, have nothing
+  representing these movements or resembling them. Accordingly it was a
+  purely arbitrary act on God's part to give us the ideas of heat, cold,
+  light and other qualities which we experience, rather than to give us
+  quite different ideas occasioned in the same way. I have often wondered
+  that people so talented should have been capable of relishing notions so
+  unphilosophic and so contrary to the fundamental maxims of reason. For
+  nothing gives clearer indication of the imperfection of a philosophy than
+  the necessity experienced by the philosopher to confess that something
+  comes to pass, in accordance with his system, for which there is no
+  reason. That applies to the idea of Epicurus on the deviation of atoms.
+  Whether it be God or Nature that operates, the operation will always have
+  its reasons. In the operations of Nature, these reasons will depend
+  either upon necessary truths or upon the laws that God has found the most
+  reasonable; and in the operations of <!-- Page 330 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page330"></a>[330]</span> God, they will depend
+  upon the choice of the supreme reason which causes them to act.</p>
+
+  <p>341. M. Regis, a famous Cartesian, had asserted in his 'Metaphysics'
+  (part 2, book 2, c. 29) that the faculties God has given to men are the
+  most excellent that they were capable of in conformity with the general
+  order of nature. 'Considering only', he says, 'the power of God and the
+  nature of man by themselves, it is very easy to conceive that God could
+  have made man more perfect: but if one will consider man, not in himself
+  and separately from all other creatures, but as a member of the universe
+  and a portion which is subject to the general laws of motions, one will
+  be bound to acknowledge that man is as perfect as he could have been.' He
+  adds 'that we cannot conceive that God could have employed any other
+  means more appropriate than pain for the conservation of our bodies'. M.
+  Regis is right in a general way in saying that God cannot do better than
+  he has done in relation to all. And although there be apparently in some
+  places in the universe rational animals more perfect than man, one may
+  say that God was right to create every kind of species, some more perfect
+  than others. It is perhaps not impossible that there be somewhere a
+  species of animals much resembling man and more perfect than we are. It
+  may be even that the human race will attain in time to a greater
+  perfection than that which we can now envisage. Thus the laws of motions
+  do not prevent man from being more perfect: but the place God has
+  assigned to man in space and in time limits the perfections he was able
+  to receive.</p>
+
+  <p>342. I also doubt, with M. Bayle, whether pain be necessary in order
+  to warn men of peril. But this writer goes too far (<i>Reply to the
+  Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. II, ch. 77, p. 104): he seems to
+  think that a feeling of pleasure could have the same effect, and that, in
+  order to prevent a child from going too near the fire, God could give him
+  ideas of pleasure in proportion to the distance he kept from it. This
+  expedient does not appear very practicable with regard to all evils,
+  unless a miracle were involved. It is more natural that what if it were
+  too near would cause an evil should cause some foreboding of evil when it
+  is a little less near. Yet I admit that it is possible such a foreboding
+  will be something less than pain, and usually this is the case. Thus it
+  indeed appears that pain is not necessary for causing one to shun present
+  peril; it is wont rather to serve as a penalty for having actually
+  plunged into <!-- Page 331 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page331"></a>[331]</span> evil, and a warning against further
+  lapse. There are also many painful evils the avoidance whereof rests not
+  with us. As a dissolution of the continuity of our body is a consequence
+  of many accidents that may happen to us, it was natural that this
+  imperfection of the body should be represented by some sense of
+  imperfection in the soul. Nevertheless I would not guarantee that there
+  were no animals in the universe whose structure was cunning enough to
+  cause a sense of indifference as accompaniment to this dissolution of
+  continuity, as for instance when a gangrenous limb is cut off; or even a
+  sense of pleasure, as if one were only scratching oneself. For the
+  imperfection that attends the dissolution of the body might lead to the
+  sense of a greater perfection, which was suspended or checked by the
+  continuity which is now broken: and in this respect the body would be as
+  it were a prison.</p>
+
+  <p>343. There is also nothing to preclude the existence in the universe
+  of animals resembling that one which Cyrano de Bergerac encountered in
+  the sun. The body of this animal being a sort of fluid composed of
+  innumerable small animals, that were capable of ranging themselves in
+  accordance with the desires of the great animal, by this means it
+  transformed itself in a moment, just as it pleased; and the dissolution
+  of continuity caused it no more hurt than the stroke of an oar can cause
+  to the sea. But, after all, these animals are not men, they are not in
+  our globe or in our present century; and God's plan ensured that there
+  should not be lacking here on earth a rational animal clothed in flesh
+  and bones, whose structure involves susceptibility to pain.</p>
+
+  <p>344. But M. Bayle further opposes this on another principle, one which
+  I have already mentioned. It seems that he thinks the ideas which the
+  soul conceives in relation to the feelings of the body are arbitrary.
+  Thus God might have caused the dissolution of continuity to give us
+  pleasure. He even maintains that the laws of motion are entirely
+  arbitrary. 'I would wish to know', he says (vol. III, ch. 166, p. 1080),
+  'whether God established by an act of his freedom of indifference general
+  laws on the communication of movements, and the particular laws on the
+  union of the human soul with an organic body? In this case, he could have
+  established quite different laws, and adopted a system whose results
+  involved neither moral evil nor physical evil. But if the answer is given
+  that God was constrained by supreme wisdom to establish the laws that he
+  has established, there we have neither more nor <!-- Page 332 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page332"></a>[332]</span> less than the
+  <i>Fatum</i> of the Stoics. Wisdom will have marked out a way for God,
+  the abandonment whereof will have been as impossible to him as his own
+  self-destruction.' This objection has been sufficiently overthrown: it is
+  only a moral necessity; and it is always a happy necessity to be bound to
+  act in accordance with the rules of perfect wisdom.</p>
+
+  <p>345. Moreover, it appears to me that the reason for the belief held by
+  many that the laws of motion are arbitrary comes from the fact that few
+  people have properly examined them. It is known now that M. Descartes was
+  much mistaken in his statement of them. I have proved conclusively that
+  conservation of the same quantity of motion cannot occur, but I consider
+  that the same quantity of force is conserved, whether absolute or
+  directive and respective, whether total or partial. My principles, which
+  carry this subject as far as it can go, have not yet been published in
+  full; but I have communicated them to friends competent to judge of them,
+  who have approved them, and have converted some other persons of
+  acknowledged erudition and ability. I discovered at the same time that
+  the laws of motion actually existing in Nature, and confirmed by
+  experiments, are not in reality absolutely demonstrable, as a geometrical
+  proposition would be; but neither is it necessary that they be so. They
+  do not spring entirely from the principle of necessity, but rather from
+  the principle of perfection and order; they are an effect of the choice
+  and the wisdom of God. I can demonstrate these laws in divers ways, but
+  must always assume something that is not of an absolutely geometrical
+  necessity. Thus these admirable laws are wonderful evidence of an
+  intelligent and free being, as opposed to the system of absolute and
+  brute necessity, advocated by Strato or Spinoza.</p>
+
+  <p>346. I have found that one may account for these laws by assuming that
+  the effect is always equal in force to its cause, or, which amounts to
+  the same thing, that the same force is conserved always: but this axiom
+  of higher philosophy cannot be demonstrated geometrically. One may again
+  apply other principles of like nature, for instance the principle that
+  action is always equal to reaction, one which assumes in things a
+  distaste for external change, and cannot be derived either from extension
+  or impenetrability; and that other principle, that a simple movement has
+  the same properties as those which might belong to a compound <!-- Page
+  333 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page333"></a>[333]</span> movement
+  such as would produce the same phenomena of locomotion. These assumptions
+  are very plausible, and are successful as an explanation of the laws of
+  motion: nothing is so appropriate, all the more since they are in accord
+  with each other. But there is to be found in them no absolute necessity,
+  such as may compel us to admit them, in the way one is compelled to admit
+  the rules of logic, of arithmetic and geometry.</p>
+
+  <p>347. It seems, when one considers the indifference of matter to motion
+  and to rest, that the largest body at rest could be carried along without
+  any resistance by the smallest body in motion, in which case there would
+  be action without reaction and an effect greater than its cause. There is
+  also no necessity to say of the motion of a ball which runs freely on an
+  even, horizontal plane, with a certain degree of speed, termed A, that
+  this motion must have the properties of that motion which it would have
+  if it were going with lesser speed in a boat, itself moving in the same
+  direction with the residue of the speed, to ensure that the ball, seen
+  from the bank, advance with the same degree A. For, although the same
+  appearance of speed and of direction results through this medium of the
+  boat, it is not because it is the same thing. Nevertheless it happens
+  that the effects of the collision of the balls in the boat, the motion in
+  each one separately combined with that of the boat giving the appearance
+  of that which goes on outside the boat, also give the appearance of the
+  effects that these same balls colliding would have outside the boat. All
+  that is admirable, but one does not see its absolute necessity. A
+  movement on the two sides of the right-angled triangle composes a
+  movement on the hypotenuse; but it does not follow that a ball moving on
+  the hypotenuse must produce the effect of two balls of its own size
+  moving on the two sides: yet that is true. Nothing is so appropriate as
+  this result, and God has chosen the laws that produce it: but one sees no
+  geometrical necessity therein. Yet it is this very lack of necessity
+  which enhances the beauty of the laws that God has chosen, wherein divers
+  admirable axioms exist in conjunction, and it is impossible for one to
+  say which of them is the primary.</p>
+
+  <p>348. I have also shown that therein is observed that excellent law of
+  continuity, which I have perhaps been the first to state, and which is a
+  kind of touchstone whose test the rules of M. Descartes, of Father Fabry,
+  Father Pardies, Father de Malebranche and others cannot pass. In virtue
+  of this law, one must be able to <!-- Page 334 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page334"></a>[334]</span> regard rest as a
+  movement vanishing after having continually diminished, and likewise
+  equality as an inequality that vanishes also, as would happen through the
+  continual diminution of the greater of two unequal bodies, while the
+  smaller retains its size. As a consequence of this consideration, the
+  general rule for unequal bodies, or bodies in motion, must apply also to
+  equal bodies or to bodies one of which is at rest, as to a particular
+  case of the rule. This does result in the true laws of motion, and does
+  not result in certain laws invented by M. Descartes and by some other men
+  of talent, which already on that score alone prove to be ill-concerted,
+  so that one may predict that experiment will not favour them.</p>
+
+  <p>349. These considerations make it plain that the laws of Nature
+  regulating movements are neither entirely necessary nor entirely
+  arbitrary. The middle course to be taken is that they are a choice of the
+  most perfect wisdom. And this great example of the laws of motion shows
+  with the utmost clarity how much difference there is between these three
+  cases, to wit, firstly <i>an absolute necessity</i>, metaphysical or
+  geometrical, which may be called blind, and which does not depend upon
+  any but efficient causes; in the second place, <i>a moral necessity</i>,
+  which comes from the free choice of wisdom in relation to final causes;
+  and finally in the third place, <i>something absolutely arbitrary</i>,
+  depending upon an indifference of equipoise, which is imagined, but which
+  cannot exist, where there is no sufficient reason either in the efficient
+  or in the final cause. Consequently one must conclude how mistaken it is
+  to confuse either that which is absolutely necessary with that which is
+  determined by the reason of the best, or the freedom that is determined
+  by reason with a vague indifference.</p>
+
+  <p>350. This also settles M. Bayle's difficulty, for he fears that, if
+  God is always determinate, Nature could dispense with him and bring about
+  that same effect which is attributed to him, through the necessity of the
+  order of things. That would be true if the laws of motion for instance,
+  and all the rest, had their source in a geometrical necessity of
+  efficient causes; but in the last analysis one is obliged to resort to
+  something depending upon final causes and upon what is fitting. This also
+  utterly destroys the most plausible reasoning of the Naturalists. Dr.
+  Johann Joachim Becher, a German physician, well known for his books on
+  chemistry, had composed a prayer which looked like getting him into
+  trouble. It <!-- Page 335 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page335"></a>[335]</span> began: 'O sancta mater natura, aeterne
+  rerum ordo'. And it ended by saying that this Nature must forgive him his
+  errors, since she herself was their cause. But the nature of things, if
+  taken as without intelligence and without choice, has in it nothing
+  sufficiently determinant. Herr Becher did not sufficiently take into
+  account that the Author of things (<i>natura naturans</i>) must be good
+  and wise, and that we can be evil without complicity on his part in our
+  acts of wickedness. When a wicked man exists, God must have found in the
+  region of possibles the idea of such a man forming part of that sequence
+  of things, the choice of which was demanded by the greatest perfection of
+  the universe, and in which errors and sins are not only punished but even
+  repaired to greater advantage, so that they contribute to the greatest
+  good.</p>
+
+  <p>351. M. Bayle, however, has extended the free choice of God a little
+  too far. Speaking of the Peripatetic Strato (<i>Reply to the Questions of
+  a Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 180, p. 1239), who asserted that
+  everything had been brought forth by the necessity of a nature devoid of
+  intelligence, he maintains that this philosopher, on being asked why a
+  tree has not the power to form bones and veins, might have asked in his
+  turn: Why has matter precisely three dimensions? why should not two have
+  sufficed for it? why has it not four? 'If one had answered that there can
+  be neither more nor less than three dimensions he would have demanded the
+  cause of this impossibility.' These words lead one to believe that M.
+  Bayle suspected that the number of the dimensions of matter depended upon
+  God's choice, even as it depended upon him to cause or not to cause trees
+  to produce animals. Indeed, how do we know whether there are not
+  planetary globes or earths situated in some more remote place in the
+  universe where the fable of the Barnacle-geese of Scotland (birds that
+  were said to be born of trees) proves true, and even whether there are
+  not countries where one could say:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>... populos umbrosa creavit</i></p>
+      <p><i>Fraxinus, et foeta viridis puer excidit alno?</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>But with the dimensions of matter it is not thus: the ternary number
+  is determined for it not by the reason of the best, but by a geometrical
+  necessity, because the geometricians have been able to prove that there
+  are only three straight lines perpendicular to one another which can
+  intersect at one and the same point. <!-- Page 336 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page336"></a>[336]</span> Nothing more
+  appropriate could have been chosen to show the difference there is
+  between the moral necessity that accounts for the choice of wisdom and
+  the brute necessity of Strato and the adherents of Spinoza, who deny to
+  God understanding and will, than a consideration of the difference
+  existing between the reason for the laws of motion and the reason for the
+  ternary number of the dimensions: for the first lies in the choice of the
+  best and the second in a geometrical and blind necessity.</p>
+
+  <p>352. Having spoken of the laws of bodies, that is, of the rules of
+  motion, let us come to the laws of the union between body and soul, where
+  M. Bayle believes that he finds again some vague indifference, something
+  absolutely arbitrary. Here is the way he speaks of it in his <i>Reply</i>
+  (vol. II, ch. 84, p. 163): 'It is a puzzling question whether bodies have
+  some natural property of doing harm or good to man's soul. If one answers
+  yes, one plunges into an insane labyrinth: for, as man's soul is an
+  immaterial substance, one will be bound to say that the local movement of
+  certain bodies is an efficient cause of the thoughts in a mind, a
+  statement contrary to the most obvious notions that philosophy imparts to
+  us. If one answers no, one will be constrained to admit that the
+  influence of our organs upon our thoughts depends neither upon the
+  internal qualities of matter, nor upon the laws of motion, but upon an
+  <i>arbitrary institution</i> of the creator. One must then admit that it
+  depended altogether upon God's freedom to combine particular thoughts of
+  our soul with particular modifications of our body, even when he had once
+  established all the laws for the action of bodies one upon another.
+  Whence it results that there is in the universe no portion of matter
+  which by its proximity can harm us, save when God wills it; and
+  consequently, that the earth is as capable as any other place of being
+  the abode of the happy man.... In short it is evident that there is no
+  need, in order to prevent the wrong choices of freedom, to transport man
+  outside the earth. God could do on earth with regard to all the acts of
+  the will what he does in respect of the good works of the predestined
+  when he settles their outcome, whether by efficacious or by sufficient
+  grace: and that grace, without in any way impairing freedom, is always
+  followed by the assent of the soul. It would be as easy for him on earth
+  as in heaven to bring about the determination of our souls to a good
+  choice.'</p>
+
+  <p>353. I agree with M. Bayle that God could have so ordered <!-- Page
+  337 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page337"></a>[337]</span> bodies
+  and souls on this globe of earth, whether by ways of nature or by
+  extraordinary graces, that it would have been a perpetual paradise and a
+  foretaste of the celestial state of the blessed. There is no reason why
+  there should not be worlds happier than ours; but God had good reasons
+  for willing that ours should be such as it is. Nevertheless, in order to
+  prove that a better state would have been possible here, M. Bayle had no
+  need to resort to the system of occasional causes: it abounds in miracles
+  and in hypotheses for which their very originators confess there is no
+  justification; and these are two defects such as will most of all
+  estrange a system from true philosophy. It is a cause for surprise, in
+  the first place, that M. Bayle did not bethink himself of the System of
+  Pre-established Harmony which he had examined before, and which for this
+  matter was so opportune. But as in this system all is connected and
+  harmonious, all following from reasons and nothing being left incomplete
+  or exposed to the rash discretion of perfect indifference, it seems that
+  it was not pleasing to M. Bayle: for he was here somewhat biassed in
+  favour of such indifference, which, notwithstanding, he contested so
+  strongly on other occasions. He was much given to passing from one
+  extreme to the other, not with an ill intention or against his own
+  conviction, but because there was as yet nothing settled in his mind on
+  the question concerned. He contented himself with whatever suited him for
+  frustrating the opponent he had in mind, his aim being only to perplex
+  philosophers, and show the weakness of our reason; and never, in my
+  opinion, did either Arcesilaus or Carneades argue for and against with
+  more eloquence and more wit. But, after all, one must not doubt for the
+  sake of doubting: doubts must serve us as a gangway to the truth. That is
+  what I often said to the late Abbé Foucher, a few specimens of whose work
+  prove that he designed to do with regard to the Academicians what Lipsius
+  and Scioppius had done for the Stoics, and M. Gassendi for Epicurus, and
+  what M. Dacier has so well begun for Plato. It must not be possible for
+  us to offer true philosophers such a reproach as that implied in the
+  celebrated Casaubon's answer to those who, in showing him the hall of the
+  Sorbonne, told him that debate had been carried on there for some
+  centuries. What conclusions have been reached? he said to them.</p>
+
+  <p>354. M. Bayle goes on (p. 166): 'It is true that since the laws of
+  motion were instituted in such forms as we see now in the world, it is an
+  inevitable necessity that a hammer striking a nut should <!-- Page 338
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page338"></a>[338]</span> break it, and
+  that a stone falling on a man's foot should cause some bruise or some
+  derangement of its parts. But that is all that can follow the action of
+  this stone upon the human body. If you want it in addition to cause a
+  feeling of pain, then one must assume the institution of a code other
+  than that one which regulates the action and reaction of bodies one upon
+  another; one must, I say, have recourse to the particular system of the
+  laws of union between the soul and certain bodies. Now as this system is
+  not of necessity connected with the other, the indifference of God does
+  not cease in relation to the one immediately upon his choice of the
+  other. He therefore combined these two systems with a complete freedom,
+  like two things which did not follow naturally the one from the other.
+  Thus it is by an arbitrary institution he has ordained that wounds in the
+  body should cause pain in the soul which is united to this body. It
+  therefore only rested with him to have chosen another system of union
+  between soul and body: he was therefore able to choose one in accordance
+  wherewith wounds only evoke the idea of the remedy and an intense but
+  agreeable desire to apply it. He was able to arrange that all bodies
+  which were on the point of breaking a man's head or piercing his heart
+  should evoke a lively sense of danger, and that this sense should cause
+  the body to remove itself promptly out of reach of the blow. All that
+  would have come to pass without miracles, since there would have been
+  general laws on this subject. The system which we know by experience
+  teaches us that the determination of the movement of certain bodies
+  changes in pursuance of our desires. It was therefore possible for a
+  combination to be effected between our desires and the movement of
+  certain bodies, whereby the nutritive juices were so modified that the
+  good arrangement of our organs was never affected.'</p>
+
+  <p>355. It is evident that M. Bayle believes that everything accomplished
+  through general laws is accomplished without miracles. But I have shown
+  sufficiently that if the law is not founded on reasons and does not serve
+  to explain the event through the nature of things, it can only be put
+  into execution by a miracle. If, for example, God had ordained that
+  bodies must have a circular motion, he would have needed perpetual
+  miracles, or the ministry of angels, to put this order into execution:
+  for that is contrary to the nature of motion, whereby the body naturally
+  abandons the circular line to continue in the tangent straight line if
+  nothing <!-- Page 339 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page339"></a>[339]</span> holds it back. Therefore it is not enough
+  for God to ordain simply that a wound should excite an agreeable
+  sensation: natural means must be found for that purpose. The real means
+  whereby God causes the soul to be conscious of what happens in the body
+  have their origin in the nature of the soul, which represents the bodies,
+  and is so made beforehand that the representations which are to spring up
+  one from another within it, by a natural sequence of thoughts, correspond
+  to the changes in the body.</p>
+
+  <p>356. The representation has a natural relation to that which is to be
+  represented. If God should have the round shape of a body represented by
+  the idea of a square, that would be an unsuitable representation: for
+  there would be angles or projections in the representation, while all
+  would be even and smooth in the original. The representation often
+  suppresses something in the objects when it is imperfect; but it can add
+  nothing: that would render it, not more than perfect, but false.
+  Moreover, the suppression is never complete in our perceptions, and there
+  is in the representation, confused as it is, more than we see there. Thus
+  there is reason for supposing that the ideas of heat, cold, colours,
+  etc., also only represent the small movements carried out in the organs,
+  when one is conscious of these qualities, although the multiplicity and
+  the diminutive character of these movements prevents their clear
+  representation. Almost in the same way it happens that we do not
+  distinguish the blue and the yellow which play their part in the
+  representation as well as in the composition of the green, when the
+  microscope shows that what appears to be green is composed of yellow and
+  blue parts.</p>
+
+  <p>357. It is true that the same thing may be represented in different
+  ways; but there must always be an exact relation between the
+  representation and the thing, and consequently between the different
+  representations of one and the same thing. The projections in perspective
+  of the conic sections of the circle show that one and the same circle may
+  be represented by an ellipse, a parabola and a hyperbola, and even by
+  another circle, a straight line and a point. Nothing appears so different
+  nor so dissimilar as these figures; and yet there is an exact relation
+  between each point and every other point. Thus one must allow that each
+  soul represents the universe to itself according to its point of view,
+  and through a relation which is peculiar to it; but a perfect harmony
+  always subsists therein. God, if he wished to effect representation <!--
+  Page 340 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page340"></a>[340]</span> of
+  the dissolution of continuity of the body by an agreeable sensation in
+  the soul, would not have neglected to ensure that this very dissolution
+  should serve some perfection in the body, by giving it some new relief,
+  as when one is freed of some burden or loosed from some bond. But organic
+  bodies of such kinds, although possible, do not exist upon our globe,
+  which doubtless lacks innumerable inventions that God may have put to use
+  elsewhere. Nevertheless it is enough that, due allowance being made for
+  the place our world holds in the universe, nothing can be done for it
+  better than what God does. He makes the best possible use of the laws of
+  nature which he has established and (as M. Regis also acknowledged in the
+  same passage) 'the laws that God has established in nature are the most
+  excellent it is possible to conceive'.</p>
+
+  <p>358. I will add to that the remark from the <i>Journal des Savants</i>
+  of the 16th March 1705, which M. Bayle has inserted in chapter 162 of the
+  <i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i> (vol. III, p. 1030). The
+  matter in question is the extract from a very ingenious modern book on
+  the Origin of Evil, to which I have already referred here. It is stated:
+  'that the general solution in respect of physical evil which this book
+  gives is that the universe must be regarded as a work composed of various
+  pieces which form a whole; that, according to the laws established in
+  nature, some parts cannot be better unless others become worse, whence
+  would result a system less perfect as a whole. This principle', the
+  writer goes on, 'is good; but if nothing is added to it, it does not
+  appear sufficient. Why has God established laws that give rise to so many
+  difficulties? philosophers who are somewhat precise will say. Could he
+  not have established others of a kind not subject to any defects? And to
+  cut the matter short, how comes it that he has prescribed laws for
+  himself? Why does he not act without general laws, in accordance with all
+  his power and all his goodness? The writer has not carried the difficulty
+  as far as that. By disentangling his ideas one might indeed possibly find
+  means of solving the difficulty, but there is no development of the
+  subject in his work.'</p>
+
+  <p>359. I suppose that the gifted author of this extract, when he thought
+  the difficulty could be solved, had in mind something akin to my
+  principles on this matter. If he had vouchsafed to declare himself in
+  this passage, he would to all appearance have replied, like M. Regis,
+  that the laws God established were the most excellent that could be
+  established. He would have acknowledged, <!-- Page 341 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page341"></a>[341]</span> at the same time, that
+  God could not have refrained from establishing laws and following rules,
+  because laws and rules are what makes order and beauty; that to act
+  without rules would be to act without reason; and that because God
+  <i>called into action all his goodness</i> the exercise of his
+  omnipotence was consistent with the laws of wisdom, to secure as much
+  good as was possible of attainment. Finally, he would have said, the
+  existence of certain particular disadvantages which strike us is a sure
+  indication that the best plan did not permit of their avoidance, and that
+  they assist in the achievement of the total good, an argument wherewith
+  M. Bayle in more than one place expresses agreement.</p>
+
+  <p>360. Now that I have proved sufficiently that everything comes to pass
+  according to determinate reasons, there cannot be any more difficulty
+  over these principles of God's foreknowledge. Although these
+  determinations do not compel, they cannot but be certain, and they
+  foreshadow what shall happen. It is true that God sees all at once the
+  whole sequence of this universe, when he chooses it, and that thus he has
+  no need of the connexion of effects and causes in order to foresee these
+  effects. But since his wisdom causes him to choose a sequence in perfect
+  connexion, he cannot but see one part of the sequence in the other. It is
+  one of the rules of my system of general harmony, <i>that the present is
+  big with the future</i>, and that he who sees all sees in that which is
+  that which shall be. What is more, I have proved conclusively that God
+  sees in each portion of the universe the whole universe, owing to the
+  perfect connexion of things. He is infinitely more discerning than
+  Pythagoras, who judged the height of Hercules by the size of his
+  footprint. There must therefore be no doubt that effects follow their
+  causes determinately, in spite of contingency and even of freedom, which
+  nevertheless exist together with certainty or determination.</p>
+
+  <p>361. Durand de Saint-Pourçain, among others, has indicated this
+  clearly in saying that contingent futurities are seen determinately in
+  their causes, and that God, who knows all, seeing all that shall have
+  power to tempt or repel the will, will see therein the course it shall
+  take. I could cite many other authors who have said the same thing, and
+  reason does not allow the possibility of thinking otherwise. M. Jacquelot
+  implies also (<i>Conformity of Faith with Reason</i>, p. 318 <i>et
+  seqq.</i>), as M. Bayle observes (<i>Reply to the Questions of a
+  Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 142, p. 796), that the dispositions of the
+  human heart and those of circumstances acquaint God <!-- Page 342
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page342"></a>[342]</span> unerringly
+  with the choice that man shall make. M. Bayle adds that some Molinists
+  say the same, and refers us to those who are quoted in the <i>Suavis
+  Concordia</i> of Pierre de S. Joseph, the Feuillant (pp. 579, 580).</p>
+
+  <p>362. Those who have confused this determination with necessity have
+  fabricated monsters in order to fight them. To avoid a reasonable thing
+  which they had disguised under a hideous shape, they have fallen into
+  great absurdities. For fear of being obliged to admit an imaginary
+  necessity, or at least one different from that in question, they have
+  admitted something which happens without the existence of any cause or
+  reason for it. This amounts to the same as the absurd deviation of atoms,
+  which according to Epicurus happened without any cause. Cicero, in his
+  book on Divination, saw clearly that if the cause could produce an effect
+  towards which it was entirely indifferent there would be a true chance, a
+  genuine luck, an actual fortuitous case, that is, one which would be so
+  not merely in relation to us and our ignorance, according to which one
+  may say:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i30"><i>Sed Te</i></p>
+      <p><i>Nos facimus, Fortuna, Deam, caeloque locamus,</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>but even in relation to God and to the nature of things. Consequently
+  it would be impossible to foresee events by judging of the future by the
+  past. He adds fittingly in the same passage: 'Qui potest provideri,
+  quicquam futurum esse, quod neque causam habet ullam, neque notam cur
+  futurum sit?' and soon after: 'Nihil est tam contrarium rationi et
+  constantiae, quam fortuna; ut mihi ne in Deum quidem cadere videatur, ut
+  sciat quid casu et fortuito futurum sit. Si enim scit, certe illud
+  eveniet: sin certe eveniet, nulla fortuna est.' If the future is certain,
+  there is no such thing as luck. But he wrongly adds: 'Est autum fortuna;
+  rerum igitur fortuitarum nulla praesensio est.' There is luck, therefore
+  future events cannot be foreseen. He ought rather to have concluded that,
+  events being predetermined and foreseen, there is no luck. But he was
+  then speaking against the Stoics, in the character of an Academician.</p>
+
+  <p>363. The Stoics already derived from the decrees of God the prevision
+  of events. For, as Cicero says in the same book: 'Sequitur porro nihil
+  Deos ignorare, quod omnia ab iis sint constituta.' And, according to my
+  system, God, having seen the possible world that <!-- Page 343 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page343"></a>[343]</span> he desired to create,
+  foresaw everything therein. Thus one may say that the <i>divine knowledge
+  of vision differs from the knowledge of simple intelligence</i> only in
+  that it adds to the latter the acquaintance with the actual decree to
+  choose this sequence of things which simple intelligence had already
+  presented, but only as possible; and this decree now makes the present
+  universe.</p>
+
+  <p>364. Thus the Socinians cannot be excused for denying to God the
+  certain knowledge of future events, and above all of the future resolves
+  of a free creature. For even though they had supposed that there is a
+  freedom of complete indifference, so that the will can choose without
+  cause, and that thus this effect could not be seen in its cause (which is
+  a great absurdity), they ought always to take into account that God was
+  able to foresee this event in the idea of the possible world that he
+  resolved to create. But the idea which they have of God is unworthy of
+  the Author of things, and is not commensurate with the skill and wit
+  which the writers of this party often display in certain particular
+  discussions. The author of the <i>Reflexion on the Picture of
+  Socinianism</i> was not altogether mistaken in saying that the God of the
+  Socinians would be ignorant and powerless, like the God of Epicurus,
+  every day confounded by events and living from one day to the next, if he
+  only knows by conjecture what the will of men is to be.</p>
+
+  <p>365. The whole difficulty here has therefore only come from a wrong
+  idea of contingency and of freedom, which was thought to have need of a
+  complete indifference or equipoise, an imaginary thing, of which neither
+  a notion nor an example exists, nor ever can exist. Apparently M.
+  Descartes had been imbued with the idea in his youth, at the College of
+  la Flèche. That caused him to say (part I of his <i>Principles</i>, art.
+  41): 'Our thought is finite, and the knowledge and omnipotence of God,
+  whereby he has not only known from all eternity everything that is, or
+  that can be, but also has willed it, is infinite. Thus we have enough
+  intelligence to recognize clearly and distinctly that this power and this
+  knowledge are in God; but we have not enough so to comprehend their
+  extent that we can know how they leave the actions of men entirely free
+  and indeterminate.' The continuation has already been quoted above.
+  'Entirely free', that is right; but one spoils everything by adding
+  'entirely indeterminate'. One has no need of infinite knowledge in order
+  to see that the foreknowledge and the providence of God allow freedom to
+  our actions, since God has foreseen those <!-- Page 344 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page344"></a>[344]</span> actions in his ideas,
+  just as they are, that is, free. Laurentius Valla indeed, in his
+  <i>Dialogue against Boethius</i> (which I will presently quote in
+  epitome) ably undertakes to reconcile freedom with foreknowledge, but
+  does not venture to hope that he can reconcile it with providence. Yet
+  there is no more difficulty in the one than the other, because the decree
+  to give existence to this action no more changes its nature than does
+  one's mere consciousness thereof. But there is no knowledge, however
+  infinite it be, which can reconcile the knowledge and providence of God
+  with actions of an indeterminate cause, that is to say, with a chimerical
+  and impossible being. The actions of the will are determined in two ways,
+  by the foreknowledge or providence of God, and also by the dispositions
+  of the particular immediate cause, which lie in the inclinations of the
+  soul. M. Descartes followed the Thomists on this point; but he wrote with
+  his usual circumspection, so as not to come into conflict with some other
+  theologians.</p>
+
+  <p>366. M. Bayle relates (<i>Reply to the Questions of a Provincial</i>,
+  vol. III, ch. 142, p. 804) that Father Gibieuf of the Oratory published a
+  Latin treatise on the freedom of God and of the creature, in the year
+  1639; that he was met with protests, and was shown a collection of
+  seventy contradictions taken from the first book of his work; and that,
+  twenty years after, Father Annat, Confessor to the King of France,
+  reproached him in his book <i>De Incoacta Libertate</i> (ed. Rome, 1654,
+  in 4to.), for the silence he still maintained. Who would not think (adds
+  M. Bayle), after the uproar of the <i>de Auxiliis</i> Congregations, that
+  the Thomists taught things touching the nature of free will which were
+  entirely opposed to the opinion of the Jesuits? When, however, one
+  considers the passages that Father Annat quoted from the works of the
+  Thomists (in a pamphlet entitled: <i>Jansenius a Thomistis, gratiae per
+  se ipsam efficacis defensoribus, condemnatus</i>, printed in Paris in the
+  year 1654 in 4to.) one can in reality only see verbal controversies
+  between the two sects. The grace efficacious of itself, according to the
+  one side, leaves to free will quite as much power of resistance as the
+  congruent grace of the others. M. Bayle thinks one can say almost as much
+  of Jansenius himself. He was (so he says) an able man, of a methodical
+  mind and of great assiduity. He worked for twenty-two years at his
+  <i>Augustinus</i>. One of his aims was to refute the Jesuits on the dogma
+  of free will; yet no decision has yet been reached as to whether he
+  rejects or adopts freedom of indifference. <!-- Page 345 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page345"></a>[345]</span> From his work
+  innumerable passages are quoted for and against this opinion, as Father
+  Annat has himself shown in the work that has just been mentioned, <i>De
+  Incoacta Libertate</i>. So easy is it to render this subject obscure, as
+  M. Bayle says at the conclusion of this discourse. As for Father Gibieuf,
+  it must be admitted that he often alters the meaning of his terms, and
+  that consequently he does not answer the question in the main, albeit he
+  often writes with good sense.</p>
+
+  <p>367. Indeed, confusion springs, more often than not, from ambiguity in
+  terms, and from one's failure to take trouble over gaining clear ideas
+  about them. That gives rise to these eternal, and usually mistaken,
+  contentions on necessity and contingency, on the possible and the
+  impossible. But provided that it is understood that necessity and
+  possibility, taken metaphysically and strictly, depend solely upon this
+  question, whether the object in itself or that which is opposed to it
+  implies contradiction or not; and that one takes into account that
+  contingency is consistent with the inclinations, or reasons which
+  contribute towards causing determination by the will; provided also that
+  one knows how to distinguish clearly between necessity and determination
+  or certainty, between metaphysical necessity, which admits of no choice,
+  presenting only one single object as possible, and moral necessity, which
+  constrains the wisest to choose the best; finally, provided that one is
+  rid of the chimera of complete indifference, which can only be found in
+  the books of philosophers, and on paper (for they cannot even conceive
+  the notion in their heads, or prove its reality by an example in things)
+  one will easily escape from a labyrinth whose unhappy Daedalus was the
+  human mind. That labyrinth has caused infinite confusion, as much with
+  the ancients as with those of later times, even so far as to lead men
+  into the absurd error of the Lazy Sophism, which closely resembles fate
+  after the Turkish fashion. I do not wonder if in reality the Thomists and
+  the Jesuits, and even the Molinists and the Jansenists, agree together on
+  this matter more than is supposed. A Thomist and even a wise Jansenist
+  will content himself with certain determination, without going on to
+  necessity: and if someone goes so far, the error mayhap will lie only in
+  the word. A wise Molinist will be content with an indifference opposed to
+  necessity, but such as shall not exclude prevalent inclinations.</p>
+
+  <p>368. These difficulties, however, have greatly impressed M. Bayle,
+  <!-- Page 346 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page346"></a>[346]</span>
+  who was more inclined to dwell on them than to solve them, although he
+  might perhaps have had better success than anyone if he had thought fit
+  to turn his mind in that direction. Here is what he says of them in his
+  <i>Dictionary</i>, art. 'Jansenius', lit. G, p. 1626: 'Someone has said
+  that the subject of Grace is an ocean which has neither shore nor bottom.
+  Perhaps he would have spoken more correctly if he had compared it to the
+  Strait of Messina, where one is always in danger of striking one reef
+  while endeavouring to avoid another.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Dextrum Scylla latus, laevum implacata Charybdis</i></p>
+      <p><i>Obsidet.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>Everything comes back in the end to this: Did Adam sin freely? If you
+  answer yes, then you will be told, his fall was not foreseen. If you
+  answer no, then you will be told, he is not guilty. You may write a
+  hundred volumes against the one or the other of these conclusions, and
+  yet you will confess, either that the infallible prevision of a
+  contingent event is a mystery impossible to conceive, or that the way in
+  which a creature which acts without freedom sins nevertheless is
+  altogether incomprehensible.'</p>
+
+  <p>369. Either I am greatly mistaken or these two alleged
+  incomprehensibilities are ended altogether by my solutions. Would to God
+  it were as easy to answer the question how to cure fevers, and how to
+  avoid the perils of two chronic sicknesses that may originate, the one
+  from not curing the fever, the other from curing it wrongly. When one
+  asserts that a free event cannot be foreseen, one is confusing freedom
+  with indetermination, or with indifference that is complete and in
+  equipoise; and when one maintains that the lack of freedom would prevent
+  man from being guilty, one means a freedom exempt, not from determination
+  or from certainty, but from necessity and from constraint. This shows
+  that the dilemma is not well expressed, and that there is a wide passage
+  between the two perilous reefs. One will reply, therefore, that Adam
+  sinned freely, and that God saw him sinning in the possible state of
+  Adam, which became actual in accordance with the decree of the divine
+  permission. It is true that Adam was determined to sin in consequence of
+  certain prevailing inclinations: but this determination destroys neither
+  contingency nor freedom. Moreover, the certain determination to sin which
+  exists in man does not deprive him of the power to avoid sinning
+  (speaking generally) or, <!-- Page 347 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page347"></a>[347]</span> since he does sin, prevent him from being
+  guilty and deserving punishment. This is more especially so since the
+  punishment may be of service to him or others, to contribute towards
+  determining them another time not to sin. There is besides punitive
+  justice, which goes beyond compensation and amendment, and wherein also
+  there is nothing liable to be shaken by the certain determination of the
+  contingent resolutions of the will. It may be said, on the contrary, that
+  the penalties and rewards would be to some extent unavailing, and would
+  fail in one of their aims, that of amendment, if they could not
+  contribute towards determining the will to do better another time.</p>
+
+  <p>370. M. Bayle continues: 'Where freedom is concerned there are only
+  two courses to take: one is to say that all the causes distinct from the
+  soul, and co-operating with it, leave it the power to act or not to act;
+  the other is to say that they so determine it to act that it cannot
+  forbear to do so. The first course is that taken by the Molinists, the
+  other is that of the Thomists and Jansenists and the Protestants of the
+  Geneva Confession. Yet the Thomists have clamorously maintained that they
+  were not Jansenists; and the latter have maintained with equal warmth
+  that where freedom was concerned they were not Calvinists. On the other
+  hand, the Molinists have maintained that St. Augustine did not teach
+  Jansenism. Thus the one side not wishing to admit that they were in
+  conformity with people who were considered heretics, and the other side
+  not wishing to admit that they were in opposition to a learned saint
+  whose opinions were always considered orthodox, have both performed a
+  hundred feats of contortion, etc.'</p>
+
+  <p>371. The two courses which M. Bayle distinguishes here do not exclude
+  a third course, according to which the determination of the soul does not
+  come solely from the co-operation of all the causes distinct from the
+  soul, but also from the state of the soul itself and its inclinations
+  which mingle with the impressions of the senses, strengthening or
+  weakening them. Now all the internal and external causes taken together
+  bring it about that the soul is determined certainly, but not of
+  necessity: for no contradiction would be implied if the soul were to be
+  determined differently, it being possible for the will to be inclined,
+  but not possible for it to be compelled by necessity. I will not venture
+  upon a discussion of the difference existing between the Jansenists and
+  the Reformed on this matter. They are not perhaps always fully in accord
+  with <!-- Page 348 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page348"></a>[348]</span> themselves as regards things, or as
+  regards expressions, on a matter where one often loses one's way in
+  bewildering subtleties. Father Theophile Raynaud, in his book entitled
+  <i>Calvinismus Religio Bestiarum</i>, wished to strike at the Dominicans,
+  without naming them. On the other hand, those who professed to be
+  followers of St. Augustine reproached the Molinists with Pelagianism or
+  at the least semi-Pelagianism. Things were carried to excess at times by
+  both sides, whether in their defence of a vague indifference and the
+  granting of too much to man, or in their teaching <i>determinationem ad
+  unum secundum qualitatem actus licet non quoad ejus substantiam</i>, that
+  is to say, a determination to evil in the non-regenerate, as if they did
+  nothing but sin. After all, I think one must not reproach any but the
+  adherents of Hobbes and Spinoza with destroying freedom and contingency;
+  for they think that that which happens is alone possible, and must happen
+  by a brute geometrical necessity. Hobbes made everything material and
+  subjected it to mathematical laws alone; Spinoza also divested God of
+  intelligence and choice, leaving him a blind power, whence all emanates
+  of necessity. The theologians of the two Protestant parties are equally
+  zealous in refuting an unendurable necessity. Although those who follow
+  the Synod of Dordrecht teach sometimes that it suffices for freedom to be
+  exempt from constraint, it seems that the necessity they leave in it is
+  only hypothetical, or rather that which is more appropriately termed
+  certainty and infallibility. Thus it results that very often the
+  difficulties only lie in the terms. I say as much with regard to the
+  Jansenists, although I do not wish to make excuse for those people in
+  everything.</p>
+
+  <p>372. With the Hebrew Cabalists, <i>Malcuth</i> or the Kingdom, the
+  last of the Sephiroth, signified that God controls everything
+  irresistibly, but gently and without violence, so that man thinks he is
+  following his own will while he carries out God's. They said that Adam's
+  sin had been <i>truncatio Malcuth a caeteris plantis</i>, that is to say,
+  that Adam had cut back the last of the Sephiroth, by making a dominion
+  for himself within God's dominion, and by assuming for himself a freedom
+  independent of God, but that his fall had taught him that he could not
+  subsist of himself, and that men must needs be redeemed by the Messiah.
+  This doctrine may receive a good interpretation. But Spinoza, who was
+  versed in the Cabala of the writers of his race, and who says
+  (<i>Tractatus Politicus</i>, c. 2, n. 6) that men, conceiving of freedom
+  as they do, establish a <!-- Page 349 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page349"></a>[349]</span> dominion within God's dominion, has gone
+  too far. The dominion of God is with Spinoza nothing but the dominion of
+  necessity, and of a blind necessity (as with Strato), whereby everything
+  emanates from the divine nature, while no choice is left to God, and
+  man's choice does not exempt him from necessity. He adds that men, in
+  order to establish what is termed <i>Imperium in Imperio</i>, supposed
+  that their soul was a direct creation of God, something which could not
+  be produced by natural causes, furthermore that it had an absolute power
+  of determination, a state of things contrary to experience. Spinoza is
+  right in opposing an absolute power of determination, that is, one
+  without any grounds; it does not belong even to God. But he is wrong in
+  thinking that a soul, that a simple substance, can be produced naturally.
+  It seems, indeed, that the soul to him was only a transient modification;
+  and when he pretends to make it lasting, and even perpetual, he
+  substitutes for it the idea of the body, which is purely a notion and not
+  a real and actual thing.</p>
+
+  <p>373. The story M. Bayle relates of Johan Bredenburg, a citizen of
+  Rotterdam (<i>Dictionary</i>, art. 'Spinoza', lit. H, p. 2774) is
+  curious. He published a book against Spinoza, entitled: <i>Enervatio
+  Tractatus Theologico-politici, una cum demonstratione geometrico ordine
+  disposita, Naturam non esse Deum, cujus effati contrario praedictus
+  Tractatus unice innititur</i>. One was surprised to see that a man who
+  did not follow the profession of letters, and who had but slight
+  education (having written his book in Flemish, and had it translated into
+  Latin), had been able to penetrate with such subtlety all the principles
+  of Spinoza, and succeed in overthrowing them, after having reduced them
+  by a candid analysis to a state wherein they could appear in their full
+  force. I have been told (adds M. Bayle) that this writer after copious
+  reflexion upon his answer, and upon the principle of his opponent,
+  finally found that this principle could be reduced to the form of a
+  demonstration. He undertook therefore to prove that there is no cause of
+  all things other than a nature which exists necessarily, and which acts
+  according to an immutable, inevitable and irrevocable necessity. He
+  examined the whole system of the geometricians, and after having
+  constructed his demonstration he scrutinized it from every imaginable
+  angle, he endeavoured to find its weak spot and was never able to
+  discover any means of destroying it, or even of weakening it. That caused
+  him real distress: he groaned over it and begged <!-- Page 350 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page350"></a>[350]</span> the most talented of
+  his friends to help him in searching out the defects of this
+  demonstration. For all that, he was not well pleased that copies of the
+  book were made. Franz Cuper, a Socinian (who had written <i>Arcana
+  Atheismi Revelata</i> against Spinoza, Rotterdam, 1676, in 4to.), having
+  obtained a copy, published it just as it was, that is, in Flemish, with
+  some reflexions, and accused the author of being an atheist. The accused
+  made his defence in the same tongue. Orobio, a very able Jewish physician
+  (that one who was refuted by M. Limbourg, and who replied, so I have
+  heard say, in a work posthumously circulated, but unpublished), brought
+  out a book opposing Bredenburg's demonstration, entitled: <i>Certamen
+  Philosophicum Propugnatae Veritatis Divinae ac Naturalis, adversus J.B.
+  principia, Amsterdam</i>, 1684. M. Aubert de Versé also wrote in
+  opposition to him the same year under the name of Latinus Serbattus
+  Sartensis. Bredenburg protested that he was convinced of free will and of
+  religion, and that he wished he might be shown a possibility of refuting
+  his own demonstration.</p>
+
+  <p>374. I would desire to see this alleged demonstration, and to know
+  whether it tended to prove that primitive Nature, which produces all,
+  acts without choice and without knowledge. In this case, I admit that his
+  proof was Spinozistic and dangerous. But if he meant perhaps that the
+  divine nature is determined toward that which it produces, by its choice
+  and through the motive of the best, there was no need for him to grieve
+  about this so-called immutable, inevitable, irrevocable necessity. It is
+  only moral, it is a happy necessity; and instead of destroying religion
+  it shows divine perfection to the best advantage.</p>
+
+  <p>375. I take this opportunity to add that M. Bayle quotes (p. 2773) the
+  opinion of those who believe that the book entitled <i>Lucii Antistii
+  Constantis de Jure Ecclesiasticorum Liber Singularis</i>, published in
+  1665, is by Spinoza. But I have reason for doubting this, despite that M.
+  Colerus, who has passed on to me an account he wrote of the life of that
+  famous Jew, is also of that opinion. The initial letters L.A.C. lead me
+  to believe that the author of this book was M. de la Cour or Van den
+  Hoof, famous for works on the <i>Interest of Holland, Political
+  Equipoise</i>, and numerous other books that he published (some of them
+  under the signature V.D.H.) attacking the power of the Governor of
+  Holland, which was at that time considered a danger to the Republic; for
+  the memory of Prince William the Second's attempt upon the city of
+  Amsterdam <!-- Page 351 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page351"></a>[351]</span> was still quite fresh. Most of the
+  ecclesiastics of Holland were on the side of this prince's son, who was
+  then a minor, and they suspected M. de Witt and what was called the
+  Lowenstein faction of favouring the Arminians, the Cartesians, and other
+  sects that were feared still more, endeavouring to rouse the populace
+  against them, and not without success, as the event proved. It was thus
+  very natural that M. de la Cour should publish this book. It is true that
+  people seldom keep to the happy mean in works published to further party
+  interests. I will say in passing that a French version of the <i>Interest
+  of Holland</i> by M. de la Cour has just been published, under the
+  deceptive title of <i>Mémoires de M. le Grand-Pensionnaire de Witt</i>;
+  as if the thoughts of a private individual, who was, to be sure, of de
+  Witt's party, and a man of talent, but who had not enough acquaintance
+  with public affairs or enough ability to write as that great Minister of
+  State might have written, could pass for the production of one of the
+  first men of his time.</p>
+
+  <p>376. I saw M. de la Cour as well as Spinoza on my return from France
+  by way of England and Holland, and I learnt from them a few good
+  anecdotes on the affairs of that time. M. Bayle says, p. 2770, that
+  Spinoza studied Latin under a physician named Franz van den Ende. He
+  tells at the same time, on the authority of Sebastian Kortholt (who
+  refers to it in the preface to the second edition of the book by his late
+  father, <i>De Tribus Impostoribus, Herberto L. B. de Cherbury, Hobbio et
+  Spinoza</i>) that a girl instructed Spinoza in Latin, and that she
+  afterwards married M. Kerkering, who was her pupil at the same time as
+  Spinoza. In connexion with that I note that this young lady was a
+  daughter of M. van den Ende, and that she assisted her father in the work
+  of teaching. Van den Ende, who was also called A. Finibus, later went to
+  Paris, and there kept a boarding-school in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He
+  was considered excellent as an instructor, and he told me, when I called
+  upon him there, that he would wager that his audiences would always pay
+  attention to his words. He had with him as well at that time a young girl
+  who also spoke Latin, and worked upon geometrical demonstrations. He had
+  insinuated himself into M. Arnauld's good graces, and the Jesuits began
+  to be jealous of his reputation. But he disappeared shortly afterwards,
+  having been mixed up in the Chevalier de Rohan's conspiracy.</p>
+
+  <p>377. I think I have sufficiently proved that neither the foreknowledge
+  nor the providence of God can impair either his justice <!-- Page 352
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page352"></a>[352]</span> or his
+  goodness, or our freedom. There remains only the difficulty arising from
+  God's co-operation with the actions of the creature, which seems to
+  concern more closely both his goodness, in relation to our evil actions,
+  and our freedom, in relation to good actions as well as to others. M.
+  Bayle has brought out this also with his usual acuteness. I will
+  endeavour to throw light upon the difficulties he puts forward, and then
+  I shall be in a position to conclude this work. I have already proved
+  that the co-operation of God consists in giving us continually all that
+  is real in us and in our actions, in so far as it involves perfection;
+  but that all that is limited and imperfect therein is a consequence of
+  the previous limitations which are originally in the creature. Since,
+  moreover, every action of the creature is a change of its modifications,
+  it is obvious that action arises in the creature in relation to the
+  limitations or negations which it has within itself, and which are
+  diversified by this change.</p>
+
+  <p>378. I have already pointed out more than once in this work that evil
+  is a consequence of privation, and I think that I have explained that
+  intelligibly enough. St. Augustine has already put forward this idea, and
+  St. Basil said something of the same kind in his <i>Hexaëmeron</i>,
+  Homil. 2, 'that vice is not a living and animate substance, but an
+  affection of the soul contrary to virtue, which arises from one's
+  abandoning the good; and there is therefore no need to look for an
+  original evil'. M. Bayle, quoting this passage in his <i>Dictionary</i>
+  (art. 'Paulicians', lit. D, p. 2325) commends a remark by Herr Pfanner
+  (whom he calls a German theologian, but he is a jurist by profession,
+  Counsellor to the Dukes of Saxony), who censures St. Basil for not being
+  willing to admit that God is the author of physical evil. Doubtless God
+  is its author, when the moral evil is assumed to be already in existence;
+  but speaking generally, one might assert that God permitted physical evil
+  by implication, in permitting moral evil which is its source. It appears
+  that the Stoics knew also how slender is the entity of evil. These words
+  of Epictetus are an indication: 'Sicut aberrandi causa meta non ponitur,
+  sic nec natura mali in mundo existit.'</p>
+
+  <p>379. There was therefore no need to have recourse to a principle of
+  evil, as St. Basil aptly observes. Nor is it necessary either to seek the
+  origin of evil in matter. Those who believed that there was a chaos
+  before God laid his hand upon it sought therein the source of disorder.
+  It was an opinion which Plato introduced into his <i>Timaeus</i>.
+  Aristotle found fault with him for that (in his third book <!-- Page 353
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page353"></a>[353]</span> on Heaven,
+  ch. 2) because, according to this doctrine, disorder would be original
+  and natural, and order would have been introduced against nature. This
+  Anaxagoras avoided by making matter remain at rest until it was stirred
+  by God; and Aristotle in the same passage commends him for it. According
+  to Plutarch (<i>De Iside et Osiride</i>, and <i>Tr. de Animae
+  Procreatione ex Timaeo</i>) Plato recognized in matter a certain
+  maleficent soul or force, rebellious against God: it was an actual
+  blemish, an obstacle to God's plans. The Stoics also believed that matter
+  was the source of defects, as Justus Lipsius showed in the first book of
+  the Physiology of the Stoics.</p>
+
+  <p>380. Aristotle was right in rejecting chaos: but it is not always easy
+  to disentangle the conceptions of Plato, and such a task would be still
+  less easy in respect of some ancient authors whose works are lost.
+  Kepler, one of the most excellent of modern mathematicians, recognized a
+  species of imperfection in matter, even when there is no irregular
+  motion: he calls it its 'natural inertia', which gives it a resistance to
+  motion, whereby a greater mass receives less speed from one and the same
+  force. There is soundness in this observation, and I have used it to
+  advantage in this work, in order to have a comparison such as should
+  illustrate how the original imperfection of the creatures sets bounds to
+  the action of the Creator, which tends towards good. But as matter is
+  itself of God's creation, it only furnishes a comparison and an example,
+  and cannot be the very source of evil and of imperfection. I have already
+  shown that this source lies in the forms or ideas of the possibles, for
+  it must be eternal, and matter is not so. Now since God made all positive
+  reality that is not eternal, he would have made the source of evil, if
+  that did not rather lie in the possibility of things or forms, that which
+  alone God did not make, since he is not the author of his own
+  understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>381. Yet even though the source of evil lies in the possible forms,
+  anterior to the acts of God's will, it is nevertheless true that God
+  co-operates in evil in the actual performance of introducing these forms
+  into matter: and this is what causes the difficulty in question here.
+  Durand de Saint-Pourçain, Cardinal Aureolus, Nicolas Taurel, Father Louis
+  de Dole, M. Bernier and some others, speaking of this co-operation, would
+  have it only general, for fear of impairing the freedom of man and the
+  holiness of God. They seem to maintain that God, having given to
+  creatures the power <!-- Page 354 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page354"></a>[354]</span> to act, contents himself with conserving
+  this power. On the other hand, M. Bayle, according to some modern
+  writers, carries the cooperation of God too far: he seems to fear lest
+  the creature be not sufficiently dependent upon God. He goes so far as to
+  deny action to creatures; he does not even acknowledge any real
+  distinction between accident and substance.</p>
+
+  <p>382. He places great reliance especially on that doctrine accepted of
+  the Schoolmen, that conservation is a continued creation. The conclusion
+  to be drawn from this doctrine would seem to be that the creature never
+  exists, that it is ever newborn and ever dying, like time, movement and
+  other transient beings. Plato believed this of material and tangible
+  things, saying that they are in a perpetual flux, <i>semper fluunt,
+  nunquam sunt</i>. But of immaterial substances he judged quite
+  differently, regarding them alone as real: nor was he in that altogether
+  mistaken. Yet continued creation applies to all creatures without
+  distinction. Sundry good philosophers have been opposed to this dogma,
+  and M. Bayle tells that David de Rodon, a philosopher renowned among
+  those of the French who have adhered to Geneva, deliberately refuted it.
+  The Arminians also do not approve of it; they are not much in favour of
+  these metaphysical subtleties. I will say nothing of the Socinians, who
+  relish them even less.</p>
+
+  <p>383. For a proper enquiry as to <i>whether conservation is a continued
+  creation,</i> it would be necessary to consider the reasons whereon this
+  dogma is founded. The Cartesians, after the example of their master,
+  employ in order to prove it a principle which is not conclusive enough.
+  They say that 'the moments of time having no necessary connexion with one
+  another, it does not follow that because I am at this moment I shall
+  exist at the moment which shall follow, if the same cause which gives me
+  being for this moment does not also give it to me for the instant
+  following.' The author of the <i>Reflexion on the Picture of
+  Socinianism</i> has made use of this argument, and M. Bayle (perhaps the
+  author of this same <i>Reflexion</i>) quotes it (<i>Reply to the
+  Questions of a Provincial</i>, vol. III, ch. 141, p. 771). One may answer
+  that in fact it does not follow <i>of necessity</i> that, because I am, I
+  shall be; but this follows <i>naturally</i>, nevertheless, that is, of
+  itself, <i>per se</i>, if nothing prevents it. It is the distinction that
+  can be drawn between the essential and the natural. For the same movement
+  endures naturally unless some new cause prevents it or changes it,
+  because the reason which makes it cease <!-- Page 355 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page355"></a>[355]</span> at this instant, if it
+  is no new reason, would have already made it cease sooner.</p>
+
+  <p>384. The late Herr Erhard Weigel, a celebrated mathematician and
+  philosopher at Jena, well known for his <i>Analysis Euclidea</i>, his
+  mathematical philosophy, some neat mechanical inventions, and finally the
+  trouble he took to induce the Protestant princes of the Empire to
+  undertake the last reform of the Almanac, whose success, notwithstanding,
+  he did not witness; Herr Weigel, I say, communicated to his friends a
+  certain demonstration of the existence of God, which indeed amounted to
+  this idea of continued creation. As he was wont to draw parallels between
+  reckoning and reasoning&mdash;witness his Arithmetical Ethics
+  (<i>rechenschaftliche Sittenlehre</i>)&mdash;he said that the foundation
+  of the demonstration was this beginning of the Pythagorean Table, <i>once
+  one is one</i>. These repeated unities were the moments of the existence
+  of things, each one of them depending upon God, who resuscitates, as it
+  were, all things outside himself at each moment: falling away as they do
+  at each moment, they must ever have one who shall resuscitate them, and
+  that cannot be any other than God. But there would be need of a more
+  exact proof if that is to be called a demonstration. It would be
+  necessary to prove that the creature always emerges from nothingness and
+  relapses thither forthwith. In particular it must be shown that the
+  privilege of enduring more than a moment by its nature belongs to the
+  necessary being alone. The difficulties on the composition of the
+  <i>continuum</i> enter also into this matter. This dogma appears to
+  resolve time into moments, whereas others regard moments and points as
+  mere modalities of the <i>continuum</i>, that is, as extremities of the
+  parts that can be assigned to it, and not as constituent parts. But this
+  is not the place for entering into that labyrinth.</p>
+
+  <p>385. What can be said for certain on the present subject is that the
+  creature depends continually upon divine operation, and that it depends
+  upon that no less after the time of its beginning than when it first
+  begins. This dependence implies that it would not continue to exist if
+  God did not continue to act; in short, that this action of God is free.
+  For if it were a necessary emanation, like that of the properties of the
+  circle, which issue from its essence, it must then be said that God in
+  the beginning produced the creature by necessity; or else it must be
+  shown how, in creating it once, he imposed upon himself the necessity of
+  conserving it. Now there is <!-- Page 356 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page356"></a>[356]</span> no reason why this conserving action
+  should not be called production, and even creation, if one will: for the
+  dependence being as great afterwards as at the beginning, the extrinsic
+  designation of being new or not does not change the nature of that
+  action.</p>
+
+  <p>386. Let us then admit in such a sense that conservation is a
+  continued creation, and let us see what M. Bayle seems to infer thence
+  (p. 771) after the author of the <i>Reflexion on the Picture of
+  Socinianism</i>, in opposition to M. Jurieu. 'It seems to me', this
+  writer says, 'that one must conclude that God does all, and that in all
+  creation there are no first or second or even occasional causes, as can
+  be easily proved. At this moment when I speak, I am such as I am, with
+  all my circumstances, with such thought, such action, whether I sit or
+  stand, that if God creates me in this moment such as I am, as one must of
+  necessity say in this system, he creates me with such thought, such
+  action, such movement and such determination. One cannot say that God
+  creates me in the first place, and that once I am created he produces
+  with me my movements and my determinations. That is indefensible for two
+  reasons. The first is, that when God creates me or conserves me at this
+  instant, he does not conserve me as a being without form, like a species,
+  or another of the Universals of Logic. I am an individual; he creates me
+  and conserves me as such, and as being all that I am in this instant,
+  with all my attendant circumstances. The second reason is that if God
+  creates me in this instant, and one says that afterwards he produces with
+  me my actions, it will be necessary to imagine another instant for
+  action: for before acting one must exist. Now that would be two instants
+  where we only assume one. It is therefore certain in this hypothesis that
+  creatures have neither more connexion nor more relation with their
+  actions than they had with their production at the first moment of the
+  first creation.' The author of this <i>Reflexion</i> draws thence very
+  harsh conclusions which one can picture to oneself; and he testifies at
+  the end that one would be deeply indebted to any man that should teach
+  those who approve this system how to extricate themselves from these
+  frightful absurdities.</p>
+
+  <p>387. M. Bayle carries this still further. 'You know', he says (p.
+  775), 'that it is demonstrated in the Scholastic writings' (he cites
+  Arriaga, <i>Disp</i>. 9, Phys., sect. 6 et praesertim, sub-sect. 3) 'that
+  the creature cannot be either the total cause or the partial cause of its
+  conservation: for if it were, it would exist before existing, <!-- Page
+  357 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page357"></a>[357]</span> which is
+  contradictory. You know that the argument proceeds like this: that which
+  conserves itself acts; now that which acts exists, and nothing can act
+  before it has attained complete existence; therefore, if a creature
+  conserved itself, it would act before being. This argument is not founded
+  upon probabilities, but upon the first principles of Metaphysics, <i>non
+  entis nulla sunt accidentia, operari sequitur esse</i>, axioms as clear
+  as daylight. Let us go further. If creatures co-operated with God (here
+  is meant an active cooperation, and not co-operation by a passive
+  instrument) to conserve themselves they would act before being: that has
+  been demonstrated. Now if they co-operated with God for the production of
+  any other thing, they would also act before being; it is therefore as
+  impossible for them to co-operate with God for the production of any
+  other thing (such as local movement, an affirmation, volition, entities
+  actually distinct from their substance, so it is asserted) as for their
+  own conservation. Since their conservation is a continued creation, and
+  since all human creatures in the world must confess that they cannot
+  co-operate with God at the first moment of their existence, either to
+  produce themselves or to give themselves any modality, since that would
+  be to act before being (observe that Thomas Aquinas and sundry other
+  Schoolmen teach that if the angels had sinned at the first moment of
+  their creation God would be the author of the sin: see the Feuillant
+  Pierre de St. Joseph, p. 318, <i>et seqq</i>., of the <i>Suavis Concordia
+  Humanae Libertatis</i>; it is a sign that they acknowledge that at the
+  first instant the creature cannot act in anything whatsoever), it follows
+  manifestly that they cannot co-operate with God in any one of the
+  subsequent moments, either to produce themselves or to produce any other
+  thing. If they could co-operate therein at the second moment of their
+  existence, nothing would prevent their being able to cooperate at the
+  first moment.'</p>
+
+  <p>388. This is the way it will be necessary to answer these arguments.
+  Let us assume that the creature is produced anew at each instant; let us
+  grant also that the instant excludes all priority of time, being
+  indivisible; but let us point out that it does not exclude priority of
+  nature, or what is called anteriority <i>in signo rationis,</i> and that
+  this is sufficient. The production, or action whereby God produces, is
+  anterior by nature to the existence of the creature that is produced; the
+  creature taken in itself, with its nature and its necessary properties,
+  is anterior to its accidental affections and <!-- Page 358 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page358"></a>[358]</span> to its actions; and
+  yet all these things are in being in the same moment. God produces the
+  creature in conformity with the exigency of the preceding instants,
+  according to the laws of his wisdom; and the creature operates in
+  conformity with that nature which God conveys to it in creating it
+  always. The limitations and imperfections arise therein through the
+  nature of the subject, which sets bounds to God's production; this is the
+  consequence of the original imperfection of creatures. Vice and crime, on
+  the other hand, arise there through the free inward operation of the
+  creature, in so far as this can occur within the instant, repetition
+  afterwards rendering it discernible.</p>
+
+  <p>389. This anteriority of nature is a commonplace in philosophy: thus
+  one says that the decrees of God have an order among themselves. When one
+  ascribes to God (and rightly so) understanding of the arguments and
+  conclusions of creatures, in such sort that all their demonstrations and
+  syllogisms are known to him, and are found in him in a transcendent way,
+  one sees that there is in the propositions or truths a natural order; but
+  there is no order of time or interval, to cause him to advance in
+  knowledge and pass from the premisses to the conclusion.</p>
+
+  <p>390. I find in the arguments that have just been quoted nothing which
+  these reflexions fail to satisfy. When God produces the thing he produces
+  it as an individual and not as a universal of logic (I admit); but he
+  produces its essence before its accidents, its nature before its
+  operations, following the priority of their nature, and <i>in signo
+  anteriore rationis</i>. Thus one sees how the creature can be the true
+  cause of the sin, while conservation by God does not prevent the sin; God
+  disposes in accordance with the preceding state of the same creature, in
+  order to follow the laws of his wisdom notwithstanding the sin, which in
+  the first place will be produced by the creature. But it is true that God
+  would not in the beginning have created the soul in a state wherein it
+  would have sinned from the first moment, as the Schoolmen have justly
+  observed: for there is nothing in the laws of his wisdom that could have
+  induced him so to do.</p>
+
+  <p>391. This law of wisdom brings it about also that God reproduces the
+  same substance, the same soul. Such was the answer that could have been
+  given by the Abbé whom M. Bayle introduces in his <i>Dictionary</i> (art.
+  'Pyrrhon.' lit. B, p. 2432). This wisdom effects the connexion of things.
+  I concede therefore that the creature <!-- Page 359 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page359"></a>[359]</span> does not co-operate
+  with God to conserve himself (in the sense in which I have just explained
+  conservation). But I see nothing to prevent the creature's co-operation
+  with God for the production of any other thing: and especially might this
+  concern its inward operation, as in the case of a thought or a volition,
+  things really distinct from the substance.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="sect392">392</a>. But there I am once more at grips with M.
+  Bayle. He maintains that there are no such accidents distinct from the
+  substance. 'The reasons', he says, 'which our modern philosophers have
+  employed to demonstrate that the accidents are not beings in reality
+  distinct from the substance are not mere difficulties; they are arguments
+  which overwhelm one, and which cannot be refuted. Take the trouble', he
+  adds, 'to look for them in the writings of Father Maignan, or Father
+  Malebranche or M. Calli' (Professor of Philosophy at Caen) 'or in the
+  <i>Accidentia profligata</i> of Father Saguens, disciple of Father
+  Maignan, the extract from which is to be found in the <i>Nouvelles de la
+  République des Lettres</i>, June 1702. Or if you wish one author only to
+  suffice you, choose Dom François Lami, a Benedictine monk, and one of the
+  strongest Cartesians to be found in France. You will find among his
+  <i>Philosophical Letters</i>, printed at Trévoux in 1703, that one
+  wherein by the geometricians' method he demonstrates "that God is the
+  sole true cause of all that which is real." I would wish to see all these
+  books; and as for this last proposition, it may be true in a very good
+  sense: God is the one principal cause of pure and absolute realities, or
+  of perfections. <i>Causae secundae agunt in virtute primae.</i> But when
+  one comprises limitations and privations under the term realities one may
+  say that the second causes co-operate in the production of that which is
+  limited; otherwise God would be the cause of sin, and even the sole
+  cause.</p>
+
+  <p>393. It is well to beware, moreover, lest in confusing substances with
+  accidents, in depriving created substances of action, one fall into
+  Spinozism, which is an exaggerated Cartesianism. That which does not act
+  does not merit the name of substance. If the accidents are not distinct
+  from the substances; if the created substance is a successive being, like
+  movement; if it does not endure beyond a moment, and does not remain the
+  same (during some stated portion of time) any more than its accidents; if
+  it does not operate any more than a mathematical figure or a number: why
+  shall one not say, with Spinoza, that God is the <!-- Page 360 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page360"></a>[360]</span> only substance, and
+  that creatures are only accidents or modifications? Hitherto it has been
+  supposed that the substance remains, and that the accidents change; and I
+  think one ought still to abide by this ancient doctrine, for the
+  arguments I remember having read do not prove the contrary, and prove
+  more than is needed.</p>
+
+  <p>394. 'One of the absurdities', says M. Bayle (p. 779), 'that arise
+  from the so-called distinction which is alleged to exist between
+  substances and their accidents is that creatures, if they produce the
+  accidents, would possess a power of creation and annihilation.
+  Accordingly one could not perform the slightest action without creating
+  an innumerable number of real beings, and without reducing to nothingness
+  an endless multitude of them. Merely by moving the tongue to cry out or
+  to eat, one creates as many accidents as there are movements of the parts
+  of the tongue, and one destroys as many accidents as there are parts of
+  that which one eats, which lose their form, which become chyle, blood,
+  etc.' This argument is only a kind of bugbear. What harm would be done,
+  supposing that an infinity of movements, an infinity of figures spring up
+  and disappear at every moment in the universe, and even in each part of
+  the universe? It can be demonstrated, moreover, that that must be so.</p>
+
+  <p>395. As for the so-called creation of the accidents, who does not see
+  that one needs no creative power in order to change place or shape, to
+  form a square or a column, or some other parade-ground figure, by the
+  movement of the soldiers who are drilling; or again to fashion a statue
+  by removing a few pieces from a block of marble; or to make some figure
+  in relief, by changing, decreasing or increasing a piece of wax? The
+  production of modifications has never been called <i>creation</i>, and it
+  is an abuse of terms to scare the world thus. God produces substances
+  from nothing, and the substances produce accidents by the changes of
+  their limits.</p>
+
+  <p>396. As for the souls or substantial forms, M. Bayle is right in
+  adding: 'that there is nothing more inconvenient for those who admit
+  substantial forms than the objection which is made that they could not be
+  produced save by an actual creation, and that the Schoolmen are pitiable
+  in their endeavours to answer this.' But there is nothing more convenient
+  for me and for my system than this same objection. For I maintain that
+  all the Souls, Entelechies or primitive forces, substantial forms, simple
+  substances, or Monads, whatever name one may apply to them, can neither
+  <!-- Page 361 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page361"></a>[361]</span>
+  spring up naturally nor perish. And the qualities or derivative forces,
+  or what are called accidental forms, I take to be modifications of the
+  primitive Entelechy, even as shapes are modifications of matter. That is
+  why these modifications are perpetually changing, while the simple
+  substance remains.</p>
+
+  <p>397. I have shown already (part I, <a href="#sect86">§ 86</a>
+  <i>seqq.</i>) that souls cannot spring up naturally, or be derived from
+  one another, and that it is necessary that ours either be created or be
+  pre-existent. I have even pointed out a certain middle way between a
+  creation and an entire pre-existence. I find it appropriate to say that
+  the soul preexisting in the seeds from the beginning of things was only
+  sentient, but that it was elevated to the superior degree, which is that
+  of reason, when the man to whom this soul should belong was conceived,
+  and when the organic body, always accompanying this soul from the
+  beginning, but under many changes, was determined for forming the human
+  body. I considered also that one might attribute this elevation of the
+  sentient soul (which makes it reach a more sublime degree of being,
+  namely reason) to the extraordinary operation of God. Nevertheless it
+  will be well to add that I would dispense with miracles in the generating
+  of man, as in that of the other animals. It will be possible to explain
+  that, if one imagines that in this great number of souls and of animals,
+  or at least of living organic bodies which are in the seeds, those souls
+  alone which are destined to attain one day to human nature contain the
+  reason that shall appear therein one day, and the organic bodies of these
+  souls alone are preformed and predisposed to assume one day the human
+  shape, while the other small animals or seminal living beings, in which
+  no such thing is pre-established, are essentially different from them and
+  possessed only of an inferior nature. This production is a kind of
+  <i>traduction</i>, but more manageable than that kind which is commonly
+  taught: it does not derive the soul from a soul, but only the animate
+  from an animate, and it avoids the repeated miracles of a new creation,
+  which would cause a new and pure soul to enter a body that must corrupt
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>398. I am, however, of the same opinion as Father Malebranche, that,
+  in general, creation properly understood is not so difficult to admit as
+  might be supposed, and that it is in a sense involved in the notion of
+  the dependence of creatures. 'How stupid and ridiculous are the
+  Philosophers!' (he exclaims, in his <i>Christian Meditations</i>, 9, No.
+  3). 'They assume that Creation is <!-- Page 362 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page362"></a>[362]</span> impossible, because
+  they cannot conceive how God's power is great enough to make something
+  from nothing. But can they any better conceive how the power of God is
+  capable of stirring a straw?' He adds, again with great truth (No. 5),
+  'If matter were uncreate, God could not move it or form anything from it.
+  For God cannot move matter, or arrange it wisely, if he does not know it.
+  Now God cannot know it, if he does not give it being: he can derive his
+  knowledge only from himself. Nothing can act on him or enlighten
+  him.'</p>
+
+  <p>399. M. Bayle, not content with saying that we are created
+  continually, insists also on this other doctrine which he would fain
+  derive thence: that our soul cannot act. This is the way he speaks on
+  that matter (ch. 141, p. 765): 'He has too much acquaintance with
+  Cartesianism' (it is of an able opponent he is speaking) 'not to know
+  with what force it has been maintained in our day that there is no
+  creature capable of producing motion, and that our soul is a purely
+  passive subject in relation to sensations and ideas, and feelings of pain
+  and of pleasure, etc. If this has not been carried as far as the
+  volitions, that is on account of the existence of revealed truths;
+  otherwise the acts of the will would have been found as passive as those
+  of the understanding. The same reasons which prove that our soul does not
+  form our ideas, and does not stir our organs, would prove also that it
+  cannot form our acts of love and our volitions, etc' He might add: our
+  vicious actions, our crimes.</p>
+
+  <p>400. The force of these proofs, which he praises, must not be so great
+  as he thinks, for if it were they would prove too much. They would make
+  God the author of sin. I admit that the soul cannot stir the organs by a
+  physical influence; for I think that the body must have been so formed
+  beforehand that it would do in time and place that which responds to the
+  volitions of the soul, although it be true nevertheless that the soul is
+  the principle of the operation. But if it be said that the soul does not
+  produce its thoughts, its sensations, its feelings of pain and of
+  pleasure, that is something for which I see no reason. In my system every
+  simple substance (that is, every true substance) must be the true
+  immediate cause of all its actions and inward passions; and, speaking
+  strictly in a metaphysical sense, it has none other than those which it
+  produces. Those who hold a different opinion, and who make God the sole
+  agent, are needlessly becoming involved in expressions whence they will
+  only with difficulty extricate themselves without offence <!-- Page 363
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page363"></a>[363]</span> against
+  religion; moreover, they unquestionably offend against reason.</p>
+
+  <p>401. Here is, however, the foundation of M. Bayle's argument. He says
+  that we do not do that of which we know not the way it is done. But it is
+  a principle which I do not concede to him. Let us listen to his
+  dissertation (p. 767 seqq.): 'It is an astonishing thing that almost all
+  philosophers (with the exception of those who expounded Aristotle, and
+  who admitted a universal intelligence distinct from our soul, and cause
+  of our perceptions: see in the <i>Historical and Critical Dictionary</i>,
+  Note E of the article "Averroes") have shared the popular belief that we
+  form our ideas actively. Yet where is the man who knows not on the one
+  hand that he is in absolute ignorance as to how ideas are made, and on
+  the other hand, that he could not sew two stitches if he were ignorant of
+  how to sew? Is the sewing of two stitches in itself a work more difficult
+  than the painting in one's mind of a rose, the very first time one's eyes
+  rest upon it, and although one has never learnt this kind of painting?
+  Does it not appear on the contrary that this mental portrait is in itself
+  a work more difficult than tracing on canvas the shape of a flower, a
+  thing we cannot do without having learnt it? We are all convinced that a
+  key would be of no use to us for opening a chest if we were ignorant as
+  to how to use the key, and yet we imagine that our soul is the efficient
+  cause of the movement of our arms, despite that it knows neither where
+  the nerves are which must be used for this movement, nor whence to obtain
+  the animal spirits that are to flow into these nerves. We have the
+  experience every day that the ideas we would fain recall do not come, and
+  that they appear of themselves when we are no longer thinking of them. If
+  that does not prevent us from thinking that we are their efficient cause,
+  what reliance shall one place on the proof of feeling, which to M.
+  Jacquelot appears so conclusive? Does our authority over our ideas more
+  often fall short than our authority over our volitions? If we were to
+  count up carefully, we should find in the course of our life more
+  velleities than volitions, that is, more evidences of the servitude of
+  our will than of its dominion. How many times does one and the same man
+  not experience an inability to do a certain act of will (for example, an
+  act of love for a man who had just injured him; an act of scorn for a
+  fine sonnet that he had composed; an act of hatred for a mistress; an act
+  of approval of an absurd epigram. Take note that I speak <!-- Page 364
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page364"></a>[364]</span> only of
+  inward acts, expressed by an "I will", such as "I will scorn", "approve",
+  etc.) even if there were a hundred pistoles to be gained forthwith, and
+  he ardently desired to gain these hundred pistoles, and he were fired
+  with the ambition to convince himself by an experimental proof that he is
+  master in his own domain?</p>
+
+  <p>402. 'To put together in few words the whole force of what I have just
+  said to you, I will observe that it is evident to all those who go deeply
+  into things, that the true efficient cause of an effect must know the
+  effect, and be aware also of the way in which it must be produced. That
+  is not necessary when one is only the instrument of the cause, or only
+  the passive subject of its action; but one cannot conceive of it as not
+  necessary to a true agent. Now if we examine ourselves well we shall be
+  strongly convinced, (1) that, independently of experience, our soul is
+  just as little aware of what a volition is as of what an idea is; (2)
+  that after a long experience it is no more fully aware of how volitions
+  are formed than it was before having willed anything. What is one to
+  conclude from that, save that the soul cannot be the efficient cause of
+  its volitions, any more than of its ideas, and of the motion of the
+  spirits which cause our arms to move? (Take note that no pretence is made
+  of deciding the point here absolutely, it is only being considered in
+  relation to the principles of the objection.)'</p>
+
+  <p>403. That is indeed a strange way of reasoning! What necessity is
+  there for one always to be aware how that which is done is done? Are
+  salts, metals, plants, animals and a thousand other animate or inanimate
+  bodies aware how that which they do is done, and need they be aware? Must
+  a drop of oil or of fat understand geometry in order to become round on
+  the surface of water? Sewing stitches is another matter: one acts for an
+  end, one must be aware of the means. But we do not form our ideas because
+  we will to do so, they form themselves within us, they form themselves
+  through us, not in consequence of our will, but in accordance with our
+  nature and that of things. The foetus forms itself in the animal, and a
+  thousand other wonders of nature are produced by a certain
+  <i>instinct</i> that God has placed there, that is by virtue of <i>divine
+  preformation</i>, which has made these admirable automata, adapted to
+  produce mechanically such beautiful effects. Even so it is easy to
+  believe that the soul is a spiritual automaton still more admirable, and
+  that it is through divine preformation that it produces these <!-- Page
+  365 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page365"></a>[365]</span> beautiful
+  ideas, wherein our will has no part and to which our art cannot attain.
+  The operation of spiritual automata, that is of souls, is not mechanical,
+  but it contains in the highest degree all that is beautiful in mechanism.
+  The movements which are developed in bodies are concentrated in the soul
+  by representation as in an ideal world, which expresses the laws of the
+  actual world and their consequences, but with this difference from the
+  perfect ideal world which is in God, that most of the perceptions in the
+  other substances are only confused. For it is plain that every simple
+  substance embraces the whole universe in its confused perceptions or
+  sensations, and that the succession of these perceptions is regulated by
+  the particular nature of this substance, but in a manner which always
+  expresses all the nature in the universe; and every present perception
+  leads to a new perception, just as every movement that it represents
+  leads to another movement. But it is impossible that the soul can know
+  clearly its whole nature, and perceive how this innumerable number of
+  small perceptions, piled up or rather concentrated together, shapes
+  itself there: to that end it must needs know completely the whole
+  universe which is embraced by them, that is, it must needs be a God.</p>
+
+  <p>404. As regards <i>velleities</i>, they are only a very imperfect kind
+  of conditional will. I would, if I could: <i>liberet si liceret</i>; and
+  in the case of a velleity, we do not will, properly speaking, to will,
+  but to be able. That explains why there are none in God; and they must
+  not be confused with antecedent will. I have explained sufficiently
+  elsewhere that our control over volitions can be exercised only
+  indirectly, and that one would be unhappy if one were sufficiently master
+  in one's own domain to be able to will without cause, without rhyme or
+  reason. To complain of not having such a control would be to argue like
+  Pliny, who carps at the power of God because God cannot destroy
+  himself.</p>
+
+  <p>405. I intended to finish here after having met (as it seems to me)
+  all the objections of M. Bayle on this matter that I could find in his
+  works. But remembering Laurentius Valla's <i>Dialogue on Free Will,</i>
+  in opposition to Boethius, which I have already mentioned, I thought it
+  would be opportune to quote it in abstract, retaining the dialogue form,
+  and then to continue from where it ends, keeping up the fiction it
+  initiated; and that less with the purpose of enlivening the subject, than
+  in order to explain myself towards the end of my dissertation as clearly
+  as I can, and in a way most <!-- Page 366 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page366"></a>[366]</span> likely to be generally understood. This
+  Dialogue of Valla and his books on Pleasure and the True Good make it
+  plain that he was no less a philosopher than a humanist. These four books
+  were opposed to the four books on the <i>Consolation of Philosophy</i> by
+  Boethius, and the Dialogue to the fifth book. A certain Spaniard named
+  Antonio Glarea requests of him elucidation on the difficulty of free
+  will, whereof little is known as it is worthy to be known, for upon it
+  depend justice and injustice, punishment and reward in this life and in
+  the life to come. Laurentius Valla answers him that we must console
+  ourselves for an ignorance which we share with the whole world, just as
+  one consoles oneself for not having the wings of birds.</p>
+
+  <p>406. <font class="sc">antonio</font>&mdash;I know that you can give me
+  those wings, like another Daedalus, so that I may emerge from the prison
+  of ignorance, and rise to the very region of truth, which is the homeland
+  of souls. The books that I have seen have not satisfied me, not even the
+  famous Boethius, who meets with general approval. I know not whether he
+  fully understood himself what he says of God's understanding, and of
+  eternity superior to time; and I ask for your opinion on his way of
+  reconciling foreknowledge with freedom. <font
+  class="sc">laurent</font>&mdash;I am fearful of giving offence to many
+  people, if I confute this great man; yet I will give preference over this
+  fear to the consideration I have for the entreaties of a friend, provided
+  that you make me a promise. <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;What?
+  <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;It is, that when you have dined with
+  me you do not ask me to give you supper, that is to say, I desire that
+  you be content with the answer to the question you have put to me, and do
+  not put a further question.</p>
+
+  <p>407. <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;I promise you. Here is the
+  heart of the difficulty. If God foresaw the treason of Judas, it was
+  necessary that he should betray, it was impossible for him not to betray.
+  There is no obligation to do the impossible. He therefore did not sin, he
+  did not deserve to be punished. That destroys justice and religion, and
+  the fear of God. <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;God foresaw sin; but
+  he did not compel man to commit it; sin is voluntary. <font
+  class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;That will was necessary, since it was
+  foreseen. <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;If my knowledge does not
+  cause things past or present to exist, neither will my foreknowledge
+  cause future things to exist.</p>
+
+  <p>408. <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;That comparison is deceptive:
+  neither the present nor the past can be changed, they are already
+  necessary; but the future, movable in itself, becomes fixed and necessary
+  through <!-- Page 367 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page367"></a>[367]</span> foreknowledge. Let us pretend that a god
+  of the heathen boasts of knowing the future: I will ask him if he knows
+  which foot I shall put foremost, then I will do the opposite of that
+  which he shall have foretold. <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;This
+  God knows what you are about to do. <font
+  class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;How does he know it, since I will do the
+  opposite of what he shall have said, and I suppose that he will say what
+  he thinks? <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;Your supposition is false:
+  God will not answer you; or again, if he were to answer you, the
+  veneration you would have for him would make you hasten to do what he had
+  said; his prediction would be to you an order. But we have changed the
+  question. We are not concerned with what God will foretell but with what
+  he foresees. Let us therefore return to foreknowledge, and distinguish
+  between the necessary and the certain. It is not impossible for what is
+  foreseen not to happen; but it is infallibly sure that it will happen. I
+  can become a Soldier or Priest, but I shall not become one.</p>
+
+  <p>409. <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;Here I have you firmly held.
+  The philosophers' rule maintains that all that which is possible can be
+  considered as existing. But if that which you affirm to be possible,
+  namely an event different from what has been foreseen, actually happened,
+  God would have been mistaken. <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;The
+  rules of the philosophers are not oracles for me. This one in particular
+  is not correct. Two contradictories are often both possible. Can they
+  also both exist? But, for your further enlightenment, let us pretend that
+  Sextus Tarquinius, coming to Delphi to consult the Oracle of Apollo,
+  receives the answer:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Exul inopsque cades irata pulsus ab urbe.</i></p>
+      <p>A beggared outcast of the city's rage,</p>
+      <p>Beside a foreign shore cut short thy age.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>The young man will complain: I have brought you a royal gift, O
+  Apollo, and you proclaim for me a lot so unhappy? Apollo will say to him:
+  Your gift is pleasing to me, and I will do that which you ask of me, I
+  will tell you what will happen. I know the future, but I do not bring it
+  about. Go make your complaint to Jupiter and the Parcae. Sextus would be
+  ridiculous if he continued thereafter to complain about Apollo. Is not
+  that true? <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;He will say: I thank you, O
+  holy Apollo, for not having repaid me with silence, for having revealed
+  to me the Truth. But whence comes it that Jupiter is so cruel towards me,
+  that he prepares so hard a fate <!-- Page 368 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page368"></a>[368]</span> for an innocent man, for a devout
+  worshipper of the Gods? <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;You innocent?
+  Apollo will say. Know that you will be proud, that you will commit
+  adulteries, that you will be a traitor to your country. Could Sextus
+  reply: It is you who are the cause, O Apollo; you compel me to do it, by
+  foreseeing it? <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;I admit that he would
+  have taken leave of his senses if he were to make this reply. <font
+  class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;Therefore neither can the traitor Judas
+  complain of God's foreknowledge. And there is the answer to your
+  question.</p>
+
+  <p>410. <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;You have satisfied me beyond
+  my hopes, you have done what Boethius was not able to do: I shall be
+  beholden to you all my life long. <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;Yet
+  let us carry our tale a little further. Sextus will say: No, Apollo, I
+  will not do what you say. <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;What! the
+  God will say, do you mean then that I am a liar? I repeat to you once
+  more, you will do all that I have just said. <font
+  class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;Sextus, mayhap, would pray the Gods to
+  alter fate, to give him a better heart. <font
+  class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;He would receive the answer:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Desine fata Deum flecti sperare precando</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>He cannot cause divine foreknowledge to lie. But what then will Sextus
+  say? Will he not break forth into complaints against the Gods? Will he
+  not say? What? I am then not free? It is not in my power to follow
+  virtue? <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;Apollo will say to him
+  perhaps: Know, my poor Sextus, that the Gods make each one as he is.
+  Jupiter made the wolf ravening, the hare timid, the ass stupid, and the
+  lion courageous. He gave you a soul that is wicked and irreclaimable; you
+  will act in conformity with your natural disposition, and Jupiter will
+  treat you as your actions shall deserve; he has sworn it by the Styx.</p>
+
+  <p>411. <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;I confess to you, it seems to
+  me that Apollo in excusing himself accuses Jupiter more than he accuses
+  Sextus, and Sextus would answer him: Jupiter therefore condemns in me his
+  own crime; it is he who is the only guilty one. He could have made me
+  altogether different: but, made as I am, I must act as he has willed. Why
+  then does he punish me? Could I have resisted his will? <font
+  class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;I confess that I am brought to a pause here
+  as you are. I have made the Gods appear on the scene, Apollo and Jupiter,
+  to make you distinguish between divine foreknowledge and providence. I
+  have shown that Apollo and foreknowledge do not impair freedom; but I
+  cannot satisfy you on the decrees of Jupiter's will, that is to say, on
+  the orders of providence. <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;You have
+  <!-- Page 369 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page369"></a>[369]</span>
+  dragged me out of one abyss, and you plunge me back into another and
+  greater abyss. <font class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;Remember our contract:
+  I have given you dinner, and you ask me to give you supper also.</p>
+
+  <p>412. <font class="sc">ant</font>.&mdash;Now I discover your cunning:
+  You have caught me, this is not an honest contract. <font
+  class="sc">laur</font>.&mdash;What would you have me do? I have given you
+  wine and meats from my home produce, such as my small estate can provide;
+  as for nectar and ambrosia, you will ask the Gods for them: that divine
+  nurture is not found among men. Let us hearken to St. Paul, that chosen
+  vessel who was carried even to the third heaven, who heard there
+  unutterable words: he will answer you with the comparison of the potter,
+  with the incomprehensibility of the ways of God, and wonder at the depth
+  of his wisdom. Nevertheless it is well to observe that one does not ask
+  why God foresees the thing, for that is understood, it is because it will
+  be: but one asks why he ordains thus, why he hardens such an one, why he
+  has compassion on another. We do not know the reasons which he may have
+  for this; but <i>since he is very good and very wise that is enough to
+  make us deem that his reasons are good</i>. As he is just also, it
+  follows that his decrees and his operation do not destroy our freedom.
+  Some men have sought some reason therein. They have said that we are made
+  from a corrupt and impure mass, indeed of mud. But Adam and the Angels
+  were made of silver and gold, and they sinned notwithstanding. One
+  sometimes becomes hardened again after regeneration. We must therefore
+  seek another cause for evil, and I doubt whether even the Angels are
+  aware of it; yet they cease not to be happy and to praise God. Boethius
+  hearkened more to the answer of philosophy than to that of St. Paul; that
+  was the cause of his failure. Let us believe in Jesus Christ, he is the
+  virtue and the wisdom of God: he teaches us that God willeth the
+  salvation of all, that he willeth not the death of the sinner. Let us
+  therefore put our trust in the divine mercy, and let us not by our vanity
+  and our malice disqualify ourselves to receive it.</p>
+
+  <p>413. This dialogue of Valla's is excellent, even though one must take
+  exception to some points in it: but its chief defect is that it cuts the
+  knot and that it seems to condemn providence under the name of Jupiter,
+  making him almost the author of sin. Let us therefore carry the little
+  fable still further. Sextus, quitting Apollo and Delphi, seeks out
+  Jupiter at Dodona. He makes sacrifices and then he exhibits his
+  complaints. Why have you condemned me, O <!-- Page 370 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page370"></a>[370]</span> great God, to be
+  wicked and unhappy? Change my lot and my heart, or acknowledge your
+  error. Jupiter answers him: If you will renounce Rome, the Parcae shall
+  spin for you different fates, you shall become wise, you shall be happy.
+  <font class="sc">sextus</font>&mdash;Why must I renounce the hope of a
+  crown? Can I not come to be a good king? <font
+  class="sc">jupiter</font>&mdash;No, Sextus; I know better what is needful
+  for you. If you go to Rome, you are lost. Sextus, not being able to
+  resolve upon so great a sacrifice, went forth from the temple, and
+  abandoned himself to his fate. Theodorus, the High Priest, who had been
+  present at the dialogue between God and Sextus, addressed these words to
+  Jupiter: Your wisdom is to be revered, O great Ruler of the Gods. You
+  have convinced this man of his error; he must henceforth impute his
+  unhappiness to his evil will; he has not a word to say. But your faithful
+  worshippers are astonished; they would fain wonder at your goodness as
+  well as at your greatness: it rested with you to give him a different
+  will. <font class="sc">jupiter</font>&mdash;Go to my daughter Pallas, she
+  will inform you what I was bound to do.</p>
+
+  <p>414. Theodorus journeyed to Athens: he was bidden to lie down to sleep
+  in the temple of the Goddess. Dreaming, he found himself transported into
+  an unknown country. There stood a palace of unimaginable splendour and
+  prodigious size. The Goddess Pallas appeared at the gate, surrounded by
+  rays of dazzling majesty.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i8"><i>Qualisque videri</i></p>
+      <p><i>Coelicolis et quanta solet.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>She touched the face of Theodorus with an olive-branch, which she was
+  holding in her hand. And lo! he had become able to confront the divine
+  radiancy of the daughter of Jupiter, and of all that she should show him.
+  Jupiter who loves you (she said to him) has commended you to me to be
+  instructed. You see here the palace of the fates, where I keep watch and
+  ward. Here are representations not only of that which happens but also of
+  all that which is possible. Jupiter, having surveyed them before the
+  beginning of the existing world, classified the possibilities into
+  worlds, and chose the best of all. He comes sometimes to visit these
+  places, to enjoy the pleasure of recapitulating things and of renewing
+  his own choice, which cannot fail to please him. I have only to speak,
+  and we shall see a whole world that my father might have produced,
+  wherein will be represented anything that can be asked of him; and in
+  this way one may know also what would happen if any <!-- Page 371
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page371"></a>[371]</span> particular
+  possibility should attain unto existence. And whenever the conditions are
+  not determinate enough, there will be as many such worlds differing from
+  one another as one shall wish, which will answer differently the same
+  question, in as many ways as possible. You learnt geometry in your youth,
+  like all well-instructed Greeks. You know therefore that when the
+  conditions of a required point do not sufficiently determine it, and
+  there is an infinite number of them, they all fall into what the
+  geometricians call a locus, and this locus at least (which is often a
+  line) will be determinate. Thus you can picture to yourself an ordered
+  succession of worlds, which shall contain each and every one the case
+  that is in question, and shall vary its circumstances and its
+  consequences. But if you put a case that differs from the actual world
+  only in one single definite thing and in its results, a certain one of
+  those determinate worlds will answer you. These worlds are all here, that
+  is, in ideas. I will show you some, wherein shall be found, not
+  absolutely the same Sextus as you have seen (that is not possible, he
+  carries with him always that which he shall be) but several Sextuses
+  resembling him, possessing all that you know already of the true Sextus,
+  but not all that is already in him imperceptibly, nor in consequence all
+  that shall yet happen to him. You will find in one world a very happy and
+  noble Sextus, in another a Sextus content with a mediocre state, a
+  Sextus, indeed, of every kind and endless diversity of forms.</p>
+
+  <p>415. Thereupon the Goddess led Theodorus into one of the halls of the
+  palace: when he was within, it was no longer a hall, it was a world,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Solemque suum, sua sidera norat</i>.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>At the command of Pallas there came within view Dodona with the temple
+  of Jupiter, and Sextus issuing thence; he could be heard saying that he
+  would obey the God. And lo! he goes to a city lying between two seas,
+  resembling Corinth. He buys there a small garden; cultivating it, he
+  finds a treasure; he becomes a rich man, enjoying affection and esteem;
+  he dies at a great age, beloved of the whole city. Theodorus saw the
+  whole life of Sextus as at one glance, and as in a stage presentation.
+  There was a great volume of writings in this hall: Theodorus could not
+  refrain from asking what that meant. It is the history of this world
+  which we are now visiting, the Goddess told him; it is the book of its
+  fates. You have <!-- Page 372 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page372"></a>[372]</span> seen a number on the forehead of Sextus.
+  Look in this book for the place which it indicates. Theodorus looked for
+  it, and found there the history of Sextus in a form more ample than the
+  outline he had seen. Put your finger on any line you please, Pallas said
+  to him, and you will see represented actually in all its detail that
+  which the line broadly indicates. He obeyed, and he saw coming into view
+  all the characteristics of a portion of the life of that Sextus. They
+  passed into another hall, and lo! another world, another Sextus. who,
+  issuing from the temple, and having resolved to obey Jupiter, goes to
+  Thrace. There he marries the daughter of the king, who had no other
+  children; he succeeds him, and he is adored by his subjects. They went
+  into other rooms, and always they saw new scenes.</p>
+
+  <p>416. The halls rose in a pyramid, becoming even more beautiful as one
+  mounted towards the apex, and representing more beautiful worlds. Finally
+  they reached the highest one which completed the pyramid, and which was
+  the most beautiful of all: for the pyramid had a beginning, but one could
+  not see its end; it had an apex, but no base; it went on increasing to
+  infinity. That is (as the Goddess explained) because amongst an endless
+  number of possible worlds there is the best of all, else would God not
+  have determined to create any; but there is not any one which has not
+  also less perfect worlds below it: that is why the pyramid goes on
+  descending to infinity. Theodorus, entering this highest hall, became
+  entranced in ecstasy; he had to receive succour from the Goddess, a drop
+  of a divine liquid placed on his tongue restored him; he was beside
+  himself for joy. We are in the real true world (said the Goddess) and you
+  are at the source of happiness. Behold what Jupiter makes ready for you,
+  if you continue to serve him faithfully. Here is Sextus as he is, and as
+  he will be in reality. He issues from the temple in a rage, he scorns the
+  counsel of the Gods. You see him going to Rome, bringing confusion
+  everywhere, violating the wife of his friend. There he is driven out with
+  his father, beaten, unhappy. If Jupiter had placed here a Sextus happy at
+  Corinth or King in Thrace, it would be no longer this world. And
+  nevertheless he could not have failed to choose this world, which
+  surpasses in perfection all the others, and which forms the apex of the
+  pyramid. Else would Jupiter have renounced his wisdom, he would have
+  banished me, me his daughter. You see that my father did not make Sextus
+  wicked; he was so from all <!-- Page 373 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page373"></a>[373]</span> eternity, he was so always and freely. My
+  father only granted him the existence which his wisdom could not refuse
+  to the world where he is included: he made him pass from the region of
+  the possible to that of the actual beings. The crime of Sextus serves for
+  great things: it renders Rome free; thence will arise a great empire,
+  which will show noble examples to mankind. But that is nothing in
+  comparison with the worth of this whole world, at whose beauty you will
+  marvel, when, after a happy passage from this mortal state to another and
+  better one, the Gods shall have fitted you to know it.</p>
+
+  <p>417. At this moment Theodorus wakes up, he gives thanks to the
+  Goddess, he owns the justice of Jupiter. His spirit pervaded by what he
+  has seen and heard, he carries on the office of High Priest, with all the
+  zeal of a true servant of his God, and with all the joy whereof a mortal
+  is capable. It seems to me that this continuation of the tale may
+  elucidate the difficulty which Valla did not wish to treat. If Apollo has
+  represented aright God's knowledge of vision (that which concerns beings
+  in existence), I hope that Pallas will have not discreditably filled the
+  role of what is called knowledge of simple intelligence (that which
+  embraces all that is possible), wherein at last the source of things must
+  be sought.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 377 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page377"></a>[377]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>APPENDICES</h3>
+
+<h3>SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY
+REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+  <p>Some persons of discernment have wished me to make this addition. I
+  have the more readily deferred to their opinion, because of the
+  opportunity thereby gained for meeting certain difficulties, and for
+  making observations on certain matters which were not treated in
+  sufficient detail in the work itself.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">objection i</font></p>
+
+  <p>Whoever does not choose the best course is lacking either in power, or
+  knowledge, or goodness.</p>
+
+  <p>God did not choose the best course in creating this world.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore God was lacking in power, or knowledge, or goodness.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">answer</font></p>
+
+  <p>I deny the minor, that is to say, the second premiss of this
+  syllogism, and the opponent proves it by this</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">prosyllogism</font></p>
+
+  <p>Whoever makes things in which there is evil, and which could have been
+  made without any evil, or need not have been made at all, does not choose
+  the best course.</p>
+
+  <p>God made a world wherein there is evil; a world, I say, which could
+  have been made without any evil or which need not have been made at
+  all.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 378 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page378"></a>[378]</span></p>
+
+  <p>Therefore God did not choose the best course.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">answer</font></p>
+
+  <p>I admit the minor of this prosyllogism: for one must confess that
+  there is evil in this world which God has made, and that it would have
+  been possible to make a world without evil or even not to create any
+  world, since its creation depended upon the free will of God. But I deny
+  the major, that is, the first of the two premisses of the prosyllogism,
+  and I might content myself with asking for its proof. In order, however,
+  to give a clearer exposition of the matter, I would justify this denial
+  by pointing out that the best course is not always that one which tends
+  towards avoiding evil, since it is possible that the evil may be
+  accompanied by a greater good. For example, the general of an army will
+  prefer a great victory with a slight wound to a state of affairs without
+  wound and without victory. I have proved this in further detail in this
+  work by pointing out, through instances taken from mathematics and
+  elsewhere, that an imperfection in the part may be required for a greater
+  perfection in the whole. I have followed therein the opinion of St.
+  Augustine, who said a hundred times that God permitted evil in order to
+  derive from it a good, that is to say, a greater good; and Thomas Aquinas
+  says (in libr. 2, <i>Sent. Dist.</i> 32, qu. 1, art. 1) that the
+  permission of evil tends towards the good of the universe. I have shown
+  that among older writers the fall of Adam was termed <i>felix culpa</i>,
+  a fortunate sin, because it had been expiated with immense benefit by the
+  incarnation of the Son of God: for he gave to the universe something more
+  noble than anything there would otherwise have been amongst created
+  beings. For the better understanding of the matter I added, following the
+  example of many good authors, that it was consistent with order and the
+  general good for God to grant to certain of his creatures the opportunity
+  to exercise their freedom, even when he foresaw that they would turn to
+  evil: for God could easily correct the evil, and it was not fitting that
+  in order to prevent sin he should always act in an extraordinary way. It
+  will therefore sufficiently refute the objection to show that a world
+  with evil may be better than a world without evil. But I have gone still
+  further in the work, and have even shown that this universe must be
+  indeed better than every other possible universe.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 379 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page379"></a>[379]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">objection ii</font></p>
+
+  <p>If there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures, there is
+  more evil than good in all God's work.</p>
+
+  <p>Now there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore there is more evil than good in all God's work.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">answer</font></p>
+
+  <p>I deny the major and the minor of this conditional syllogism. As for
+  the major, I do not admit it because this supposed inference from the
+  part to the whole, from intelligent creatures to all creatures, assumes
+  tacitly and without proof that creatures devoid of reason cannot be
+  compared or taken into account with those that have reason. But why might
+  not the surplus of good in the non-intelligent creatures that fill the
+  world compensate for and even exceed incomparably the surplus of evil in
+  rational creatures? It is true that the value of the latter is greater;
+  but by way of compensation the others are incomparably greater in number;
+  and it may be that the proportion of number and quantity surpasses that
+  of value and quality.</p>
+
+  <p>The minor also I cannot admit, namely, that there is more evil than
+  good in intelligent creatures. One need not even agree that there is more
+  evil than good in the human kind. For it is possible, and even a very
+  reasonable thing, that the glory and the perfection of the blessed may be
+  incomparably greater than the misery and imperfection of the damned, and
+  that here the excellence of the total good in the smaller number may
+  exceed the total evil which is in the greater number. The blessed draw
+  near to divinity through a divine Mediator, so far as can belong to these
+  created beings, and make such progress in good as is impossible for the
+  damned to make in evil, even though they should approach as nearly as may
+  be the nature of demons. God is infinite, and the Devil is finite; good
+  can and does go on <i>ad infinitum</i>, whereas evil has its bounds. It
+  may be therefore, and it is probable, that there happens in the
+  comparison between the blessed and the damned the opposite of what I said
+  could happen in the comparison between the happy and the unhappy, namely
+  that in the latter the proportion of degrees surpasses that of numbers,
+  while in the comparison between intelligent and non-intelligent the
+  proportion of numbers is greater than that of values. One is justified in
+  assuming that a thing may be so as long as one does not prove that it is
+  <!-- Page 380 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page380"></a>[380]</span>
+  impossible, and indeed what is here put forward goes beyond
+  assumption.</p>
+
+  <p>But secondly, even should one admit that there is more evil than good
+  in the human kind, one still has every reason for not admitting that
+  there is more evil than good in all intelligent creatures. For there is
+  an inconceivable number of Spirits, and perhaps of other rational
+  creatures besides: and an opponent cannot prove that in the whole City of
+  God, composed as much of Spirits as of rational animals without number
+  and of endless different kinds, the evil exceeds the good. Although one
+  need not, in order to answer an objection, prove that a thing is, when
+  its mere possibility suffices, I have nevertheless shown in this present
+  work that it is a result of the supreme perfection of the Sovereign of
+  the Universe that the kingdom of God should be the most perfect of all
+  states or governments possible, and that in consequence what little evil
+  there is should be required to provide the full measure of the vast good
+  existing there.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">objection iii</font></p>
+
+  <p>If it is always impossible not to sin, it is always unjust to
+  punish.</p>
+
+  <p>Now it is always impossible not to sin, or rather all sin is
+  necessary.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore it is always unjust to punish.</p>
+
+  <p>The minor of this is proved as follows.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">first prosyllogism</font></p>
+
+  <p>Everything predetermined is necessary.</p>
+
+  <p>Every event is predetermined.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore every event (and consequently sin also) is necessary.</p>
+
+  <p>Again this second minor is proved thus.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">second prosyllogism</font></p>
+
+  <p>That which is future, that which is foreseen, that which is involved
+  in causes is predetermined.</p>
+
+  <p>Every event is of this kind.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore every event is predetermined.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">answer</font></p>
+
+  <p>I admit in a certain sense the conclusion of the second prosyllogism,
+  which is the minor of the first; but I shall deny the <!-- Page 381
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page381"></a>[381]</span> major of the
+  first prosyllogism, namely that everything predetermined is necessary;
+  taking 'necessity', say the necessity to sin, or the impossibility of not
+  sinning, or of not doing some action, in the sense relevant to the
+  argument, that is, as a necessity essential and absolute, which destroys
+  the morality of action and the justice of punishment. If anyone meant a
+  different necessity or impossibility (that is, a necessity only moral or
+  hypothetical, which will be explained presently) it is plain that we
+  would deny him the major stated in the objection. We might content
+  ourselves with this answer, and demand the proof of the proposition
+  denied: but I am well pleased to justify my manner of procedure in the
+  present work, in order to make the matter clear and to throw more light
+  on this whole subject, by explaining the necessity that must be rejected
+  and the determination that must be allowed. The truth is that the
+  necessity contrary to morality, which must be avoided and which would
+  render punishment unjust, is an insuperable necessity, which would render
+  all opposition unavailing, even though one should wish with all one's
+  heart to avoid the necessary action, and though one should make all
+  possible efforts to that end. Now it is plain that this is not applicable
+  to voluntary actions, since one would not do them if one did not so
+  desire. Thus their prevision and predetermination is not absolute, but it
+  presupposes will: if it is certain that one will do them, it is no less
+  certain that one will will to do them. These voluntary actions and their
+  results will not happen whatever one may do and whether one will them or
+  not; but they will happen because one will do, and because one will will
+  to do, that which leads to them. That is involved in prevision and
+  predetermination, and forms the reason thereof. The necessity of such
+  events is called conditional or hypothetical, or again necessity of
+  consequence, because it presupposes the will and the other requisites.
+  But the necessity which destroys morality, and renders punishment unjust
+  and reward unavailing, is found in the things that will be whatever one
+  may do and whatever one may will to do: in a word, it exists in that
+  which is essential. This it is which is called an absolute necessity.
+  Thus it avails nothing with regard to what is necessary absolutely to
+  ordain interdicts or commandments, to propose penalties or prizes, to
+  blame or to praise; it will come to pass no more and no less. In
+  voluntary actions, on the contrary, and in what depends upon them,
+  precepts, armed with power to <!-- Page 382 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page382"></a>[382]</span> punish and to reward, very often serve,
+  and are included in the order of causes that make action exist. Thus it
+  comes about that not only pains and effort but also prayers are
+  effective, God having had even these prayers in mind before he ordered
+  things, and having made due allowance for them. That is why the precept
+  <i>Ora et labora</i> (Pray and work) remains intact. Thus not only those
+  who (under the empty pretext of the necessity of events) maintain that
+  one can spare oneself the pains demanded by affairs, but also those who
+  argue against prayers, fall into that which the ancients even in their
+  time called 'the Lazy Sophism'. So the predetermination of events by
+  their causes is precisely what contributes to morality instead of
+  destroying it, and the causes incline the will without necessitating it.
+  For this reason the determination we are concerned with is not a
+  necessitation. It is certain (to him who knows all) that the effect will
+  follow this inclination; but this effect does not follow thence by a
+  consequence which is necessary, that is, whose contrary implies
+  contradiction; and it is also by such an inward inclination that the will
+  is determined, without the presence of necessity. Suppose that one has
+  the greatest possible passion (for example, a great thirst), you will
+  admit that the soul can find some reason for resisting it, even if it
+  were only that of displaying its power. Thus though one may never have
+  complete indifference of equipoise, and there is always a predominance of
+  inclination for the course adopted, that predominance does not render
+  absolutely necessary the resolution taken.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">objection iv</font></p>
+
+  <p>Whoever can prevent the sin of others and does not so, but rather
+  contributes to it, although he be fully apprised of it, is accessary
+  thereto.</p>
+
+  <p>God can prevent the sin of intelligent creatures; but he does not so,
+  and he rather contributes to it by his co-operation and by the
+  opportunities he causes, although he is fully cognizant of it.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">answer</font></p>
+
+  <p>I deny the major of this syllogism. It may be that one can prevent the
+  sin, but that one ought not to do so, because one could not do so without
+  committing a sin oneself, or (when God is concerned) without acting
+  unreasonably. I have given instances of <!-- Page 383 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page383"></a>[383]</span> that, and have applied
+  them to God himself. It may be also that one contributes to the evil, and
+  that one even opens the way to it sometimes, in doing things one is bound
+  to do. And when one does one's duty, or (speaking of God) when, after
+  full consideration, one does that which reason demands, one is not
+  responsible for events, even when one foresees them. One does not will
+  these evils; but one is willing to permit them for a greater good, which
+  one cannot in reason help preferring to other considerations. This is a
+  <i>consequent</i> will, resulting from acts of <i>antecedent</i> will, in
+  which one wills the good. I know that some persons, in speaking of the
+  antecedent and consequent will of God, have meant by the antecedent that
+  which wills that all men be saved, and by the consequent that which
+  wills, in consequence of persistent sin, that there be some damned,
+  damnation being a result of sin. But these are only examples of a more
+  general notion, and one may say with the same reason, that God wills by
+  his antecedent will that men sin not, and that by his consequent or final
+  and decretory will (which is always followed by its effect) he wills to
+  permit that they sin, this permission being a result of superior reasons.
+  One has indeed justification for saying, in general, that the antecedent
+  will of God tends towards the production of good and the prevention of
+  evil, each taken in itself, and as it were detached (<i>particulariter et
+  secundum quid</i>: Thom., I, qu. 19, art. 6) according to the measure of
+  the degree of each good or of each evil. Likewise one may say that the
+  consequent, or final and total, divine will tends towards the production
+  of as many goods as can be put together, whose combination thereby
+  becomes determined, and involves also the permission of some evils and
+  the exclusion of some goods, as the best possible plan of the universe
+  demands. Arminius, in his <i>Antiperkinsus,</i> explained very well that
+  the will of God can be called consequent not only in relation to the
+  action of the creature considered beforehand in the divine understanding,
+  but also in relation to other anterior acts of divine will. But it is
+  enough to consider the passage cited from Thomas Aquinas, and that from
+  Scotus (I, dist. 46, qu. 11), to see that they make this distinction as I
+  have made it here. Nevertheless if anyone will not suffer this use of the
+  terms, let him put 'previous' in place of 'antecedent' will, and 'final'
+  or 'decretory' in place of 'consequent' will. For I do not wish to
+  wrangle about words.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 384 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page384"></a>[384]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">objection v</font></p>
+
+  <p>Whoever produces all that is real in a thing is its cause.</p>
+
+  <p>God produces all that is real in sin.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore God is the cause of sin.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">answer</font></p>
+
+  <p>I might content myself with denying the major or the minor, because
+  the term 'real' admits of interpretations capable of rendering these
+  propositions false. But in order to give a better explanation I will make
+  a distinction. 'Real' either signifies that which is positive only, or
+  else it includes also privative beings: in the first case, I deny the
+  major and I admit the minor; in the second case, I do the opposite. I
+  might have confined myself to that; but I was willing to go further, in
+  order to account for this distinction. I have therefore been well pleased
+  to point out that every purely positive or absolute reality is a
+  perfection, and that every imperfection comes from limitation, that is,
+  from the privative: for to limit is to withhold extension, or the more
+  beyond. Now God is the cause of all perfections, and consequently of all
+  realities, when they are regarded as purely positive. But limitations or
+  privations result from the original imperfection of creatures which
+  restricts their receptivity. It is as with a laden boat, which the river
+  carries along more slowly or less slowly in proportion to the weight that
+  it bears: thus the speed comes from the river, but the retardation which
+  restricts this speed comes from the load. Also I have shown in the
+  present work how the creature, in causing sin, is a deficient cause; how
+  errors and evil inclinations spring from privation; and how privation is
+  efficacious accidentally. And I have justified the opinion of St.
+  Augustine (lib. I, <i>Ad. Simpl.</i>, qu. 2) who explains (for example)
+  how God hardens the soul, not in giving it something evil, but because
+  the effect of the good he imprints is restricted by the resistance of the
+  soul, and by the circumstances contributing to this resistance, so that
+  he does not give it all the good that would overcome its evil. 'Nec
+  <i>(inquit)</i> ab illo erogatur aliquid quo homo fit deterior, sed
+  tantum quo fit melior non erogatur.' But if God had willed to do more
+  here he must needs have produced either fresh natures in his creatures or
+  fresh miracles to change their natures, and this the best plan did not
+  allow. It is just as if the current of the river must needs be more rapid
+  than its slope permits or the boats themselves <!-- Page 385 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page385"></a>[385]</span> be less laden, if they
+  had to be impelled at a greater speed. So the limitation or original
+  imperfection of creatures brings it about that even the best plan of the
+  universe cannot admit more good, and cannot be exempted from certain
+  evils, these, however, being only of such a kind as may tend towards a
+  greater good. There are some disorders in the parts which wonderfully
+  enhance the beauty of the whole, just as certain dissonances,
+  appropriately used, render harmony more beautiful. But that depends upon
+  the answer which I have already given to the first objection.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">objection vi</font></p>
+
+  <p>Whoever punishes those who have done as well as it was in their power
+  to do is unjust.</p>
+
+  <p>God does so.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">answer</font></p>
+
+  <p>I deny the minor of this argument. And I believe that God always gives
+  sufficient aid and grace to those who have good will, that is to say, who
+  do not reject this grace by a fresh sin. Thus I do not admit the
+  damnation of children dying unbaptized or outside the Church, or the
+  damnation of adult persons who have acted according to the light that God
+  has given them. And I believe that, <i>if anyone has followed the light
+  he had</i>, he will undoubtedly receive thereof in greater measure as he
+  has need, even as the late Herr Hulsemann, who was celebrated as a
+  profound theologian at Leipzig, has somewhere observed; and if such a man
+  had failed to receive light during his life, he would receive it at least
+  in the hour of death.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">objection vii</font></p>
+
+  <p>Whoever gives only to some, and not to all, the means of producing
+  effectively in them good will and final saving faith has not enough
+  goodness.</p>
+
+  <p>God does so.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">answer</font></p>
+
+  <p>I deny the major. It is true that God could overcome the greatest
+  resistance of the human heart, and indeed he sometimes <!-- Page 386
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page386"></a>[386]</span> does so,
+  whether by an inward grace or by the outward circumstances that can
+  greatly influence souls; but he does not always do so. Whence comes this
+  distinction, someone will say, and wherefore does his goodness appear to
+  be restricted? The truth is that it would not have been in order always
+  to act in an extraordinary way and to derange the connexion of things, as
+  I have observed already in answering the first objection. The reasons for
+  this connexion, whereby the one is placed in more favourable
+  circumstances than the other, are hidden in the depths of God's wisdom:
+  they depend upon the universal harmony. The best plan of the universe,
+  which God could not fail to choose, required this. One concludes thus
+  from the event itself; since God made the universe, it was not possible
+  to do better. Such management, far from being contrary to goodness, has
+  rather been prompted by supreme goodness itself. This objection with its
+  solution might have been inferred from what was said with regard to the
+  first objection; but it seemed advisable to touch upon it separately.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">objection viii</font></p>
+
+  <p>Whoever cannot fail to choose the best is not free.</p>
+
+  <p>God cannot fail to choose the best.</p>
+
+  <p>Therefore God is not free.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><font class="sc">answer</font></p>
+
+  <p>I deny the major of this argument. Rather is it true freedom, and the
+  most perfect, to be able to make the best use of one's free will, and
+  always to exercise this power, without being turned aside either by
+  outward force or by inward passions, whereof the one enslaves our bodies
+  and the other our souls. There is nothing less servile and more befitting
+  the highest degree of freedom than to be always led towards the good, and
+  always by one's own inclination, without any constraint and without any
+  displeasure. And to object that God therefore had need of external things
+  is only a sophism. He creates them freely: but when he had set before him
+  an end, that of exercising his goodness, his wisdom determined him to
+  choose the means most appropriate for obtaining this end. To call that a
+  <i>need</i> is to take the term in a sense not usual, which clears it of
+  all imperfection, somewhat as one does when speaking of the wrath of
+  God.</p>
+
+  <p>Seneca says somewhere, that God commanded only once, but <!-- Page 387
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page387"></a>[387]</span> that he obeys
+  always, because he obeys the laws that he willed to ordain for himself:
+  <i>semel jussit, semper paret</i>. But he had better have said, that God
+  always commands and that he is always obeyed: for in willing he always
+  follows the tendency of his own nature, and all other things always
+  follow his will. And as this will is always the same one cannot say that
+  he obeys that will only which he formerly had. Nevertheless, although his
+  will is always indefectible and always tends towards the best, the evil
+  or the lesser good which he rejects will still be possible in itself.
+  Otherwise the necessity of good would be geometrical (so to speak) or
+  metaphysical, and altogether absolute; the contingency of things would be
+  destroyed, and there would be no choice. But necessity of this kind,
+  which does not destroy the possibility of the contrary, has the name by
+  analogy only: it becomes effective not through the mere essence of
+  things, but through that which is outside them and above them, that is,
+  through the will of God. This necessity is called moral, because for the
+  wise what is necessary and what is owing are equivalent things; and when
+  it is always followed by its effect, as it indeed is in the perfectly
+  wise, that is, in God, one can say that it is a happy necessity. The more
+  nearly creatures approach this, the closer do they come to perfect
+  felicity. Moreover, necessity of this kind is not the necessity one
+  endeavours to avoid, and which destroys morality, reward and
+  commendation. For that which it brings to pass does not happen whatever
+  one may do and whatever one may will, but because one desires it. A will
+  to which it is natural to choose well deserves most to be commended; and
+  it carries with it its own reward, which is supreme happiness. And as
+  this constitution of the divine nature gives an entire satisfaction to
+  him who possesses it, it is also the best and the most desirable from the
+  point of view of the creatures who are all dependent upon God. If the
+  will of God had not as its rule the principle of the best, it would tend
+  towards evil, which would be worst of all; or else it would be
+  indifferent somehow to good and to evil, and guided by chance. But a will
+  that would always drift along at random would scarcely be any better for
+  the government of the universe than the fortuitous concourse of
+  corpuscles, without the existence of divinity. And even though God should
+  abandon himself to chance only in some cases, and in a certain way (as he
+  would if he did not always tend entirely towards the best, and if he were
+  capable of preferring a lesser good to a greater good, that <!-- Page 388
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page388"></a>[388]</span> is, an evil
+  to a good, since that which prevents a greater good is an evil) he would
+  be no less imperfect than the object of his choice. Then he would not
+  deserve absolute trust; he would act without reason in such a case, and
+  the government of the universe would be like certain games equally
+  divided between reason and luck. This all proves that this objection
+  which is made against the choice of the best perverts the notions of free
+  and necessary, and represents the best to us actually as evil: but that
+  is either malicious or absurd.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 389 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page389"></a>[389]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>EXCURSUS ON THEODICY</h3>
+
+<h3><a href="#sect392">§ 392</a></h3>
+
+<h3>published by the author in Mémoires de Trévoux</h3>
+
+<h3>July 1712</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+  <p class="author"><i>February</i> 1712</p>
+
+  <p>I said in my essays, <a href="#sect392">§ 392</a>, that I wished to
+  see the demonstrations mentioned by M. Bayle and contained in the sixth
+  letter printed at Trévoux in 1703. Father des Bosses has shown me this
+  letter, in which the writer essays to demonstrate by the geometrical
+  method that God is the sole true cause of all that is real. My perusal of
+  it has confirmed me in the opinion which I indicated in the same passage,
+  namely, that this proposition can be true in a very good sense, God being
+  the only cause of pure and absolute realities, or perfections; but when
+  one includes limitations or privations under the name of realities one
+  can say that second causes co-operate in the production of what is
+  limited, and that otherwise God would be the cause of sin, and even its
+  sole cause. And I am somewhat inclined to think that the gifted author of
+  the letter does not greatly differ in opinion from me, although he seems
+  to include all modalities among the realities of which he declares God to
+  be the sole cause. For in actual fact I think he will not admit that God
+  is the cause and the author of sin. Indeed, he explains himself in a
+  manner which seems to overthrow his thesis and to grant real action to
+  creatures. For in the proof of the eighth corollary of his second
+  proposition these words occur: 'The natural motion of the soul, although
+  determinate in itself, is indeterminate in respect of its objects. For it
+  is love of good in <!-- Page 390 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page390"></a>[390]</span> general. It is through the ideas of good
+  appearing in individual objects that this motion becomes individual and
+  determinate in relation to those objects. And thus as the mind has the
+  power of varying its own ideas it can also change the determinations of
+  its love. And for that purpose it is not necessary that it overcome the
+  power of God or oppose his action. These determinations of motion towards
+  individual objects are not invincible. It is this noninvincibility which
+  causes the mind to be free and capable of changing them; but after all
+  the mind makes these changes only through the motion which God gives to
+  it and conserves for it.' In my own style I would have said that the
+  perfection which is in the action of the creature comes from God, but
+  that the limitations to be found there are a consequence of the original
+  limitation and the preceding limitations that occurred in the creature.
+  Further, this is so not only in minds but also in all other substances,
+  which thereby are causes co-operating in the change which comes to pass
+  in themselves; for this determination of which the author speaks is
+  nothing but a limitation.</p>
+
+  <p>Now if after that one reviews all the demonstrations or corollaries of
+  the letter, one will be able to admit or reject the majority of its
+  assertions, in accordance with the interpretation one may make of them.
+  If by 'reality' one means only perfections or positive realities, God is
+  the only true cause; but if that which involves limitations is included
+  under the realities, one will deny a considerable portion of the theses,
+  and the author himself will have shown us the example. It is in order to
+  render the matter more comprehensible that I used in the Essays the
+  example of a laden boat, which, the more laden it is, is the more slowly
+  carried along by the stream. There one sees clearly that the stream is
+  the cause of what is positive in this motion, of the perfection, the
+  force, the speed of the boat, but that the load is the cause of the
+  restriction of this force, and that it brings about the retardation.</p>
+
+  <p>It is praiseworthy in anyone to attempt to apply the geometrical
+  method to metaphysical matters. But it must be admitted that hitherto
+  success has seldom been attained: and M. Descartes himself, with all that
+  very great skill which one cannot deny in him, never perhaps had less
+  success than when he essayed to do this in one of his answers to
+  objections. For in mathematics it is easier to succeed, because numbers,
+  figures and calculations make good the defects concealed in words; but in
+  metaphysics, where <!-- Page 391 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page391"></a>[391]</span> one is deprived of this aid (at least in
+  ordinary argumentation), the strictness employed in the form of the
+  argument and in the exact definitions of the terms must needs supply this
+  lack. But in neither argument nor definition is that strictness here to
+  be seen.</p>
+
+  <p>The author of the letter, who undoubtedly displays much ardour and
+  penetration, sometimes goes a little too far, as when he claims to prove
+  that there is as much reality and force in rest as in motion, according
+  to the fifth corollary of the second proposition. He asserts that the
+  will of God is no less positive in rest than in motion, and that it is
+  not less invincible. Be it so, but does it follow that there is as much
+  reality and force in each of the two? I do not see this conclusion, and
+  with the same argument one would prove that there is as much force in a
+  strong motion as in a weak motion. God in willing rest wills that the
+  body be at the place A, where it was immediately before, and for that it
+  suffices that there be no reason to prompt God to the change. But when
+  God wills that afterwards the body be at the place B, there must needs be
+  a new reason, of such a kind as to determine God to will that it be in B
+  and not in C or in any other place, and that it be there more or less
+  promptly. It is upon these reasons, the volitions of God, that we must
+  assess the force and the reality existent in things. The author speaks
+  much of the will of God, but he does not speak much in this letter of the
+  reasons which prompt God to will, and upon which all depends. And these
+  reasons are taken from the objects.</p>
+
+  <p>I observe first, indeed, with regard to the second corollary of the
+  first proposition, that it is very true, but that it is not very well
+  proven. The writer affirms that if God only ceased to will the existence
+  of a being, that being would no longer exist; and here is the proof given
+  word for word:</p>
+
+  <p>'Demonstration. That which exists only by the will of God no longer
+  exists once that will has ceased.' (But that is what must be proved. The
+  writer endeavours to prove it by adding:) 'Remove the cause, you remove
+  the effect.' (This maxim ought to have been placed among the axioms which
+  are stated at the beginning. But unhappily this axiom may be reckoned
+  among those rules of philosophy which are subject to many exceptions.)
+  'Now by the preceding proposition and by its first corollary no being
+  exists save by the will of God. Therefore, etc.' There is ambiguity in
+  this expression, that nothing exists save by the will of God. If one <!--
+  Page 392 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page392"></a>[392]</span>
+  means that things begin to exist only through this will, one is justified
+  in referring to the preceding propositions; but if one means that the
+  existence of things is at all times a consequence of the will of God, one
+  assumes more or less what is in question. Therefore it was necessary to
+  prove first that the existence of things depends upon the will of God,
+  and that it is not only a mere effect of that will, but a dependence, in
+  proportion to the perfection which things contain; and once that is
+  assumed, they will depend upon God's will no less afterwards than at the
+  beginning. That is the way I have taken the matter in my Essays.</p>
+
+  <p>Nevertheless I recognize that the letter upon which I have just made
+  observations is admirable and well deserving of perusal, and that it
+  contains noble and true sentiments, provided it be taken in the sense I
+  have just indicated. And arguments in this form may serve as an
+  introduction to meditations somewhat more advanced.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 393 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page393"></a>[393]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK
+THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED
+IN ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM,
+NECESSITY AND CHANCE'</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+  <p>1. As the question of Necessity and Freedom, with other questions
+  depending thereon, was at one time debated between the famous Mr. Hobbes
+  and Dr. John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, in books published by each of
+  them, I have deemed it appropriate to give a clear account of them
+  (although I have already mentioned them more than once); and this all the
+  more since these writings of Mr. Hobbes have hitherto only appeared in
+  English, and since the works of this author usually contain something
+  good and ingenious. The Bishop of Derry and Mr. Hobbes, having met in
+  Paris at the house of the Marquis, afterwards Duke, of Newcastle in the
+  year 1646, entered into a discussion on this subject. The dispute was
+  conducted with extreme restraint; but the bishop shortly afterwards sent
+  a note to My Lord Newcastle, desiring him to induce Mr. Hobbes to answer
+  it. He answered; but at the same time he expressed a wish that his answer
+  should not be published, because he believed it possible for
+  ill-instructed persons to abuse dogmas such as his, however true they
+  might be. It so happened, however, that Mr. Hobbes himself passed it to a
+  French friend, and allowed a young Englishman to translate it into French
+  for the benefit of this friend. This young man kept a copy of the English
+  original, and published it later in England without the author's
+  knowledge. Thus the bishop was obliged to reply to it, <!-- Page 394
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page394"></a>[394]</span> and Mr.
+  Hobbes to make a rejoinder, and to publish all the pieces together in a
+  book of 348 pages printed in London in the year 1656, in 4to., entitled,
+  <i>Questions concerning Freedom, Necessity and Chance, elucidated and
+  discussed between Doctor Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, and Thomas Hobbes of
+  Malmesbury</i>. There is a later edition, of the year 1684, in a work
+  entitled <i>Hobbes's Tripos</i>, where are to be found his book on human
+  nature, his treatise on the body politic and his treatise on freedom and
+  necessity; but the latter does not contain the bishop's reply, nor the
+  author's rejoinder. Mr. Hobbes argues on this subject with his usual wit
+  and subtlety; but it is a pity that in both the one and the other we
+  stumble upon petty tricks, such as arise in excitement over the game. The
+  bishop speaks with much vehemence and behaves somewhat arrogantly. Mr.
+  Hobbes for his part is not disposed to spare the other, and manifests
+  rather too much scorn for theology, and for the terminology of the
+  Schoolmen, which is apparently favoured by the bishop.</p>
+
+  <p>2. One must confess that there is something strange and indefensible
+  in the opinions of Mr. Hobbes. He maintains that doctrines touching the
+  divinity depend entirely upon the determination of the sovereign, and
+  that God is no more the cause of the good than of the bad actions of
+  creatures. He maintains that all that which God does is just, because
+  there is none above him with power to punish and constrain him. Yet he
+  speaks sometimes as if what is said about God were only compliments, that
+  is to say expressions proper for paying him honour, but not for knowing
+  him. He testifies also that it seems to him that the pains of the wicked
+  must end in their destruction: this opinion closely approaches that of
+  the Socinians, but it seems that Mr. Hobbes goes much further. His
+  philosophy, which asserts that bodies alone are substances, hardly
+  appears favourable to the providence of God and the immortality of the
+  soul. On other subjects nevertheless he says very reasonable things. He
+  shows clearly that nothing comes about by chance, or rather that chance
+  only signifies the ignorance of causes that produce the effect, and that
+  for each effect there must be a concurrence of all the sufficient
+  conditions anterior to the event, not one of which, manifestly, can be
+  lacking when the event is to follow, because they are conditions: the
+  event, moreover, does not fail to follow when these conditions exist all
+  together, because they are sufficient conditions. All which amounts to
+  the same as I have said so many times, that everything comes to pass <!--
+  Page 395 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page395"></a>[395]</span> as a
+  result of determining reasons, the knowledge whereof, if we had it, would
+  make us know at the same time why the thing has happened and why it did
+  not go otherwise.</p>
+
+  <p>3. But this author's humour, which prompts him to paradoxes and makes
+  him seek to contradict others, has made him draw out exaggerated and
+  odious conclusions and expressions, as if everything happened through an
+  absolute necessity. The Bishop of Derry, on the other hand, has aptly
+  observed in the answer to article 35, page 327, that there results only a
+  hypothetical necessity, such as we all grant to events in relation to the
+  foreknowledge of God, while Mr. Hobbes maintains that even divine
+  foreknowledge alone would be sufficient to establish an absolute
+  necessity of events. This was also the opinion of Wyclif, and even of
+  Luther, when he wrote <i>De Servo Arbitrio</i>; or at least they spoke
+  so. But it is sufficiently acknowledged to-day that this kind of
+  necessity which is termed hypothetical, and springs from foreknowledge or
+  from other anterior reasons, has nothing in it to arouse one's alarm:
+  whereas it would be quite otherwise if the thing were necessary of
+  itself, in such a way that the contrary implied contradiction. Mr. Hobbes
+  refuses to listen to anything about a moral necessity either, on the
+  ground that everything really happens through physical causes. But one is
+  nevertheless justified in making a great difference between the necessity
+  which constrains the wise to do good, and which is termed moral, existing
+  even in relation to God, and that blind necessity whereby according to
+  Epicurus, Strato, Spinoza, and perhaps Mr. Hobbes, things exist without
+  intelligence and without choice, and consequently without God. Indeed,
+  there would according to them be no need of God, since in consequence of
+  this necessity all would have existence through its own essence, just as
+  necessarily as two and three make five. And this necessity is absolute,
+  because everything it carries with it must happen, whatever one may do;
+  whereas what happens by a hypothetical necessity happens as a result of
+  the supposition that this or that has been foreseen or resolved, or done
+  beforehand; and moral necessity contains an obligation imposed by reason,
+  which is always followed by its effect in the wise. This kind of
+  necessity is happy and desirable, when one is prompted by good reasons to
+  act as one does; but necessity blind and absolute would subvert piety and
+  morality.</p>
+
+  <p>4. There is more reason in Mr. Hobbes's discourse when he <!-- Page
+  396 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page396"></a>[396]</span> admits
+  that our actions are in our power, so that we do that which we will when
+  we have the power to do it, and when there is no hindrance. He asserts
+  notwithstanding that our volitions themselves are not so within our power
+  that we can give ourselves, without difficulty and according to our good
+  pleasure, inclinations and wills which we might desire. The bishop does
+  not appear to have taken notice of this reflexion, which Mr. Hobbes also
+  does not develop enough. The truth is that we have some power also over
+  our volitions, but obliquely, and not absolutely and indifferently. This
+  has been explained in some passages of this work. Finally Mr. Hobbes
+  shows, like others before him, that the certainty of events, and
+  necessity itself, if there were any in the way our actions depend upon
+  causes, would not prevent us from employing deliberations, exhortations,
+  blame and praise, punishments and rewards: for these are of service and
+  prompt men to produce actions or to refrain from them. Thus, if human
+  actions were necessary, they would be so through these means. But the
+  truth is, that since these actions are not necessary absolutely whatever
+  one may do, these means contribute only to render the actions determinate
+  and certain, as they are indeed; for their nature shows that they are not
+  subject to an absolute necessity. He gives also a good enough notion of
+  <i>freedom</i>, in so far as it is taken in a general sense, common to
+  intelligent and non-intelligent substances: he states that a thing is
+  deemed free when the power which it has is not impeded by an external
+  thing. Thus the water that is dammed by a dyke has the power to spread,
+  but not the freedom. On the other hand, it has not the power to rise
+  above the dyke, although nothing would prevent it then from spreading,
+  and although nothing from outside prevents it from rising so high. To
+  that end it would be necessary that the water itself should come from a
+  higher point or that the water-level should be raised by an increased
+  flow. Thus a prisoner lacks the freedom, while a sick man lacks the
+  power, to go his way.</p>
+
+  <p>5. There is in Mr. Hobbes's preface an abstract of the disputed
+  points, which I will give here, adding some expression of opinion. <i>On
+  one side</i> (he says) the assertion is made, (1) 'that it is not in the
+  present power of man to choose for himself the will that he should have'.
+  That is <i>well</i> said, especially in relation to present will: men
+  choose the objects through will, but they do not choose their present
+  wills, which spring from reasons and dispositions. It is <!-- Page 397
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page397"></a>[397]</span> true,
+  however, that one can seek new reasons for oneself, and with time give
+  oneself new dispositions; and by this means one can also obtain for
+  oneself a will which one had not and could not have given oneself
+  forthwith. It is (to use the comparison Mr. Hobbes himself uses) as with
+  hunger or with thirst. At the present it does not rest with my will to be
+  hungry or not; but it rests with my will to eat or not to eat; yet, for
+  the time to come, it rests with me to be hungry, or to prevent myself
+  from being so at such and such an hour of day, by eating beforehand. In
+  this way it is possible often to avoid an evil will. Even though Mr.
+  Hobbes states in his reply (No. 14, p. 138) that it is the manner of laws
+  to say, you must do or you must not do this, but that there is no law
+  saying, you must will, or you must not will it, yet it is clear that he
+  is mistaken in regard to the Law of God, which says <i>non
+  concupisces</i>, thou shalt not covet; it is true that this prohibition
+  does not concern the first motions, which are involuntary. It is asserted
+  (2) 'That hazard' (<i>chance</i> in English, <i>casus</i> in Latin)
+  'produces nothing', that is, that nothing is produced without cause or
+  reason. Very <i>right</i>, I admit it, if one thereby intends a real
+  hazard. For fortune and hazard are only appearances, which spring from
+  ignorance of causes or from disregard of them. (3) 'That all events have
+  their necessary causes.' <i>Wrong</i>: they have their determining
+  causes, whereby one can account for them; but these are not necessary
+  causes. The contrary might have happened, without implying contradiction.
+  (4) 'That the will of God makes the necessity of all things.'
+  <i>Wrong</i>: the will of God produces only contingent things, which
+  could have gone differently, since time, space and matter are indifferent
+  with regard to all kinds of shape and movement.</p>
+
+  <p>6. <i>On the other side</i> (according to Mr. Hobbes) it is asserted,
+  (1) 'That man is free' (absolutely) not only 'to choose what he wills to
+  do, but also to choose what he wills to will.' That is <i>ill</i> said:
+  one is not absolute master of one's will, to change it forthwith, without
+  making use of some means or skill for that purpose. (2) 'When man wills a
+  good action, the will of God co-operates with his, otherwise not.' That
+  is <i>well</i> said, provided one means that God does not will evil
+  actions, although he wills to permit them, to prevent the occurrence of
+  something which would be worse than these sins. (3) 'That the will can
+  choose whether it wills to will or not.' <i>Wrong</i>, with regard to
+  present volition. (4) 'That things happen without necessity by chance.'
+  <i>Wrong</i>: what <!-- Page 398 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page398"></a>[398]</span> happens without necessity does not
+  because of that happen by chance, that is to say, without causes and
+  reasons. (5) 'Notwithstanding that God may foresee that an event will
+  happen, it is not necessary that it happen, since God foresees things,
+  not as futurities and as in their causes, but as present.' That begins
+  <i>well</i>, and finishes <i>ill</i>. One is justified in admitting the
+  necessity of the consequence, but one has no reason to resort to the
+  question how the future is present to God: for the necessity of the
+  consequence does not prevent the event or consequent from being
+  contingent in itself.</p>
+
+  <p>7. Our author thinks that since the doctrine revived by Arminius had
+  been favoured in England by Archbishop Laud and by the Court, and
+  important ecclesiastical promotions had been only for those of that
+  party, this contributed to the revolt which caused the bishop and him to
+  meet in their exile in Paris at the house of Lord Newcastle, and to enter
+  into a discussion. I would not approve all the measures of Archbishop
+  Laud, who had merit and perhaps also good will, but who appears to have
+  goaded the Presbyterians excessively. Nevertheless one may say that the
+  revolutions, as much in the Low Countries as in Great Britain, in part
+  arose from the extreme intolerance of the strict party. One may say also
+  that the defenders of the absolute decree were at least as strict as the
+  others, having oppressed their opponents in Holland with the authority of
+  Prince Maurice and having fomented the revolts in England against King
+  Charles I. But these are the faults of men, and not of dogmas. Their
+  opponents do not spare them either, witness the severity used in Saxony
+  against Nicolas Krell and the proceedings of the Jesuits against the
+  Bishop of Ypres's party.</p>
+
+  <p>8. Mr. Hobbes observes, after Aristotle, that there are two sources
+  for proofs: reason and authority. As for reason, he says that he admits
+  the reasons derived from the attributes of God, which he calls
+  argumentative, and the notions whereof are conceivable; but he maintains
+  that there are others wherein one conceives nothing, and which are only
+  expressions by which we aspire to honour God. But I do not see how one
+  can honour God by expressions that have no meaning. It may be that with
+  Mr. Hobbes, as with Spinoza, wisdom, goodness, justice are only fictions
+  in relation to God and the universe, since the prime cause, according to
+  them, acts through the necessity of its power, and <!-- Page 399 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page399"></a>[399]</span> not by the choice of
+  its wisdom. That is an opinion whose falsity I have sufficiently proved.
+  It appears that Mr. Hobbes did not wish to declare himself enough, for
+  fear of causing offence to people; on which point he is to be commended.
+  It was also on that account, as he says himself, that he had desired that
+  what had passed between the bishop and him in Paris should not be
+  published. He adds that it is not good to say that an action which God
+  does not will happens, since that is to say in effect that God is lacking
+  in power. But he adds also at the same time that it is not good either to
+  say the opposite, and to attribute to God that he wills the evil; because
+  that is not seemly, and would appear to accuse God of lack of goodness.
+  He believes, therefore, that in these matters telling the truth is not
+  advisable. He would be right if the truth were in the paradoxical
+  opinions that he maintains. For indeed it appears that according to the
+  opinion of this writer God has no goodness, or rather that that which he
+  calls God is nothing but the blind nature of the mass of material things,
+  which acts according to mathematical laws, following an absolute
+  necessity, as the atoms do in the system of Epicurus. If God were as the
+  great are sometimes here on earth, it would not be fitting to utter all
+  the truths concerning him. But God is not as a man, whose designs and
+  actions often must be concealed; rather it is always permissible and
+  reasonable to publish the counsels and the actions of God, because they
+  are always glorious and worthy of praise. Thus it is always right to
+  utter truths concerning the divinity; one need not anyhow refrain from
+  fear of giving offence. And I have explained, so it seems to me, in a way
+  which satisfies reason, and does not wound piety, how it is to be
+  understood that God's will takes effect, and concurs with sin, without
+  compromising his wisdom and his goodness.</p>
+
+  <p>9. As to the authorities derived from Holy Scripture, Mr. Hobbes
+  divides them into three kinds; some, he says, are for me, the second kind
+  are neutral, and the third seem to be for my opponent. The passages which
+  he thinks favourable to his opinion are those which ascribe to God the
+  cause of our will. Thus Gen. xlv. 5, where Joseph says to his brethren,
+  'Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me hither: for
+  God did send me before you to preserve life'; and verse 8, 'it was not
+  you that sent me hither, but God.' And God said (Exod. vii. 3), 'I will
+  harden Pharaoh's heart.' And Moses said (Deut. ii. 30), <!-- Page 400
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page400"></a>[400]</span> 'But Sihon
+  King of Heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the Lord thy God
+  hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver
+  him into thy hand.' And David said of Shimei (2 Sam. xvi. 10), 'Let him
+  curse, because the Lord hath said unto him: Curse David. Who shall then
+  say, wherefore hast thou done so?' And (1 Kings xii. 15), 'The King
+  [Rehoboam] hearkened not unto the people; for the cause was from the
+  Lord.' Job xii. 16: 'The deceived and the deceiver are his.' v. 17: 'He
+  maketh the judges fools'; v. 24: 'He taketh away the heart of the chief
+  of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness';
+  v. 25: 'He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.' God said of the
+  King of Assyria (Isa. x. 6), 'Against the people will I give him a
+  charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down
+  like the mire of the streets.' And Jeremiah said (Jer. x. 23), 'O Lord, I
+  know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh
+  to direct his steps.' And God said (Ezek. iii. 20), 'When a righteous man
+  doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a
+  stumbling-block before him, he shall die.' And the Saviour said (John vi.
+  44), 'No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw
+  him.' And St. Peter (Acts ii. 23), 'Jesus having been delivered by the
+  determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken.' And Acts
+  iv. 27, 28, 'Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the
+  people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand
+  and thy counsel determined before to be done.' And St. Paul (Rom. ix.
+  16), 'It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God
+  that showeth mercy.' And v. 18: 'Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will
+  have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth'; v. 19: 'Thou wilt say then
+  unto me, why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?'; v.
+  20: 'Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the
+  thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?' And
+  1 Cor. iv. 7: 'For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast
+  thou that thou didst not receive?' And 1 Cor. xii. 6: 'There are
+  diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in
+  all.' And Eph. ii. 10: 'We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
+  unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in
+  them.' And Phil. ii. 13: 'It is God which worketh in you both to will and
+  to do of his good pleasure.' One may add to these passages all those
+  which <!-- Page 401 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page401"></a>[401]</span> make God the author of all grace and of
+  all good inclinations, and all those which say that we are as dead in
+  sin.</p>
+
+  <p>10. Here now are the neutral passages, according to Mr. Hobbes. These
+  are those where Holy Scripture says that man has the choice to act if he
+  wills, or not to act if he wills not. For example Deut. xxx. 19: 'I call
+  heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before
+  you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that
+  both thou and thy seed may live.' And Joshua xxiv. 15: 'Choose you this
+  day whom ye will serve.' And God said to Gad the prophet (2 Sam. xxiv.
+  12), 'Go and say unto David: Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three
+  things; choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.' And Isa.
+  vii. 16: 'Until the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the
+  good.' Finally the passages which Mr. Hobbes acknowledges to be
+  apparently contrary to his opinion are all those where it is indicated
+  that the will of man is not in conformity with that of God. Thus Isa. v.
+  4: 'What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done
+  in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes,
+  brought it forth wild grapes?' And Jer. xix. 5: 'They have built also the
+  high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings
+  unto Baal; which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my
+  mind.' And Hos. xiii. 9: 'O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in
+  me is thine help.' And I Tim. ii. 4: 'God will have all men to be saved,
+  and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.' He avows that he could
+  quote very many other passages, such as those which indicate that God
+  willeth not iniquity, that he willeth the salvation of the sinner, and
+  generally all those which declare that God commands good and forbids
+  evil.</p>
+
+  <p>11. Mr. Hobbes makes answer to these passages that God does not always
+  will that which he commands, as for example when he commanded Abraham to
+  sacrifice his son, and that God's revealed will is not always his full
+  will or his decree, as when he revealed to Jonah that Nineveh would
+  perish in forty days. He adds also, that when it is said that God wills
+  the salvation of all, that means simply that God commands that all do
+  that which is necessary for salvation; when, moreover, the Scripture says
+  that God wills not sin, that means that he wills to punish it. And as for
+  the rest, Mr. Hobbes ascribes it to the forms of expression used among
+  men. But one will answer him that it would be to God's discredit that
+  <!-- Page 402 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page402"></a>[402]</span>
+  his revealed will should be opposed to his real will: that what he bade
+  Jonah say to the Ninevites was rather a threat than a prediction, and
+  that thus the condition of impenitence was implied therein; moreover the
+  Ninevites took it in this sense. One will say also, that it is quite true
+  that God in commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son willed obedience, but
+  did not will action, which he prevented after having obtained obedience;
+  for that was not an action deserving in itself to be willed. And it is
+  not the same in the case of actions where he exerts his will positively,
+  and which are in fact worthy to be the object of his will. Of such are
+  piety, charity and every virtuous action that God commands; of such is
+  omission of sin, a thing more alien to divine perfection than any other.
+  It is therefore incomparably better to explain the will of God as I have
+  explained it in this work. Thus I shall say that God, by virtue of his
+  supreme goodness, has in the beginning a serious inclination to produce,
+  or to see and cause to be produced, all good and every laudable action,
+  and to prevent, or to see and cause to fail, all evil and every bad
+  action. But he is determined by this same goodness, united to an infinite
+  wisdom, and by the very concourse of all the previous and particular
+  inclinations towards each good, and towards the preventing of each evil,
+  to produce the best possible design of things. This is his final and
+  decretory will. And this design of the best being of such a nature that
+  the good must be enhanced therein, as light is enhanced by shade, by some
+  evil which is incomparably less than this good, God could not have
+  excluded this evil, nor introduced certain goods that were excluded from
+  this plan, without wronging his supreme perfection. So for that reason
+  one must say that he permitted the sins of others, because otherwise he
+  would have himself performed an action worse than all the sin of
+  creatures.</p>
+
+  <p>12. I find that the Bishop of Derry is at least justified in saying,
+  article XV, in his Reply, p. 153, that the opinion of his opponents is
+  contrary to piety, when they ascribe all to God's power only, and that
+  Mr. Hobbes ought not to have said that honour or worship is only a sign
+  of the power of him whom one honours: for one may also, and one must,
+  acknowledge and honour wisdom, goodness, justice and other perfections.
+  <i>Magnos facile laudamus, bonos libenter.</i> This opinion, which
+  despoils God of all goodness and of all true justice, which represents
+  him as a Tyrant, wielding an absolute power, independent of all right and
+  of all equity, and <!-- Page 403 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page403"></a>[403]</span> creating millions of creatures to be
+  eternally unhappy, and this without any other aim than that of displaying
+  his power, this opinion, I say, is capable of rendering men very evil;
+  and if it were accepted no other Devil would be needed in the world to
+  set men at variance among themselves and with God; as the Serpent did in
+  making Eve believe that God, when he forbade her the fruit of the tree,
+  did not will her good. Mr. Hobbes endeavours to parry this thrust in his
+  Rejoinder (p. 160) by saying that goodness is a part of the power of God,
+  that is to say, the power of making himself worthy of love. But that is
+  an abuse of terms by an evasion, and confounds things that must be kept
+  distinct. After all, if God does not intend the good of intelligent
+  creatures, if he has no other principles of justice than his power alone,
+  which makes him produce either arbitrarily that which chance presents to
+  him, or by necessity all that which is possible, without the intervention
+  of choice founded on good, how can he make himself worthy of love? It is
+  therefore the doctrine either of blind power or of arbitrary power, which
+  destroys piety: for the one destroys the intelligent principle or the
+  providence of God, the other attributes to him actions which are
+  appropriate to the evil principle. Justice in God, says Mr. Hobbes (p.
+  161), is nothing but the power he has, which he exercises in distributing
+  blessings and afflictions. This definition surprises me: it is not the
+  power to distribute them, but the will to distribute them reasonably,
+  that is, goodness guided by wisdom, which makes the justice of God. But,
+  says he, justice is not in God as in a man, who is only just through the
+  observance of laws made by his superior. Mr. Hobbes is mistaken also in
+  that, as well as Herr Pufendorf, who followed him. Justice does not
+  depend upon arbitrary laws of superiors, but on the eternal rules of
+  wisdom and of goodness, in men as well as in God. Mr. Hobbes asserts in
+  the same passage that the wisdom which is attributed to God does not lie
+  in a logical consideration of the relation of means to ends, but in an
+  incomprehensible attribute, attributed to an incomprehensible nature to
+  honour it. It seems as if he means that it is an indescribable something
+  attributed to an indescribable something, and even a chimerical quality
+  given to a chimerical substance, to intimidate and to deceive the nations
+  through the worship which they render to it. After all, it is difficult
+  for Mr. Hobbes to have a different opinion of God and of wisdom, since he
+  admits only material substances. If Mr. Hobbes were still alive, I would
+  beware <!-- Page 404 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page404"></a>[404]</span> of ascribing to him opinions which might
+  do him injury; but it is difficult to exempt him from this. He may have
+  changed his mind subsequently, for he attained to a great age; thus I
+  hope that his errors may not have been deleterious to him. But as they
+  might be so to others, it is expedient to give warnings to those who
+  shall read the writings of one who otherwise is of great merit, and from
+  whom one may profit in many ways. It is true that God does not reason,
+  properly speaking, using time as we do, to pass from one truth to the
+  other: but as he understands at one and the same time all the truths and
+  all their connexions, he knows all the conclusions, and he contains in
+  the highest degree within himself all the reasonings that we can develop.
+  And just because of that his wisdom is perfect.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 405 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page405"></a>[405]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK
+CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL'
+PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN LONDON</h3>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+  <p>1. It is a pity that M. Bayle should have seen only the reviews of
+  this admirable work, which are to be found in the journals. If he had
+  read it himself and examined it properly, he would have provided us with
+  a good opportunity of throwing light on many difficulties, which spring
+  again and again like the head of the hydra, in a matter where it is easy
+  to become confused when one has not seen the whole system or does not
+  take the trouble to reason according to a strict plan. For strictness of
+  reasoning performs in subjects that transcend imagination the same
+  function as figures do in geometry: there must always be something
+  capable of fixing our attention and forming a connexion between our
+  thoughts. That is why when this Latin book, so learned and so elegant of
+  style, printed originally in London and then reprinted in Bremen, fell
+  into my hands, I judged that the seriousness of the matter and the
+  author's merit required an attention which readers might fairly expect of
+  me, since we are agreed only in regard to half of the subject. Indeed, as
+  the work contains five chapters, and the fifth with the appendix equals
+  the rest in size, I have observed that the first four, where it is a
+  question of evil in general and of physical evil in particular, are in
+  harmony with my principles (save for a few individual passages), and that
+  they sometimes even develop with force and eloquence some points I had
+  treated but <!-- Page 406 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page406"></a>[406]</span> slightly because M. Bayle had not placed
+  emphasis upon them. But the fifth chapter, with its sections (of which
+  some are equal to entire chapters) speaking of freedom and of the moral
+  evil dependent upon it, is constructed upon principles opposed to mine,
+  and often, indeed, to those of M. Bayle; that is, if it were possible to
+  credit him with any fixed principles. For this fifth chapter tends to
+  show (if that were possible) that true freedom depends upon an
+  indifference of equipoise, vague, complete and absolute; so that, until
+  the will has determined itself, there would be no reason for its
+  determination, either in him who chooses or in the object; and one would
+  not choose what pleases, but in choosing without reason one would cause
+  what one chooses to be pleasing.</p>
+
+  <p>2. This principle of choice without cause or reason, of a choice, I
+  say, divested of the aim of wisdom and goodness, is regarded by many as
+  the great privilege of God and of intelligent substances, and as the
+  source of their freedom, their satisfaction, their morality and their
+  good or evil. The fantasy of a power to declare one's independence, not
+  only of inclination, but of reason itself within and of good and evil
+  without, is sometimes painted in such fine colours that one might take it
+  to be the most excellent thing in the world. Nevertheless it is only a
+  hollow fantasy, a suppression of the reasons for the caprice of which one
+  boasts. What is asserted is impossible, but if it came to pass it would
+  be harmful. This fantastic character might be attributed to some Don Juan
+  in a St. Peter's Feast, and a man of romantic disposition might even
+  affect the outward appearances of it and persuade himself that he has it
+  in reality. But in Nature there will never be any choice to which one is
+  not prompted by the previous representation of good or evil, by
+  inclinations or by reasons: and I have always challenged the supporters
+  of this absolute indifference to show an example thereof. Nevertheless if
+  I call fantastic this choice whereto one is determined by nothing, I am
+  far from calling visionaries the supporters of that hypothesis,
+  especially our gifted author. The Peripatetics teach some beliefs of this
+  nature; but it would be the greatest injustice in the world to be ready
+  to despise on that account an Occam, a Suisset, a Cesalpino, a
+  Conringius, men who still advocated certain scholastic opinions which
+  have been improved upon to-day.</p>
+
+  <p>3. One of these opinions, revived, however, and introduced by <!--
+  Page 407 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page407"></a>[407]</span>
+  degenerate scholasticism, and in the Age of Chimeras, is vague
+  indifference of choice, or real chance, assumed in our souls; as if
+  nothing gave us any inclination unless we perceived it distinctly, and as
+  if an effect could be without causes, when these causes are
+  imperceptible. It is much as some have denied the existence of insensible
+  corpuscles because they do not see them. Modern philosophers have
+  improved upon the opinions of the Schoolmen by showing that, according to
+  the laws of corporeal nature, a body can only be set in motion by the
+  movement of another body propelling it. Even so we must believe that our
+  souls (by virtue of the laws of spiritual nature) can only be moved by
+  some reason of good or evil: and this even when no distinct knowledge can
+  be extracted from our mental state, on account of a concourse of
+  innumerable little perceptions which make us now joyful and now sad, or
+  again of some other humour, and cause us to like one thing more than
+  another without its being possible to say why. Plato, Aristotle and even
+  Thomas Aquinas, Durand and other Schoolmen of the sounder sort reason on
+  that question like the generality of men, and as unprejudiced people
+  always have reasoned. They assume that freedom lies in the use of reason
+  and the inclinations, which cause the choice or rejection of objects. But
+  finally some rather too subtle philosophers have extracted from their
+  alembic an inexplicable notion of choice independent of anything
+  whatsoever, which is said to do wonders in solving all difficulties. But
+  the notion is caught up at the outset in one of the greatest
+  difficulties, by offending against the grand principle of reasoning which
+  makes us always assume that nothing is done without some sufficient cause
+  or reason. As the Schoolmen often forgot to apply this great principle,
+  admitting certain prime occult qualities, one need not wonder if this
+  fiction of vague indifference met with applause amongst them, and if even
+  most worthy men have been imbued therewith. Our author, who is otherwise
+  rid of many of the errors of the ordinary Schoolmen, is still deluded by
+  this fiction: but he is without doubt one of the most skilful of those
+  who have supported it.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i12"><i>Si Pergama dextra</i></p>
+      <p><i>Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>He gives it the best possible turn, and only shows it on its good
+  side. He knows how to strip spontaneity and reason of their <!-- Page 408
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page408"></a>[408]</span> advantages,
+  transferring all these to vague indifference: only through this
+  indifference is one active, resisting the passions, taking pleasure in
+  one's choice, or being happy; it appears indeed that one would be
+  miserable if some happy necessity should oblige us to choose aright. Our
+  author had said admirable things on the origin and reasons of natural
+  evils: he only had to apply the same principles to moral evil; indeed, he
+  believes himself that moral evil becomes an evil through the physical
+  evils that it causes or tends to cause. But somehow or other he thinks
+  that it would be a degradation of God and men if they were to be made
+  subject to reason; that thus they would all be rendered passive to it and
+  would no longer be satisfied with themselves; in short that men would
+  have nothing wherewith to oppose the misfortunes that come to them from
+  without, if they had not within them this admirable privilege of
+  rendering things good or tolerable by choosing them, and of changing all
+  into gold by the touch of this wondrous faculty.</p>
+
+  <p>4. We will examine it in closer detail presently; but it will be well
+  to profit beforehand by the excellent ideas of our author on the nature
+  of things and on natural evils, particularly since there are some points
+  in which we shall be able to go a little further: by this means also we
+  shall gain a better understanding of the whole arrangement of his system.
+  The first chapter contains the principles. The writer calls substance a
+  being the idea of which does not involve the existence of another. I do
+  not know if there are any such among created beings, by reason of the
+  connexion existing between all things; and the example of a wax torch is
+  not the example of a substance, any more than that of a swarm of bees
+  would be. But one may take the terms in an extended sense. He observes
+  aptly that after all the changes of matter and after all the qualities of
+  which it may be divested, there remain extension, mobility, divisibility
+  and resistance. He explains also the nature of notions, and leaves it to
+  be understood that <i>universals</i> indicate only the resemblances which
+  exist between <i>individuals</i>; that we understand by <i>ideas</i> only
+  that which is known through an immediate sensation, and that the rest is
+  known to us only through relations with these ideas. But when he admits
+  that we have no idea of God, of spirit, of substance, he does not appear
+  to have observed sufficiently that we have immediate apperception of
+  substance and of spirit in our apperception of ourselves, and that <!--
+  Page 409 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page409"></a>[409]</span> the
+  idea of God is found in the idea of ourselves through a suppression of
+  the limits of our perfections, as extension taken in an absolute sense is
+  comprised in the idea of a globe. He is right also in asserting that our
+  simple ideas at least are innate, and in rejecting the <i>Tabula rasa</i>
+  of Aristotle and of Mr. Locke. But I cannot agree with him that our ideas
+  have scarce any more relation to things than words uttered into the air
+  or writings traced upon paper have to our ideas, and that the bearing of
+  our sensations is arbitrary and <i>ex instituto</i>, like the
+  signification of words. I have already indicated elsewhere why I am not
+  in agreement with our Cartesians on that point.</p>
+
+  <p>5. For the purpose of advancing to the first Cause, the author seeks a
+  criterion, a distinguishing mark of truth; and he finds it in the force
+  whereby our inward assertions, when they are evident, compel the
+  understanding to give them its consent. It is by such a process, he says,
+  that we credit the senses. He points out that the distinguishing mark in
+  the Cartesian scheme, to wit, a clear and distinct perception, has need
+  of a new mark to indicate what is clear and distinct, and that the
+  congruity or non-congruity of ideas (or rather of terms, as one spoke
+  formerly) may still be deceptive, because there are congruities real and
+  apparent. He appears to recognize even that the inward force which
+  constrains us to give our assent is still a matter for caution, and may
+  come from deep-rooted prejudices. That is why he confesses that he who
+  should furnish another criterion would have found something very
+  advantageous to the human race. I have endeavoured to explain this
+  criterion in a little <i>Discourse on Truth and Ideas</i>, published in
+  1684; and although I do not boast of having given therein a new discovery
+  I hope that I have expounded things which were only confusedly
+  recognized. I distinguish between truths of fact and truths of reason.
+  Truths of fact can only be verified by confronting them with truths of
+  reason, and by tracing them back to immediate perceptions within us, such
+  as St. Augustine and M. Descartes very promptly acknowledged to be
+  indubitable; that is to say, we cannot doubt that we think, nor indeed
+  that we think this thing or that. But in order to judge whether our
+  inward notions have any reality in things, and to pass from thoughts to
+  objects, my opinion is that it is necessary to consider whether our
+  perceptions are firmly connected among themselves and with others that we
+  have had, in such fashion as to manifest the rules of mathematics and
+  <!-- Page 410 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page410"></a>[410]</span>
+  other truths of reason. In this case one must regard them as real; and I
+  think that it is the only means of distinguishing them from imaginations,
+  dreams and visions. Thus the truth of things outside us can be recognized
+  only through the connexion of phenomena. The criterion of the truths of
+  reason, or those which spring from conceptions, is found in an exact use
+  of the rules of logic. As for ideas or notions, I call <i>real</i> all
+  those the possibility of which is certain; and the <i>definitions</i>
+  which do not mark this possibility are only <i>nominal</i>. Geometricians
+  well versed in analysis are aware what difference there is in this
+  respect between several properties by which some line or figure might be
+  defined. Our gifted author has not gone so far, perhaps; one may see,
+  however, from the account I have given of him already, and from what
+  follows, that he is by no means lacking in profundity or reflexion.</p>
+
+  <p>6. Thereafter he proceeds to examine whether motion, matter and space
+  spring from themselves; and to that end he considers whether it is
+  possible to conceive that they do not exist. He remarks upon this
+  privilege of God, that as soon as it is assumed that he exists it must be
+  admitted that he exists of necessity. This is a corollary to a remark
+  which I made in the little discourse mentioned above, namely that as soon
+  as one admits that God is possible, one must admit that he exists of
+  necessity. Now, as soon as one admits that God exists, one admits that he
+  is possible. Therefore as soon as one admits that God exists, one must
+  admit that he exists of necessity. Now this privilege does not belong to
+  the three things of which we have just spoken. The author believes also
+  especially concerning motion, that it is not sufficient to say, with Mr.
+  Hobbes, that the present movement comes from an anterior movement, and
+  this one again from another, and so on to infinity. For, however far back
+  you may go, you will not be one whit nearer to finding the reason which
+  causes the presence of motion in matter. Therefore this reason must be
+  outside the sequence; and even if there were an eternal motion, it would
+  require an eternal motive power. So the rays of the sun, even though they
+  were eternal with the sun, would nevertheless have their eternal cause in
+  the sun. I am well pleased to recount these arguments of our gifted
+  author, that it may be seen how important, according to him, is the
+  principle of sufficient reason. For, if it is permitted to admit
+  something for which it is acknowledged there is no reason, it will be
+  easy for an atheist to overthrow this argument, <!-- Page 411 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page411"></a>[411]</span> by saying that it is
+  not necessary that there be a sufficient reason for the existence of
+  motion. I will not enter into the discussion of the reality and the
+  eternity of space, for fear of straying too far from our subject. It is
+  enough to state that the author believes that space can be annihilated by
+  the divine power, but in entirety and not in portions, and that we could
+  exist alone with God even if there were neither space nor matter, since
+  we do not contain within ourselves the notion of the existence of
+  external things. He also puts forward the consideration that in the
+  sensations of sounds, of odours and of savours the idea of space is not
+  included. But whatever the opinion formed as to space, it suffices that
+  there is a God, the cause of matter and of motion, and in short of all
+  things. The author believes that we can reason about God, as one born
+  blind would reason about light. But I hold that there is something more
+  in us, for our light is a ray from God's light. After having spoken of
+  some attributes of God, the author acknowledges that God acts for an end,
+  which is the communication of his goodness, and that his works are
+  ordered aright. Finally he concludes this chapter very properly, by
+  saying that God in creating the world was at pains to give it the
+  greatest harmony amongst things, the greatest comfort of beings endowed
+  with reason, and the greatest compatibility in desires that an infinite
+  power, wisdom and goodness combined could produce. He adds that, if some
+  evil has remained notwithstanding, one must believe that these infinite
+  divine perfections could not have (I would rather say ought not to have)
+  taken it away.</p>
+
+  <p>7. Chapter II anatomizes evil, dividing it as we do into metaphysical,
+  physical and moral. Metaphysical evil consists in imperfections, physical
+  evil in suffering and other like troubles, and moral evil in sin. All
+  these evils exist in God's work; Lucretius thence inferred that there is
+  no providence, and he denied that the world can be an effect of
+  divinity:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Naturam rerum divinitus esse creatam;</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>because there are so many faults in the nature of things,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>quoniam tanta stat praedita culpa.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>Others have admitted two principles, the one good, the other evil.
+  There have also been people who thought the difficulty insurmountable,
+  and among these our author appears to have had <!-- Page 412 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page412"></a>[412]</span> M. Bayle in mind. He
+  hopes to show in his work that it is not a Gordian knot, which needs to
+  be cut; and he says rightly that the power, the wisdom and the goodness
+  of God would not be infinite and perfect in their exercise if these evils
+  had been banished. He begins with the evil of imperfection in Chapter III
+  and observes, as St. Augustine does, that creatures are imperfect, since
+  they are derived from nothingness, whereas God producing a perfect
+  substance from his own essence would have made thereof a God. This gives
+  him occasion for making a little digression against the Socinians. But
+  someone will say, why did not God refrain from producing things, rather
+  than make imperfect things? The author answers appositely that the
+  abundance of the goodness of God is the cause. He wished to communicate
+  himself at the expense of a certain fastidiousness which we assume in
+  God, imagining that imperfections offend him. Thus he preferred that
+  there should be the imperfect rather than nothing. But one might have
+  added that God has produced indeed the most perfect whole that was
+  possible, one wherewith he had full cause for satisfaction, the
+  imperfections of the parts serving a greater perfection in the whole.
+  Also the observation is made soon afterwards, that certain things might
+  have been made better, but not without other new and <i>perhaps</i>
+  greater disadvantages. This <i>perhaps</i> could have been omitted: for
+  the author also states as a certainty, and rightly so, at the end of the
+  chapter, <i>that it appertains to infinite goodness to choose the
+  best</i>; and thus he was able to draw this conclusion a little earlier,
+  that imperfect things will be added to those more perfect, so long as
+  they do not preclude the existence of the more perfect in as great a
+  number as possible. Thus bodies were created as well as spirits, since
+  the one does not offer any obstacle to the other; and the creation of
+  matter was not unworthy of the great God, as some heretics of old
+  believed, attributing this work to a certain Demogorgon.</p>
+
+  <p>8. Let us now proceed to physical evil, which is treated of in Chapter
+  IV. Our famous author, having observed that metaphysical evil, or
+  imperfection, springs from nothingness, concludes that physical evil, or
+  discomfort, springs from matter, or rather from its movement; for without
+  movement matter would be useless. Moreover there must be contrariety in
+  these movements; otherwise, if all went together in the same direction,
+  there would be neither variety nor generation. But the movements that
+  cause <!-- Page 413 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page413"></a>[413]</span> generations cause also corruptions, since
+  from the variety of movements comes concussion between bodies, by which
+  they are often dissipated and destroyed. The Author of Nature however, in
+  order to render bodies more enduring, distributed them into
+  <i>systems</i>, those which we know being composed of luminous and opaque
+  balls, in a manner so excellent and so fitting for the display of that
+  which they contain, and for arousing wonder thereat, that we can conceive
+  of nothing more beautiful. But the crowning point of the work was the
+  construction of animals, to the end that everywhere there should be
+  creatures capable of cognition,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Ne regio foret ulla suis animalibus orba.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>Our sagacious author believes that the air and even the purest aether
+  have their denizens as well as the water and the earth. But supposing
+  that there were places without animals, these places might have uses
+  necessary for other places which are inhabited. So for example the
+  mountains, which render the surface of our globe unequal and sometimes
+  desert and barren, are of use for the production of rivers and of winds;
+  and we have no cause to complain of sands and marshes, since there are so
+  many places still remaining to be cultivated. Moreover, it must not be
+  supposed that all is made for man alone: and the author is persuaded that
+  there are not only pure spirits but also immortal animals of a nature
+  akin to these spirits, that is, animals whose souls are united to an
+  ethereal and incorruptible matter. But it is not the same with animals
+  whose body is terrestrial, composed of tubes and fluids which circulate
+  therein, and whose motion is terminated by the breaking of the vessels.
+  Thence the author is led to believe that the immortality granted to Adam,
+  if he had been obedient, would not have been an effect of his nature, but
+  of the grace of God.</p>
+
+  <p>9. Now it was necessary for the conservation of corruptible animals
+  that they should have indications causing them to recognize a present
+  danger, and giving them the inclination to avoid it. That is why what is
+  about to cause a great injury must beforehand cause pain such as may
+  force the animal to efforts capable of repulsing or shunning the cause of
+  this discomfort, and of forestalling a greater evil. The dread of death
+  helps also to cause its avoidance: for it if were not so ugly and if the
+  dissolution of continuity were not so painful, very often animals would
+  take no precautions against perishing, or allowing the parts of their
+  body <!-- Page 414 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page414"></a>[414]</span> to perish, and the strongest would have
+  difficulty in subsisting for a whole day.</p>
+
+  <p>God has also given hunger and thirst to animals, to compel them to
+  feed and maintain themselves by replacing that which is used up and which
+  disappears imperceptibly. These appetites are of use also to prompt them
+  to work, in order to procure a nourishment meet for their constitution,
+  and which may avail to invigorate them. It was even found necessary by
+  the Author of things that one animal very often should serve as food for
+  another. This hardly renders the victim more unhappy, since death caused
+  by diseases is generally just as painful as a violent death, if not more
+  so; and animals subject to being preyed upon by others, having neither
+  foresight nor anxiety for the future, have a life no less tranquil when
+  they are not in danger. It is the same with inundations, earthquakes,
+  thunderbolts and other disorders, which brute beasts do not fear, and
+  which men have ordinarily no cause to fear, since there are few that
+  suffer thereby.</p>
+
+  <p>10. The Author of Nature has compensated for these evils and others,
+  which happen only seldom, with a thousand advantages that are ordinary
+  and constant. Hunger and thirst augment the pleasure experienced in the
+  taking of nourishment. Moderate work is an agreeable exercise of the
+  animal's powers; and sleep is also agreeable in an altogether opposite
+  way, restoring the forces through repose. But one of the pleasures most
+  intense is that which prompts animals to propagation. God, having taken
+  care to ensure that the species should be immortal, since the individual
+  cannot be so here on earth, also willed that animals should have a great
+  tenderness for their little ones, even to the point of endangering
+  themselves for their preservation. From pain and from sensual pleasure
+  spring fear, cupidity and the other passions that are ordinarily
+  serviceable, although it may accidentally happen that they sometimes turn
+  towards ill: one must say as much of poisons, epidemic diseases and other
+  hurtful things, namely that these are indispensable consequences of a
+  well-conceived system. As for ignorance and errors, it must be taken into
+  account that the most perfect creatures are doubtless ignorant of much,
+  and that knowledge is wont to be proportionate to needs. Nevertheless it
+  is necessary that one be exposed to hazards which cannot be foreseen, and
+  accidents of such kinds are inevitable. One must often be mistaken in
+  one's judgement, because it is not always permitted <!-- Page 415
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page415"></a>[415]</span> to suspend it
+  long enough for exact consideration. These disadvantages are inseparable
+  from the system of things: for things must very often resemble one
+  another in a certain situation, the one being taken for the other. But
+  the inevitable errors are not the most usual, nor the most pernicious.
+  Those which cause us the most harm are wont to arise through our fault;
+  and consequently one would be wrong to make natural evils a pretext for
+  taking one's own life, since one finds that those who have done so have
+  generally been prompted to such action by voluntary evils.</p>
+
+  <p>11. After all, one finds that all these evils of which we have spoken
+  come accidentally from good causes; and there is reason to infer
+  concerning all we do not know, from all we do know, that one could not
+  have done away with them without falling into greater troubles. For the
+  better understanding of this the author counsels us to picture the world
+  as a great building. There must be not only apartments, halls, galleries,
+  gardens, grottoes, but also the kitchen, the cellar, the poultry-yard,
+  stables, drainage. Thus it would not have been proper to make only suns
+  in the world, or to make an earth all of gold and of diamonds, but not
+  habitable. If man had been all eye or all ear, he would not have been
+  fitted for feeding himself. If God had made him without passions, he
+  would have made him stupid; and if he had wished to make man free from
+  error he would have had to deprive him of senses, or give him powers of
+  sensation through some other means than organs, that is to say, there
+  would not have been any man. Our learned author remarks here upon an idea
+  which histories both sacred and profane appear to inculcate, namely that
+  wild beasts, poisonous plants and other natures that are injurious to us
+  have been armed against us by sin. But as he argues here only in
+  accordance with the principles of reason he sets aside what Revelation
+  can teach. He believes, however, that Adam would have been exempted from
+  natural evils (if he had been obedient) only by virtue of divine grace
+  and of a covenant made with God, and that Moses expressly indicates only
+  about seven effects of the first sin. These effects are:</p>
+
+  <p>1. The revocation of the gracious gift of immortality.</p>
+
+  <p>2. The sterility of the earth, which was no longer to be fertile of
+  itself, save in evil or useless herbs.</p>
+
+  <p>3. The rude toil one must exercise in order to gain sustenance.</p>
+
+  <p>4. The subjection of the woman to the will of the husband.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 416 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page416"></a>[416]</span></p>
+
+  <p>5. The pains of childbirth.</p>
+
+  <p>6. The enmity between man and the serpent.</p>
+
+  <p>7. The banishment of man from the place of delight wherein God had
+  placed him.</p>
+
+  <p>But our author thinks that many of our evils spring from the necessity
+  of matter, especially since the withdrawal of grace. Moreover, it seems
+  to him that after our banishment immortality would be only a burden to
+  us, and that it is perhaps more for our good than to punish us that the
+  tree of life has become inaccessible to us. On one point or another one
+  might have something to say in objection, but the body of the discourse
+  by our author on the origin of evils is full of good and sound
+  reflexions, which I have judged it advisable to turn to advantage. Now I
+  must pass on to the subject of our controversy, that is, the explanation
+  of the nature of freedom.</p>
+
+  <p>12. The learned author of this work on the origin of evil, proposing
+  to explain the origin of moral evil in the fifth chapter, which makes up
+  half of the whole book, considers that it is altogether different from
+  that of physical evil, which lies in the inevitable imperfection of
+  creatures. For, as we shall see presently, it appears to him that moral
+  evil comes rather from that which he calls a perfection, which the
+  creature has in common, according to him, with the Creator, that is to
+  say, in the power of choosing without any motive and without any final or
+  impelling cause. It is a very great paradox to assert that the greatest
+  imperfection, namely sin, springs from perfection itself. But it is no
+  less a paradox to present as a perfection the thing which is the least
+  reasonable in the world, the advantage whereof would consist in being
+  privileged against reason. And that, after all, rather than pointing out
+  the source of the evil, would be to contend that it has none. For if the
+  will makes its resolve without the existence of anything, either in the
+  person who chooses or in the object which is chosen, to prompt it to the
+  choice, there will be neither cause nor reason for this election; and as
+  moral evil consists in the wrong choice, that is admitting that moral
+  evil has no source at all. Thus in the rules of good metaphysics there
+  would have to be no moral evil in Nature; and also for the same reason
+  there would be no moral good either, and all morality would be destroyed.
+  But we must listen to our gifted author, from whom the subtlety of an
+  opinion maintained by famous philosophers among the Schoolmen, and <!--
+  Page 417 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page417"></a>[417]</span> the
+  adornments that he has added thereto himself by his wit and his
+  eloquence, have hidden the great disadvantages contained therein. In
+  setting forth the position reached in the controversy, he divides the
+  writers into two parties. The one sort, he says, are content to say that
+  the freedom of the will is exempt from outward constraint; and the other
+  sort maintain that it is also exempt from inward necessity. But this
+  exposition does not suffice, unless one distinguish the necessity that is
+  absolute and contrary to morality from hypothetical necessity and moral
+  necessity, as I have already explained in many places.</p>
+
+  <p>13. The first section of this chapter is to indicate the nature of
+  choice. The author sets forth in the first place the opinion of those who
+  believe that the will is prompted by the judgement of the understanding,
+  or by anterior inclinations of the desires, to resolve upon the course
+  that it adopts. But he confuses these authors with those who assert that
+  the will is prompted to its resolution by an absolute necessity, and who
+  maintain that the person who wills has no power over his volitions: that
+  is, he confuses a Thomist with a Spinozist. He makes use of the
+  admissions and the odious declarations of Mr. Hobbes and his like, to lay
+  them to the charge of those who are infinitely far removed from them, and
+  who take great care to refute them. He lays these things to their charge
+  because they believe, as Mr. Hobbes believes, like everyone else (save
+  for some doctors who are enveloped in their own subtleties), that the
+  will is moved by the representation of good and evil. Thence he imputes
+  to them the opinion that there is therefore no such thing as contingency,
+  and that all is connected by an absolute necessity. That is a very speedy
+  manner of reasoning; yet he adds also, that properly speaking there will
+  be no evil will, since if there were, all one could object to therein
+  would be the evil which it can cause. That, he says, is different from
+  the common notion, since the world censures the wicked not because they
+  do harm, but because they do harm without necessity. He holds also that
+  the wicked would be only unfortunate and by no means culpable; that there
+  would be no difference between physical evil and moral evil, since man
+  himself would not be the true cause of an action which he could not
+  avoid; that evil-doers would not be either blamed or maltreated because
+  they deserve it, but because that action may serve to turn people away
+  from evil; again, for this reason only one would find fault with a rogue,
+  but <!-- Page 418 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page418"></a>[418]</span> not with a sick man, that reproaches and
+  threats can correct the one, and cannot cure the other. And further,
+  according to this doctrine, chastisements would have no object save the
+  prevention of future evil, without which the mere consideration of the
+  evil already done would not be sufficient for punishment. Likewise
+  gratitude would have as its sole aim that of procuring a fresh benefit,
+  without which the mere consideration of the past benefit would not
+  furnish a sufficient reason. Finally the author thinks that if this
+  doctrine, which derives the resolution of the will from the
+  representation of good and evil, were true, one must despair of human
+  felicity, since it would not be in our power, and would depend upon
+  things which are outside us. Now as there is no ground for hoping that
+  things from outside will order themselves and agree together in
+  accordance with our wishes, there will always lack something to us, and
+  there will always be something too much. All these conclusions hold,
+  according to him, against those also who think that the will makes its
+  resolve in accordance with the final judgement of the understanding, an
+  opinion which, as he considers, strips the will of its right and renders
+  the soul quite passive. This accusation is also directed against
+  countless serious writers, of accepted authority, who are here placed in
+  the same class with Mr. Hobbes and Spinoza, and with some other
+  discredited authors, whose doctrine is considered odious and
+  insupportable. As for me, I do not require the will always to follow the
+  judgement of the understanding, because I distinguish this judgement from
+  the motives that spring from insensible perceptions and inclinations. But
+  I hold that the will always follows the most advantageous representation,
+  whether distinct or confused, of the good or the evil resulting from
+  reasons, passions and inclinations, although it may also find motives for
+  suspending its judgement. But it is always upon motives that it acts.</p>
+
+  <p>14. It will be necessary to answer these objections to my opinion
+  before proceeding to establish that of our author. The misapprehension of
+  my opponents originates in their confusing a consequence which is
+  necessary absolutely, whose contrary implies contradiction, with a
+  consequence which is founded only upon truths of fitness, and
+  nevertheless has its effect. To put it otherwise, there is a confusion
+  between what depends upon the principle of contradiction, which makes
+  necessary and indispensable truths, and what depends upon the principle
+  of the sufficient <!-- Page 419 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page419"></a>[419]</span> reason, which applies also to contingent
+  truths. I have already elsewhere stated this proposition, which is one of
+  the most important in philosophy, pointing out that there are two great
+  principles, namely, <i>that of identicals or of contradiction</i>, which
+  states that of two contradictory enunciations the one is true and the
+  other false, and <i>that of the sufficient reason</i>, which states that
+  there is no true enunciation whose reason could not be seen by one
+  possessing all the knowledge necessary for its complete understanding.
+  Both principles must hold not only in necessary but also in contingent
+  truths; and it is even necessary that that which has no sufficient reason
+  should not exist. For one may say in a sense that these two principles
+  are contained in the definition of the true and the false. Nevertheless,
+  when in making the analysis of the truth submitted one sees it depending
+  upon truths whose contrary implies contradiction, one may say that it is
+  absolutely necessary. But when, while pressing the analysis to the
+  furthest extent, one can never attain to such elements of the given
+  truth, one must say that it is contingent, and that it originates from a
+  prevailing reason which inclines without necessitating. Once that is
+  granted, it is seen how we can say with sundry famous philosophers and
+  theologians, that the thinking substance is prompted to its resolution by
+  the prevailing representation of good or of evil, and this certainly and
+  infallibly, but not necessarily, that is, by reasons which incline it
+  without necessitating it. That is why contingent futurities, foreseen
+  both in themselves and through their reasons, remain contingent. God was
+  led infallibly by his wisdom and by his goodness to create the world
+  through his power, and to give it the best possible form; but he was not
+  led thereto of necessity, and the whole took place without any diminution
+  of his perfect and supreme wisdom. And I do not know if it would be easy,
+  apart from the reflexions we have just entertained, to untie the Gordian
+  knot of contingency and freedom.</p>
+
+  <p>15. This explanation dismisses all the objections of our gifted
+  opponent. In the first place, it is seen that contingency exists together
+  with freedom. Secondly, evil wills are evil not only because they do
+  harm, but also because they are a source of harmful things, or of
+  physical evils, a wicked spirit being, in the sphere of its activity,
+  what the evil principle of the Manichaeans would be in the universe.
+  Moreover, the author has observed (ch. 4, sect. 4, § 8) that divine
+  wisdom has usually forbidden actions <!-- Page 420 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page420"></a>[420]</span> which would cause
+  discomforts, that is to say, physical evils. It is agreed that he who
+  causes evil by necessity is not culpable. But there is neither legislator
+  nor lawyer who by this necessity means the force of the considerations of
+  good or evil, real or apparent, that have prompted man to do ill: else
+  anyone stealing a great sum of money or killing a powerful man in order
+  to attain to high office would be less deserving of punishment than one
+  who should steal a few halfpence for a mug of beer or wantonly kill his
+  neighbour's dog, since these latter were tempted less. But it is quite
+  the opposite in the administration of justice which is authorized in the
+  world: for the greater is the temptation to sin, the more does it need to
+  be repressed by the fear of a great chastisement. Besides, the greater
+  the calculation evident in the design of an evil-doer, the more will it
+  be found that the wickedness has been deliberate, and the more readily
+  will one decide that it is great and deserving of punishment. Thus a too
+  artful fraud causes the aggravating crime called <i>stellionate</i>, and
+  a cheat becomes a forger when he has the cunning to sap the very
+  foundations of our security in written documents. But one will have
+  greater indulgence for a great passion, because it is nearer to madness.
+  The Romans punished with the utmost severity the priests of the God Apis,
+  when these had prostituted the chastity of a noble lady to a knight who
+  loved her to distraction, making him pass as their god; while it was
+  found enough to send the lover into exile. But if someone had done evil
+  deeds without apparent reason and without appearance of passion the judge
+  would be tempted to take him for a madman, especially if it proved that
+  he was given to committing such extravagances often: this might tend
+  towards reduction of the penalty, rather than supplying the true grounds
+  of wickedness and punishment. So far removed are the principles of our
+  opponents from the practice of the tribunals and from the general opinion
+  of men.</p>
+
+  <p>16. Thirdly, the distinction between physical evil and moral evil will
+  still remain, although there be this in common between them, that they
+  have their reasons and causes. And why manufacture new difficulties for
+  oneself concerning the origin of moral evil, since the principle followed
+  in the solution of those which natural evils have raised suffices also to
+  account for voluntary evils? That is to say, it suffices to show that one
+  could not have prevented men from being prone to errors, without changing
+  the <!-- Page 421 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page421"></a>[421]</span> constitution of the best of systems or
+  without employing miracles at every turn. It is true that sin makes up a
+  large portion of human wretchedness, and even the largest; but that does
+  not prevent one from being able to say that men are wicked and deserving
+  of punishment: else one must needs say that the actual sins of the
+  non-regenerate are excusable, because they spring from the first cause of
+  our wretchedness, which is original sin. Fourthly, to say that the soul
+  becomes passive and that man is not the true cause of sin, if he is
+  prompted to his voluntary actions by their objects, as our author asserts
+  in many passages, and particularly ch. 5, sect. 1, sub-sect. 3, § 18, is
+  to create for oneself new senses for terms. When the ancients spoke of
+  that which is <span lang="el" title="eph' hêmin" >&#x3B5;&#x3C6;'
+  &#x201B;&#x3B7;&#x3BC;&#x3B9;&#x3BD;</span>, or when we speak of that
+  which depends upon us, of spontaneity, of the inward principle of our
+  actions, we do not exclude the representation of external things; for
+  these representations are in our souls, they are a portion of the
+  modifications of this active principle which is within us. No agent is
+  capable of acting without being <i>predisposed</i> to what the action
+  demands; and the reasons or inclinations derived from good or evil are
+  the dispositions that enable the soul to decide between various courses.
+  One will have it that the will is alone active and supreme, and one is
+  wont to imagine it to be like a queen seated on her throne, whose
+  minister of state is the understanding, while the passions are her
+  courtiers or favourite ladies, who by their influence often prevail over
+  the counsel of her ministers. One will have it that the understanding
+  speaks only at this queen's order; that she can vacillate between the
+  arguments of the minister and the suggestions of the favourites, even
+  rejecting both, making them keep silence or speak, and giving them
+  audience or not as seems good to her. But it is a personification or
+  mythology somewhat ill-conceived. If the will is to judge, or take
+  cognizance of the reasons and inclinations which the understanding or the
+  senses offer it, it will need another understanding in itself, to
+  understand what it is offered. The truth is that the soul, or the
+  thinking substance, understands the reasons and feels the inclinations,
+  and decides according to the predominance of the representations
+  modifying its active force, in order to shape the action. I have no need
+  here to apply my system of Pre-established Harmony, which shows our
+  independence to the best advantage and frees us from the physical
+  influence of objects. For what I have just said is sufficient to answer
+  the <!-- Page 422 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page422"></a>[422]</span> objection. Our author, even though he
+  admits with people in general this physical influence of objects upon us,
+  observes nevertheless with much perspicacity that the body or the objects
+  of the senses do not even give us our ideas, much less the active force
+  of our soul, and that they serve only to draw out that which is within
+  us. This is much in the spirit of M. Descartes' belief that the soul, not
+  being able to give force to the body, gives it at least some direction.
+  It is a mean between one side and the other, between physical influence
+  and Pre-established Harmony.</p>
+
+  <p>17. Fifthly, the objection is made that, according to my opinion, sin
+  would neither be censured nor punished because of its deserts, but
+  because the censure and the chastisement serve to prevent it another
+  time; whereas men demand something more, namely, satisfaction for the
+  crime, even though it should serve neither for amendment nor for example.
+  So do men with reason demand that true gratitude should come from a true
+  recognition of the past benefit, and not from the interested aim of
+  extorting a fresh benefit. This objection contains noble and sound
+  considerations, but it does not strike at me. I require a man to be
+  virtuous, grateful, just, not only from the motive of interest, of hope
+  or of fear, but also of the pleasure that he should find in good actions:
+  else one has not yet reached the degree of virtue that one must endeavour
+  to attain. That is what one means by saying that justice and virtue must
+  be loved for their own sake; and it is also what I explained in
+  justifying 'disinterested love', shortly before the opening of the
+  controversy which caused so much stir. Likewise I consider that
+  wickedness is all the greater when its practice becomes a pleasure, as
+  when a highwayman, after having killed men because they resist, or
+  because he fears their vengeance, finally grows cruel and takes pleasure
+  in killing them, and even in making them suffer beforehand. Such a degree
+  of wickedness is taken to be diabolical, even though the man affected
+  with it finds in this execrable indulgence a stronger reason for his
+  homicides than he had when he killed simply under the influence of hope
+  or of fear. I have also observed in answering the difficulties of M.
+  Bayle that, according to the celebrated Conringius, justice which
+  punishes by means of <i>medicinal</i> penalties, so to speak, that is, in
+  order to correct the criminal or at least to provide an example for
+  others, might exist in the opinion of those who do away with the freedom
+  that is exempt from necessity. <!-- Page 423 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page423"></a>[423]</span> True retributive justice, on the other
+  hand, going beyond the medicinal, assumes something more, namely,
+  intelligence and freedom in him who sins, because the harmony of things
+  demands a satisfaction, or evil in the form of suffering, to make the
+  mind feel its error after the voluntary active evil whereto it has
+  consented. Mr. Hobbes also, who does away with freedom, has rejected
+  retributive justice, as do the Socinians, drawing on themselves the
+  condemnation of our theologians; although the writers of the Socinian
+  party are wont to exaggerate the idea of freedom.</p>
+
+  <p>18. Sixthly, the objection is finally made that men cannot hope for
+  felicity if the will can only be actuated by the representation of good
+  and evil. But this objection seems to me completely null and void, and I
+  think it would be hard to guess how any tolerable interpretation was ever
+  put upon it. Moreover, the line of reasoning adopted to prove it is of a
+  most astounding nature: it is that our felicity depends upon external
+  things, if it is true that it depends upon the representation of good or
+  evil. It is therefore not in our own power, so it is said, for we have no
+  ground for hoping that outward things will arrange themselves for our
+  pleasure. This argument is halting from every aspect. <i>There is no
+  force in the inference: one might grant the conclusion: the argument may
+  be retorted upon the author</i>. Let us begin with the retort, which is
+  easy. For are men any happier or more independent of the accidents of
+  fortune upon this argument, or because they are credited with the
+  advantage of choosing without reason? Have they less bodily suffering?
+  Have they less tendency toward true or apparent goods, less fear of true
+  or imaginary evils? Are they any less enslaved by sensual pleasure, by
+  ambition, by avarice? less apprehensive? less envious? Yes, our gifted
+  author will say; I will prove it by a method of counting or assessment. I
+  would rather he had proved it by experience; but let us see this proof by
+  counting. Suppose that by my choice, which enables me to give
+  goodness-for-me to that which I choose, I give to the object chosen six
+  degrees of goodness, when previously there were two degrees of evil in my
+  condition; I shall become happy all at once, and with perfect ease, for I
+  should have four degrees surplus, or net good. Doubtless that is all very
+  well; but unfortunately it is impossible. For what possibility is there
+  of giving these six degrees of goodness to the object? To that end we
+  must needs have the power to change our taste, or the things, as we
+  please. That <!-- Page 424 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page424"></a>[424]</span> would be almost as if I could say to
+  lead, Thou shalt be gold, and make it so; to the pebble, Thou shalt be
+  diamond; or at the least, Thou shalt look like it. Or it would be like
+  the common explanation of the Mosaical passage which seems to say that
+  the desert manna assumed any taste the Israelites desired to give to it.
+  They only had to say to their homerful, Thou shalt be a capon, thou shalt
+  be a partridge. But if I am free to give these six degrees of goodness to
+  the object, am I not permitted to give it more goodness? I think that I
+  am. But if that is so, why shall we not give to the object all the
+  goodness conceivable? Why shall we not even go as far as twenty-four
+  carats of goodness? By this means behold us completely happy, despite the
+  accidents of fortune; it may blow, hail or snow, and we shall not mind:
+  by means of this splendid secret we shall be always shielded against
+  fortuitous events. The author agrees (in this first section of the fifth
+  chapter, sub-sect. 3, § 12) that this power overcomes all the natural
+  appetites and cannot be overcome by any of them; and he regards it (§§
+  20, 21, 22) as the soundest foundation for happiness. Indeed, since there
+  is nothing capable of limiting a power so indeterminate as that of
+  choosing without any reason, and of giving goodness to the object through
+  the choice, either this goodness must exceed infinitely that which the
+  natural appetites seek in objects, these appetites and objects being
+  limited while this power is independent or at the least this goodness,
+  given by the will to the chosen object, must be arbitrary and of such a
+  kind as the will desires. For whence would one derive the reason for
+  limits if the object is possible, if it is within reach of him who wills,
+  and if the will can give it the goodness it desires to give,
+  independently of reality and of appearances? It seems to me that may
+  suffice to overthrow a hypothesis so precarious, which contains something
+  of a fairy-tale kind, <i>optantis ista sunt, non invenientis</i>. It
+  therefore remains only too true that this handsome fiction cannot render
+  us more immune from evils. And we shall see presently that when men place
+  themselves above certain desires or certain aversions they do so through
+  other desires, which always have their foundation in the representation
+  of good and evil. I said also 'that one might grant the conclusion of the
+  argument', which states that our happiness does not depend absolutely
+  upon ourselves, at least in the present state of human life: for who
+  would question the fact that we are liable to meet a thousand accidents
+  which human prudence cannot evade? How, <!-- Page 425 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page425"></a>[425]</span> for example, can I
+  avoid being swallowed up, together with a town where I take up my abode,
+  by an earthquake, if such is the order of things? But finally I can also
+  deny the inference in the argument, which states that if the will is only
+  actuated by the representation of good and evil our happiness does not
+  depend upon ourselves. The inference would be valid if there were no God,
+  if everything were ruled by brute causes; but God's ordinance is that for
+  the attainment of happiness it suffices that one be virtuous. Thus, if
+  the soul follows reason and the orders that God has given it, it is
+  assured of its happiness, even though one may not find a sufficiency
+  thereof in this life.</p>
+
+  <p>19. Having thus endeavoured to point out the disadvantages of my
+  hypothesis, our gifted author sets forth the advantages of his own. He
+  believes that it alone is capable of saving our freedom, that all our
+  felicity rests therein, that it increases our goods and lessens our
+  evils, and that an agent possessing this power is so much the more
+  complete. These advantages have almost all been already disproved. We
+  have shown that for the securing of our freedom it is enough that the
+  representations of goods and of evils, and other inward or outward
+  dispositions, should incline us without constraining us. Moreover one
+  does not see how pure indifference can contribute to felicity; on the
+  contrary, the more indifferent one is, the more insensitive and the less
+  capable of enjoying what is good will one prove to be. Besides the
+  hypothesis proves too much. For if an indifferent power could give itself
+  the consciousness of good it could also give itself the most perfect
+  happiness, as has been already shown. And it is manifest that there is
+  nothing which would set limits to that power, since limits would withdraw
+  it from its pure indifference, whence, so our author alleges, it only
+  emerges of itself, or rather wherein it has never been. Finally one does
+  not see wherein the perfection of pure indifference lies: on the
+  contrary, there is nothing more imperfect; it would render knowledge and
+  goodness futile, and would reduce everything to chance, with no rules,
+  and no measures that could be taken. There are, however, still some
+  advantages adduced by our author which have not been discussed. He
+  considers then that by this power alone are we the true cause to which
+  our actions can be imputed, since otherwise we should be under the
+  compulsion of external objects; likewise that by this power alone can one
+  ascribe to oneself the merit of one's own felicity, and feel pleased with
+  oneself. <!-- Page 426 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page426"></a>[426]</span> But the exact opposite is the case: for
+  when one happens upon the action through an absolutely indifferent
+  movement, and not as a result of one's good or bad qualities, is it not
+  just as though one were to happen upon it blindly by chance or hazard?
+  Why then should one boast of a good action, or why should one be censured
+  for an evil one, if the thanks or blame redounds to fortune or hazard? I
+  think that one is more worthy of praise when one owes the action to one's
+  good qualities, and the more culpable in proportion as one has been
+  impelled to it by one's evil qualities. To attempt to assess actions
+  without weighing the qualities whence they spring is to talk at random
+  and to put an imaginary indefinable something in the place of causes.
+  Thus, if this chance or this indefinable something were the cause of our
+  actions, to the exclusion of our natural or acquired qualities, of our
+  inclinations, of our habits, it would not be possible to set one's hopes
+  upon anything depending upon the resolve of others, since it would not be
+  possible to fix something indefinite, or to conjecture into what
+  roadstead the uncertain weather of an extravagant indifference will drive
+  the vessel of the will.</p>
+
+  <p>20. But setting aside advantages and disadvantages, let us see how our
+  learned author will justify the hypothesis from which he promises us so
+  much good. He imagines that it is only God and the free creatures who are
+  active in the true sense, and that in order to be active one must be
+  determined by oneself only. Now that which is determined by itself must
+  not be determined by objects, and consequently the free substance, in so
+  far as it is free, must be indifferent with regard to objects, and emerge
+  from this indifference only by its own choice, which shall render the
+  object pleasing to it. But almost all the stages of this argument have
+  their stumbling-blocks. Not only the free creatures, but also all the
+  other substances and natures composed of substances, are active. Beasts
+  are not free, and yet all the same they have active souls, unless one
+  assume, with the Cartesians, that they are mere machines. Moreover, it is
+  not necessary that in order to be active one should be determined only by
+  oneself, since a thing may receive direction without receiving force. So
+  it is that the horse is controlled by the rider and the vessel is steered
+  by the helm; and M. Descartes' belief was that our body, having force in
+  itself, receives only some direction from the soul. Thus an active thing
+  may receive from outside some determination or direction, capable of
+  changing <!-- Page 427 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page427"></a>[427]</span> that direction which it would take of
+  itself. Finally, even though an active substance is determined only by
+  itself, it does not follow that it is not moved by objects: for it is the
+  representation of the object within it which contributes towards the
+  determination. Now the representation does not come from without, and
+  consequently there is complete spontaneity. Objects do not act upon
+  intelligent substances as efficient and physical causes, but as final and
+  moral causes. When God acts in accordance with his wisdom, he is guided
+  by the ideas of the possibles which are his objects, but which have no
+  reality outside him before their actual creation. Thus this kind of
+  spiritual and moral motion is not contrary to the activity of the
+  substance, nor to the spontaneity of its action. Finally, even though
+  free power were not determined by the objects, it can never be
+  indifferent to the action when it is on the point of acting, since the
+  action must have its origin in a disposition to act: otherwise one will
+  do anything from anything, <i>quidvis ex quovis</i>, and there will be
+  nothing too absurd for us to imagine. But this disposition will have
+  already broken the charm of mere indifference, and if the soul gives
+  itself this disposition there must needs be another predisposition for
+  this act of giving it. Consequently, however far back one may go, one
+  will never meet with a mere indifference in the soul towards the actions
+  which it is to perform. It is true that these dispositions incline it
+  without constraining it. They relate usually to the objects; but there
+  are some, notwithstanding, which arise variously <i>a subjecto</i> or
+  from the soul itself, and which bring it about that one object is more
+  acceptable than the other, or that the same is more acceptable at one
+  time than at another.</p>
+
+  <p>21. Our author continually assures us that his hypothesis is true, and
+  he undertakes to show that this indifferent power is indeed found in God,
+  and even that it must be attributed to him of necessity. For (he says)
+  nothing is to God either good or bad in creatures. He has no natural
+  appetite, to be satisfied by the enjoyment of anything outside him. He is
+  therefore absolutely indifferent to all external things, since by them he
+  can neither be helped nor hindered; and he must determine himself and
+  create as it were an appetite in making his choice. And having once
+  chosen, he will wish to abide by his choice, just as if he had been
+  prompted thereto by a natural inclination. Thus will the divine will be
+  the cause of goodness in beings. That is to say, there will <!-- Page 428
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page428"></a>[428]</span> be goodness
+  in the objects, not by their nature, but by the will of God: whereas if
+  that will be excluded neither good nor evil can exist in things. It is
+  difficult to imagine how writers of merit could have been misled by so
+  strange an opinion, for the reason which appears to be advanced here has
+  not the slightest force. It seems to me as though an attempt is being
+  made to justify this opinion by the consideration that all creatures have
+  their whole being from God, so that they cannot act upon him or determine
+  him. But this is clearly an instance of self-deception. When we say that
+  an intelligent substance is actuated by the goodness of its object, we do
+  not assert that this object is necessarily a being existing outside the
+  substance, and it is enough for us that it be conceivable: for its
+  representation acts in the substance, or rather the substance acts upon
+  itself, in so far as it is disposed and influenced by this
+  representation. With God, it is plain that his understanding contains the
+  ideas of all possible things, and that is how everything is in him in a
+  transcendent manner. These ideas represent to him the good and evil, the
+  perfection and imperfection, the order and disorder, the congruity and
+  incongruity of possibles; and his superabundant goodness makes him choose
+  the most advantageous. God therefore determines himself by himself; his
+  will acts by virtue of his goodness, but it is particularized and
+  directed in action by understanding filled with wisdom. And since his
+  understanding is perfect, since his thoughts are always clear, his
+  inclinations always good, he never fails to do the best; whereas we may
+  be deceived by the mere semblances of truth and goodness. But how is it
+  possible for it to be said that there is no good or evil in the ideas
+  before the operation of God's will? Does the will of God form the ideas
+  which are in his understanding? I dare not ascribe to our learned author
+  so strange a sentiment, which would confuse understanding and will, and
+  would subvert the current use of our notions. Now if ideas are
+  independent of will, the perfection or imperfection which is represented
+  in them will be independent also. Indeed, is it by the will of God, for
+  example, or is it not rather by the nature of numbers, that certain
+  numbers allow more than others of various exact divisions? that some are
+  more fitted than others for forming battalions, composing polygons and
+  other regular figures? that the number six has the advantage of being the
+  least of all the numbers that are called perfect? that in a plane six
+  equal circles may touch a seventh? that of all equal <!-- Page 429
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page429"></a>[429]</span> bodies, the
+  sphere has the least surface? that certain lines are incommensurable, and
+  consequently ill-adapted for harmony? Do we not see that all these
+  advantages or disadvantages spring from the idea of the thing, and that
+  the contrary would imply contradiction? Can it be thought that the pain
+  and discomfort of sentient creatures, and above all the happiness and
+  unhappiness of intelligent substances, are a matter of indifference to
+  God? And what shall be said of his justice? Is it also something
+  arbitrary, and would he have acted wisely and justly if he had resolved
+  to condemn the innocent? I know that there have been writers so
+  ill-advised as to maintain an opinion so dangerous and so liable to
+  overthrow religion. But I am assured that our illustrious author is far
+  from holding it. Nevertheless, it seems as though this hypothesis tends
+  in that direction, if there is nothing in objects save what is
+  indifferent to the divine will before its choice. It is true that God has
+  need of nothing; but the author has himself shown clearly that God's
+  goodness, and not his need, prompted him to produce creatures. There was
+  therefore in him a reason anterior to the resolution; and, as I have said
+  so many times, it was neither by chance nor without cause, nor even by
+  necessity, that God created this world, but rather as a result of his
+  inclination, which always prompts him to the best. Thus it is surprising
+  that our author should assert here (ch. 5, sect. 1, sub-sect. 4, § 5)
+  that there is no reason which could have induced God, absolutely perfect
+  and happy in himself, to create anything outside him, although, according
+  to the author's previous declarations (ch. 1, sect. 3, §§ 8, 9), God acts
+  for an end, and his aim is to communicate his goodness. It was therefore
+  not altogether a matter of indifference to him whether he should create
+  or not create, and creation is notwithstanding a free act. Nor was it a
+  matter of indifference to him either, whether he should create one world
+  rather than another; a perpetual chaos, or a completely ordered system.
+  Thus the qualities of objects, included in their ideas, formed the reason
+  for God's choice.</p>
+
+  <p>22. Our author, having already spoken so admirably about the beauty
+  and fittingness of the works of God, has tried to search out phrases that
+  would reconcile them with his hypothesis, which appears to deprive God of
+  all consideration for the good or the advantage of creatures. The
+  indifference of God prevails (he says) only in his first elections, but
+  as soon as God has chosen something <!-- Page 430 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page430"></a>[430]</span> he has virtually
+  chosen, at the same time, all that which is of necessity connected
+  therewith. There were innumerable possible men equally perfect: the
+  election of some from among them is purely arbitrary (in the judgement of
+  our author). But God, once having chosen them, could not have willed in
+  them anything contrary to human nature. Up to this point the author's
+  words are consistent with his hypothesis; but those that follow go
+  further. He advances the proposition that when God resolved to produce
+  certain creatures he resolved at the same time, by virtue of his infinite
+  goodness, to give them every possible advantage. Nothing, indeed, could
+  be so reasonable, but also nothing could be so contrary to the hypothesis
+  he has put forward, and he does right to overthrow it, rather than
+  prolong the existence of anything so charged with incongruities
+  incompatible with the goodness and wisdom of God. Here is the way to see
+  plainly that this hypothesis cannot harmonize with what has just been
+  said. The first question will be: Will God create something or not, and
+  wherefore? The author has answered that he will create something in order
+  to communicate his goodness. It is therefore no matter of indifference to
+  him whether he shall create or not. Next the question is asked: Will God
+  create such and such a thing, and wherefore? One must needs answer (to
+  speak consistently) that the same goodness makes him choose the best, and
+  indeed the author falls back on that subsequently. But, following his own
+  hypothesis, he answers that God will create such a thing, but that there
+  is no <i>wherefore</i>, because God is absolutely indifferent towards
+  creatures, who have their goodness only from his choice. It is true that
+  our author varies somewhat on this point, for he says here (ch. 5, sect.
+  5, sub-sect. 4, § 12) that God is indifferent to the choice between men
+  of equal perfection, or between equally perfect kinds of rational
+  creatures. Thus, according to this form of expression, he would choose
+  rather the more perfect kind: and as kinds that are of equal perfection
+  harmonize more or less with others, God will choose those that agree best
+  together; there will therefore be no pure and absolute indifference, and
+  the author thus comes back to my principles. But let us speak, as he
+  speaks, in accordance with his hypothesis, and let us assume with him
+  that God chooses certain creatures even though he be absolutely
+  indifferent towards them. He will then just as soon choose creatures that
+  are irregular, ill-shapen, mischievous, unhappy, chaos everlasting, <!--
+  Page 431 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page431"></a>[431]</span>
+  monsters everywhere, scoundrels as sole inhabitants of the earth, devils
+  filling the whole universe, all this rather than excellent systems,
+  shapely forms, upright persons, good angels! No, the author will say,
+  God, when once he had resolved to create men, resolved at the same time
+  to give them all the advantages possible in the world, and it is the same
+  with regard to creatures of other kinds. I answer, that if this advantage
+  were connected of necessity with their nature, the author would be
+  speaking in accordance with his hypothesis. That not being so, however,
+  he must admit that God's resolve to give every possible advantage to men
+  arises from a new election independent of that one which prompted God to
+  make men. But whence comes this new election? Does it also come from mere
+  indifference? If such is the case, nothing prompts God to seek the good
+  of men, and if he sometimes comes to do it, it will be merely by
+  accident. But the author maintains that God was prompted to the choice by
+  his goodness; therefore the good and ill of creatures is no matter of
+  indifference to him, and there are in him primary choices to which the
+  goodness of the object prompts him. He chooses not only to create men,
+  but also to create men as happy as it is possible to be in this system.
+  After that not the least vestige of mere indifference will be left, for
+  we can reason concerning the entire world just as we have reasoned
+  concerning the human race. God resolved to create a world, but he was
+  bound by his goodness at the same time to make choice of such a world as
+  should contain the greatest possible amount of order, regularity, virtue,
+  happiness. For I can see no excuse for saying that whereas God was
+  prompted by his goodness to make the men he has resolved to create as
+  perfect as is possible within this system, he had not the same good
+  intention towards the whole universe. There we have come back again to
+  the goodness of the objects; and pure indifference, where God would act
+  without cause, is altogether destroyed by the very procedure of our
+  gifted author, with whom the force of truth, once the heart of the matter
+  was reached, prevailed over a speculative hypothesis, which cannot admit
+  of any application to the reality of things.</p>
+
+  <p>23. Since, therefore, nothing is altogether indifferent to God, who
+  knows all degrees, all effects, all relations of things, and who
+  penetrates at one and the same time all their possible connexions, let us
+  see whether at least the ignorance and insensibility of man can make him
+  absolutely indifferent in his choice. The author <!-- Page 432 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page432"></a>[432]</span> regales us with this
+  pure indifference as with a handsome present. Here are the proofs of it
+  which he gives: (1) We feel it within us. (2) We have experience within
+  ourselves of its marks and its properties. (3) We can show that other
+  causes which might determine our will are insufficient. As for the first
+  point, he asserts that in feeling freedom within us we feel within us at
+  the same time pure indifference. But I do not agree that we feel such
+  indifference, or that this alleged feeling follows upon that of freedom.
+  We feel usually within us something which inclines us to our choice. At
+  times it happens, however, that we cannot account for all our
+  dispositions. If we give our mind to the question, we shall recognize
+  that the constitution of our body and of bodies in our environment, the
+  present or previous temper of our soul, together with countless small
+  things included under these comprehensive headings, may contribute
+  towards our greater or lesser predilection for certain objects, and the
+  variation of our opinions from one time to another. At the same time we
+  shall recognize that none would attribute this to mere indifference, or
+  to some indefinable force of the soul which has the same effect upon
+  objects as colours are said to have upon the chameleon. Thus the author
+  has no cause here to appeal to the judgement of the people: he does so,
+  saying that in many things the people reason better than the
+  philosophers. It is true that certain philosophers have been misled by
+  chimeras, and it would seem that mere indifference is numbered among
+  chimerical notions. But when someone maintains that a thing does not
+  exist because the common herd does not perceive it, here the populace
+  cannot be regarded as a good judge, being, as it is, only guided by the
+  senses. Many people think that air is nothing when it is not stirred by
+  the wind. The majority do not know of imperceptible bodies, the fluid
+  which causes weight or elasticity, magnetic matter, to say nothing of
+  atoms and other indivisible substances. Do we say then that these things
+  are not because the common herd does not know of them? If so, we shall be
+  able to say also that the soul acts sometimes without any disposition or
+  inclination contributing towards the production of its act, because there
+  are many dispositions and inclinations which are not sufficiently
+  perceived by the common herd, for lack of attention and thought.
+  Secondly, as to the marks of the power in question, I have already
+  refuted the claim advanced for it, that it possesses the advantage of
+  making one active, the real cause of <!-- Page 433 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page433"></a>[433]</span> one's action, and
+  subject to responsibility and morality: these are not genuine marks of
+  its existence. Here is one the author adduces, which is not genuine
+  either, namely, that we have within us a power of resisting natural
+  appetites, that is to say of resisting not only the senses, but also the
+  reason. But I have already stated this fact: one resists natural
+  appetites through other natural appetites. One sometimes endures
+  inconveniences, and is happy to do so; but that is on account of some
+  hope or of some satisfaction which is combined with the ill and exceeds
+  it: either one anticipates good from it, or one finds good in it. The
+  author asserts that it is through that power to transform appearances
+  which he has introduced on the scene, that we render agreeable what at
+  first displeased us. But who cannot see that the true reason is, that
+  application and attention to the object and custom change our disposition
+  and consequently our natural appetites? Once we become used to a rather
+  high degree of cold or heat, it no longer incommodes us as it formerly
+  did, and yet no one would ascribe this effect to our power of choice.
+  Time is needed, for instance, to bring about that hardening, or rather
+  that callosity, which enables the hands of certain workmen to resist a
+  degree of heat that would burn our hands. The populace, whom the author
+  invokes, guess correctly the cause of this effect, although they
+  sometimes apply it in a laughable manner. Two serving-maids being close
+  to the fire in the kitchen, one who has burnt herself says to the other:
+  Oh, my dear, who will be able to endure the fire of purgatory? The other
+  answers: Don't be absurd, my good woman, one grows used to
+  everything.</p>
+
+  <p>24. But (the author will say) this wonderful power which causes us to
+  be indifferent to everything, or inclined towards everything, simply at
+  our own free will, prevails over reason itself. And this is his third
+  proof, namely, that one cannot sufficiently explain our actions without
+  having recourse to this power. One sees numbers of people despising the
+  entreaties of their friends, the counsels of their neighbours, the
+  reproaches of their conscience, discomforts, tortures, death, the wrath
+  of God, hell itself, for the sake of running after follies which have no
+  claim to be good or tolerable, save as being freely chosen by such
+  people. All is well in this argument, with the exception of the last
+  words only. For when one takes an actual instance one will find that
+  there were reasons or causes which led the man to his choice, and that
+  there are very <!-- Page 434 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page434"></a>[434]</span> strong bonds to fasten him thereto. A
+  love-affair, for example, will never have arisen from mere indifference:
+  inclination or passion will have played its part; but habit and
+  stubbornness will cause certain natures to face ruin rather than
+  separation from the beloved. Here is another example cited by the author:
+  an atheist, a man like Lucilio Vanini (that is what many people call him,
+  whereas he himself adopts the magnificent name of Giulio Cesare Vanini in
+  his works), will suffer a preposterous martyrdom for his chimera rather
+  than renounce his impiety. The author does not name Vanini; and the truth
+  is that this man repudiated his wrong opinions, until he was convicted of
+  having published atheistical dogmas and acted as an apostle of atheism.
+  When he was asked whether there was a God, he plucked some grass,
+  saying:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Et levis est cespes qui probet esse Deum.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>But since the Attorney General to the Parliament of Toulouse desired
+  to cause annoyance to the First President (so it is said), to whom Vanini
+  was granted considerable access, teaching his children philosophy, if
+  indeed he was not altogether in the service of that magistrate, the
+  inquisition was carried through rigorously. Vanini, seeing that there was
+  no chance of pardon, declared himself, when at the point of death, for
+  what he was, an atheist; and there was nothing very extraordinary in
+  that. But supposing there were an atheist who gave himself up for
+  torture, vanity might be in his case a strong enough motive, as in that
+  of the Gymnosophist, Calanus, and of the Sophist who, according to
+  Lucian's account, was burnt to death of his own will. But the author
+  thinks that that very vanity, that stubbornness, those other wild
+  intentions of persons who otherwise seem to have quite good sense, cannot
+  be explained by the appetites that arise from the representation of good
+  and evil, and that they compel us to have recourse to that transcendent
+  power which transforms good into evil, and evil into good, and the
+  indifferent into good or into evil. But we do not need to go so far, and
+  the causes of our errors are only too visible. Indeed, we can make these
+  transformations, but it is not as with the Fairies, by a mere act of this
+  magic power, but by obscuring and suppressing in one's mind the
+  representations of good or bad qualities which are naturally attached to
+  certain objects, and by contemplating only such representations as
+  conform to our taste or <!-- Page 435 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page435"></a>[435]</span> our prejudices; or again, because one
+  attaches to the objects, by dint of thinking of them, certain qualities
+  which are connected with them only accidentally or through our habitual
+  contemplation of them. For example, all my life long I detest a certain
+  kind of good food, because in my childhood I found in it something
+  distasteful, which made a strong impression upon me. On the other hand, a
+  certain natural defect will be pleasing to me, because it will revive
+  within me to some extent the thought of a person I used to esteem or
+  love. A young man will have been delighted by the applause which has been
+  showered upon him after some successful public action; the impression of
+  this great pleasure will have made him remarkably sensitive to
+  reputation; he will think day and night of nothing save what nourishes
+  this passion, and that will cause him to scorn death itself in order to
+  attain his end. For although he may know very well that he will not feel
+  what is said of him after his death, the representation he makes of it
+  for himself beforehand creates a strong impression on his mind. And there
+  are always motives of the same kind in actions which appear most useless
+  and absurd to those who do not enter into these motives. In a word, a
+  strong or oft-repeated impression may alter considerably our organs, our
+  imagination, our memory, and even our reasoning. It happens that a man,
+  by dint of having often related something untrue, which he has perhaps
+  invented, finally comes to believe in it himself. And as one often
+  represents to oneself something pleasing, one makes it easy to imagine,
+  and one thinks it also easy to put into effect, whence it comes that one
+  persuades oneself easily of what one wishes.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Et qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>25. Errors are therefore, absolutely speaking, never voluntary,
+  although the will very often contributes towards them indirectly, owing
+  to the pleasure one takes in giving oneself up to certain thoughts, or
+  owing to the aversion one feels for others. Beautiful print in a book
+  will help towards making it persuasive to the reader. The air and manner
+  of a speaker will win the audience for him. One will be inclined to
+  despise doctrines coming from a man one despises or hates, or from
+  another who resembles him in some point that strikes us. I have already
+  said why one is readily disposed to believe what is advantageous or
+  agreeable, and I have known people who at first had changed their
+  religion for worldly <!-- Page 436 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page436"></a>[436]</span> considerations, but who have been
+  persuaded (and well persuaded) afterwards that they had taken the right
+  course. One sees also that stubbornness is not simply wrong choice
+  persevering, but also a disposition to persevere therein, which is due to
+  some good supposed to be inherent in the choice, or some evil imagined as
+  arising from a change. The first choice has perchance been made in mere
+  levity, but the intention to abide by it springs from certain stronger
+  reasons or impressions. There are even some writers on ethics who lay it
+  down that one ought to abide by one's choice so as not to be inconstant
+  or appear so. Yet perseverance is wrong when one despises the warnings of
+  reason, especially when the subject is important enough to be examined
+  carefully; but when the thought of change is unpleasant, one readily
+  averts one's attention from it, and that is the way which most frequently
+  leads one to stubbornness. The author wished to connect stubbornness with
+  his so-called pure indifference. He might then have taken into account
+  that to make us cling to a choice there would be need of more than the
+  mere choice itself or a pure indifference, especially if this choice has
+  been made lightly, and all the more lightly in proportion to the
+  indifference shown. In such a case we shall be readily inclined to
+  reverse the choice, unless vanity, habit, interest or some other motive
+  makes us persevere therein. It must not be supposed either that vengeance
+  pleases without cause. Persons of intense feeling ponder upon it day and
+  night, and it is hard for them to efface the impression of the wrong or
+  the affront they have sustained. They picture for themselves a very great
+  pleasure in being freed from the thought of scorn which comes upon them
+  every moment, and which causes some to find vengeance sweeter than life
+  itself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Quis vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa.</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <p>The author would wish to persuade us that usually, when our desire or
+  our aversion is for some object which does not sufficiently deserve it,
+  we have given to it the surplus of good or evil which has affected us,
+  through the alleged power of choice which makes things appear good or
+  evil as we wish. One has had two degrees of natural evil, one gives
+  oneself six degrees of artificial good through the power that can choose
+  without cause. Thus one will have four degrees of net good (ch. 5, sect.
+  2, § 7). If that could be carried out it would take us far, as I have
+  already said here. The <!-- Page 437 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page437"></a>[437]</span> author even thinks that ambition,
+  avarice, the gambling mania and other frivolous passions derive all their
+  force from this power (ch. 5, sect. 5, sub-sect. 6). But there are
+  besides so many false appearances in things, so many imaginations capable
+  of enlarging or diminishing objects, so many unjustified connexions in
+  our arguments, that there is no need of this little Fairy, that is, of
+  this inward power operating as it were by enchantment, to whom the author
+  attributes all these disorders. Indeed, I have already said repeatedly
+  that when we resolve upon some course contrary to acknowledged reason, we
+  are prompted to it by another reason stronger to outward appearance, such
+  as, for instance, is the pleasure of appearing independent and of
+  performing an extraordinary action. There was in days past at the Court
+  of Osnabrück a tutor to the pages, who, like a second Mucius Scaevola,
+  held out his arm into the flame and looked like getting a gangrene, in
+  order to show that the strength of his mind was greater than a very acute
+  pain. Few people will follow his example; and I do not even know if a
+  writer could easily be found who, having once affirmed the existence of a
+  power capable of choosing without cause, or even contrary to reason,
+  would be willing to prove his case by his own example, in renouncing some
+  good benefice or some high office, simply in order to display this
+  superiority of will over reason. But I am sure at the least that an
+  intelligent man would not do so. He would be presently aware that someone
+  would nullify his sacrifice by pointing out to him that he had simply
+  imitated Heliodorus, Bishop of Larissa. That man (so it is said) held his
+  book on Theagenes and Chariclea dearer than his bishopric; and such a
+  thing may easily happen when a man has resources enabling him to dispense
+  with his office and when he is sensitive to reputation. Thus every day
+  people are found ready to sacrifice their advantages to their caprices,
+  that is to say, actual goods to the mere semblance of them.</p>
+
+  <p>26. If I wished to follow step by step the arguments of our gifted
+  author, which often come back to matters previously considered in our
+  inquiry, usually however with some elegant and well-phrased addition, I
+  should be obliged to proceed too far; but I hope that I shall be able to
+  avoid doing so, having, as I think, sufficiently met all his reasons. The
+  best thing is that with him practice usually corrects and amends theory.
+  After having advanced the hypothesis, in the second section of this fifth
+  chapter, <!-- Page 438 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page438"></a>[438]</span> that we approach God through the capacity
+  to choose without reason, and that this power being of the noblest kind
+  its exercise is the most capable of making one happy, things in the
+  highest degree paradoxical, since it is reason which leads us to imitate
+  God and our happiness lies in following reason: after that, I say, the
+  author provides an excellent corrective, for he says rightly (§ 5) that
+  in order to be happy we must adapt our choice to things, since things are
+  scarcely prone to adapt themselves to us, and that this is in effect
+  adapting oneself to the divine will. Doubtless that is well said, but it
+  implies besides that our will must be guided as far as possible by the
+  reality of the objects, and by true representations of good and evil.
+  Consequently also the motives of good and evil are not opposed to
+  freedom, and the power of choosing without cause, far from ministering to
+  our happiness, will be useless and even highly prejudicial. Thus it is
+  happily the case that this power nowhere exists, and that it is 'a being
+  of reasoning reason', as some Schoolmen call the fictions that are not
+  even possible. As for me, I should have preferred to call them 'beings of
+  non-reasoning reason'. Also I think that the third section (on wrong
+  elections) may pass, since it says that one must not choose things that
+  are impossible, inconsistent, harmful, contrary to the divine will, or
+  already taken by others. Moreover, the author remarks appositely that by
+  prejudicing the happiness of others needlessly one offends the divine
+  will, which desires that all be happy as far as it is possible. I will
+  say as much of the fourth section, where there is mention of the source
+  of wrong elections, which are error or ignorance, negligence, fickleness
+  in changing too readily, stubbornness in not changing in time, and bad
+  habits; finally there is the importunity of the appetites, which often
+  drive us inopportunely towards external things. The fifth section is
+  designed to reconcile evil elections or sins with the power and goodness
+  of God; and this section, as it is diffuse, is divided into sub-sections.
+  The author has cumbered himself needlessly with a great objection: for he
+  asserts that without a power to choose that is altogether indifferent in
+  the choice there would be no sin. Now it was very easy for God to refuse
+  to creatures a power so irrational. It was sufficient for them to be
+  actuated by the representations of goods and evils; it was therefore
+  easy, according to the author's hypothesis, for God to prevent sin. To
+  extricate himself from this difficulty, he has no other resource than to
+  state that if this power <!-- Page 439 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page439"></a>[439]</span> were removed from things the world would
+  be nothing but a purely passive machine. But that is the very thing which
+  I have disproved. If this power were missing in the world (as in fact it
+  is), one would hardly complain of the fact. Souls will be well content
+  with the representations of goods and evils for the making of their
+  choice, and the world will remain as beautiful as it is. The author comes
+  back to what he had already put forward here, that without this power
+  there would be no happiness. But I have given a sufficient answer to
+  that, and there is not the slightest probability in this assertion and in
+  certain other paradoxes he puts forward here to support his principal
+  paradox.</p>
+
+  <p>27. He makes a small digression on prayer (sub-sect. 4), saying that
+  those who pray to God hope for some change in the order of nature; but it
+  seems as though, according to his opinion, they are mistaken. In reality,
+  men will be content if their prayers are heard, without troubling
+  themselves as to whether the course of nature is changed in their favour,
+  or not. Indeed, if they receive succour from good angels there will be no
+  change in the general order of things. Also this opinion of our author is
+  a very reasonable one, that there is a system of spiritual substances,
+  just as there is of corporeal substances, and that the spiritual have
+  communication with one another, even as bodies do. God employs the
+  ministry of angels in his rule of mankind, without any detriment to the
+  order of nature. Nevertheless, it is easier to put forward theories on
+  these matters than to explain them, unless one have recourse to my system
+  of Harmony. But the author goes somewhat further. He believes that the
+  mission of the Holy Spirit was a great miracle in the beginning, but that
+  now his operations within us are natural. I leave it to him to explain
+  his opinion, and to settle the matter with other theologians. Yet I
+  observe that he finds the natural efficacy of prayer in the power it has
+  of making the soul better, of overcoming the passions, and of winning for
+  oneself a certain degree of new grace. I can say almost the same things
+  on my hypothesis, which represents the will as acting only in accordance
+  with motives; and I am immune from the difficulties in which the author
+  has become involved over his power of choosing without cause. He is in
+  great embarrassment also with regard to the foreknowledge of God. For if
+  the soul is perfectly indifferent in its choice how is it possible to
+  foresee this choice? and what sufficient reason will one be able to find
+  for the knowledge of a <!-- Page 440 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page440"></a>[440]</span> thing, if there is no reason for its
+  existence? The author puts off to some other occasion the solution of
+  this difficulty, which would require (according to him) an entire work.
+  For the rest, he sometimes speaks pertinently, and in conformity with my
+  principles, on the subject of moral evil. He says, for example (sub-sect.
+  6), that vices and crimes do not detract from the beauty of the universe,
+  but rather add to it, just as certain dissonances would offend the ear by
+  their harshness if they were heard quite alone, and yet in combination
+  they render the harmony more pleasing. He also points out divers goods
+  involved in evils, for instance, the usefulness of prodigality in the
+  rich and avarice in the poor; indeed it serves to make the arts flourish.
+  We must also bear in mind that we are not to judge the universe by the
+  small size of our globe and of all that is known to us. For the stains
+  and defects in it may be found as useful for enhancing the beauty of the
+  rest as patches, which have nothing beautiful in themselves, are by the
+  fair sex found adapted to embellish the whole face, although they
+  disfigure the part they cover. Cotta, in Cicero's book, had compared
+  providence, in its granting of reason to men, to a physician who allows
+  wine to a patient, notwithstanding that he foresees the misuse which will
+  be made thereof by the patient, at the expense of his life. The author
+  replies that providence does what wisdom and goodness require, and that
+  the good which accrues is greater than the evil. If God had not given
+  reason to man there would have been no man at all, and God would be like
+  a physician who killed someone in order to prevent his falling ill. One
+  may add that it is not reason which is harmful in itself, but the absence
+  of reason; and when reason is ill employed we reason well about means,
+  but not adequately about an end, or about that bad end we have proposed
+  to ourselves. Thus it is always for lack of reason that one does an evil
+  deed. The author also puts forward the objection made by Epicurus in the
+  book by Lactantius on the wrath of God. The terms of the objection are
+  more or less as follows. Either God wishes to banish evils and cannot
+  contrive to do so, in which case he would be weak; or he can abolish
+  them, and will not, which would be a sign of malignity in him; or again
+  he lacks power and also will, which would make him appear both weak and
+  jealous; or finally he can and will, but in this case it will be asked
+  why he then does not banish evil, if he exists? The author replies that
+  God cannot banish evil, that he does not wish to either, <!-- Page 441
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page441"></a>[441]</span> and that
+  notwithstanding he is neither malicious nor weak. I should have preferred
+  to say that he can banish evil, but that he does not wish to do so
+  absolutely, and rightly so, because he would then banish good at the same
+  time, and he would banish more good than evil. Finally our author, having
+  finished his learned work, adds an Appendix, in which he speaks of the
+  Divine Laws. He fittingly divides these laws into natural and positive.
+  He observes that the particular laws of the nature of animals must give
+  way to the general laws of bodies, that God is not in reality angered
+  when his laws are violated, but that order demanded that he who sins
+  should bring an evil upon himself, and that he who does violence to
+  others should suffer violence in his turn. But he believes that the
+  positive laws of God rather indicate and forecast the evil than cause its
+  infliction. And that gives him occasion to speak of the eternal damnation
+  of the wicked, which no longer serves either for correction or example,
+  and which nevertheless satisfies the retributive justice of God, although
+  the wicked bring their unhappiness upon themselves. He suspects, however,
+  that these punishments of the wicked bring some advantage to virtuous
+  people. He is doubtful also whether it is not better to be damned than to
+  be nothing: for it might be that the damned are fools, capable of
+  clinging to their state of misery owing to a certain perversity of mind
+  which, he maintains, makes them congratulate themselves on their false
+  judgements in the midst of their misery, and take pleasure in finding
+  fault with the will of God. For every day one sees peevish, malicious,
+  envious people who enjoy the thought of their ills, and seek to bring
+  affliction upon themselves. These ideas are not worthy of contempt, and I
+  have sometimes had the like myself, but I am far from passing final
+  judgement on them. I related, in <a href="#sect271">§ 271</a> of the
+  essays written to oppose M. Bayle, the fable of the Devil's refusal of
+  the pardon a hermit offers him on God's behalf. Baron André Taifel, an
+  Austrian nobleman, Knight of the Court of Ferdinand Archduke of Austria
+  who became the second emperor of that name, alluding to his name (which
+  appears to mean Devil in German) assumed as his emblem a devil or satyr,
+  with this Spanish motto, <i>Mas perdido, y menos arrepentido</i>, the
+  more lost, the less repentant, which indicates a hopeless passion from
+  which one cannot free oneself. This motto was afterwards repeated by the
+  Spanish Count of Villamediana when he was said to be in love with the
+  Queen. Coming to the question <!-- Page 442 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page442"></a>[442]</span> why evil often happens to the good and
+  good to the wicked, our illustrious author thinks that it has been
+  sufficiently answered, and that hardly any doubt remains on that point.
+  He observes nevertheless that one may often doubt whether good people who
+  endure affliction have not been made good by their very misfortune, and
+  whether the fortunate wicked have not perhaps been spoilt by prosperity.
+  He adds that we are often bad judges, when it is a question of
+  recognizing not only a virtuous man, but also a happy man. One often
+  honours a hypocrite, and one despises another whose solid virtue is
+  without pretence. We are poor judges of happiness also, and often
+  felicity is hidden from sight under the rags of a contented poor man,
+  while it is sought in vain in the palaces of certain of the great.
+  Finally the author observes, that the greatest felicity here on earth
+  lies in the hope of future happiness, and thus it may be said that to the
+  wicked nothing happens save what is of service for correction or
+  chastisement, and to the good nothing save what ministers to their
+  greater good. These conclusions entirely correspond to my opinion, and
+  one can say nothing more appropriate for the conclusion of this work.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 443 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page443"></a>[443]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>CAUSA DEI ASSERTA
+PER JUSTITIAM EJUS</h3>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em;"><i>cum caeteris ejus perfectionibus cunctisque
+actionibus conciliatam.</i></p>
+
+  <p>The original edition of the Theodicy contained a fourth appendix under
+  this title. It presented in scholastic Latin a formal summary of the
+  positive doctrine expressed by the French treatise. It satisfied the
+  academic requirements of its day, but would not, presumably, be of
+  interest to many modern readers, and is consequently omitted here.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 445 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page445"></a>[445]</span></p>
+
+  <br clear="all" />
+<hr />
+
+<h3>INDEX</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Abélard, <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page232">232</a>-4, <a href="#page272">272</a></p>
+      <p>Abraham, <a href="#page209">209</a></p>
+      <p>Adam, <a href="#page222">222</a>, <a href="#page270">270</a>-2, <a href="#page346">346</a>-7</p>
+      <p>Adam Kadmon, <a href="#page133">133</a></p>
+      <p>Albius, Thomas, <a href="#page122">122</a></p>
+      <p>Alcuin, <a href="#page77">77</a></p>
+      <p>Alfonso, King of Castile, <a href="#page247">247</a>-8</p>
+      <p>Aloysius Novarinus, <a href="#page191">191</a></p>
+      <p>Alrasi, <a href="#page288">288</a></p>
+      <p>Alvarez, <a href="#page149">149</a></p>
+      <p>Ambrose, St., <a href="#page153">153</a>, <a href="#page194">194</a></p>
+      <p>Amyraut, <a href="#page238">238</a></p>
+      <p>Anaxagoras, <a href="#page353">353</a></p>
+      <p>Andradius, Jacques Payva, <a href="#page176">176</a></p>
+      <p>Andreas Cisalpinus, <a href="#page81">81</a></p>
+      <p>Angelus Silesius, Johann, <a href="#page79">79</a></p>
+      <p>Annat, <a href="#page344">344</a>-5</p>
+      <p>Anselm, St., <a href="#page77">77</a></p>
+      <p>Antipater, <a href="#page232">232</a></p>
+      <p>Aquinas, Thomas, <i>see</i> Thomas</p>
+      <p>Arcesilaus, <a href="#page337">337</a></p>
+      <p>Archidemus, <a href="#page232">232</a></p>
+      <p>Aristotelians, <a href="#page27">27</a>-8</p>
+      <p>Aristotle, <a href="#page13">13</a>, <a href="#page76">76</a>-8, <a href="#page81">81</a>, <a href="#page148">148</a>, <a href="#page170">170</a>, <a href="#page195">195</a>, <a href="#page203">203</a>, <a href="#page229">229</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a>, <a href="#page243">243</a>-4, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page269">269</a>, <a href="#page283">283</a>, <a href="#page304">304</a>, <a href="#page309">309</a>-10, <a href="#page324">324</a>, <a href="#page352">352</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a>, <a href="#page409">409</a></p>
+      <p>Arminius, <i>see</i> Irminius</p>
+      <p>Arminius (Jacob Harmensen), <a href="#page383">383</a>, <a href="#page398">398</a></p>
+      <p>Arnauld, <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page89">89</a>, <a href="#page225">225</a>, <a href="#page254">254</a>, <a href="#page260">260</a>, <a href="#page264">264</a>-6, <a href="#page351">351</a></p>
+      <p>Arriaga, <a href="#page112">112</a>, <a href="#page356">356</a></p>
+      <p>Arrian, <a href="#page232">232</a></p>
+      <p>Assassins, <a href="#page284">284</a></p>
+      <p>Athanasius, St., <a href="#page87">87</a></p>
+      <p>Augustine (of Hippo), St., <a href="#page60">60</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page134">134</a>, <a href="#page148">148</a>, <a href="#page166">166</a>, <a href="#page173">173</a>, <a href="#page187">187</a>, <a href="#page226">226</a>, <a href="#page274">274</a>, <a href="#page285">285</a>, <a href="#page294">294</a>, <a href="#page296">296</a>-7, <a href="#page300">300</a>-3, <a href="#page347">347</a>, <a href="#page352">352</a>-3, <a href="#page378">378</a>, <a href="#page384">384</a>, <a href="#page409">409</a>, <a href="#page412">412</a></p>
+      <p>&mdash;&mdash;, his disciples, <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page297">297</a>, <a href="#page300">300</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a>, <a href="#page330">330</a>, <a href="#page348">348</a></p>
+      <p>Augustus (Emperor), <a href="#page287">287</a></p>
+      <p>Aulus Gellius, <a href="#page258">258</a>-9, <a href="#page325">325</a>, <a href="#page327">327</a></p>
+      <p>Aureolus, Cardinal, <a href="#page139">139</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a></p>
+      <p>Averroes, Averroists, <a href="#page77">77</a> ff.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Bacon, Francis, <a href="#page306">306</a></p>
+      <p>Bañez, <a href="#page149">149</a></p>
+      <p>Barbaro, Ermolao, <a href="#page170">170</a></p>
+      <p>Baron, Vincent, <a href="#page121">121</a></p>
+      <p>Baronius, Robert, <a href="#page84">84</a></p>
+      <p>Barton, Thomas, <a href="#page122">122</a></p>
+      <p>Basil, St., <a href="#page221">221</a>, <a href="#page352">352</a></p>
+      <p>Bayle, P., <a href="#page34">34</a> ff. <i>et passim</i></p>
+      <p>Becher, Johann Joachim, <a href="#page334">334</a>-5</p>
+      <p>Becker, <a href="#page221">221</a></p>
+      <p>Bede, <a href="#page77">77</a></p>
+      <p>Bellarmine, St. Robert, <a href="#page107">107</a>, <a href="#page313">313</a>, <a href="#page323">323</a></p>
+      <p>Berigardus, Claudius, <a href="#page81">81</a></p>
+      <p>Berkeley, Bp., <a href="#page11">11</a></p>
+      <p>Bernard, St., <a href="#page277">277</a></p>
+      <p>Bernier, <a href="#page139">139</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a></p>
+      <p>Bertius, <a href="#page227">227</a></p>
+      <p>de Bèze, Theodore, <a href="#page274">274</a></p>
+      <p><i>Birgitta, Revelations of St.</i>, <a href="#page173">173</a></p>
+      <p>Boethius, <a href="#page76">76</a>, <a href="#page365">365</a>-6</p>
+      <p>Bonartes, Thomas, <a href="#page58">58</a>, <a href="#page121">121</a>-2</p>
+      <p>Bonaventura, St., <a href="#page294">294</a></p>
+      <p>des Bosses, Fr., <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href="#page389">389</a></p>
+      <p>Bossuet, <a href="#page10">10</a></p>
+      <p>Bradwardine, Abp., <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href="#page176">176</a></p>
+      <p>Bramhall, Bp. John, <a href="#page161">161</a>, <a href="#page393">393</a></p>
+      <p>Bredenburg, Johan, <a href="#page349">349</a>-50</p>
+      <p>Brunswick, Duke of, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+      <p>Buckingham, Duke of, <a href="#page142">142</a></p>
+      <p>Buridan's ass, <a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href="#page311">311</a>, <a href="#page312">312</a></p>
+      <p>Burnet, Thomas, <a href="#page278">278</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Cabalists, <a href="#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page133">133</a>, <a href="#page347">347</a></p>
+      <p>Caesar Cremoninus, <a href="#page81">81</a></p>
+      <p>Cajetan, Cardinal, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page243">243</a></p>
+      <p>Calanus, <a href="#page284">284</a>, <a href="#page434">434</a></p>
+      <p>Caligula, <a href="#page227">227</a></p>
+      <p>Calixtus, <a href="#page108">108</a></p>
+      <p>Calli, <a href="#page359">359</a></p>
+      <p>Callimachus, <a href="#page213">213</a></p>
+      <p>Calovius, <a href="#page84">84</a></p>
+      <p>Calvin, <a href="#page84">84</a>-5, <a href="#page101">101</a>, <a href="#page165">165</a>, <a href="#page222">222</a>, <a href="#page238">238</a>, <a href="#page240">240</a>, <a href="#page328">328</a></p>
+      <p>Cameron, <a href="#page313">313</a></p>
+      <p>Campanella, <a href="#page217">217</a></p>
+      <p>Capella, Martianus, <a href="#page264">264</a></p>
+      <p>Cardan, Jerome, <a href="#page282">282</a>, <a href="#page286">286</a></p>
+      <p>Carneades, <a href="#page312">312</a>, <a href="#page320">320</a>-1, <a href="#page337">337</a></p>
+      <p>Caroli, Andreas, <a href="#page227">227</a></p>
+      <p>Casaubon, Meric, <a href="#page285">285</a></p>
+      <p>Caselius, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+      <p>Cassiodorus, <a href="#page76">76</a></p>
+<!-- Page 446 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page446"></a>[446]</span>
+      <p>Casuists, <a href="#page194">194</a>, <a href="#page222">222</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a></p>
+      <p>Catharin, Ambrose, <a href="#page173">173</a></p>
+      <p>Catherine de Medicis, <a href="#page227">227</a></p>
+      <p>Cato, <a href="#page263">263</a>, <a href="#page318">318</a></p>
+      <p>Celsus, <a href="#page102">102</a>-3</p>
+      <p>Chardin, <a href="#page209">209</a></p>
+      <p>de la Charmoye, Abbé, <a href="#page213">213</a></p>
+      <p>Chemnitz, Martin, <a href="#page111">111</a>, <a href="#page176">176</a></p>
+      <p>Christine, Queen of Sweden, <a href="#page96">96</a>, <a href="#page104">104</a></p>
+      <p>Chrysippus, <a href="#page229">229</a>-32, <a href="#page258">258</a>-9, <a href="#page324">324</a>-7</p>
+      <p>Cicero, <a href="#page99">99</a>, <a href="#page194">194</a>, <a href="#page229">229</a>-32, <a href="#page241">241</a>, <a href="#page286">286</a>, <a href="#page297">297</a>, <a href="#page312">312</a>, <a href="#page321">321</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a>-5, <a href="#page342">342</a></p>
+      <p>Claudian, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href="#page191">191</a>, <a href="#page215">215</a></p>
+      <p>Cleanthes, <a href="#page233">233</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a></p>
+      <p>Coelius Secundus Curio, <a href="#page134">134</a></p>
+      <p>Coimbra, Fathers of, <a href="#page325">325</a></p>
+      <p>Colerus, <a href="#page350">350</a></p>
+      <p>Conringius, <a href="#page161">161</a>, <a href="#page422">422</a></p>
+      <p>Constance, Council of, <a href="#page234">234</a></p>
+      <p>de la Cour, <a href="#page350">350</a>-1</p>
+      <p>Crellius, <a href="#page161">161</a></p>
+      <p>Cudworth, Ralph, <a href="#page64">64</a>, <a href="#page245">245</a></p>
+      <p>Cuper, Franz, <a href="#page350">350</a></p>
+      <p>Cyrano de Bergerac, <a href="#page331">331</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Dacier, <a href="#page337">337</a></p>
+      <p>Daillé, <a href="#page70">70</a>, <a href="#page107">107</a></p>
+      <p>Davidius, John, <a href="#page179">179</a></p>
+      <p><i>De Auxiliis</i>, <a href="#page168">168</a></p>
+      <p>Democritus, <a href="#page324">324</a></p>
+      <p>Descartes, <a href="#page12">12</a>-13, <a href="#page19">19</a>-21, <a href="#page107">107</a>, <a href="#page111">111</a>-12, <a href="#page140">140</a>, <a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href="#page156">156</a>, <a href="#page224">224</a> ff., <a href="#page239">239</a>, <a href="#page244">244</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page281">281</a>, <a href="#page304">304</a>, <a href="#page331">331</a>, <a href="#page333">333</a>, <a href="#page334">334</a>, <a href="#page343">343</a>, <a href="#page390">390</a>, <a href="#page409">409</a>, <a href="#page426">426</a></p>
+      <p>Desmarests, Samuel, <a href="#page241">241</a></p>
+      <p>Diodorus, <a href="#page230">230</a>-2</p>
+      <p>Diogenianus, <a href="#page325">325</a></p>
+      <p>Dionysius of Halicarnassus, <a href="#page232">232</a></p>
+      <p>Diphilus, <a href="#page285">285</a></p>
+      <p>Diroys, <a href="#page249">249</a>-53, <a href="#page329">329</a></p>
+      <p>Dominicans, <a href="#page348">348</a></p>
+      <p>Dreier, <a href="#page244">244</a></p>
+      <p>Drexler, <a href="#page291">291</a></p>
+      <p>Dualists, <a href="#page251">251</a></p>
+      <p>du Plessis-Mornay, <a href="#page91">91</a></p>
+      <p>Durand de Saint-Pourçain, <a href="#page139">139</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a>, <a href="#page341">341</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Empedocles, <a href="#page324">324</a></p>
+      <p>Epictetus, <a href="#page352">352</a></p>
+      <p>Epicureans, <a href="#page282">282</a>-3</p>
+      <p>Epicurus, <a href="#page229">229</a>-30, <a href="#page310">310</a>-11, <a href="#page319">319</a>, <a href="#page320">320</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a>, <a href="#page395">395</a></p>
+      <p>Esprit, Abbé, <a href="#page131">131</a></p>
+      <p>Euclid, <a href="#page261">261</a></p>
+      <p>Euripides, <a href="#page284">284</a>, <a href="#page285">285</a></p>
+      <p>Eusebius, <a href="#page326">326</a></p>
+      <p>Eutrapelus, <a href="#page191">191</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Fabricius, Johann Ludwig, <a href="#page67">67</a></p>
+      <p>Fabry, <a href="#page333">333</a></p>
+      <p>Fecht, <a href="#page290">290</a>, <a href="#page291">291</a>, <a href="#page293">293</a></p>
+      <p>Fénelon, <a href="#page287">287</a></p>
+      <p>Fludde, <a href="#page184">184</a></p>
+      <p>Fonseca, <a href="#page145">145</a></p>
+      <p>Foucher, <a href="#page34">34</a>, <a href="#page89">89</a>, <a href="#page337">337</a></p>
+      <p>Francis I of France, <a href="#page204">204</a></p>
+      <p>Francis of Sales, St., <a href="#page176">176</a></p>
+      <p>Francis Xavier, St., <a href="#page176">176</a></p>
+      <p>Freitag, Johann, <a href="#page171">171</a></p>
+      <p>Fromondus, Libertus, <a href="#page89">89</a></p>
+      <p>Fulgentius, <a href="#page167">167</a></p>
+      <p><i>Fur praedestinatus</i>, <a href="#page227">227</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>della Galla, Julius Caesar, <a href="#page171">171</a></p>
+      <p>Gassendi, <a href="#page12">12</a>, <a href="#page337">337</a></p>
+      <p>Gatacre, Thomas, <a href="#page262">262</a></p>
+      <p>Gerhard, Johann, <a href="#page291">291</a></p>
+      <p>Gerson, <a href="#page79">79</a></p>
+      <p>Gibieuf, <a href="#page344">344</a>-5</p>
+      <p>Glarea, Antonio, <a href="#page366">366</a></p>
+      <p>Godescalc, <a href="#page167">167</a>, <a href="#page294">294</a></p>
+      <p>Gomarists, <a href="#page227">227</a></p>
+      <p>Gregory, St., the Great, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page291">291</a>, <a href="#page293">293</a>, <a href="#page294">294</a></p>
+      <p>Gregory, St., of Nazianzus, <a href="#page173">173</a></p>
+      <p>Gregory, St., of Nyssa, <a href="#page132">132</a></p>
+      <p>Gregory of Rimini, <a href="#page173">173</a></p>
+      <p>Grotius, <a href="#page77">77</a>, <a href="#page91">91</a>, <a href="#page161">161</a>, <a href="#page194">194</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a>, <a href="#page243">243</a>, <a href="#page276">276</a></p>
+      <p>Guerre, Martin, <a href="#page97">97</a>-8</p>
+      <p>Gymnosophists, <a href="#page284">284</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Hartsoeker, <a href="#page172">172</a></p>
+      <p>Heliodorus of Larissa, <a href="#page437">437</a></p>
+      <p>Heraclitus, <a href="#page324">324</a></p>
+      <p>Herminius, <i>see</i> Irminius</p>
+      <p>Hermippus, <a href="#page209">209</a></p>
+      <p>Herodotus, <a href="#page196">196</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page210">210</a></p>
+      <p>Heshusius, Tilemann, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+      <p>Hobbes, Thomas, <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page89">89</a>, <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href="#page161">161</a>, <a href="#page234">234</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page348">348</a>, <a href="#page393">393</a> ff., <a href="#page410">410</a></p>
+      <p>Hoffmann, Daniel, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+      <p>Horace, <a href="#page131">131</a>, <a href="#page318">318</a></p>
+      <p>Homer, <a href="#page284">284</a></p>
+      <p>Hyde, <a href="#page209">209</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Innocent III, Pope, <a href="#page131">131</a></p>
+      <p>Irminius, <a href="#page209">209</a></p>
+      <p>Isbrand, <a href="#page238">238</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Jansenists, <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page346">346</a>-7</p>
+      <p>Jansenius, <a href="#page344">344</a></p>
+      <p>Jacquelot, <a href="#page157">157</a>, <a href="#page223">223</a>, <a href="#page259">259</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page278">278</a>, <a href="#page341">341</a></p>
+      <p>Jerome, St., <a href="#page132">132</a></p>
+      <p>John of Damascus, St., <a href="#page77">77</a></p>
+<!-- Page 447 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page447"></a>[447]</span>
+      <p>John Scot, <a href="#page171">171</a></p>
+      <p>Jung, <a href="#page261">261</a></p>
+      <p>Jupiter, <a href="#page213">213</a></p>
+      <p>Jurieu, <a href="#page174">174</a>, <a href="#page187">187</a>, <a href="#page290">290</a>-2, <a href="#page356">356</a></p>
+      <p>Justin, <a href="#page208">208</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Keckermann, Bartholomaeus, <a href="#page106">106</a></p>
+      <p>Keilah, siege of, <a href="#page145">145</a>-6</p>
+      <p>Kendal, George, <a href="#page228">228</a></p>
+      <p>Kepler, <a href="#page140">140</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a></p>
+      <p>Kerkering, <a href="#page351">351</a></p>
+      <p>Kessler, Andreas, <a href="#page83">83</a></p>
+      <p>Kortholt, Sebastian, <a href="#page351">351</a></p>
+      <p>Krell, Nicolas, <a href="#page398">398</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>de Labadie, Jean, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+      <p>Lactantius, <a href="#page221">221</a>, <a href="#page285">285</a>, <a href="#page286">286</a>, <a href="#page440">440</a></p>
+      <p>Lami, François, <a href="#page89">89</a>, <a href="#page359">359</a></p>
+      <p>Lateran Council, <a href="#page80">80</a></p>
+      <p>Laud, Abp., <a href="#page398">398</a></p>
+      <p>de Launoy, <a href="#page100">100</a></p>
+      <p>Lazarus, <a href="#page294">294</a></p>
+      <p>le Clerc, <a href="#page64">64</a>, <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href="#page245">245</a>, <a href="#page292">292</a></p>
+      <p>Leeuwenhoek, <a href="#page172">172</a></p>
+      <p>Limbourg, <a href="#page350">350</a></p>
+      <p>Lipsius, Justus, <a href="#page325">325</a>, <a href="#page337">337</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a></p>
+      <p>Livy, <a href="#page263">263</a></p>
+      <p>Locke, John, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page9">9</a>, <a href="#page33">33</a>-4, <a href="#page86">86</a>, <a href="#page409">409</a></p>
+      <p>Löscher, <a href="#page298">298</a></p>
+      <p>Louis of Dole, <a href="#page149">149</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a></p>
+      <p>Lucan, <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page212">212</a></p>
+      <p>Lucian, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page434">434</a></p>
+      <p>Lucretius, <a href="#page320">320</a></p>
+      <p>Lully, Raymond, <a href="#page106">106</a></p>
+      <p>Luther, <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page81">81</a>, <a href="#page99">99</a>, <a href="#page101">101</a>, <a href="#page110">110</a>-11, <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page298">298</a>, <a href="#page328">328</a>, <a href="#page395">395</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Machiavelli, <a href="#page216">216</a></p>
+      <p>Maignan, <a href="#page359">359</a></p>
+      <p>Maimonides, <a href="#page287">287</a>-8</p>
+      <p>Malebranche, <a href="#page172">172</a>, <a href="#page244">244</a>, <a href="#page254">254</a> ff., <a href="#page276">276</a>, <a href="#page280">280</a>, <a href="#page333">333</a>, <a href="#page359">359</a>, <a href="#page361">361</a></p>
+      <p>Manichaeans, <a href="#page59">59</a>, <a href="#page98">98</a>, <a href="#page113">113</a>, <a href="#page124">124</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page274">274</a>, <a href="#page419">419</a></p>
+      <p>Marchetti, <a href="#page320">320</a></p>
+      <p>Marcion, <a href="#page213">213</a></p>
+      <p>Marcus Aurelius, <a href="#page263">263</a></p>
+      <p>Mary, Blessed Virgin, <a href="#page193">193</a></p>
+      <p>Matthieu, Pierre, <a href="#page204">204</a></p>
+      <p>Maurice, Prince, <a href="#page398">398</a></p>
+      <p>Melanchthon, <a href="#page81">81</a></p>
+      <p>Melissus, <a href="#page218">218</a>, <a href="#page220">220</a></p>
+      <p>Ménage, <a href="#page232">232</a></p>
+      <p>Meyer, Louis, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+      <p>Mithras, <a href="#page209">209</a></p>
+      <p>Molina, <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page173">173</a>, <a href="#page207">207</a></p>
+      <p>Molinists, <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page317">317</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a>, <a href="#page342">342</a></p>
+      <p>More, Henry, <a href="#page169">169</a></p>
+      <p>Moses Germanus, <a href="#page79">79</a></p>
+      <p>de la Motte le Vayer, <a href="#page282">282</a></p>
+      <p>Musaeus, Johann, <a href="#page86">86</a>, <a href="#page111">111</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Naudé, Gabriel, <a href="#page81">81</a></p>
+      <p>Newcastle, Duke of, <a href="#page393">393</a> ff.</p>
+      <p>Newton, Isaac, <a href="#page34">34</a>, <a href="#page85">85</a>-6</p>
+      <p>Nicole, <a href="#page96">96</a>-7, <a href="#page174">174</a>, <a href="#page291">291</a>, <a href="#page299">299</a></p>
+      <p>Nominalists, <a href="#page203">203</a></p>
+      <p>Novarini, <a href="#page286">286</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Ochino, Bernardino, <a href="#page89">89</a></p>
+      <p>Onomaus, <a href="#page325">325</a></p>
+      <p>Opalenius, <a href="#page194">194</a></p>
+      <p>Origen, <a href="#page102">102</a>-3, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href="#page235">235</a>, <a href="#page294">294</a></p>
+      <p>Origenists, <a href="#page260">260</a>, <a href="#page292">292</a></p>
+      <p>Orobio, <a href="#page350">350</a></p>
+      <p>Ovid, <a href="#page209">209</a>, <a href="#page220">220</a>, <a href="#page306">306</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Pardies, <a href="#page333">333</a></p>
+      <p>Pascal, <a href="#page35">35</a></p>
+      <p>Paul, St., <a href="#page129">129</a>-30, <a href="#page238">238</a>, <a href="#page260">260</a></p>
+      <p>Paulicians, <i>see</i> Manichaeans</p>
+      <p>Pelagius, <a href="#page139">139</a></p>
+      <p>Pélisson, <a href="#page176">176</a></p>
+      <p>Pereir, Louis, <a href="#page139">139</a></p>
+      <p>Peter Lombard, <a href="#page290">290</a></p>
+      <p>Pfanner, <a href="#page352">352</a></p>
+      <p>Pierre de Saint-Joseph, <a href="#page342">342</a>, <a href="#page357">357</a></p>
+      <p>Pietists, Leipzig, <a href="#page83">83</a></p>
+      <p>Piscator, <a href="#page207">207</a></p>
+      <p>Pitcairne, <a href="#page172">172</a></p>
+      <p>Plato, <a href="#page59">59</a>, <a href="#page76">76</a>, <a href="#page135">135</a>, <a href="#page148">148</a>, <a href="#page209">209</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a>, <a href="#page286">286</a>, <a href="#page297">297</a>, <a href="#page321">321</a>, <a href="#page352">352</a>-4</p>
+      <p>Pliny the Younger, <a href="#page204">204</a>, <a href="#page209">209</a>, <a href="#page284">284</a>, <a href="#page287">287</a>, <a href="#page365">365</a></p>
+      <p>Plutarch, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page231">231</a>, <a href="#page326">326</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a></p>
+      <p>Pomponazzi, <a href="#page80">80</a>, <a href="#page161">161</a></p>
+      <p>de la Porrée, Gilbert, <a href="#page122">122</a></p>
+      <p>de Preissac, <a href="#page80">80</a></p>
+      <p>Prudentius, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href="#page218">218</a></p>
+      <p>Ptolomei, Fr., <a href="#page70">70</a></p>
+      <p>Pufendorf, <a href="#page194">194</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a>, <a href="#page403">403</a></p>
+      <p>Pythagoras, <a href="#page172">172</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Quênel, Fr., <a href="#page70">70</a></p>
+      <p>Quietists, <a href="#page79">79</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Rachelius, <a href="#page194">194</a></p>
+      <p>de la Ramée, Pierre, <a href="#page81">81</a></p>
+      <p>Ravaillac, <a href="#page204">204</a></p>
+      <p>Regis, <a href="#page305">305</a>, <a href="#page330">330</a>, <a href="#page340">340</a></p>
+      <p>Remonstrants, <a href="#page226">226</a></p>
+      <p>Reynaud, Theophile, <a href="#page348">348</a></p>
+<!-- Page 448 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page448"></a>[448]</span>
+      <p>Rodon, David de, <a href="#page354">354</a></p>
+      <p>Rorarius, <a href="#page160">160</a></p>
+      <p>Rutherford, Samuel, <a href="#page236">236</a>, <a href="#page238">238</a>, <a href="#page269">269</a></p>
+      <p>Ruysbroek, <a href="#page79">79</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Saguens, <a href="#page359">359</a></p>
+      <p>Salmeron, <a href="#page173">173</a></p>
+      <p>Saurin, <a href="#page106">106</a></p>
+      <p>Scaliger, Joseph, <a href="#page89">89</a>, <a href="#page104">104</a>-5</p>
+      <p>Scaliger, Julius, <a href="#page170">170</a></p>
+      <p>Scherzer, <a href="#page84">84</a></p>
+      <p>Schoolmen, <a href="#page75">75</a>, <a href="#page77">77</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a>, <a href="#page290">290</a>, <a href="#page310">310</a>, <a href="#page354">354</a>, <a href="#page407">407</a></p>
+      <p>Scioppius, <a href="#page337">337</a></p>
+      <p>Scotists, <a href="#page243">243</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a></p>
+      <p>Scotus, Duns, <a href="#page203">203</a>, <a href="#page271">271</a>, <a href="#page328">328</a>, <a href="#page383">383</a></p>
+      <p>Seneca, <a href="#page226">226</a>, <a href="#page285">285</a></p>
+      <p>Sennert, Daniel, <a href="#page171">171</a></p>
+      <p>Sentences, Master of the, <i>see</i> Peter Lombard</p>
+      <p>Servetus, Michael, <a href="#page81">81</a></p>
+      <p>Sfondrati, Cardinal, <a href="#page129">129</a>, <a href="#page173">173</a></p>
+      <p>Sharrok, <a href="#page194">194</a></p>
+      <p>Silenus, <a href="#page286">286</a></p>
+      <p>Slevogt, Paul, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+      <p>Socinians, <a href="#page58">58</a>, <a href="#page83">83</a>-4, <a href="#page161">161</a>-2, <a href="#page307">307</a>, <a href="#page343">343</a>, <a href="#page394">394</a>, <a href="#page412">412</a>, <a href="#page423">423</a></p>
+      <p>Sonner, Ernst, <a href="#page290">290</a></p>
+      <p>Spee, Friedrich, <a href="#page176">176</a>-7</p>
+      <p>Sperling, Johann, <a href="#page171">171</a></p>
+      <p>Sperling, Otto, <a href="#page212">212</a></p>
+      <p>Spinoza, <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href="#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page82">82</a>, <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href="#page234">234</a>-6, <a href="#page331">331</a>, <a href="#page348">348</a>-51, <a href="#page359">359</a>, <a href="#page418">418</a></p>
+      <p>Stahl, Daniel, <a href="#page243">243</a></p>
+      <p>Stegman, Josua, <a href="#page107">107</a></p>
+      <p>Stegmann, Christopher, <a href="#page84">84</a></p>
+      <p>Steno, <a href="#page178">178</a></p>
+      <p>Steuchus, Augustinus, <a href="#page91">91</a></p>
+      <p>Stoics, <a href="#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page232">232</a>, <a href="#page263">263</a>, <a href="#page282">282</a>-3, <a href="#page324">324</a> ff., <a href="#page342">342</a></p>
+      <p>Strato, <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page245">245</a>-6, <a href="#page331">331</a>, <a href="#page335">335</a>, <a href="#page336">336</a>, <a href="#page349">349</a>, <a href="#page395">395</a></p>
+      <p>Strinesius, <a href="#page241">241</a></p>
+      <p>Sturm, <a href="#page69">69</a>, <a href="#page261">261</a></p>
+      <p>Suarez, <a href="#page314">314</a></p>
+      <p>Suetonius, <a href="#page287">287</a></p>
+      <p>Supralapsarians, <a href="#page166">166</a>, <a href="#page228">228</a>, <a href="#page236">236</a>, <a href="#page238">238</a>, <a href="#page269">269</a>, <a href="#page273">273</a>-4, <a href="#page289">289</a></p>
+      <p>Swammerdam, <a href="#page172">172</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Tacitus, <a href="#page210">210</a>, <a href="#page211">211</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page287">287</a></p>
+      <p>Taifel, Baron André, <a href="#page441">441</a></p>
+      <p>Taurel, Nicolas, <a href="#page81">81</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a></p>
+      <p>Tertullian, <a href="#page101">101</a></p>
+      <p>Thomas Aquinas, St., <a href="#page174">174</a>, <a href="#page176">176</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a>, <a href="#page243">243</a>, <a href="#page262">262</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a>, <a href="#page357">357</a>, <a href="#page378">378</a>, <a href="#page383">383</a></p>
+      <p>Thomasius, Jacob, <a href="#page243">243</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a></p>
+      <p>Thomists, <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page149">149</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a>, <a href="#page311">311</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a>, <a href="#page344">344</a>, <a href="#page347">347</a></p>
+      <p>Tiberius, <a href="#page227">227</a></p>
+      <p>Timon, <a href="#page265">265</a></p>
+      <p>Tiresias, <a href="#page230">230</a></p>
+      <p>Toland, John, <a href="#page106">106</a></p>
+      <p>de Tournemine, Fr., <a href="#page69">69</a></p>
+      <p>Trajan, <a href="#page293">293</a></p>
+      <p>Trogus, <a href="#page208">208</a></p>
+      <p>Turretin, <a href="#page240">240</a></p>
+      <p>Twiss, <a href="#page238">238</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Ursinus, Zacharias, <a href="#page291">291</a></p>
+      <p>Usserius, <a href="#page70">70</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Valla, Laurentius, <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page344">344</a>, <a href="#page365">365</a> ff.</p>
+      <p>van Beverwyck, Johan, <a href="#page153">153</a>-4</p>
+      <p>van den Ende, Franz, <a href="#page351">351</a></p>
+      <p>van den Hoof, <a href="#page350">350</a></p>
+      <p>van der Weye, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+      <p>van Helmont, <a href="#page169">169</a></p>
+      <p>Vanini, Lucilio, <a href="#page434">434</a></p>
+      <p>Vedelius, Nicolaus, <a href="#page86">86</a>, <a href="#page111">111</a></p>
+      <p>Velleius Paterculus, <a href="#page318">318</a></p>
+      <p>Vergil, <a href="#page78">78</a>-9, <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page287">287</a>, <a href="#page293">293</a>, <a href="#page306">306</a>, <a href="#page315">315</a></p>
+      <p>Véron, François, <a href="#page107">107</a></p>
+      <p>Versé, Aubert de, <a href="#page350">350</a></p>
+      <p>Voëtius, Gisbertus, <a href="#page86">86</a></p>
+      <p>Vorstius, Conrad, <a href="#page58">58</a></p>
+      <p>Vogelsang, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>von Wallenberg, Bp. Peter, <a href="#page67">67</a></p>
+      <p>Wander, William, <a href="#page169">169</a></p>
+      <p>Weigel, Erhard, <a href="#page261">261</a>, <a href="#page355">355</a></p>
+      <p>Weigel, Valentine, <a href="#page79">79</a></p>
+      <p>de Witt, <a href="#page351">351</a></p>
+      <p>Wittich, <a href="#page187">187</a>, <a href="#page306">306</a>-7, <a href="#page309">309</a></p>
+      <p>von Wollzogen, <a href="#page82">82</a></p>
+      <p>Wyclif, John, <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href="#page234">234</a>, <a href="#page272">272</a>, <a href="#page395">395</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Xanthus, <a href="#page209">209</a></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Zeisold, Johann, <a href="#page171">171</a></p>
+      <p>Zoroaster, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a>-10, <a href="#page218">218</a></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Theodicy, by G. W. Leibniz
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Theodicy
+       Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
+
+Author: G. W. Leibniz
+
+Commentator: Austin Farrer
+
+Translator: E.M. Huggard
+
+Release Date: November 24, 2005 [EBook #17147]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEODICY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Juliet Sutherland, Keith Edkins
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Theodicy
+
+Essays on
+the Goodness of God
+the Freedom of Man and
+the Origin of Evil
+
+G.W. LEIBNIZ
+
+Edited with an Introduction by Austin Farrer, Fellow of Trinity College,
+Oxford
+
+Translated by E.M. Huggard from C.J. Gerhardt's Edition of the Collected
+Philosophical Works, 1875-90
+
+Open [Logo] Court
+
+La Salle, Illinois 61301
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Logo]
+
+OPEN COURT and the above logo are registered in the U.S. Patent & Trademark
+Office.
+
+  Published 1985 by Open Court Publishing Company, Peru, Illinois 61354.
+  This edition first published 1951 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited,
+      London.
+  Second printing 1988
+  Third printing 1990
+  Fourth printing 1993
+  Fifth printing 1996
+
+Printed and bound in the United States of America.
+
+LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
+
+  Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716.
+    Theodicy: essays on the goodness of God, the
+  freedom of man, and the origin of evil.
+
+    Translation of: Essais de Theodicee.
+    Includes index.
+    1. Theodicy--Early works to 1800. I. Title.
+  B2590.E5 1985 231'.8 85-8833
+  ISBN O-87548-437-9
+
+                                                                        [5]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION                                                page 7
+PREFACE                                                                  49
+PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH                 73
+REASON
+ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE    123, 182, 276
+ORIGIN OF EVIL, IN THREE PARTS
+                                APPENDICES
+SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY, REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS                 377
+EXCURSUS ON THEODICY, Sec. 392                                             389
+REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN                     393
+ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND CHANCE'
+OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL',               405
+PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN LONDON
+CAUSA DEI ASSERTA                                                       443
+INDEX                                                                   445
+
+                                                                        [7]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I
+
+Leibniz was above all things a metaphysician. That does not mean that his
+head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences lacked interest for
+him. Not at all--he felt a lively concern for theological debate, he was a
+mathematician of the first rank, he made original contributions to physics,
+he gave a realistic attention to moral psychology. But he was incapable of
+looking at the objects of any special enquiry without seeing them as
+aspects or parts of one intelligible universe. He strove constantly after
+system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative
+reason. He embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. Nothing could
+be less like the spirit of ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means
+a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A
+professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with the
+duties of his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at
+all, though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by showing
+them up as confused forms of something else. A chair in metaphysical
+philosophy becomes analogous to a chair in tropical diseases: what is
+taught from it is not the propagation but the cure.
+
+Confidence in metaphysical construction has ebbed and flowed through
+philosophical history; periods of speculation have been followed by periods
+of criticism. The tide will flow again, but it has not turned yet, and  [8]
+such metaphysicians as survive scarcely venture further than to argue a
+case for the possibility of their art. It would be an embarrassing task to
+open an approach to Leibnitian metaphysics from the present metaphysical
+position, if there is a present position. If we want an agreed
+starting-point, it will have to be historical.
+
+The historical importance of Leibniz's ideas is anyhow unmistakable. If
+metaphysical thinking is nonsensical, its empire over the human imagination
+must still be confessed; if it is as chimerical a science as alchemy, it is
+no less fertile in by-products of importance. And if we are to consider
+Leibniz historically, we cannot do better than take up his _Theodicy_, for
+two reasons. It was the only one of his main philosophical works to be
+published in his lifetime, so that it was a principal means of his direct
+influence; the Leibniz his own age knew was the Leibniz of the _Theodicy_.
+Then in the second place, the _Theodicy_ itself is peculiarly rich in
+historical material. It reflects the world of men and books which Leibniz
+knew; it expresses the theological setting of metaphysical speculation
+which still predominated in the first years of the eighteenth century.
+
+Leibniz is remembered for his philosophy; he was not a professional
+philosopher. He was offered academic chairs, but he declined them. He was a
+gentleman, a person of means, librarian to a reigning prince, and
+frequently employed in state affairs of trust and importance. The librarian
+might at any moment become the political secretary, and offer his own
+contributions to policy. Leibniz was for the greater part of his active
+life the learned and confidential servant of the House of Brunswick; when
+the Duke had nothing better to do with him, he set him to research into
+ducal history. If Leibniz had a profession in literature, it was history
+rather than philosophy. He was even more closely bound to the interests of
+his prince than John Locke was to those of the Prince of Orange. The Houses
+of Orange and of Brunswick were on the same side in the principal contest
+which divided Europe, the battle between Louis XIV and his enemies. It was
+a turning-point of the struggle when the Prince of Orange supplanted
+Louis's Stuart friends on the English throne. It was a continuation of the
+same movement, when Leibniz's master, George I, succeeded to the same
+throne, and frustrated the restoration of the Stuart heir. Locke returned
+to England in the wake of the Prince of Orange, and became the          [9]
+representative thinker of the regime. Leibniz wished to come to the English
+court of George I, but was unkindly ordered to attend to the duties of his
+librarianship. So he remained in Hanover. He was then an old man, and
+before the tide of favour had turned, he died.
+
+Posterity has reckoned Locke and Leibniz the heads of rival sects, but
+politically they were on the same side. As against Louis's political
+absolutism and enforced religious uniformity, both championed religious
+toleration and the freedom of the mind. Their theological liberalism was
+political prudence; it was not necessarily for that reason the less
+personally sincere. They had too much wisdom to meet bigotry with bigotry,
+or set Protestant intolerance against Catholic absolutism. But they had too
+much sympathy with the spirit of Europe to react into free thinking or to
+make a frontal attack on revealed truth. They took their stand on a
+fundamental Christian theism, the common religion of all good men; they
+repudiated the negative enormities of Hobbes and Spinoza.
+
+The Christian was to hold a position covered by three lines of defences.
+The base line was to be the substance of Christian theism and of Christian
+morals, and it was to be held by the forces of sheer reason, without aid
+from scriptural revelation. The middle line was laid down by the general
+sense of Scripture, and the defence of it was this. 'Scriptural doctrine is
+reconcilable with the findings of sheer reason, but it goes beyond them. We
+believe the Scriptures, because they are authenticated by marks of
+supernatural intervention in the circumstances of their origin. We believe
+them, but reason controls our interpretation of them.' There remained the
+most forward and the most hazardous line: the special positions which a
+Church, a sect, or an individual might found upon the scriptural
+revelation. A prudent man would not hold his advance positions in the same
+force or defend them with the same obstinacy as either of the lines behind
+them. He could argue for them, but he could not require assent to them.
+
+One cannot help feeling, indeed, the readiness of these writers to fall
+back, not only from the front line to the middle line, but from the middle
+line itself to the base line. Leibniz, for example, writes with perfect
+seriousness and decency about the Christian scheme of redemption, but it
+hardly looks like being for him a crucial deliverance from perdition. It is
+not the intervention of Mercy, by which alone He possesses himself of  [10]
+us: it is one of the ways in which supreme Benevolence carries out a cosmic
+policy; and God's benevolence is known by pure reason, and apart from
+Christian revelation.
+
+In one politically important particular the theological attitude of Leibniz
+differed from that of Locke. Both stood for toleration and for the
+minimizing of the differences between the sects. This was a serious enough
+matter in England, but it was an even more serious matter in Germany. For
+Germany was divided between Catholics and Protestants; effective toleration
+must embrace them both. English toleration might indulge a harmless
+Catholic minority, while rejecting the Catholic regime as the embodiment of
+intolerance. But this was not practical politics on the Continent; you must
+tolerate Catholicism on an equal footing, and come to terms with Catholic
+regimes. Leibniz was not going to damn the Pope with true Protestant
+fervour. It was his consistent aim to show that his theological principles
+were as serviceable to Catholic thinkers as to the doctors of his own
+church. On some points, indeed, he found his most solid support from
+Catholics; in other places there are hints of a joint Catholic-Lutheran
+front against Calvinism. But on the whole Leibniz's writings suggest that
+the important decisions cut across all the Churches, and not between them.
+
+Leibniz was impelled to a compromise with 'popery', not only by the
+religious divisions of Germany, but (at one stage) by the political
+weakness of the German Protestant States. At the point of Louis XIV's
+highest success, the Protestant princes had no hope but in Catholic
+Austria, and Austria was distracted by Turkish pressure in the rear.
+Leibniz hoped to relieve the situation by preaching a crusade. Could not
+the Christian princes sink their differences and unite against the infidel?
+And could not the Christian alliance be cemented by theological agreement?
+Hence Leibniz's famous negotiation with Bossuet for a basis of
+Catholic-Lutheran concord. It was plainly destined to fail; and it was
+bound to recoil upon its author. How could he be a true Protestant who
+treated the differences with the Catholics as non-essentials? How could he
+have touched pitch and taken no defilement? Leibniz was generally admired,
+but he was not widely trusted. As a mere politician, he may be judged to
+have over-reached himself.
+
+It has been the object of the preceding paragraphs to show that Leibniz[11]
+the politician and Leibniz the theologian were one and the same person; not
+at all to suggest that his rational theology was just political expediency.
+We may apply to him a parody of his own doctrine, the pre-established
+harmony between nature and grace. Everything happens as though Leibniz were
+a liberal politician, and his theology expressed his politics. Yes, but
+equally, everything happens as though Leibniz were a philosophical
+theologian, and his politics expressed his theology. His appreciation of
+Catholic speculation was natural and sincere; his dogmatic ancestry is to
+be looked for in Thomism and Catholic humanism as much as anywhere. Above
+all, he had himself a liberal and generous mind. It gave him pleasure to
+appreciate good wherever he could see it, and to discover a soul of truth
+in every opinion.
+
+From the moment when Leibniz became aware of himself as an independent
+thinker, he was the man of a doctrine. Sometimes he called it 'my
+principles', sometimes 'the new system', sometimes 'pre-established
+harmony'. It could be quite briefly expressed; he was always ready to
+oblige his friends with a summary statement, either in a letter or an
+enclosed memorandum, and several such have come down to us. The doctrine
+may have been in Leibniz's view simple, but it was applicable to every
+department of human speculation or enquiry. It provided a new alphabet of
+philosophical ideas, and everything in heaven and earth could be expressed
+in it; not only could be, but ought to be, and Leibniz showed tireless
+energy in working out restatements of standing problems.
+
+As a man with an idea, with a philosophical nostrum, Leibniz may be
+compared to Bishop Berkeley. There was never any more doubt that Leibniz
+was a Leibnitian than that Berkeley was a Berkeleian. But there is no
+comparison between the two men in the width of their range. About many
+things Berkeley never took the trouble to Berkeleianize. To take the most
+surprising instance of his neglect--he assured the world that his whole
+doctrine pointed to, and hung upon, theology. But what sort of a theology?
+He scarcely took the first steps in the formulation of it. He preferred to
+keep on defending and explaining his _esse est percipi_. With Leibniz it is
+wholly different; he carries his new torch into every corner, to illuminate
+the dark questions.
+
+The wide applicability of pre-established harmony might come home to its
+inventor as a rich surprise. The reflective historian will find it less[12]
+surprising, for he will suspect that the applications were in view from the
+start. What was Leibniz thinking of when the new principle flashed upon
+him? What was he _not_ thinking of? He had a many-sided mind. If the
+origins of the principle were complex, little wonder that its applications
+were manifold. Every expositor of Leibniz who does not wish to be endlessly
+tedious must concentrate attention on one aspect of Leibniz's principle,
+and one source of its origin. We will here give an account of the matter
+which, we trust, will go most directly to the heart of it, but we will make
+no claims to sufficient interpretation of Leibniz's thought-processes.
+
+Leibniz, then, like all the philosophers of the seventeenth century, was
+reforming scholasticism in the light of a new physical science. The science
+was mathematical in its form, mechanistical in its doctrine, and
+unanswerable in its evidence--it got results. But it was metaphysically
+intractable, and the doctrines of infinite and finite substance which it
+generated furnish a gallery of metaphysical grotesques; unless we are to
+except Leibniz; his system is, if nothing else, a miracle of ingenuity, and
+there are moments when we are in danger of believing it.
+
+It is a natural mistake for the student of seventeenth-century thought to
+underestimate the tenacity of scholastic Aristotelianism. Descartes, we all
+know, was reared in it, but then Descartes overthrew it; and he had done
+his work and died by the time that Leibniz was of an age to philosophize at
+all. We expect to see Leibniz starting on his shoulders and climbing on
+from there. We are disappointed. Leibniz himself tells us that he was
+raised in the scholastic teaching. His acquaintance with Descartes's
+opinions was second-hand, and they were retailed to him only that they
+might be derided. He agreed, like an amiable youth, with his preceptors.
+
+The next phase of his development gave him a direct knowledge of Cartesian
+writings, and of other modern books beside, such as those of the atomist
+Gassendi. He was delighted with what he read, because of its fertility in
+the field of physics and mathematics; and for a short time he was an
+enthusiastic modern. But presently he became dissatisfied. The new systems
+did not go far enough, they were still scientifically inadequate. At the
+same time they went too far, and carried metaphysical paradox beyond the
+limits of human credulity.
+
+                                                                       [13]
+There is no mystery about Leibniz's scientific objections to the new
+philosophers. If he condemned them here, it was on the basis of scientific
+thought and observation. Descartes's formulation of the laws of motion
+could, for example, be refuted by physical experiment; and if his general
+view of physical nature was bound up with it, then so much the worse for
+the Cartesian philosophy. But whence came Leibniz's more strictly
+metaphysical objections? Where had he learned that standard of metaphysical
+adequacy which showed up the inadequacy of the new metaphysicians? His own
+disciples might be satisfied to reply, that he learnt it from Reason
+herself; but the answer will not pass with us. Leibniz reasoned, indeed,
+but he did not reason from nowhere, nor would he have got anywhere if he
+had. His conception of metaphysical reason was what his early scholastic
+training had made it.
+
+There are certain absurd opinions which we are sure we have been taught,
+although, when put to it, we find it hard to name the teacher. Among them
+is something of this sort. 'Leibniz was a scholarly and sympathetic
+thinker. He had more sense of history than his contemporaries, and he was
+instinctively eclectic. He believed he could learn something from each of
+his great predecessors. We see him reaching back to cull a notion from
+Plato or from Aristotle; he even found something of use in the scholastics.
+In particular, he picked out the Aristotelian "entelechy" to stop a gap in
+the philosophy of his own age.' What this form of statement ignores is that
+Leibniz _was_ a scholastic: a scholastic endeavouring, like Descartes
+before him, to revolutionize scholasticism. The word 'entelechy' was,
+indeed, a piece of antiquity which Leibniz revived, but the thing for which
+it stood was the most familiar of current scholastic conceptions.
+'Entelechy' means active principle of wholeness or completion in an
+individual thing. Scholasticism was content to talk about it under the name
+of 'substantial form' or 'formal cause'. But the scholastic interpretation
+of the idea was hopelessly discredited by the new science, and the
+scholastic terms shared the discredit of scholastic doctrine. Leibniz
+wanted a term with a more general sound. 'There is an _X_', he wanted to
+say, 'which scholasticism has defined as substantial form, but I am going
+to give a new definition of it.' Entelechy was a useful name for _X_, the
+more so as it had the authority of Aristotle, the master of scholasticism.
+
+Under the name of entelechy Leibniz was upholding the soul of          [14]
+scholastic doctrine, while retrenching the limbs and outward flourishes.
+The doctrine of substantial form which he learnt in his youth had had
+_something_ in it; he could not settle down in the principles of Descartes
+or of Gassendi, because both ignored this vital _something_. Since the
+requirements of a new science would not allow a return to sheer
+scholasticism, it was necessary to find a fresh philosophy, in which
+entelechy and mechanism might be accommodated side by side.
+
+If one had asked any 'modern' of the seventeenth century to name the
+'ancient' doctrine he most abominated, he would most likely have replied,
+'Substantial form'. Let us recall what was rejected under this name, and
+why.
+
+The medieval account of physical nature had been dominated by what we may
+call common-sense biology. Biology, indeed, is the science of the living,
+and the medievals were no more inclined than we are to endow all physical
+bodies with life. What they did do was to take living bodies as typical,
+and to treat other bodies as imperfectly analogous to them. Such an
+approach was _a priori_ reasonable enough. For we may be expected to know
+best the physical being closest to our own; and we, at any rate, are alive.
+Why not argue from the better known to the less known, from the nearer to
+the more remote, interpreting other things by the formula of our own being,
+and allowing whatever discount is necessary for their degree of unlikeness
+to us?
+
+Common-sense biology reasons as follows. In a living body there is a
+certain pattern of organized parts, a certain rhythm of successive motions,
+and a certain range of characteristic activities. The pattern, the sheer
+anatomy, is basic; but it cannot long continue to exist (outside a
+refrigerator) without accompanying vital rhythms in heart, respiration and
+digestion. Nor do these perform their parts without the intermittent
+support of variable but still characteristic activities: dogs not only
+breathe and digest, they run about, hunt their food, look for mates, bark
+at cats, and so on. The anatomical pattern, the vital rhythm, and the
+characteristic acts together express dogginess; they reveal the specific
+form of the dog. They _reveal_ it; exactly what the specific form
+_consisted in_ was the subject of much medieval speculation. It need not
+concern us here.
+
+Taking the form of the species for granted, common-sense biology proceeds
+to ask how it comes to be in a given instance, say in the dog Toby.    [15]
+Before this dog was born or thought of, his form or species was displayed
+in each of his parents. And now it looks as though the form of dog had
+detached itself from them through the generative act, and set up anew on
+its own account. How does it do that? By getting hold of some materials in
+which to express itself. At first it takes them from the body of the
+mother, afterwards it collects them from a wider environment, and what the
+dog eats becomes the dog.
+
+What, then, is the relation of the assimilated materials to the dog-form
+which assimilates them? Before assimilation, they have their own form.
+Before the dog eats the leg of mutton, it has the form given to it by its
+place in the body of a sheep. What happens to the mutton? Is it without
+remainder transubstantiated from sheep into dog? It loses all its
+distinctively sheep-like characteristicsm but there may be some more
+basically material characteristics which it preserves. They underlay the
+structure of the mutton, and they continue to underlie the structure of the
+dog's flesh which supplants it. Whatever these characteristics may be, let
+us call them common material characteristics, and let us say that they
+belong to or compose a common material nature.
+
+The common material nature has its own way of existing, and perhaps its own
+principles of physical action. We may suppose that we know much or that we
+know little about it. This one thing at least we know, that it is capable
+of becoming alternatively either mutton or dog's flesh. It is not essential
+to it to be mutton, or mutton it would always be; nor dog's flesh, or it
+would always be dog's flesh. It is capable of becoming either, according as
+it is captured by one or other system of formal organization. So the voters
+who are to go to the polls are, by their common nature, Englishmen; they
+are essentially neither Socialist curs nor Conservative sheep, but
+intrinsically capable of becoming either, if they become captured by either
+system of party organization.
+
+According to this way of thinking, there is a certain _looseness_ about the
+relation of the common material nature to the higher forms of organization
+capable of capturing it. Considered in itself alone, it is perhaps to be
+seen as governed by absolutely determined laws of its own. It is heavy,
+then it will fall unless obstructed; it is solid, then it will resist
+intrusions. But considered as material for organization by higher forms, it
+is indeterminate. It acts in one sort of way under the persuasion of the
+sheep-form, and in another sort of way under the persuasion of the     [16]
+dog-form, and we cannot tell how it will act until we know which form is
+going to capture it. No amount of study bestowed on the common material
+nature will enable us to judge how it will behave under the persuasion of
+the higher organizing form. The only way to discover that is to examine the
+higher form itself.
+
+Every form, then, will really be the object of a distinct science. The form
+of the sheep and the form of the dog have much in common, but that merely
+happens to be so; we cannot depend upon it, or risk inferences from sheep
+to dog: we must examine each in itself; we shall really need a science of
+probatology about sheep, and cynology about dogs. Again, the common
+material nature has its own principles of being and action, so it will need
+a science of itself, which we may call hylology. Each of these sciences is
+mistress in her own province; but how many there are, and how puzzlingly
+they overlap! So long as we remain within the province of a single science,
+we may be able to think rigorously, everything will be 'tight'. But as soon
+as we consider border-issues between one province and another, farewell to
+exactitude: everything will be 'loose'. We can think out hylology till we
+are blue in the face, but we shall never discover anything about the entry
+of material elements into higher organizations, or how they behave when
+they get there. We may form perfect definitions and descriptions of the
+form of the dog as such, and still derive no rules for telling what
+elements of matter will enter into the body of a given dog or how they will
+be placed when they do. All we can be sure of is, that the dog-form will
+keep itself going in, and by means of, the material it embodies--unless the
+dog dies. But what happens to the matter in the body of the dog is
+'accidental' to the nature of the matter; and the use of this matter,
+rather than of some other equally suitable, is accidental to the nature of
+the dog.
+
+No account of material events can dispense with accidental relations
+altogether. We must at least recognize that there are accidental relations
+between particular things. Accident in the sense of brute fact had to be
+acknowledged even by the tidiest and most dogmatic atomism of the last
+century. That atomism must allow it to be accidental, in this sense, that
+the space surrounding any given atom was occupied by other atoms in a given
+manner. It belonged neither to the nature of space to be occupied by just
+those atoms in just those places, nor to the nature of the atoms to be [17]
+distributed just like that over space; and so in a certain sense the
+environment of any atom was an accidental environment. That is, the
+particular arrangement of the environment was accidental. The nature of the
+environment was not accidental at all. It was proper to the nature of the
+atom to be in interaction with other atoms over a spatial field, and it
+never encountered in the fellow-denizens of space any other nature but its
+own. It was not subject to the accident of meeting strange natures, nor of
+becoming suddenly subject to strange or unequal laws of interaction. All
+interactions, being with its own kind, were reciprocal and obedient to a
+single set of calculable laws.
+
+But the medieval philosophy had asserted accidental relations between
+distinct sorts of _natures_, the form of living dog and the form of dead
+matter, for example. No one could know _a priori_ what effect an accidental
+relation would produce, and all accidental relations between different
+pairs of natures were different: at the most there was analogy between
+them. Every different nature had to be separately observed, and when you
+had observed them all, you could still simply write an inventory of them,
+you could not hope to rationalize your body of knowledge. Let us narrow the
+field and consider what this doctrine allows us to know about the wood of a
+certain kind of tree. We shall begin by observing the impressions it makes
+on our several senses, and we shall attribute to it a substantial form such
+as naturally to give rise to these impressions, without, perhaps, being so
+rash as to claim a knowledge of what this substantial form is. Still we do
+not know what its capacities of physical action and passion may be. We
+shall find them out by observing it in relation to different 'natures'. It
+turns out to be combustible by fire, resistant to water, tractable to the
+carpenter's tools, intractable to his digestive organs, harmless to
+ostriches, nourishing to wood-beetles. Each of these capacities of the wood
+is distinct; we cannot relate them intelligibly to one another, nor deduce
+them from the assumed fundamental 'woodiness'.
+
+We can now see why 'substantial forms' were the _betes noires_ of the
+seventeenth-century philosophers. It was because they turned nature into an
+unmanageable jungle, in which trees, bushes, and parasites of a thousand
+kinds wildly interlaced. There was nothing for it, if science was to
+proceed, but to clear the ground and replant with spruce in rows: to
+postulate a single uniform nature, of which there should be a single
+science. Now neither probatology nor cynology could hope to be         [18]
+universal--the world is not all sheep nor all dog: it would have to be
+hylology; for the world is, in its spatial aspect, all material. Let us
+say, then, that there is one uniform material nature of things, and that
+everything else consists in the arrangements of the basic material nature;
+as the show of towers and mountains in the sunset results simply from an
+arrangement of vapours. And let us suppose that the interactions of the
+parts of matter are all like those which we can observe in dead manipulable
+bodies--in mechanism, in fact. Such was the postulate of the new
+philosophers, and it yielded them results.
+
+It yielded them results, and that was highly gratifying. But what,
+meanwhile, had happened to those palpable facts of common experience from
+which the whole philosophy of substantial forms had taken its rise? Is the
+wholeness of a living thing the mere resultant of the orderly operations of
+its parts? Is a bee no more essentially one than a swarm is? Is the life of
+a living animal indistinguishable from the rhythm of a going watch, except
+in degree of complication and subtlety of contrivance? And if an animal's
+body, say my own, is simply an agglomerate of minute interacting material
+units, and its wholeness is merely accidental and apparent, how is my
+conscious mind to be adjusted to it? For my consciousness appears to
+identify itself with that whole vital pattern which used to be called the
+substantial form. We are now told that the pattern is nothing real or
+active, but the mere accidental resultant of distinct interacting forces:
+it does no work, it exercises no influence or control, it _is_ nothing. How
+then can it be the vehicle and instrument of my conscious soul? It cannot.
+Then is my soul homeless? Or is it to be identified with the activity and
+fortunes of a single atomic constituent of my body, a single cog in the
+animal clockwork? If so, how irrational! For the soul does not experience
+itself as the soul of one minute part, but as the soul of the body.
+
+Such questions rose thick and fast in the minds of the seventeenth-century
+philosophers. It will cause us no great surprise that Leibniz should have
+quickly felt that the Formal Principle of Aristotle and of the Scholastic
+philosophy must be by hook or by crook reintroduced--not as the detested
+_substantial form_, but under a name by which it might hope to smell more
+sweet, _entelechy_.
+
+Nothing so tellingly revealed the difficulties of the new philosophy in[19]
+dealing with living bodies as the insufficiency of the solutions Descartes
+had proposed. He had boldly declared the unity of animal life to be purely
+mechanical, and denied that brutes had souls at all, or any sensation. He
+had to admit soul in man, but he still denied the substantial unity of the
+human body. It was put together like a watch, it was many things, not one:
+if Descartes had lived in our time, he would have been delighted to compare
+it with a telephone system, the nerves taking the place of the wires, and
+being so arranged that all currents of 'animal spirit' flowing in them
+converged upon a single unit, a gland at the base of the brain. In this
+unit, or in the convergence of all the motions upon it, the 'unity' of the
+body virtually consisted; and the soul was incarnate, not in the plurality
+of members (for how could it, being one, indwell many things?), but in the
+single gland.
+
+Even so, the relation between the soul and the gland was absolutely
+unintelligible, as Descartes disarmingly confessed. Incarnation was all
+very well in the old philosophy: those who had allowed the interaction of
+disparate natures throughout the physical world need find no particular
+difficulty about the special case of it provided by incarnation. Why should
+not a form of conscious life so interact with what would otherwise be dead
+matter as to 'indwell' it? But the very principle of the new philosophy
+disallowed the interaction of disparate natures, because such an
+interaction did not allow of exact formulation, it was a 'loose' and not a
+'tight' relation.
+
+From a purely practical point of view the much derided pineal gland theory
+would serve. If we could be content to view Descartes as a man who wanted
+to make the world safe for physical science, then there would be a good
+deal to be said for his doctrine. In the old philosophy exact science had
+been frustrated by the hypothesis of loose relations all over the field of
+nature. Descartes had cleared them from as much of the field as science was
+then in a position to investigate; he allowed only one such relation to
+subsist, the one which experience appeared unmistakably to force upon
+us--that between our own mind and its bodily vehicle. He had exorcized the
+spirits from the rest of nature; and though there was a spirit here which
+could not be exorcized, the philosophic conjurer had nevertheless confined
+it and its unaccountable pranks within a minutely narrow magic circle: all
+mind could do was to turn the one tiny switch at the centre of its     [20]
+animal telephone system. It could create no energy--it could merely
+redirect the currents actually flowing.
+
+Practically this might do, but speculatively it was most disturbing. For if
+the 'loose relation' had to be admitted in one instance, it was admitted in
+principle; and one could not get rid of the suspicion that it would turn up
+elsewhere, and that the banishment of it from every other field represented
+a convenient pragmatic postulate rather than a solid metaphysical truth.
+Moreover, the correlation of the unitary soul with the unitary gland might
+do justice to a mechanistical philosophy, but it did not do justice to the
+soul's own consciousness of itself. The soul's consciousness is the 'idea'
+or 'representation' of the life of the whole body, certainly not of the
+life of the pineal gland nor, as the unreflective nowadays would say, of
+the brain. I am not conscious in, or of, my brain except when I have a
+headache; consciousness is in my eyes and finger-tips and so on. It is
+physically true, no doubt, that consciousness in and of my finger-tips is
+not possible without the functioning of my brain; but that is a poor reason
+for locating the consciousness in the brain. The filament of the electric
+bulb will not be incandescent apart from the functioning of the dynamo; but
+that is a poor reason for saying that the incandescence is in the dynamo.
+
+Certainly the area of representation in our mind is not simply equivalent
+to the area of our body. But in so far as the confines of mental
+representation part company with the confines of the body, it is not that
+they may contract and fall back upon the pineal gland, but that they may
+expand and advance over the surrounding world. The mind does not represent
+its own body merely, it represents the world in so far as the world affects
+that body or is physically reproduced in it. The mind has no observable
+natural relation to the pineal gland. It has only two natural relations: to
+its body as a whole and to its effective environment. What Descartes had
+really done was to pretend that the soul was related to the pineal gland as
+it is in fact related to its whole body; and then that it was related to
+the bodily members as in fact it is related to outer environment. The
+members became an inner environment, known only in so far as they affected
+the pineal gland; just as the outer environment in its turn was to be known
+only in so far as it affected the members.
+
+                                                                       [21]
+This doctrine of a double environment was wholly artificial. It was forced
+on Descartes by the requirements of mechanistical science: if the members
+were simply a plurality of things, they must really be parts of
+environment; the body which the soul indwelt must be _a_ body; presumably,
+then, the pineal gland. An untenable compromise, surely, between admitting
+and denying the reality of the soul's incarnation.
+
+What, then, was to be done? Descartes's rivals and successors attempted
+several solutions, which it would be too long to examine here. They
+dissatisfied Leibniz and they have certainly no less dissatisfied
+posterity. It will be enough for us here to consider what Leibniz did. He
+admitted, to begin with, the psychological fact. The unity of consciousness
+is the representation of a plurality--the plurality of the members, and
+through them the plurality of the world. Here, surely, was the very
+principle the new philosophy needed for the reconciliation of substantial
+unity with mechanical plurality of parts. For it is directly evident to us
+that consciousness focuses the plurality of environing things in a unity of
+representation. This is no philosophical theory, it is a simple fact. Our
+body, then, as a physical system is a mechanical plurality; as focused in
+consciousness it is a unity of 'idea'.
+
+Very well: but we have not got far yet. For the old difficulty still
+remains--it is purely arbitrary, after all, that a unitary consciousness
+should be attached to, and represent, a mechanical collection of things
+which happen to interact in a sort of pattern. If there is a consciousness
+attached to human bodies, then why not to systems of clockwork? If the body
+is _represented_ as unity, it must surely be because it _is_ unity, as the
+old philosophy had held. But how can we reintroduce unity into the body
+without reintroducing substantial form, and destroying the mechanistical
+plurality which the new science demanded?
+
+It is at this point that Leibniz produces the speculative postulate of his
+system. Why not reverse the relation, and make the members represent the
+mind as the mind represents the members? For then the unity of person
+represented in the mind will become something actual in the members also.
+
+Representation appears to common sense to be a one-way sort of traffic. If
+my mind represents my bodily members, something happens to my mind, for it
+becomes a representation of such members in such a state; but nothing
+happens to the members by their being so represented in the mind. The  [22]
+mental representation obeys the bodily facts; the bodily facts do not obey
+the mental representation. It seems nonsense to say that my members obey my
+mind _because_ they are mirrored in it. And yet my members do obey my mind,
+or at least common sense supposes so. Sometimes my mind, instead of
+representing the state my members are in, represents a state which it
+intends that they shall be in, for example, that my hand should go through
+the motion of writing these words. And my hand obeys; its action becomes
+the moving diagram of my thought, my thought is represented or expressed in
+the manual act. Here the relation of mind and members appears to be
+reversed: instead of its representing them, they represent it. With this
+representation it is the opposite of what it was with the other. By the
+members' being represented in the mind, something happened to the mind, and
+nothing to the members; by the mind's being represented in the members
+something happens to the members and nothing to the mind.
+
+Why should not we take this seriously? Why not allow that there is two-way
+traffic--by one relation the mind represents the members, by another the
+members represent the mind? But then again, how can we take it seriously?
+For representation, in the required sense, is a mental act; brute matter
+can represent nothing, only mind can represent. And the members are brute
+matter. But are they? How do we know that? By brute matter we understand
+extended lumps of stuff, interacting with one another mechanically, as do,
+for example, two cogs in a piece of clockwork. But this is a large-scale
+view. The cogs are themselves composed of interrelated parts and those
+parts of others, and so on _ad infinitum_. Who knows what the ultimate
+constituents really are? The 'modern' philosophers, certainly, have
+proposed no hypothesis about them which even looks like making sense. They
+have supposed that the apparently inert lumps, the cogs, are composed of
+parts themselves equally inert, and that by subdivision we shall still
+reach nothing but the inert. But this supposition is in flat contradiction
+with what physical theory demands. We have to allow the reality of _force_
+in physics. Now the force which large-scale bodies display may easily be
+the block-effect of activity in their minute real constituents. If not,
+where does it come from? Let it be supposed, then, that these minute real
+constituents are active because they are alive, because they are minds; for
+indeed we have no notion of activity other than the perception we have [23]
+of our own. We have no notion of it except as something mental. On the
+hypothesis that the constituents of active body are also mental, this
+limitation in our conception of activity need cause us neither sorrow nor
+surprise.
+
+The mind-units which make up body will not of course be developed and fully
+conscious minds like yours or mine, and it is only for want of a better
+word that we call them minds at all. They will be mere unselfconscious
+representations of their physical environment, as it might be seen from the
+physical point to which they belong by a human mind paying no attention at
+all to its own seeing. How many of these rudimentary 'minds' will there be
+in my body? As many as you like--as many as it is possible there should
+be--say an infinite number and have done with it.
+
+We may now observe how this hypothesis introduces real formal unity without
+prejudicing mechanical plurality. Each of the mind-units in my body is
+itself and substantially distinct. But since each, in its own way and
+according to its own position, represents the superior and more developed
+mind which I call 'me', they will order themselves according to a common
+form. The order is real, not accidental: it is like the order of troops on
+a parade-ground. Each man is a distinct active unit, but each is really
+expressing by his action the mind of the officer in command. He is
+expressing no less his relation to the other men in the ranks--to obey the
+officer is to keep in step with them. So the metaphysical units of the
+body, being all minds, represent one another as well as the dominant mind:
+one another co-ordinately, the dominant mind subordinately.
+
+But if the metaphysically real units of the body are of the nature of mind,
+then _the_ mind is a mind among minds, a spirit-atom among spirit-atoms.
+What then constitutes its superiority or dominance, and makes it a mind
+_par excellence_? Well, what constitutes the officer an officer? Two
+things: a more developed mentality and the fact of being obeyed. In
+military life these two factors are not always perfectly proportioned to
+one another, but in the order of Leibniz's universe they are. A fuller
+power to represent the universe is necessarily combined with dominance over
+an organized troop of members; for the mind knows the universe only in so
+far as the universe is expressed in its body. That is what the         [24]
+_finitude_ of the mind means. Only an infinite mind appreciates the whole
+plurality of things in themselves; a finite mind perceives them in so far
+as mirrored in the physical being of an organized body of members. The more
+adequate the mirror, the more adequate the representation: the more highly
+organized the body, the more developed the mind.
+
+The developed mind has an elaborate body; but the least developed mind has
+still some body, or it would lack any mirror whatever through which to
+represent the world. This means, in effect, that Leibniz's system is not an
+unmitigated spiritual atomism. For though the spiritual atoms, or monads,
+are the ultimate constituents out of which nature is composed, they stand
+composed together from the beginning in a minimal order which cannot be
+broken up. Each monad, if it is to be anything at all, must be a continuing
+finite representation of the universe, and to be that it must have a body,
+that is to say, it must have other monads in a permanent relation of mutual
+correspondence with it. And if you said to Leibniz, 'But surely any
+physical body can be broken up, and this must mean the dissolution of the
+organic relation between its monadical constituents,' he would take refuge
+in the infinitesimal. The wonders revealed by that new miracle, the
+microscope, suggested what the intrinsic divisibility of space itself
+suggests--whatever organization is broken up, there will still be a minute
+organization within each of the fragments which remains unbroken--and so
+_ad infinitum_. You will never come down to loose monads, monads out of all
+organization. You will never disembody the monads, and so remove their
+representative power; you will only reduce their bodies and so impoverish
+their representative power. In this sense no animal dies and no animal is
+generated. Death is the reduction and generation the enrichment of some
+existing monad's body; and, by being that, is the enrichment or the
+reduction of the monad's mental life.
+
+'But,' our common sense protests, 'it is too great a strain on our
+credulity to make the real nature of things so utterly different from what
+sense and science make of them. If the real universe is what you say it is,
+why do our minds represent it to us as they do?' The philosopher's answer
+is, 'Because they _represent_ it. According to the truth of things, each
+monad is simply its own mental life, its own world-view, its own thoughts
+and desires. To know things as they are would be simultaneously to live
+over, as though from within and by a miracle of sympathy, the          [25]
+biographies of an infinite number of distinct monads. This is absolutely
+impossible. Our senses represent the coexistent families of monads _in the
+gross_, and therefore conventionally; what is in fact the mutual
+representation of monads in ordered systems, is represented as the
+mechanical interaction of spatially extended and material parts.' This does
+not mean that science is overthrown. The physical world-view is in terms of
+the convention of representation, but it is not, for all that, illusory. It
+can, ideally, be made as true as it is capable of being. There is no reason
+whatever for confusing the 'well-grounded seemings' of the apparent
+physical world with the fantastic seemings of dream and hallucination.
+
+So far the argument seems to draw whatever cogency it has from the
+simplicity and naturalness of the notion of representation. The nature of
+idea, it is assumed, is to represent plurality in a unified view. If idea
+did not represent, it would not be idea. And since there _is_ idea (for our
+minds at least exist and are made up of idea) there is representation. It
+belongs to idea to represent, and since the whole world has now been
+interpreted as a system of mutually representing ideations, or ideators, it
+might seem that all their mutual relations are perfectly natural, a harmony
+of agreement which could not be other than it is. But if so, why does
+Leibniz keep saying that the harmony is _pre-established_, by special and
+infinitely elaborate divine decrees?
+
+Leibniz himself says that the very nature of representation excludes
+interaction. By representing environment a mind does not do anything to
+environment, that is plain. But it is no less plain that environment does
+nothing to it, either. The act of representing is simply the act of the
+mind; it represents _in view of_ environment, of course, but not under the
+causal influence of environment. Representation is a business carried on by
+the mind on its own account, and in virtue of its innate power to
+represent.
+
+Very well; but does this consideration really drive us into theology? Is
+not Leibniz the victim of a familiar fallacy, that of incompletely stated
+alternatives? '_Either_ finite beings interact _or else_ they do not
+directly condition one another. Monads do not interact, therefore they do
+not directly condition one another. How then explain the actual conformity
+of their mutual representation, without recourse to divine fore-ordaining?'
+It seems sufficient to introduce a further alternative in the first line of
+the argument, and we are rid of the theology. Things may condition the [26]
+action of a further thing, without acting upon it. It acts of itself, but
+it acts in view of what they are. We are tempted to conclude that Leibniz
+has introduced the _Deus ex machina_ with the fatal facility of his age.
+'Where a little further meditation on the characters in the play would
+furnish a natural _denouement_, he swings divine intervention on to the
+scene by wires from the ceiling. It is easy for us to reconstruct for him
+the end of the piece without recourse to stage-machines.'
+
+Is it? No, I fear it is not. There is really no avoiding the
+pre-established harmony. And so we shall discover, if we pursue our train
+of reflexion a little further. It is natural, we were saying, than an idea
+should represent an environment; indeed, it _is_ the representation of one.
+Given no environment to represent, it would be empty, a mere capacity for
+representation. Then every idea or ideator, taken merely in itself, _is_ an
+empty capacity. But of what is the environment of each made up? According
+to the Leibnitian theory, of further ideas or ideators: of empty
+capacities, therefore. Then no idea will either be anything in itself, or
+find anything in its neighbours to represent. An unhappy predicament, like
+that of a literary clique in which all the members are adepts at discussing
+one another's ideas--only that unfortunately none of them are provided with
+any; or like the shaky economics of the fabled Irish village where they all
+lived by taking in one another's washing.
+
+It is useless, then, to conceive representations as simply coming into
+existence in response to environment, and modelling themselves on
+environment. They must all mutually reflect environment or they would not
+be representations; but they must also exist as themselves and in their own
+right or there would be no environment for them mutually to represent.
+Since the world is infinitely various, each representor must have its own
+distinct character or nature, as our minds have: that is to say, it must
+represent in its own individual way; and all these endlessly various
+representations must be so constituted as to form a mutually reflecting
+harmony. Considered as a representation, each monadical existence simply
+reflects the universe after its own manner. But considered as something to
+be represented by the others, it is a self-existent mental life, or world
+of ideas. Now when we are considering the fact of representation, that
+which is to be represented comes first and the representation follows upon
+it. Thus in considering the Leibnitian universe, we must begin with the[27]
+monads as self-existent mental lives, or worlds of ideas; their
+representation of one another comes second. Nothing surely, then, but
+omnipotent creative wisdom could have pre-established between so many
+distinct given mental worlds that harmony which constitutes their mutual
+representation.
+
+Our common-sense pluralistic thinking escapes from the need of the
+pre-established harmony by distinguishing what we are from what we do. Let
+the world be made up of a plurality of agents in a 'loose' order, with room
+to manoeuvre and to adjust themselves to one another. Then, by good luck or
+good management, through friction and disaster, by trial and error, by
+accident or invention, they may work out for themselves a harmony of
+_action_. There is no need for divine preordaining here. But on Leibniz's
+view what the monads do is to represent, and what they are is
+representation; there is no ultimate distinction between what they are and
+what they do: all that they do belongs to what they are. The whole system
+of action in each monad, which fits with such infinite complexity the
+system of action in each other monad, is precisely the existence of that
+monad, and apart from it the monad is not. The monads do not _achieve_ a
+harmony, they _are_ a harmony, and therefore they are pre-established in
+harmony.
+
+Leibniz denied that he invoked God to intervene in nature, or that there
+was anything arbitrary or artificial about his physical theology. He was
+simply analysing nature and finding it to be a system of mutual
+representation; he was analysing mutual representation and finding it to be
+of its nature intrinsically pre-established, and therefore God-dependent.
+He was not adding anything to mutual representation, he was just showing
+what it necessarily contained or implied. At least he was doing nothing
+worse than recognized scholastic practice. Scholastic Aristotelianism
+explained all natural causality as response to stimulus, and then had to
+postulate a stimulus which stimulated without being stimulated, and this
+was God. Apart from this supreme and first stimulus nothing would in fact
+be moving. The Aristotelians claimed simply to be analysing the nature of
+physical motion as they perceived it, and to find the necessity of
+perpetually applied divine stimulation implicit in it. No violence was
+thereby done to the system of physical motion nor was anything brought in
+from without to patch it up; it was simply found to be of its own      [28]
+nature God-dependent.
+
+It seems as though the reproachful description _'Deus ex machina'_ should
+be reserved for more arbitrary expedients than Aristotle's or Leibniz's,
+say for the occasionalist theory. Occasionalism appeared to introduce God
+that he might make physical matter do what it had no natural tendency to
+do, viz. to obey the volitions of finite mind. Ideas, on the other hand,
+have a natural tendency to represent one another, for to be an idea is to
+be a representation; God is not introduced by Leibniz to make them
+correspond, he is introduced to work a system in which they shall
+correspond. This may not be _Deus-ex-machina philosophy_, but it is
+_physical theology_; that is to say, it treats divine action as one factor
+among the factors which together constitute the working of the natural
+system. And this appears to be perhaps unscientific, certainly blasphemous:
+God's action cannot be a factor among factors; the Creator works through
+and in all creaturely action equally; we can never say 'This is the
+creature, and that is God' of distinguishable causalities in the natural
+world. The creature is, in its creaturely action, self-sufficient: but
+because a creature, insufficient to itself throughout, and sustained by its
+Creator both in existence and in action.
+
+The only acceptable argument for theism is that which corresponds to the
+religious consciousness, and builds upon the insufficiency of finite
+existence throughout, because it is finite. All arguments to God's
+existence from a particular gap in our account of the world of finites are
+to be rejected. They do not indicate God, they indicate the failure of our
+power to analyse the world-order. When Leibniz discovered that his system
+of mutual representations needed to be pre-established, he ought to have
+seen that he had come up a cul-de-sac and backed out; he ought not to have
+said, 'With the help of God I will leap over the wall.'
+
+If we condemn Leibniz for writing physical theology, we condemn not him but
+his age. No contemporary practice was any better, and much of it a good
+deal worse, as Leibniz liked somewhat complacently to point out. And
+because he comes to theology through physical theology, that does not mean
+that all his theology was physical theology and as such to be written off.
+On the contrary, Leibniz is led to wrestle with many problems which beset
+any philosophical theism of the Christian type. This is particularly so[29]
+in the _Theodicy_, as its many citations of theologians suggest. His
+discussions never lack ingenuity, and the system of creation and providence
+in which they result has much of that luminous serenity which colours the
+best works of the Age of Reason.
+
+Every theistic philosopher is bound, with whatever cautions, to conceive
+God by the analogy of the human mind. When Leibniz declares the harmony of
+monads to be pre-established by God, he is invoking the image of
+intelligent human pre-arrangement. Nor is he content simply to leave it at
+that: he endeavours as well as he may to conceive the sort of act by which
+God pre-arranges; and this involves the detailed adaptation for theological
+purposes of Leibnitian doctrine about the human mind.
+
+The human mind, as we have seen, is the mind predominant in a certain
+system of 'minds', viz. in those which constitute the members of the human
+body. If we call it predominant, we mean that its system of ideas is more
+developed than theirs, so that there are more points in which each of them
+conforms to it than in which it conforms to any one of them. The conception
+of a divine pre-establishing mind will be analogous. It will be the
+conception of a mind _absolutely_ dominant, to whose ideas, that is to say,
+the whole system simply corresponds, without any reciprocating
+correspondence on his side. In a certain sense this is to make God the
+'Mind of the World'; and yet the associations of the phrase are misleading.
+It suggests that the world is an organism or body in which the divine mind
+is incarnate, and on which he relies for his representations. But that is
+nonsense; the world is not _a_ body, nor is it organic to God. Absolute
+dominance involves absolute transcendence: if everything in the world
+without remainder simply obeys the divine thoughts, that is only another
+way of saying that the world is the creature of God; the whole system is
+pre-established by him who is absolute Being and perfectly independent of
+the world.
+
+Of createdness, or pre-establishedness, there is no more to be said: we can
+think of it as nothing but the pure or absolute case of subjection to
+dominant mind. It is no use asking further _how_ God's thoughts are obeyed
+in the existence and action of things. What we can and must enquire into
+further, is the nature of the divine thoughts which are thus obeyed. They
+must be understood to be volitions or decrees. There are indeed two ways in
+which things obey the divine thought, and correspondingly two sorts of
+divine thoughts that they obey. In so far as created things conform to [30]
+the mere universal principles of reason, they obey a reasonableness which
+is an inherent characteristic of the divine mind itself. If God wills the
+existence of any creature, that creature's existence must observe the
+limits prescribed by eternal reason: it cannot, for example, both have and
+lack a certain characteristic in the same sense and at the same time; nor
+can it contain two parts and two parts which are not also countable as one
+part and three parts. Finite things, if they exist at all, must thus
+conform to the reasonableness of the divine nature, but what the divine
+reasonableness thus prescribes is highly general: we can deduce from it
+only certain laws which any finite things must obey, we can never deduce
+from it which finite things there are to be, nor indeed that there are to
+be any. Finite things are particular and individual: each of them might
+have been other than it is or, to speak more properly, instead of any one
+of them there might have existed something else; it was, according to the
+mere principles of eternal reason, equally possible. But if so, the whole
+universe, being made up of things each of which might be otherwise, might
+as a whole be otherwise. Therefore the divine thoughts which it obeys by
+existing have the nature of _choices_ or _decrees_.
+
+What material does the finite mind supply for an analogical picture of the
+infinite mind making choices or decrees? If we use such language of God, we
+are using language which has its first and natural application to
+ourselves. We all of us choose, and those of us who are in authority make
+decrees. What is to choose? It involves a real freedom in the mind. A
+finite mind, let us remember, is nothing but a self-operating succession of
+perceptions, ideas, or representations. With regard to some of our ideas we
+have no freedom, those, for example, which represent to us our body. We
+think of them as constituting our given substance. They are sheer datum for
+us, and so are those reflexions of our environment which they mediate to
+us. They make up a closely packed and confused mass; they persevere in
+their being with an obstinate innate force, the spiritual counterpart of
+the force which we have to recognize in things as physically interpreted.
+Being real spiritual force, it is quasi-voluntary, and indeed do we not
+love our own existence and, in a sense, will it in all its necessary
+circumstances? But if we can be said to will to be ourselves and to enact
+with native force what our body and its environment makes us, we are   [31]
+merely willing to conform to the conditions of our existence; we are making
+no choice. When, however, we think freely or perform deliberate acts, there
+is not only force but choice in our activity. Choice between what? Between
+alternative possibilities arising out of our situation. And choice in
+virtue of what? In virtue of the appeal exercised by one alternative as
+seemingly better.
+
+Can we adapt our scheme of choice to the description of God's creative
+decrees? We will take the second point in it first: our choice is in virtue
+of the appeal of the seeming best. Surely the only corrective necessary in
+applying this to God is the omission of the word 'seeming'. His choice is
+in virtue of the appeal of the simply best. The other point causes more
+trouble. We choose between possibilities which arise for us out of our
+situation in the system of the existing world. But as the world does not
+exist before God's creative choices, he is in no world-situation, and no
+alternative possibilities can arise out of it, between which he should have
+to choose. But if God does not choose between intrinsic possibilities of
+some kind, his choice becomes something absolutely meaningless to us--it is
+not a choice at all, it is an arbitrary and unintelligible _fiat_.
+
+Leibniz's solution is this: what are mere possibilities of thought for us
+are possibilities of action for God. For a human subject, possibilities of
+action are limited to what arises out of his actual situation, but
+possibilities for thought are not so limited. I can conceive a world
+different in many respects from this world, in which, for example,
+vegetables should be gifted with thought and speech; but I can do nothing
+towards bringing it about. My imaginary world is practically impossible but
+speculatively possible, in the sense that it contradicts no single
+principle of necessary and immutable reason. I, indeed, can explore only a
+very little way into the region of sheer speculative possibility; God does
+not explore it, he simply possesses it all: the whole region of the
+possible is but a part of the content of his infinite mind. So among all
+possible creatures he chooses the best and creates it.
+
+But the whole realm of the possible is an actual infinity of ideas. Out of
+the consideration of an infinity of ideas, how can God arrive at a choice?
+Why not? His mind is not, of course, discursive; he does not successively
+turn over the leaves of an infinite book of sample worlds, for then he
+would never come to the end of it. Embracing infinite possibility in   [32]
+the single act of his mind, he settles his will with intuitive immediacy
+upon the best. The inferior, the monstrous, the absurd is not a wilderness
+through which he painfully threads his way, it is that from which he
+immediately turns; his wisdom is his elimination of it.
+
+But in so applying the scheme of choice to God's act, have we not
+invalidated its application to our own? For if God has chosen the whole
+form and fabric of the world, he has chosen everything in it, including the
+choices we shall make. And if our choices have already been chosen for us
+by God, it would seem to follow that they are not real open choices on our
+part at all, but are pre-determined. And if they are pre-determined, it
+would seem that they are not really even choices, for a determined choice
+is not a choice. But if we do not ourselves exercise real choice in any
+degree, then we have no clue to what any choice would be: and if so, we
+have no power of conceiving divine choice, either; and so the whole
+argument cuts its own throat.
+
+There are two possible lines of escape from this predicament. One is to
+define human choice in such a sense that it allows of pre-determination
+without ceasing to be choice; and this is Leibniz's method, and it can be
+studied at length in the _Theodicy_. He certainly makes the very best he
+can of it, and it hardly seems that any of those contemporaries whose views
+he criticizes was in a position to answer him. The alternative method is to
+make the most of the negative element involved in all theology. After all,
+we do not positively or adequately understand the nature of infinite
+creative will. Perhaps it is precisely the transcendent glory of divine
+freedom to be able to work infallibly through free instruments. But so
+mystical a paradox is not the sort of thing we can expect to appeal to a
+late-seventeenth-century philosopher.
+
+One criticism of Leibniz's argument we cannot refrain from making. He
+allows himself too easy a triumph when he says that the only alternative to
+a choice determined by a prevailing inclination towards one proposal is a
+choice of mere caprice. There is a sort of choice Leibniz never so much as
+considers and which appears at least to fall quite outside his categories,
+and that is the sort of choice exercised in artistic creativity. In such
+choice we freely feel after the shaping of a scheme, we do not arbitrate
+simply between shaped and given possible schemes. And perhaps some such
+element enters into all our choices, since our life is to some extent  [33]
+freely designed by ourselves. If so, our minds are even more akin to the
+divine mind than Leibniz realized. For the sort of choice we are now
+referring to seems to be an intuitive turning away from an infinite, or at
+least indefinite, range of less attractive possibility. And such is the
+nature of the divine creative choice. The consequence of such a line of
+speculation would be, that the divine mind designs more through us, and
+less simply for us, than Leibniz allowed: the 'harmony' into which we enter
+would be no longer simply 'pre-established'. Leibniz, in fact, could have
+nothing to do with such a suggestion, and he would have found it easy to be
+ironical about it if his contemporaries had proposed it.
+
+II
+
+Leibniz wrote two books; a considerable number of articles in learned
+periodicals; and an enormous number of unpublished notes, papers and
+letters, preserved in the archives of the Electors of Hanover not because
+of the philosophical significance of some of them, but because of the
+political importance of most of them. From among this great mass various
+excerpts of philosophical interest have been made by successive editors of
+Leibniz's works. It may be that the most profound understanding of his mind
+is to be derived from some of these pieces, but if we wish to consider the
+public history of Leibniz, we may set them aside.
+
+Of the two books, one was published, and the other never was. The _New
+Essays_ remained in Leibniz's desk, the _Theodicy_ saw the light. And so,
+to his own and the succeeding generation, Leibniz was known as the author
+of the _Theodicy_.
+
+The articles in journals form the immediate background to the two books. In
+1696 Leibniz heard that a French translation of Locke's _Essay concerning
+Human Understanding_ was being prepared at Amsterdam. He wrote some polite
+comments on Locke's great work, and published them. He also sent them to
+Locke, hoping that Locke would write a reply, and that Leibniz's reflexions
+and Locke's reply might be appended to the projected French translation.
+But Locke set Leibniz's comments aside. Leibniz, not to be defeated, set to
+work upon the _New Essays_, in which the whole substance of Locke's book is
+systematically discussed in dialogue. The _New Essays_ were written in
+1703. But meanwhile a painful dispute had broken out between Leibniz   [34]
+and the disciples of Locke and Newton, in which the English, and perhaps
+Newton himself, were much to blame, and Leibniz thought it impolitic to
+publish his book. It was not issued until long after his death, in the
+middle of the century.
+
+The discussion with Locke was a failure: Locke would not play, and the book
+in which the whole controversy was to be systematized never appeared. The
+discussion with Bayle, on the other hand, was a model of what a discussion
+should be. Bayle played up tirelessly, and was never embarrassingly
+profound; he provided just the sort of objections most useful for drawing
+forth illuminating expositions; he was as good as a fictitious character in
+a philosophical dialogue. And the book in which the controversy was
+systematized duly appeared with great eclat.
+
+Here is the history of the controversy. In 1695 Leibniz was forty-nine
+years old. He had just emerged from a period of close employment under his
+prince's commands, and he thought fit to try his metaphysical principles
+upon the polite world and see what would come of it. He therefore published
+an article in the _Journal des Savants_ under the title: 'New System of
+Nature and of the Communication of Substances, as well as of the Union
+between Soul and Body'. In the same year Foucher published an article in
+the _Journal_ controverting Leibniz; and in the next year Leibniz replied
+with an 'Explanation'. A second explanation in the same year appeared in
+Basnage's _Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_, in answer to reflexions by
+the editor. M. Pierre Bayle had all these articles before him when he
+inserted a note on Leibniz's doctrine in his article on 'Rorarius', in the
+first edition of his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_. The point of
+connexion between Rorarius and Leibniz was no more than this, that both
+held views about the souls of beasts.
+
+Pierre Bayle was the son of a Calvinist pastor, early converted to
+Catholicism, but recovered to his old faith after a short time. He held
+academic employments in Switzerland and Holland; he promoted and edited the
+_Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres_, and he produced that
+extraordinary work the _Historical and Critical Dictionary._ The notices it
+contains of authors and thinkers are little more than pegs upon which Bayle
+could hang his philosophical reflexions. He could write an intelligent
+discussion on any opinion; what he could not do was to reconcile the points
+of view from which he felt impelled to write upon this author and that.[35]
+His was not a systematic mind. So far as he had a philosophical opinion, he
+was a Cartesian; in theology he was an orthodox Calvinist. He could not
+reconcile his theology with his Cartesianism and he did not try to. He made
+a merit of the oppositions of faith to reason and reason to itself, so that
+he could throw himself upon a meritorious and voluntary faith.
+
+There is nothing original in this position. It was characteristic of
+decadent scholasticism, it squared with Luther's exaggerations about the
+impotence of reason in fallen man, and Pascal had given his own highly
+personal twist to it. Bayle has been hailed as a forerunner of Voltairean
+scepticism. It would be truer to say that a Voltairean sceptic could read
+Bayle's discussions in his own sense and for his own purposes if he wished.
+But Bayle was not a sceptic. It is hard to say what he was; his whole
+position as between faith and reason is hopelessly confused. He was a
+scholar, a wit, and a philosophical sparring-partner of so perfectly
+convenient a kind that if we had not evidence of his historical reality, we
+might have suspected Leibniz of inventing him.
+
+In the first edition of his _Dictionary_, under the article 'Rorarius',
+Bayle gave a very fair account of Leibniz's doctrine concerning the souls
+of animals, as it could be collected from his article in the _Journal des
+Savants_, 27 June 1695. He then proceeded to comment upon it in the
+following terms:
+
+'There are some things in Mr. Leibniz's hypothesis that are liable to some
+difficulties, though they show the great extent of his genius. He will have
+it, for example, that the soul of a dog acts independently of outward
+bodies; that _it stands upon its own bottom, by a perfect _spontaneity_
+with respect to itself, and yet with a perfect _conformity_ to outward
+things_.... That _its internal perceptions arise from its original
+constitution, that is to say, the representative constitution (capable of
+expressing beings outside itself in relation to its organs) which was
+bestowed upon it from the time of its creation, and makes its individual
+character_ (_Journal des Savants_, 4 July 1695). From whence it results
+that it would feel hunger and thirst at such and such an hour, though there
+were not any one body in the universe, and _though nothing should exist but
+God and that soul_. He has explained (_Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_,
+Feb. 1696) his thought by the example of two pendulums that should
+perfectly agree: that is, he supposes that according to the particular laws
+which put the soul upon action, it must feel hunger at such an hour;   [36]
+and that according to the particular laws which direct the motion of
+matter, the body which is united to that soul must be modified at that same
+hour as it is modified when the soul is hungry. I will forbear preferring
+this system to that of occasional causes till the learned author has
+perfected it. I cannot apprehend the connexion of internal and spontaneous
+actions which would have this effect, that the soul of a dog would feel
+pain immediately after having felt joy, though it were alone in the
+universe. I understand why a dog passes immediately from pleasure to pain
+when, being very hungry and eating a piece of bread, he is suddenly struck
+with a cudgel. But I cannot apprehend that his soul should be so framed
+that at the very moment of his being beaten he should feel pain though he
+were not beaten, and though he should continue to eat bread without any
+trouble or hindrance. Nor do I see how the spontaneity of that soul should
+be consistent with the sense of pain, and in general with any unpleasing
+perceptions.
+
+'Besides, the reason why this learned man does not like the Cartesian
+system seems to me to be a false supposition; for it cannot be said that
+the system of occasional causes brings in God acting by a miracle (ibid.),
+_Deum ex machina_, in the mutual dependency of the body and soul: for since
+God does only intervene according to general laws, he cannot be said to act
+in an extraordinary manner. Does the internal and active virtue
+communicated to the forms of bodies according to M. Leibniz know the train
+of actions which it is to produce? By no means; for we know by experience
+that we are ignorant whether we shall have such and such perceptions in an
+hour's time. It were therefore necessary that the forms should be directed
+by some internal principle in the production of their acts. But this would
+be _Deus ex machina,_ as much as in the system of occasional causes. In
+fine, as he supposes with great reason that all souls are simple and
+indivisible, it cannot be apprehended how they can be compared with a
+pendulum, that is, how by their original constitution they can diversify
+their operations by using the spontaneous activity bestowed upon them by
+their Creator. It may clearly be conceived that a simple being will always
+act in a uniform manner, if no external cause hinders it. If it were
+composed of several pieces, as a machine, it would act different ways,
+because the peculiar activity of each piece might change every moment the
+progress of others; but how will you find in a simple substance the    [37]
+cause of a change of operation?'
+
+Leibniz published a reply to Bayle in the _Histoire des Ouvrages des
+Savants_ for July 1698. As in all his references to Bayle, he is studiously
+polite and repays compliment for compliment. The following are perhaps the
+principal points of his answer.
+
+1. On the example of the dog:
+
+(_a_) How should it of itself change its sentiment, since everything left
+to itself continues in the state in which it is? Because the state may be a
+state of _change_, as in a moving body which, unless hindered, continues to
+move. And such is the nature of simple substances--they continue to evolve
+steadily.
+
+(_b_) Would it really feel as though beaten if it were not beaten, since
+Leibniz says that the action of every substance takes place as though
+nothing existed but God and itself? Leibniz replies that his remark refers
+to the causality behind an action, not to the reasons for it. The
+spontaneous action of the dog, which leads to the feeling of pain, is only
+decreed to be what it is, for the reason that the dog is part of a world of
+mutually reflecting substances, a world which also includes the cudgel.
+
+(_c_) Why should the dog ever be displeased _spontaneously_? Leibniz
+distinguishes the spontaneous from the voluntary: many things occur in the
+mind, of itself, but not chosen by it.
+
+2. On Cartesianism and miracle:
+
+Cartesianism in the form of occasionalism _does_ involve miracle, for
+though God is said by it to act according to laws in conforming body and
+mind to one another, he thereby causes them to act beyond their natural
+capacities.
+
+3. On the problem, how can the simple act otherwise than uniformly?
+
+Leibniz distinguishes: some uniform action is monotonous, but some is not.
+A point moves uniformly in describing a parabola, for it constantly fulfils
+the formula of the curve. But it does not move monotonously, for the curve
+constantly varies. Such is the uniformity of the action of simple
+substances.
+
+Bayle read this reply, and was pleased but not satisfied with it. In the
+second edition of the dictionary, under the same article 'Rorarius', he
+added the following note:
+
+'I declare first of all that I am very glad I have proposed some small
+difficulties against the system of that great philosopher, since they  [38]
+have occasioned some answers whereby that subject has been made clearer to
+me, and which have given me a more distinct notion of what is most to be
+admired in it. I look now upon that new system as an important conquest,
+which enlarges the bounds of philosophy. We had only two hypotheses, that
+of the Schools and that of the Cartesians: the one was a _way of influence_
+of the body upon the soul and of the soul upon the body; the other was a
+_way of assistance_ or occasional causality. But here is a new acquisition,
+a new hypothesis, which may be called, as Fr. Lami styles it, a _way of
+pre-established harmony_. We are beholden for it to M. Leibniz, and it is
+impossible to conceive anything that gives us a nobler idea of the power
+and wisdom of the Author of all things. This, together with the advantage
+of setting aside all notions of a miraculous conduct, would engage me to
+prefer this new system to that of the Cartesians, if I could conceive any
+possibility in the _way of pre-established harmony_.
+
+'I desire the reader to take notice that though I confess that this way
+removes all notions of a miraculous conduct, yet I do not retract what I
+have said formerly, that the system of occasional causes does not bring in
+God acting miraculously. (See M. Leibniz's article in _Histoire des
+Ouvrages des Savants_, July 1698.) I am as much persuaded as ever I was
+that an action cannot be said to be miraculous, unless God produces it as
+an exception to the general laws; and that everything of which he is
+immediately the author according to those laws is distinct from a miracle
+properly so called. But being willing to cut off from this dispute as many
+things as I possibly can, I consent it should be said that the surest way
+of removing all notions that include a miracle is to suppose that all
+created substances are actively the immediate causes of the effects of
+nature. I will therefore lay aside what I might reply to that part of M.
+Leibniz's answer.
+
+'I will also omit all objections which are not more contrary to his opinion
+than to that of some other philosophers. I will not therefore propose the
+difficulties that may be raised against the supposition that a creature can
+receive from God the power of moving itself. They are strong and almost
+unanswerable, but M. Leibniz's system does not lie more open to them than
+that of the Aristotelians; nay, I do not know whether the Cartesians would
+presume to say that God cannot communicate to our souls a power of acting.
+If they say so, how can they own that Adam sinned? And if they dare not[39]
+say so they weaken the arguments whereby they endeavour to prove that
+matter is not capable of any activity. Nor do I believe that it is more
+difficult for M. Leibniz than for the Cartesians or other philosophers, to
+free himself from the objection of a fatal mechanism which destroys human
+liberty. Wherefore, waiving this, I shall only speak of what is peculiar to
+the system of the _pre-established harmony_.
+
+'I. My first observation shall be, that it raises the power and wisdom of
+the divine art above everything that can be conceived. Fancy to yourself a
+ship which, without having any sense or knowledge, and without being
+directed by any created or uncreated being, has the power of moving itself
+so seasonably as to have always the wind favourable, to avoid currents and
+rocks, to cast anchor where it ought to be done, and to retire into a
+harbour precisely when it is necessary. Suppose such a ship sails in that
+manner for several years successively, being always turned and situated as
+it ought to be, according to the several changes of the air and the
+different situations of seas and lands; you will acknowledge that God,
+notwithstanding his infinite power, cannot communicate such a faculty to a
+ship; or rather you will say that the nature of a ship is not capable of
+receiving it from God. And yet what M. Leibniz supposes about the machine
+of a human body is more admirable and more surprising than all this. Let us
+apply his system concerning the union of the soul with the body to the
+person of Julius Caesar.
+
+'II. We must say according to this system that the body of Julius Caesar
+did so exercise its moving faculty that from its birth to its death it went
+through continual changes which did most exactly answer the perpetual
+changes of a certain soul which it did not know and which made no
+impression on it. We must say that the rule according to which that faculty
+of Caesar's body performed such actions was such, that he would have gone
+to the Senate upon such a day and at such an hour, that he would have
+spoken there such and such words, etc., though God had willed to annihilate
+his soul the next day after it was created. We must say that this moving
+power did change and modify itself exactly according to the volubility of
+the thoughts of that ambitious man, and that it was affected precisely in a
+certain manner rather than in another, because the soul of Caesar passed
+from a certain thought to another. Can a blind power modify itself so
+exactly by virtue of an impression communicated thirty or forty years  [40]
+before and never renewed since, but left to itself, without ever knowing
+what it is to do? Is not this much more incomprehensible than the
+navigation I spoke of in the foregoing paragraph?
+
+'III. The difficulty will be greater still, if it be considered that the
+human machine contains an almost infinite number of organs, and that it is
+continually exposed to the shock of the bodies that surround it,[1] and
+which by an innumerable variety of shakings produce in it a thousand sorts
+of modifications. How is it possible to conceive that this _pre-established
+harmony_ should never be disordered, but go on still during the longest
+life of a man, notwithstanding the infinite varieties of the reciprocal
+action of so many organs upon one another, which are surrounded on all
+sides with infinite corpuscles, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, sometimes
+dry and sometimes moist, and always acting, and pricking the nerves a
+thousand different ways? Suppose that the multiplicity of organs and of
+external agents be a necessary instrument of the almost infinite variety of
+changes in a human body: will that variety have the exactness here
+required? Will it never disturb the correspondence of those changes with
+the changes of the soul? This seems to be altogether impossible.
+
+[1] 'According to M. Leibniz what is active in every substance ought to be
+reduced to a true unity. Since therefore the body of every man is composed
+of several substances, each of them ought to have a principle of action
+really distinct from the principle of each of the others. He will have the
+action of every principle to be spontaneous. Now this must vary the effects
+_ad infinitum_, and confound them. For the impression of the neighbouring
+bodies must needs put some constraint upon the natural spontaneity of every
+one of them.'
+
+'IV. It is in vain to have recourse to the power of God, in order to
+maintain that brutes are mere machines; it is in vain to say that God was
+able to make machines so artfully contrived that the voice of a man, the
+reflected light of an object, etc., will strike them exactly where it is
+necessary, that they may move in a given manner. This supposition is
+rejected by everybody except some Cartesians; and no Cartesian would admit
+it if it were to be extended to man; that is, if anyone were to assert that
+God was able to form such bodies as would mechanically do whatever we see
+other men do. By denying this we do not pretend to limit the power and
+knowledge of God: we only mean that the nature of things does not permit
+that the faculties imparted to a creature should not be necessarily
+confined within certain bounds. The actions of creatures must be       [41]
+necessarily proportioned to their essential state, and performed according
+to the character belonging to each machine; for according to the maxim of
+the philosophers, whatever is received is proportionate to the capacity of
+the subject that receives it. We may therefore reject M. Leibniz's
+hypothesis as being impossible, since it is liable to greater difficulties
+than that of the Cartesians, which makes beasts to be mere machines. It
+puts a perpetual harmony between two beings, which do not act one upon
+another; whereas if servants were mere machines, and should punctually obey
+their masters' command, it could not be said that they do it without a real
+action of their masters upon them; for their masters would speak words and
+make signs which would really shake and move the organs of the servants.
+
+'V. Now let us consider the soul of Julius Caesar, and we shall find the
+thing more impossible still. That soul was in the world without being
+exposed to the influence of any spirit. The power it received from God was
+the only principle of the actions it produced at every moment: and if those
+actions were different one from another, it was not because some of them
+were produced by the united influence of some springs which did not
+contribute to the production of others, for the soul of man is simple,
+indivisible and immaterial. M. Leibniz owns it; and if he did not
+acknowledge it, but if, on the contrary, he should suppose with most
+philosophers and some of the most excellent metaphysicians of our age (Mr.
+Locke, for instance) that a compound of several material parts placed and
+disposed in a certain manner, is capable of thinking, his hypothesis would
+appear to be on that very ground absolutely impossible, and I could refute
+it several other ways; which I need not mention since he acknowledges the
+immateriality of our soul and builds upon it.
+
+'Let us return to the soul of Julius Caesar, and call it an immaterial
+automaton (M. Leibniz's own phrase), and compare it with an atom of
+Epicurus; I mean an atom surrounded with a vacuum on all sides, and which
+will never meet any other atom. This is a very just comparison: for this
+atom, on the one hand, has a natural power of moving itself and exerts it
+without any assistance, and without being retarded or hindered by anything:
+and, on the other hand, the soul of Caesar is a spirit which has received
+the faculty of producing thoughts, and exerts it without the influence [42]
+of any other spirit or of any body. It is neither assisted nor thwarted by
+anything whatsoever. If you consult the common notions and the ideas of
+order, you will find that this atom can never stop, and that having been in
+motion in the foregoing moment, it will continue in it at the present
+moment and in all the moments that shall follow, and that it will always
+move in the same manner. This is the consequence of an axiom approved by M.
+Leibniz: _since a thing does always remain in the same state wherein it
+happens to be, unless it receives some alteration from some other thing ...
+we conclude_, says he, _not only that a body which is at rest will always
+be at rest, but that a body in motion will always keep that motion or
+change, that is, the same swiftness and the same direction, unless
+something happens to hinder it_. (M. Leibniz, ibid.)
+
+'Everyone clearly sees that this atom, whether it moves by an innate power,
+as Democritus and Epicurus would have it, or by a power received from the
+Creator, will always move in the same line equally and after a uniform
+manner, without ever turning or going back. Epicurus was laughed at, when
+he invented the motion of declination; it was a needless supposition, which
+he wanted in order to get out of the labyrinth of a fatal necessity; and he
+could give no reason for this new part of his system. It was inconsistent
+with the clearest notions of our minds: for it is evident that an atom
+which describes a straight line for the space of two days cannot turn away
+at the beginning of a third, unless it meets with some obstacle, or has a
+mind all of a sudden to go out of its road, or contains some spring which
+begins to play at that very moment. The first of these reasons cannot be
+admitted in a vacuum. The second is impossible, since an atom has not the
+faculty of thinking. And the third is likewise impossible in a corpuscle
+that is a perfect unity. I must make some use of all this.
+
+'VI. Caesar's soul is a being to which unity belongs in a strict sense. The
+faculty of producing thoughts is a property of its nature (so M. Leibniz),
+which it has received from God, both as to possession and exercise. If the
+first thought it produces is a sense of pleasure, there is no reason why
+the second should not likewise be a sense of pleasure; for when the total
+cause of an effect remains the same, the effect cannot be altered. Now this
+soul, at the second moment of its existence, does not receive a new faculty
+of thinking; it only preserves the faculty it had at the first moment, and
+it is as independent of the concourse of any other cause at the second [43]
+moment as it was at the first. It must therefore produce again at the
+second moment the same thought it had produced just before. If it be
+objected that it ought to be in a state of change, and that it would not be
+in such a state, in the case that I have supposed; I answer that its change
+will be like the change of the atom; for an atom which continually moves in
+the same line acquires a new situation at every moment, but it is like the
+preceding situation. A soul may therefore continue in its state of change,
+if it does but produce a new thought like the preceding.
+
+'But suppose it to be not confined within such narrow bounds; it must be
+granted at least that its going from one thought to another implies some
+reason of affinity. If I suppose that in a certain moment the soul of
+Caesar sees a tree with leaves and blossoms, I can conceive that it does
+immediately desire to see one that has only leaves, and then one that has
+only blossoms, and that it will thus successively produce several images
+arising from one another; but one cannot conceive the odd change of
+thoughts, which have no affinity with, but are even contrary to, one
+another, and which are so common in men's souls. One cannot apprehend how
+God could place in the soul of Julius Caesar the principle of what I am
+going to say. He was without doubt pricked with a pin more than once, when
+he was sucking; and therefore according to M. Leibniz's hypothesis which I
+am here considering, his soul must have produced in itself a sense of pain
+immediately after the pleasant sensations of the sweetness of the milk,
+which it had enjoyed for the space of two or three minutes. By what springs
+was it determined to interrupt its pleasures and to give itself all of a
+sudden a sense of pain, without receiving any intimation of preparing
+itself to change, and without any new alteration in its substance? If you
+run over the life of that Roman emperor, every page will afford you matter
+for a stronger objection than this is.
+
+'VII. The thing would be less incomprehensible if it were supposed that the
+soul of man is not one spirit but rather a multitude of spirits, each of
+which has its functions, that begin and end precisely as the changes made
+in a human body require. By virtue of this supposition it should be said
+that something analogous to a great number of wheels and springs, or of
+matters that ferment, disposed according to the changes of our machine,
+awakens or lulls asleep for a certain time the action of each of those
+spirits. But then the soul of man would be no longer a single substance[44]
+but an _ens per aggregationem_, a collection and heap of substances just
+like all material beings. We are here in quest of a single being, which
+produces in itself sometimes joy, sometimes pain, etc., and not of many
+beings, one of which produces hope, another despair, etc.
+
+'In these observations I have merely cleared and unfolded those which M.
+Leibniz has done me the honour to examine: and now I shall make some
+reflexions upon his answers.
+
+'VIII. He says (ibid., p. 332) that _the law of the change which happens in
+the substance of the animal transports him from pleasure to pain at the
+very moment that a solution of continuity is made in his body; because the
+law of the indivisible substance of that animal is to represent what is
+done in his body as we experience it, and even to represent in some manner,
+and with respect to that body, whatever is done in the world_. These words
+are a very good explication of the grounds of this system; they are, as it
+were, the unfolding and key of it; but at the same time they are the very
+things at which the objections of those who take this system to be
+impossible are levelled. The law M. Leibniz speaks of supposes a decree of
+God, and shows wherein this system agrees with that of occasional causes.
+Those two systems agree in this point, that there are laws according to
+which the soul of man is _to represent what is done in the body of man, as
+we experience it_. But they disagree as to the manner of executing those
+laws. The Cartesians say that God executes them; M. Leibniz will have it,
+that the soul itself does it; which appears to me impossible, because the
+soul has not the necessary instruments for such an execution. Now however
+infinite the power and knowledge of God be, he cannot perform with a
+machine deprived of a certain piece, what requires the concourse of such a
+piece. He must supply that defect; but then the effect would be produced by
+him and not by the machine. I shall show that the soul has not the
+instruments requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it
+I shall make use of a comparison.
+
+'Fancy to yourself an animal created by God and designed to sing
+continually. It will always sing, that is most certain; but if God designs
+him a certain tablature, he must necessarily either put it before his eyes
+or imprint it upon his memory or dispose his muscles in such a manner that
+according to the laws of mechanism one certain note will always come after
+another, agreeably to the order of the tablature. Without this one cannot
+apprehend that the animal can always follow the whole set of the notes [45]
+appointed him by God. Let us apply this to man's soul. M. Leibniz will have
+it that it has received not only the power of producing thoughts
+continually, but also the faculty of following always a certain set of
+thoughts, which answers the continual changes that happen in the machine of
+the body. This set of thoughts is like the tablature prescribed to the
+singing animal above mentioned. Can the soul change its perceptions or
+modifications at every moment according to such a set of thoughts, without
+knowing the series of the notes, and actually thinking upon them? But
+experience teaches us that it knows nothing of it. Were it not at least
+necessary that in default of such a knowledge, there should be in the soul
+a set of particular instruments, each of which would be a necessary cause
+of such and such a thought? Must they not be so placed and disposed as to
+operate precisely one after another, according to the correspondence
+_pre-established_ between the changes of the body and the thoughts of the
+soul? but it is most certain that an immaterial simple and indivisible
+substance cannot be made up of such an innumerable multitude of particular
+instruments placed one before another, according to the order of the
+tablature in question. It is not therefore possible that a human soul
+should execute that law.
+
+'M. Leibniz supposes that the soul does not distinctly know its future
+perceptions, _but that it perceives them confusedly_, and that _there are
+in each substance traces of whatever hath happened, or shall happen to it:
+but that an infinite multitude of perceptions hinders us from
+distinguishing them. The present state of each substance is a natural
+consequence of its preceding state. The soul, though never so simple, has
+always a sentiment composed of several perceptions at one time: which
+answers our end as well as though it were composed of pieces, like a
+machine. For each foregoing perception has an influence on those that
+follow agreeably to a law of order, which is in perceptions as well as in
+motions...The perceptions that are together in one and the same soul at the
+same time, including an infinite multitude of little and indistinguishable
+sentiments that are to be unfolded, we need not wonder at the infinite
+variety of what is to result from it in time. This is only a consequence of
+the representative nature of the soul, which is, to express what happens
+and what will happen in its body, by the connexion and correspondence of
+all the parts of the world_. I have but little to say in answer to this: I
+shall only observe that this supposition when sufficiently cleared is the
+right way of solving all the difficulties. M. Leibniz, through the     [46]
+penetration of his great genius, has very well conceived the extent and
+strength of this objection, and what remedy ought to be applied to the main
+inconveniency. I do not doubt but that he will smooth the rough parts of
+his system, and teach us some excellent things about the nature of spirits.
+Nobody can travel more usefully or more safely than he in the intellectual
+world. I hope that his curious explanations will remove all the
+impossibilities which I have hitherto found in his system, and that he will
+solidly remove my difficulties, as well as those of Father Lami. And these
+hopes made me say before, without designing to pass a compliment upon that
+learned man, that his system ought to be looked upon as an important
+conquest.
+
+'He will not be much embarrassed by this, viz. that whereas according to
+the supposition of the Cartesians there is but one general law for the
+union of spirits and bodies, he will have it that God gives a particular
+law to each spirit; from whence it seems to result that the primitive
+constitution of each spirit is specifically different from all others. Do
+not the Thomists say, that there are as many species as individuals in
+angelic nature?'
+
+Leibniz acknowledged Bayle's note in a further reply, which is written as
+though for publication. It was communicated to Bayle, but it was not in
+fact published. It is dated 1702. It may be found in the standard
+collections of Leibniz's philosophical works. It reads almost like a sketch
+for the _Theodicy_.
+
+The principal point developed by Leibniz is the richness of content which,
+according to him, is to be found in each 'simple substance'. Its simplicity
+is more like the infinitely rich simplicity of the divine Being, than like
+the simplicity of the atom of Epicurus, with which Bayle had chosen to
+compare it. It contains a condensation in confused idea of the whole
+universe: and its essence is from the first defined by the part it is to
+play in the total harmony.
+
+As to the musical score ('tablature of notes') which the individual soul
+plays from, in order to perform its ordained part in the universal harmony,
+this 'score' is to be found in the confused or implicit ideas at any moment
+present, from which an omniscient observer could always deduce what is to
+happen next. To the objection 'But the created soul is not an omniscient
+observer, and if it cannot read the score, the score is useless to it',[47]
+Leibniz replies by affirming that much spontaneous action arises from
+subjective and yet unperceived reasons, as we are all perfectly aware, once
+we attend to the relevant facts. All he claims to be doing is to generalize
+this observation. All events whatsoever arise from the 'interpretation of
+the score' by monads, but very little of this 'interpretation' is in the
+least conscious.
+
+Leibniz passes from the remarks about his own doctrine under the article
+'Rorarius' to other articles of Bayle's dictionary, and touches the
+question of the origin of evil, and other matters which receive their
+fuller treatment in the _Theodicy_.
+
+In the same year Leibniz wrote a very friendly letter to Bayle himself,
+offering further explanations of disputed points. He concluded it with a
+paragraph of some personal interest, comparing himself the
+historian-philosopher with Bayle the philosophic lexicographer, and
+revealing by the way his attitude to philosophy, science and history:
+
+'We have good reason to admire, Sir, the way in which your striking
+reflexions on the deepest questions of philosophy remain unhindered by your
+boundless researches into matters of fact. I too am not always able to
+excuse myself from discussions of the sort, and have even been obliged to
+descend to questions of genealogy, which would be still more trifling, were
+it not that the interests of States frequently depend upon them. I have
+worked much on the history of Germany in so far as it bears upon these
+countries, a study which has furnished me with some observations belonging
+to general history. So I have learnt not to neglect the knowledge of sheer
+facts. But if the choice were open to me, I should prefer natural history
+to political, and the customs and laws God has established in nature, to
+what is observed among mankind.'
+
+Leibniz now conceived the idea of putting together all the passages in
+Bayle's works which interested him, and writing a systematic answer to
+them. Before he had leisure to finish the task, Bayle died. The work
+nevertheless appeared in 1710 as the Essays in _Theodicy_.
+
+                                                                       [49]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PREFACE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It has ever been seen that men in general have resorted to outward forms
+for the expression of their religion: sound piety, that is to say, light
+and virtue, has never been the portion of the many. One should not wonder
+at this, nothing is so much in accord with human weakness. We are impressed
+by what is outward, while the inner essence of things requires
+consideration of such a kind as few persons are fitted to give. As true
+piety consists in principles and practice, the outward forms of religion
+imitate these, and are of two kinds: the one kind consists in ceremonial
+practices, and the other in the formularies of belief. Ceremonies resemble
+virtuous actions, and formularies are like shadows of the truth and
+approach, more or less, the true light. All these outward forms would be
+commendable if those who invented them had rendered them appropriate to
+maintain and to express that which they imitate--if religious ceremonies,
+ecclesiastical discipline, the rules of communities, human laws were always
+like a hedge round the divine law, to withdraw us from any approach to
+vice, to inure us to the good and to make us familiar with virtue. That was
+the aim of Moses and of other good lawgivers, of the wise men who founded
+religious orders, and above all of Jesus Christ, divine founder of the
+purest and most enlightened religion. It is just the same with the
+formularies of belief: they would be valid provided there were nothing [50]
+in them inconsistent with truth unto salvation, even though the full truth
+concerned were not there. But it happens only too often that religion is
+choked in ceremonial, and that the divine light is obscured by the opinions
+of men.
+
+The pagans, who inhabited the earth before Christianity was founded, had
+only one kind of outward form: they had ceremonies in their worship, but
+they had no articles of faith and had never dreamed of drawing up
+formularies for their dogmatic theology. They knew not whether their gods
+were real persons or symbols of the forces of Nature, as the sun, the
+planets, the elements. Their mysteries consisted not in difficult dogmas
+but in certain secret observances, whence the profane, namely those who
+were not initiated, were excluded. These observances were very often
+ridiculous and absurd, and it was necessary to conceal them in order to
+guard them against contempt. The pagans had their superstitions: they
+boasted of miracles, everything with them was full of oracles, auguries,
+portents, divinations; the priests invented signs of the anger or of the
+goodness of the gods, whose interpreters they claimed to be. This tended to
+sway minds through fear and hope concerning human events; but the great
+future of another life was scarce envisaged; one did not trouble to impart
+to men true notions of God and of the soul.
+
+Of all ancient peoples, it appears that the Hebrews alone had public dogmas
+for their religion. Abraham and Moses established the belief in one God,
+source of all good, author of all things. The Hebrews speak of him in a
+manner worthy of the Supreme Substance; and one wonders at seeing the
+inhabitants of one small region of the earth more enlightened than the rest
+of the human race. Peradventure the wise men of other nations have
+sometimes said the same, but they have not had the good fortune to find a
+sufficient following and to convert the dogma into law. Nevertheless Moses
+had not inserted in his laws the doctrine of the immortality of souls: it
+was consistent with his ideas, it was taught by oral tradition; but it was
+not proclaimed for popular acceptance until Jesus Christ lifted the veil,
+and, without having force in his hand, taught with all the force of a
+lawgiver that immortal souls pass into another life, wherein they shall
+receive the wages of their deeds. Moses had already expressed the beautiful
+conceptions of the greatness and the goodness of God, whereto many
+civilized peoples to-day assent; but Jesus Christ demonstrated fully   [51]
+the results of these ideas, proclaiming that divine goodness and justice
+are shown forth to perfection in God's designs for the souls of men.
+
+I refrain from considering here the other points of the Christian doctrine,
+and I will show only how Jesus Christ brought about the conversion of
+natural religion into law, and gained for it the authority of a public
+dogma. He alone did that which so many philosophers had endeavoured in vain
+to do; and Christians having at last gained the upper hand in the Roman
+Empire, the master of the greater part of the known earth, the religion of
+the wise men became that of the nations. Later also Mahomet showed no
+divergence from the great dogmas of natural theology: his followers spread
+them abroad even among the most remote races of Asia and of Africa, whither
+Christianity had not been carried; and they abolished in many countries
+heathen superstitions which were contrary to the true doctrine of the unity
+of God and the immortality of souls.
+
+It is clear that Jesus Christ, completing what Moses had begun, wished that
+the Divinity should be the object not only of our fear and veneration but
+also of our love and devotion. Thus he made men happy by anticipation, and
+gave them here on earth a foretaste of future felicity. For there is
+nothing so agreeable as loving that which is worthy of love. Love is that
+mental state which makes us take pleasure in the perfections of the object
+of our love, and there is nothing more perfect than God, nor any greater
+delight than in him. To love him it suffices to contemplate his
+perfections, a thing easy indeed, because we find the ideas of these within
+ourselves. The perfections of God are those of our souls, but he possesses
+them in boundless measure; he is an Ocean, whereof to us only drops have
+been granted; there is in us some power, some knowledge, some goodness, but
+in God they are all in their entirety. Order, proportions, harmony delight
+us; painting and music are samples of these: God is all order; he always
+keeps truth of proportions, he makes universal harmony; all beauty is an
+effusion of his rays.
+
+It follows manifestly that true piety and even true felicity consist in the
+love of God, but a love so enlightened that its fervour is attended by
+insight. This kind of love begets that pleasure in good actions which gives
+relief to virtue, and, relating all to God as to the centre, transports the
+human to the divine. For in doing one's duty, in obeying reason, one   [52]
+carries out the orders of Supreme Reason. One directs all one's intentions
+to the common good, which is no other than the glory of God. Thus one finds
+that there is no greater individual interest than to espouse that of the
+community, and one gains satisfaction for oneself by taking pleasure in the
+acquisition of true benefits for men. Whether one succeeds therein or not,
+one is content with what comes to pass, being once resigned to the will of
+God and knowing that what he wills is best. But before he declares his will
+by the event one endeavours to find it out by doing that which appears most
+in accord with his commands. When we are in this state of mind, we are not
+disheartened by ill success, we regret only our faults; and the ungrateful
+ways of men cause no relaxation in the exercise of our kindly disposition.
+Our charity is humble and full of moderation, it presumes not to domineer;
+attentive alike to our own faults and to the talents of others, we are
+inclined to criticize our own actions and to excuse and vindicate those of
+others. We must work out our own perfection and do wrong to no man. There
+is no piety where there is not charity; and without being kindly and
+beneficent one cannot show sincere religion.
+
+Good disposition, favourable upbringing, association with pious and
+virtuous persons may contribute much towards such a propitious condition
+for our souls; but most securely are they grounded therein by good
+principles. I have already said that insight must be joined to fervour,
+that the perfecting of our understanding must accomplish the perfecting of
+our will. The practices of virtue, as well as those of vice, may be the
+effect of a mere habit, one may acquire a taste for them; but when virtue
+is reasonable, when it is related to God, who is the supreme reason of
+things, it is founded on knowledge. One cannot love God without knowing his
+perfections, and this knowledge contains the principles of true piety. The
+purpose of religion should be to imprint these principles upon our souls:
+but in some strange way it has happened all too often that men, that
+teachers of religion have strayed far from this purpose. Contrary to the
+intention of our divine Master, devotion has been reduced to ceremonies and
+doctrine has been cumbered with formulae. All too often these ceremonies
+have not been well fitted to maintain the exercise of virtue, and the
+formulae sometimes have not been lucid. Can one believe it? Some Christians
+have imagined that they could be devout without loving their neighbour,[53]
+and pious without loving God; or else people have thought that they could
+love their neighbour without serving him and could love God without knowing
+him. Many centuries have passed without recognition of this defect by the
+people at large; and there are still great traces of the reign of darkness.
+There are divers persons who speak much of piety, of devotion, of religion,
+who are even busied with the teaching of such things, and who yet prove to
+be by no means versed in the divine perfections. They ill understand the
+goodness and the justice of the Sovereign of the universe; they imagine a
+God who deserves neither to be imitated nor to be loved. This indeed seemed
+to me dangerous in its effect, since it is of serious moment that the very
+source of piety should be preserved from infection. The old errors of those
+who arraigned the Divinity or who made thereof an evil principle have been
+renewed sometimes in our own days: people have pleaded the irresistible
+power of God when it was a question rather of presenting his supreme
+goodness; and they have assumed a despotic power when they should rather
+have conceived of a power ordered by the most perfect wisdom. I have
+observed that these opinions, apt to do harm, rested especially on confused
+notions which had been formed concerning freedom, necessity and destiny;
+and I have taken up my pen more than once on such an occasion to give
+explanations on these important matters. But finally I have been compelled
+to gather up my thoughts on all these connected questions, and to impart
+them to the public. It is this that I have undertaken in the Essays which I
+offer here, on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of
+Evil.
+
+There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray:
+one concerns the great question of the Free and the Necessary, above all in
+the production and the origin of Evil; the other consists in the discussion
+of continuity and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements
+thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. The
+first perplexes almost all the human race, the other exercises philosophers
+only. I shall have perchance at another time an opportunity to declare
+myself on the second, and to point out that, for lack of a true conception
+of the nature of substance and matter, people have taken up false positions
+leading to insurmountable difficulties, difficulties which should properly
+be applied to the overthrow of these very positions. But if the        [54]
+knowledge of continuity is important for speculative enquiry, that of
+necessity is none the less so for practical application; and it, together
+with the questions therewith connected, to wit, the freedom of man and the
+justice of God, forms the object of this treatise.
+
+Men have been perplexed in well-nigh every age by a sophism which the
+ancients called the 'Lazy Reason', because it tended towards doing nothing,
+or at least towards being careful for nothing and only following
+inclination for the pleasure of the moment. For, they said, if the future
+is necessary, that which must happen will happen, whatever I may do. Now
+the future (so they said) is necessary, whether because the Divinity
+foresees everything, and even pre-establishes it by the control of all
+things in the universe; or because everything happens of necessity, through
+the concatenation of causes; or finally, through the very nature of truth,
+which is determinate in the assertions that can be made on future events,
+as it is in all assertions, since the assertion must always be true or
+false in itself, even though we know not always which it is. And all these
+reasons for determination which appear different converge finally like
+lines upon one and the same centre; for there is a truth in the future
+event which is predetermined by the causes, and God pre-establishes it in
+establishing the causes.
+
+The false conception of necessity, being applied in practice, has given
+rise to what I call _Fatum Mahometanum_, fate after the Turkish fashion,
+because it is said of the Turks that they do not shun danger or even
+abandon places infected with plague, owing to their use of such reasoning
+as that just recorded. For what is called _Fatum Stoicum_ was not so black
+as it is painted: it did not divert men from the care of their affairs, but
+it tended to give them tranquillity in regard to events, through the
+consideration of necessity, which renders our anxieties and our vexations
+needless. In which respect these philosophers were not far removed from the
+teaching of our Lord, who deprecates these anxieties in regard to the
+morrow, comparing them with the needless trouble a man would give himself
+in labouring to increase his stature.
+
+It is true that the teachings of the Stoics (and perhaps also of some
+famous philosophers of our time), confining themselves to this alleged
+necessity, can only impart a forced patience; whereas our Lord inspires
+thoughts more sublime, and even instructs us in the means of gaining
+contentment by assuring us that since God, being altogether good and   [55]
+wise, has care for everything, even so far as not to neglect one hair of
+our head, our confidence in him ought to be entire. And thus we should see,
+if we were capable of understanding him, that it is not even possible to
+wish for anything better (as much in general as for ourselves) than what he
+does. It is as if one said to men: Do your duty and be content with that
+which shall come of it, not only because you cannot resist divine
+providence, or the nature of things (which may suffice for tranquillity,
+but not for contentment), but also because you have to do with a good
+master. And that is what may be called _Fatum Christianum_.
+
+Nevertheless it happens that most men, and even Christians, introduce into
+their dealings some mixture of fate after the Turkish fashion, although
+they do not sufficiently acknowledge it. It is true that they are not
+inactive or negligent when obvious perils or great and manifest hopes
+present themselves; for they will not fail to abandon a house that is about
+to fall and to turn aside from a precipice they see in their path; and they
+will burrow in the earth to dig up a treasure half uncovered, without
+waiting for fate to finish dislodging it. But when the good or the evil is
+remote and uncertain and the remedy painful or little to our taste, the
+lazy reason seems to us to be valid. For example, when it is a question of
+preserving one's health and even one's life by good diet, people to whom
+one gives advice thereupon very often answer that our days are numbered and
+that it avails nothing to try to struggle against that which God destines
+for us. But these same persons run to even the most absurd remedies when
+the evil they had neglected draws near. One reasons in somewhat the same
+way when the question for consideration is somewhat thorny, as for instance
+when one asks oneself, _quod vitae sectabor iter_? what profession one must
+choose; when it is a question of a marriage being arranged, of a war being
+undertaken, of a battle being fought; for in these cases many will be
+inclined to evade the difficulty of consideration and abandon themselves to
+fate or to inclination, as if reason should not be employed except in easy
+cases. One will then all too often reason in the Turkish fashion (although
+this way is wrongly termed trusting in providence, a thing that in reality
+occurs only when one has done one's duty) and one will employ the lazy
+reason, derived from the idea of inevitable fate, to relieve oneself of the
+need to reason properly. One will thus overlook the fact that if this  [56]
+argument contrary to the practice of reason were valid, it would always
+hold good, whether the consideration were easy or not. This laziness is to
+some extent the source of the superstitious practices of fortune-tellers,
+which meet with just such credulity as men show towards the philosopher's
+stone, because they would fain have short cuts to the attainment of
+happiness without trouble.
+
+I do not speak here of those who throw themselves upon fortune because they
+have been happy before, as if there were something permanent therein. Their
+argument from the past to the future has just as slight a foundation as the
+principles of astrology and of other kinds of divination. They overlook the
+fact that there is usually an ebb and flow in fortune, _una marea_, as
+Italians playing basset are wont to call it. With regard to this they make
+their own particular observations, which I would, nevertheless, counsel
+none to trust too much. Yet this confidence that people have in their
+fortune serves often to give courage to men, and above all to soldiers, and
+causes them to have indeed that good fortune they ascribe to themselves.
+Even so do predictions often cause that to happen which has been foretold,
+as it is supposed that the opinion the Mahometans hold on fate makes them
+resolute. Thus even errors have their use at times, but generally as
+providing a remedy for other errors: and truth is unquestionably better.
+
+But it is taking an unfair advantage of this alleged necessity of fate to
+employ it in excuse for our vices and our libertinism. I have often heard
+it said by smart young persons, who wished to play the freethinker, that it
+is useless to preach virtue, to censure vice, to create hopes of reward and
+fears of punishment, since it may be said of the book of destiny, that what
+is written is written, and that our behaviour can change nothing therein.
+Thus, they would say, it were best to follow one's inclination, dwelling
+only upon such things as may content us in the present. They did not
+reflect upon the strange consequences of this argument, which would prove
+too much, since it would prove (for instance) that one should take a
+pleasant beverage even though one knows it is poisoned. For the same reason
+(if it were valid) I could say: if it is written in the records of the
+Parcae that poison will kill me now or will do me harm, this will happen
+even though I were not to take this beverage; and if this is not written,
+it will not happen even though I should take this same beverage;
+consequently I shall be able to follow with impunity my inclination to [57]
+take what is pleasing, however injurious it may be; the result of which
+reasoning is an obvious absurdity. This objection disconcerted them a
+little, but they always reverted to their argument, phrased in different
+ways, until they were brought to understand where the fault of the sophism
+lies. It is untrue that the event happens whatever one may do: it will
+happen because one does what leads thereto; and if the event is written
+beforehand, the cause that will make it happen is written also. Thus the
+connexion of effects and causes, so far from establishing the doctrine of a
+necessity detrimental to conduct, serves to overthrow it.
+
+Yet, without having evil intentions inclined towards libertinism, one may
+envisage differently the strange consequences of an inevitable necessity,
+considering that it would destroy the freedom of the will, so essential to
+the morality of action: for justice and injustice, praise and blame,
+punishment and reward cannot attach to necessary actions, and nobody will
+be under obligation to do the impossible or to abstain from doing what is
+absolutely necessary. Without any intention of abusing this consideration
+in order to favour irregularity, one will nevertheless not escape
+embarrassment sometimes, when it comes to a question of judging the actions
+of others, or rather of answering objections, amongst which there are some
+even concerned with the actions of God, whereof I will speak presently. And
+as an insuperable necessity would open the door to impiety, whether through
+the impunity one could thence infer or the hopelessness of any attempt to
+resist a torrent that sweeps everything along with it, it is important to
+note the different degrees of necessity, and to show that there are some
+which cannot do harm, as there are others which cannot be admitted without
+giving rise to evil consequences.
+
+Some go even further: not content with using the pretext of necessity to
+prove that virtue and vice do neither good nor ill, they have the hardihood
+to make the Divinity accessary to their licentious way of life, and they
+imitate the pagans of old, who ascribed to the gods the cause of their
+crimes, as if a divinity drove them to do evil. The philosophy of
+Christians, which recognizes better than that of the ancients the
+dependence of things upon the first Author and his co-operation with all
+the actions of creatures, appears to have increased this difficulty. Some
+able men in our own time have gone so far as to deny all action to     [58]
+creatures, and M. Bayle, who tended a little towards this extraordinary
+opinion, made use of it to restore the lapsed dogma of the two principles,
+or two gods, the one good, the other evil, as if this dogma were a better
+solution to the difficulties over the origin of evil. Yet again he
+acknowledges that it is an indefensible opinion and that the oneness of the
+Principle is incontestably founded on _a priori_ reasons; but he wishes to
+infer that our Reason is confounded and cannot meet her own objections, and
+that one should disregard them and hold fast the revealed dogmas, which
+teach us the existence of one God altogether good, altogether powerful and
+altogether wise. But many readers, convinced of the irrefutable nature of
+his objections and believing them to be at least as strong as the proofs
+for the truth of religion, would draw dangerous conclusions.
+
+Even though there were no co-operation by God in evil actions, one could
+not help finding difficulty in the fact that he foresees them and that,
+being able to prevent them through his omnipotence, he yet permits them.
+This is why some philosophers and even some theologians have rather chosen
+to deny to God any knowledge of the detail of things and, above all, of
+future events, than to admit what they believed repellent to his goodness.
+The Socinians and Conrad Vorstius lean towards that side; and Thomas
+Bonartes, an English Jesuit disguised under a pseudonym but exceedingly
+learned, who wrote a book _De Concordia Scientiae cum Fide_, of which I
+will speak later, appears to hint at this also.
+
+They are doubtless much mistaken; but others are not less so who, convinced
+that nothing comes to pass save by the will and the power of God, ascribe
+to him intentions and actions so unworthy of the greatest and the best of
+all beings that one would say these authors have indeed renounced the dogma
+which recognizes God's justice and goodness. They thought that, being
+supreme Master of the universe, he could without any detriment to his
+holiness cause sins to be committed, simply at his will and pleasure, or in
+order that he might have the pleasure of punishing; and even that he could
+take pleasure in eternally afflicting innocent people without doing any
+injustice, because no one has the right or the power to control his
+actions. Some even have gone so far as to say that God acts thus indeed;
+and on the plea that we are as nothing in comparison with him, they liken
+us to earthworms which men crush without heeding as they walk, or in
+general to animals that are not of our species and which we do not     [59]
+scruple to ill-treat.
+
+I believe that many persons otherwise of good intentions are misled by
+these ideas, because they have not sufficient knowledge of their
+consequences. They do not see that, properly speaking, God's justice is
+thus overthrown. For what idea shall we form of such a justice as has only
+will for its rule, that is to say, where the will is not guided by the
+rules of good and even tends directly towards evil? Unless it be the idea
+contained in that tyrannical definition by Thrasymachus in Plato, which
+designated as _just_ that which pleases the stronger. Such indeed is the
+position taken up, albeit unwittingly, by those who rest all obligation
+upon constraint, and in consequence take power as the gauge of right. But
+one will soon abandon maxims so strange and so unfit to make men good and
+charitable through the imitation of God. For one will reflect that a God
+who would take pleasure in the misfortune of others cannot be distinguished
+from the evil principle of the Manichaeans, assuming that this principle
+had become sole master of the universe; and that in consequence one must
+attribute to the true God sentiments that render him worthy to be called
+the good Principle.
+
+Happily these extravagant dogmas scarce obtain any longer among
+theologians. Nevertheless some astute persons, who are pleased to make
+difficulties, revive them: they seek to increase our perplexity by uniting
+the controversies aroused by Christian theology to the disputes of
+philosophy. Philosophers have considered the questions of necessity, of
+freedom and of the origin of evil; theologians have added thereto those of
+original sin, of grace and of predestination. The original corruption of
+the human race, coming from the first sin, appears to us to have imposed a
+natural necessity to sin without the succour of divine grace: but necessity
+being incompatible with punishment, it will be inferred that a sufficient
+grace ought to have been given to all men; which does not seem to be in
+conformity with experience.
+
+But the difficulty is great, above all, in relation to God's dispositions
+for the salvation of men. There are few saved or chosen; therefore the
+choice of many is not God's decreed will. And since it is admitted that
+those whom he has chosen deserve it no more than the rest, and are not even
+fundamentally less evil, the goodness which they have coming only from the
+gift of God, the difficulty is increased. Where is, then, his justice  [60]
+(people will say), or at the least, where is his goodness? Partiality, or
+respect of persons, goes against justice, and he who without cause sets
+bounds to his goodness cannot have it in sufficient measure. It is true
+that those who are not chosen are lost by their own fault: they lack good
+will or living faith; but it rested with God alone to grant it them. We
+know that besides inward grace there are usually outward circumstances
+which distinguish men, and that training, conversation, example often
+correct or corrupt natural disposition. Now that God should call forth
+circumstances favourable to some and abandon others to experiences which
+contribute to their misfortune, will not that give us cause for
+astonishment? And it is not enough (so it seems) to say with some that
+inward grace is universal and equal for all. For these same authors are
+obliged to resort to the exclamations of St. Paul, and to say: 'O the
+depth!' when they consider how men are distinguished by what we may call
+outward graces, that is, by graces appearing in the diversity of
+circumstances which God calls forth, whereof men are not the masters, and
+which have nevertheless so great an influence upon all that concerns their
+salvation.
+
+Nor will it help us to say with St. Augustine that, all men being involved
+in the damnation caused by the sin of Adam, God might have left them all in
+their misery; and that thus his goodness alone induces him to deliver some
+of them. For not only is it strange that the sin of another should condemn
+anyone, but there still remains the question why God does not deliver
+all--why he delivers the lesser number and why some in preference to
+others. He is in truth their master, but he is a good and just master; his
+power is absolute, but his wisdom permits not that he exercise that power
+in an arbitrary and despotic way, which would be tyrannous indeed.
+
+Moreover, the fall of the first man having happened only with God's
+permission, and God having resolved to permit it only when once he had
+considered its consequences, which are the corruption of the mass of the
+human race and the choice of a small number of elect, with the abandonment
+of all the rest, it is useless to conceal the difficulty by limiting one's
+view to the mass already corrupt. One must, in spite of oneself, go back to
+the knowledge of the consequences of the first sin, preceding the decree
+whereby God permitted it, and whereby he permitted simultaneously that [61]
+the damned should be involved in the mass of perdition and should not be
+delivered: for God and the sage make no resolve without considering its
+consequences.
+
+I hope to remove all these difficulties. I will point out that absolute
+necessity, which is called also logical and metaphysical and sometimes
+geometrical, and which would alone be formidable in this connexion, does
+not exist in free actions, and that thus freedom is exempt not only from
+constraint but also from real necessity. I will show that God himself,
+although he always chooses the best, does not act by an absolute necessity,
+and that the laws of nature laid down by God, founded upon the fitness of
+things, keep the mean between geometrical truths, absolutely necessary, and
+arbitrary decrees; which M. Bayle and other modern philosophers have not
+sufficiently understood. Further I will show that there is an indifference
+in freedom, because there is no absolute necessity for one course or the
+other; but yet that there is never an indifference of perfect equipoise.
+And I will demonstrate that there is in free actions a perfect spontaneity
+beyond all that has been conceived hitherto. Finally I will make it plain
+that the hypothetical and the moral necessity which subsist in free actions
+are open to no objection, and that the 'Lazy Reason' is a pure sophism.
+
+Likewise concerning the origin of evil in its relation to God, I offer a
+vindication of his perfections that shall extol not less his holiness, his
+justice and his goodness than his greatness, his power and his
+independence. I show how it is possible for everything to depend upon God,
+for him to co-operate in all the actions of creatures, even, if you will,
+to create these creatures continually, and nevertheless not to be the
+author of sin. Here also it is demonstrated how the privative nature of
+evil should be understood. Much more than that, I explain how evil has a
+source other than the will of God, and that one is right therefore to say
+of moral evil that God wills it not, but simply permits it. Most important
+of all, however, I show that it has been possible for God to permit sin and
+misery, and even to co-operate therein and promote it, without detriment to
+his holiness and his supreme goodness: although, generally speaking, he
+could have avoided all these evils.
+
+Concerning grace and predestination, I justify the most debatable
+assertions, as for instance: that we are converted only through the    [62]
+prevenient grace of God and that we cannot do good except with his aid;
+that God wills the salvation of all men and that he condemns only those
+whose will is evil; that he gives to all a sufficient grace provided they
+wish to use it; that, Jesus Christ being the source and the centre of
+election, God destined the elect for salvation, because he foresaw that
+they would cling with a lively faith to the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Yet
+it is true that this reason for election is not the final reason, and that
+this very pre-vision is still a consequence of God's anterior decree. Faith
+likewise is a gift of God, who has predestinated the faith of the elect,
+for reasons lying in a superior decree which dispenses grace and
+circumstance in accordance with God's supreme wisdom.
+
+Now, as one of the most gifted men of our time, whose eloquence was as
+great as his acumen and who gave great proofs of his vast erudition, had
+applied himself with a strange predilection to call attention to all the
+difficulties on this subject which I have just touched in general, I found
+a fine field for exercise in considering the question with him in detail. I
+acknowledge that M. Bayle (for it is easy to see that I speak of him) has
+on his side all the advantages except that of the root of the matter, but I
+hope that truth (which he acknowledges himself to be on our side) by its
+very plainness, and provided it be fittingly set forth, will prevail over
+all the ornaments of eloquence and erudition. My hope for success therein
+is all the greater because it is the cause of God I plead, and because one
+of the maxims here upheld states that God's help is never lacking for those
+that lack not good will. The author of this discourse believes that he has
+given proof of this good will in the attention he has brought to bear upon
+this subject. He has meditated upon it since his youth; he has conferred
+with some of the foremost men of the time; and he has schooled himself by
+the reading of good authors. And the success which God has given him
+(according to the opinion of sundry competent judges) in certain other
+profound meditations, of which some have much influence on this subject,
+gives him peradventure some right to claim the attention of readers who
+love truth and are fitted to search after it.
+
+The author had, moreover, particular and weighty reasons inducing him to
+take pen in hand for discussion of this subject. Conversations which he had
+concerning the same with literary and court personages, in Germany and in
+France, and especially with one of the greatest and most accomplished  [63]
+of princesses, have repeatedly prompted him to this course. He had had the
+honour of expressing his opinions to this Princess upon divers passages of
+the admirable _Dictionary_ of M. Bayle, wherein religion and reason appear
+as adversaries, and where M. Bayle wishes to silence reason after having
+made it speak too loud: which he calls the triumph of faith. The present
+author declared there and then that he was of a different opinion, but that
+he was nevertheless well pleased that a man of such great genius had
+brought about an occasion for going deeply into these subjects, subjects as
+important as they are difficult. He admitted having examined them also for
+some long time already, and having sometimes been minded to publish upon
+this matter some reflexions whose chief aim should be such knowledge of God
+as is needed to awaken piety and to foster virtue. This Princess exhorted
+and urged him to carry out his long-cherished intention, and some friends
+added their persuasions. He was all the more tempted to accede to their
+requests since he had reason to hope that in the sequel to his
+investigation M. Bayle's genius would greatly aid him to give the subject
+such illumination as it might receive with his support. But divers
+obstacles intervened, and the death of the incomparable Queen was not the
+least. It happened, however, that M. Bayle was attacked by excellent men
+who set themselves to examine the same subject; he answered them fully and
+always ingeniously. I followed their dispute, and was even on the point of
+being involved therein. This is how it came about.
+
+I had published a new system, which seemed well adapted to explain the
+union of the soul and the body: it met with considerable applause even from
+those who were not in agreement with it, and certain competent persons
+testified that they had already been of my opinion, without having reached
+so distinct an explanation, before they saw what I had written on the
+matter. M. Bayle examined it in his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_,
+article 'Rorarius'. He thought that my expositions were worthy of further
+development; he drew attention to their usefulness in various connexions,
+and he laid stress upon what might still cause difficulty. I could not but
+reply in a suitable way to expressions so civil and to reflexions so
+instructive as his. In order to turn them to greater account, I published
+some elucidations in the _Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_, July 1698. M.
+Bayle replied to them in the second edition of his _Dictionary_. I sent[64]
+him a rejoinder which has not yet been published; I know not whether he
+ever made a further reply.
+
+Meanwhile it happened that M. le Clerc had inserted in his _Select Library_
+an extract from the _Intellectual System_ of the late Mr. Cudworth, and had
+explained therein certain 'plastic natures' which this admirable author
+applied to the formation of animals. M. Bayle believed (see the
+continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, ch. 21, art. 11) that,
+these natures being without cognition, in establishing them one weakened
+the argument which proves, through the marvellous formation of things, that
+the universe must have an intelligent Cause. M. le Clerc replied (4th art.
+of the 5th vol. of his _Select Library_) that these natures required to be
+directed by divine wisdom. M. Bayle insisted (7th article of the _Histoire
+des Ouvrages des Savants_, August 1704) that direction alone was not
+sufficient for a cause devoid of cognition, unless one took the cause to be
+a mere instrument of God, in which case direction would be needless. My
+system was touched upon in passing; and that gave me an opportunity to send
+a short essay to the illustrious author of the _Histoire des Ouvrages des
+Savants_, which he inserted in the month of May 1705, art. 9. In this I
+endeavoured to make clear that in reality mechanism is sufficient to
+produce the organic bodies of animals, without any need of other plastic
+natures, provided there be added thereto the _preformation_ already
+completely organic in the seeds of the bodies that come into existence,
+contained in those of the bodies whence they spring, right back to the
+primary seeds. This could only proceed from the Author of things,
+infinitely powerful and infinitely wise, who, creating all in the beginning
+in due order, had _pre-established_ there all order and artifice that was
+to be. There is no chaos in the inward nature of things, and there is
+organism everywhere in a matter whose disposition proceeds from God. More
+and more of it would come to light if we pressed closer our examination of
+the anatomy of bodies; and we should continue to observe it even if we
+could go on to infinity, like Nature, and make subdivision as continuous in
+our knowledge as Nature has made it in fact.
+
+In order to explain this marvel of the formation of animals, I made use of
+a Pre-established Harmony, that is to say, of the same means I had used to
+explain another marvel, namely the correspondence of soul with body,   [65]
+wherein I proved the uniformity and the fecundity of the principles I had
+employed. It seems that this reminded M. Bayle of my system of accounting
+for this correspondence, which he had examined formerly. He declared (in
+chapter 180 of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, p.
+1253) that he did not believe God could give to matter or to any other
+cause the faculty of becoming organic without communicating to it the idea
+and the knowledge of organic nature. Also he was not yet disposed to
+believe that God, with all his power over Nature and with all the
+foreknowledge which he has of the contingencies that may arrive, could have
+so disposed things that by the laws of mechanics alone a vessel (for
+instance) should go to its port of destination without being steered during
+its passage by some intelligent guide. I was surprised to see that limits
+were placed on the power of God, without the adduction of any proof and
+without indication that there was any contradiction to be feared on the
+side of the object or any imperfection on God's side. Whereas I had shown
+before in my Rejoinder that even men often produce through automata
+something like the movements that come from reason, and that even a finite
+mind (but one far above ours) could accomplish what M. Bayle thinks
+impossible to the Divinity. Moreover, as God orders all things at once
+beforehand, the accuracy of the path of this vessel would be no more
+strange than that of a fuse passing along a cord in fireworks, since the
+whole disposition of things preserves a perfect harmony between them by
+means of their influence one upon the other.
+
+This declaration of M. Bayle pledged me to an answer. I therefore purposed
+to point out to him, that unless it be said that God forms organic bodies
+himself by a perpetual miracle, or that he has entrusted this care to
+intelligences whose power and knowledge are almost divine, we must hold the
+opinion that God _preformed_ things in such sort that new organisms are
+only a mechanical consequence of a preceding organic constitution. Even so
+do butterflies come out of silkworms, an instance where M. Swammerdam has
+shown that there is nothing but development. And I would have added that
+nothing is better qualified than the preformation of plants and of animals
+to confirm my System of Pre-established Harmony between the soul and the
+body. For in this the body is prompted by its original constitution to
+carry out with the help of external things all that it does in accordance
+with the will of the soul. So the seeds by their original constitution [66]
+carry out naturally the intentions of God, by an artifice greater still
+than that which causes our body to perform everything in conformity with
+our will. And since M. Bayle himself deems with reason that there is more
+artifice in the organism of animals than in the most beautiful poem in the
+world or in the most admirable invention whereof the human mind is capable,
+it follows that my system of the connexion between the body and the soul is
+as intelligible as the general opinion on the formation of animals. For
+this opinion (which appears to me true) states in effect that the wisdom of
+God has so made Nature that it is competent in virtue of its laws to form
+animals; I explain this opinion and throw more light upon the possibility
+of it through the system of preformation. Whereafter there will be no cause
+for surprise that God has so made the body that by virtue of its own laws
+it can carry out the intentions of the reasoning soul: for all that the
+reasoning soul can demand of the body is less difficult than the
+organization which God has demanded of the seeds. M. Bayle says (_Reply to
+the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 182, p. 1294) that it is only very
+recently there have been people who have understood that the formation of
+living bodies cannot be a natural process. This he could say also (in
+accordance with his principles) of the communication between the soul and
+the body, since God effects this whole communication in the system of
+occasional causes to which this author subscribes. But I admit the
+supernatural here only in the beginning of things, in respect of the first
+formation of animals or in respect of the original constitution of
+pre-established harmony between the soul and the body. Once that has come
+to pass, I hold that the formation of animals and the relation between the
+soul and the body are something as natural now as the other most ordinary
+operations of Nature. A close parallel is afforded by people's ordinary
+thinking about the instinct and the marvellous behaviour of brutes. One
+recognizes reason there not in the brutes but in him who created them. I
+am, then, of the general opinion in this respect; but I hope that my
+explanation will have added clearness and lucidity, and even a more ample
+range, to that opinion.
+
+Now when preparing to justify my system in face of the new difficulties of
+M. Bayle, I purposed at the same time to communicate to him the ideas which
+I had had for some time already, on the difficulties put forward by him[67]
+in opposition to those who endeavour to reconcile reason with faith in
+regard to the existence of evil. Indeed, there are perhaps few persons who
+have toiled more than I in this matter. Hardly had I gained some tolerable
+understanding of Latin writings when I had an opportunity of turning over
+books in a library. I flitted from book to book, and since subjects for
+meditation pleased me as much as histories and fables, I was charmed by the
+work of Laurentius Valla against Boethius and by that of Luther against
+Erasmus, although I was well aware that they had need of some mitigation. I
+did not omit books of controversy, and amongst other writings of this
+nature the records of the Montbeliard Conversation, which had revived the
+dispute, appeared to me instructive. Nor did I neglect the teachings of our
+theologians: and the study of their opponents, far from disturbing me,
+served to strengthen me in the moderate opinions of the Churches of the
+Augsburg Confession. I had opportunity on my journeys to confer with some
+excellent men of different parties, for instance with Bishop Peter von
+Wallenburg, Suffragan of Mainz, with Herr Johann Ludwig Fabricius, premier
+theologian of Heidelberg, and finally with the celebrated M. Arnauld. To
+him I even tendered a Latin Dialogue of my own composition upon this
+subject, about the year 1673, wherein already I laid it down that God,
+having chosen the most perfect of all possible worlds, had been prompted by
+his wisdom to permit the evil which was bound up with it, but which still
+did not prevent this world from being, all things considered, the best that
+could be chosen. I have also since read many and various good authors on
+these subjects, and I have endeavoured to make progress in the knowledge
+that seems to me proper for banishing all that could have obscured the idea
+of supreme perfection which must be acknowledged in God. I have not
+neglected to examine the most rigorous authors, who have extended furthest
+the doctrine of the necessity of things, as for instance Hobbes and
+Spinoza, of whom the former advocated this absolute necessity not only in
+his _Physical Elements_ and elsewhere, but also in a special book against
+Bishop Bramhall. And Spinoza insists more or less (like an ancient
+Peripatetic philosopher named Strato) that all has come from the first
+cause or from primitive Nature by a blind and geometrical necessity, with
+complete absence of capacity for choice, for goodness and for understanding
+in this first source of things.
+
+                                                                       [68]
+I have found the means, so it seems to me, of demonstrating the contrary in
+a way that gives one a clear insight into the inward essence of the matter.
+For having made new discoveries on the nature of active force and the laws
+of motion, I have shown that they have no geometrical necessity, as Spinoza
+appears to have believed they had. Neither, as I have made plain, are they
+purely arbitrary, even though this be the opinion of M. Bayle and of some
+modern philosophers: but they are dependent upon the fitness of things as I
+have already pointed out above, or upon that which I call the 'principle of
+the best'. Moreover one recognizes therein, as in every other thing, the
+marks of the first substance, whose productions bear the stamp of a supreme
+wisdom and make the most perfect of harmonies. I have shown also that this
+harmony connects both the future with the past and the present with the
+absent. The first kind of connexion unites times, and the other places.
+This second connexion is displayed in the union of the soul with the body,
+and in general in the communication of true substances with one another and
+with material phenomena. But the first takes place in the preformation of
+organic bodies, or rather of all bodies, since there is organism
+everywhere, although all masses do not compose organic bodies. So a pond
+may very well be full of fish or of other organic bodies, although it is
+not itself an animal or organic body, but only a mass that contains them.
+Thus I had endeavoured to build upon such foundations, established in a
+conclusive manner, a complete body of the main articles of knowledge that
+reason pure and simple can impart to us, a body whereof all the parts were
+properly connected and capable of meeting the most important difficulties
+of the ancients and the moderns. I had also in consequence formed for
+myself a certain system concerning the freedom of man and the cooperation
+of God. This system appeared to me to be such as would in no wise offend
+reason and faith; and I desired to submit it to the scrutiny of M. Bayle,
+as well as of those who are in controversy with him. Now he has departed
+from us, and such a loss is no small one, a writer whose learning and
+acumen few have equalled. But since the subject is under consideration and
+men of talent are still occupied with it, while the public also follows it
+attentively, I take this to be a fitting moment for the publication of
+certain of my ideas.
+
+It will perhaps be well to add the observation, before finishing this
+preface, that in denying the physical influence of the soul upon the   [69]
+body or of the body upon the soul, that is, an influence causing the one to
+disturb the laws of the other, I by no means deny the union of the one with
+the other which forms of them a suppositum; but this union is something
+metaphysical, which changes nothing in the phenomena. This is what I have
+already said in reply to the objection raised against me, in the _Memoires
+de Trevoux_, by the Reverend Father de Tournemine, whose wit and learning
+are of no ordinary mould. And for this reason one may say also in a
+metaphysical sense that the soul acts upon the body and the body upon the
+soul. Moreover, it is true that the soul is the Entelechy or the active
+principle, whereas the corporeal alone or the mere material contains only
+the passive. Consequently the principle of action is in the soul, as I have
+explained more than once in the _Leipzig Journal_. More especially does
+this appear in my answer to the late Herr Sturm, philosopher and
+mathematician of Altorf, where I have even demonstrated that, if bodies
+contained only the passive, their different conditions would be
+indistinguishable. Also I take this opportunity to say that, having heard
+of some objections made by the gifted author of the book on
+_Self-knowledge_, in that same book, to my System of Pre-established
+Harmony, I sent a reply to Paris, showing that he has attributed to me
+opinions I am far from holding. On another matter recently I met with like
+treatment at the hands of an anonymous Doctor of the Sorbonne. And these
+misconceptions would have become plain to the reader at the outset if my
+own words, which were being taken in evidence, had been quoted.
+
+This tendency of men to make mistakes in presenting the opinions of others
+leads me to observe also, that when I said somewhere that man helps himself
+in conversion through the succour of grace, I mean only that he derives
+advantage from it through the cessation of the resistance overcome, but
+without any cooperation on his part: just as there is no co-operation in
+ice when it is broken. For conversion is purely the work of God's grace,
+wherein man co-operates only by resisting it; but human resistance is more
+or less great according to the persons and the occasions. Circumstances
+also contribute more or less to our attention and to the motions that arise
+in the soul; and the co-operation of all these things, together with the
+strength of the impression and the condition of the will, determines the
+operation of grace, although not rendering it necessary. I have expounded
+sufficiently elsewhere that in relation to matters of salvation        [70]
+unregenerate man is to be considered as dead; and I greatly approve the
+manner wherein the theologians of the Augsburg Confession declare
+themselves on this subject. Yet this corruption of unregenerate man is, it
+must be added, no hindrance to his possession of true moral virtues and his
+performance of good actions in his civic life, actions which spring from a
+good principle, without any evil intention and without mixture of actual
+sin. Wherein I hope I shall be forgiven, if I have dared to diverge from
+the opinion of St. Augustine: he was doubtless a great man, of admirable
+intelligence, but inclined sometimes, as it seems, to exaggerate things,
+above all in the heat of his controversies. I greatly esteem some persons
+who profess to be disciples of St. Augustine, amongst others the Reverend
+Father Quenel, a worthy successor of the great Arnauld in the pursuit of
+controversies that have embroiled them with the most famous of Societies.
+But I have found that usually in disputes between people of conspicuous
+merit (of whom there are doubtless some here in both parties) there is
+right on both sides, although in different points, and it is rather in the
+matter of defence than attack, although the natural malevolence of the
+human heart generally renders attack more agreeable to the reader than
+defence. I hope that the Reverend Father Ptolemei, who does his Society
+credit and is occupied in filling the gaps left by the famous Bellarmine,
+will give us, concerning all of that, some explanations worthy of his
+acumen and his knowledge, and I even dare to add, his moderation. And one
+must believe that among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession there
+will arise some new Chemnitz or some new Callixtus; even as one is
+justified in thinking that men like Usserius or Daille will again appear
+among the Reformed, and that all will work more and more to remove the
+misconceptions wherewith this matter is charged. For the rest I shall be
+well pleased that those who shall wish to examine it closely read the
+objections with the answers I have given thereto, formulated in the small
+treatise I have placed at the end of the work by way of summary. I have
+endeavoured to forestall some new objections. I have explained, for
+instance, why I have taken the antecedent and consequent will as
+preliminary and final, after the example of Thomas, of Scotus and others;
+how it is possible that there be incomparably more good in the glory of all
+the saved than there is evil in the misery of all the damned, despite  [71]
+that there are more of the latter; how, in saying that evil has been
+permitted as a _conditio sine qua non_ of good, I mean not according to the
+principle of necessity, but according to the principle of the fitness of
+things. Furthermore I show that the predetermination I admit is such as
+always to predispose, but never to necessitate, and that God will not
+refuse the requisite new light to those who have made a good use of that
+which they had. Other elucidations besides I have endeavoured to give on
+some difficulties which have been put before me of late. I have, moreover,
+followed the advice of some friends who thought it fitting that I should
+add two appendices: the one treats of the controversy carried on between
+Mr. Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall touching Freedom and Necessity, the other of
+the learned work on _The Origin of Evil_, published a short time ago in
+England.
+
+Finally I have endeavoured in all things to consider edification: and if I
+have conceded something to curiosity, it is because I thought it necessary
+to relieve a subject whose seriousness may cause discouragement. It is with
+that in view that I have introduced into this dissertation the pleasing
+chimera of a certain astronomical theology, having no ground for
+apprehension that it will ensnare anyone and deeming that to tell it and
+refute it is the same thing. Fiction for fiction, instead of imagining that
+the planets were suns, one might conceive that they were masses melted in
+the sun and thrown out, and that would destroy the foundation of this
+hypothetical theology. The ancient error of the two principles, which the
+Orientals distinguished by the names Oromasdes and Arimanius, caused me to
+explain a conjecture on the primitive history of peoples. It appears indeed
+probable that these were the names of two great contemporary princes, the
+one monarch of a part of upper Asia, where there have since been others of
+this name, the other king of the Scythian Celts who made incursions into
+the states of the former, and who was also named amongst the divinities of
+Germania. It seems, indeed, that Zoroaster used the names of these princes
+as symbols of the invisible powers which their exploits made them resemble
+in the ideas of Asiatics. Yet elsewhere, according to the accounts of Arab
+authors, who in this might well be better informed than the Greeks, it
+appears from detailed records of ancient oriental history, that this
+Zerdust or Zoroaster, whom they make contemporary with the great Darius,
+did not look upon these two principles as completely primitive and     [72]
+independent, but as dependent upon one supreme and single principle. They
+relate that he believed, in conformity with the cosmogony of Moses, that
+God, who is without an equal, created all and separated the light from the
+darkness; that the light conformed with his original design, but that the
+darkness came as a consequence, even as the shadow follows the body, and
+that this is nothing but privation. Such a thesis would clear this ancient
+author of the errors the Greeks imputed to him. His great learning caused
+the Orientals to compare him with the Mercury or Hermes of the Egyptians
+and Greeks; just as the northern peoples compared their Wodan or Odin to
+this same Mercury. That is why Mercredi (Wednesday), or the day of Mercury,
+was called Wodansdag by the northern peoples, but day of Zerdust by the
+Asiatics, since it is named Zarschamba or Dsearschambe by the Turks and the
+Persians, Zerda by the Hungarians from the north-east, and Sreda by the
+Slavs from the heart of Great Russia, as far as the Wends of the Luneburg
+region, the Slavs having learnt the name also from the Orientals. These
+observations will perhaps not be displeasing to the curious. And I flatter
+myself that the small dialogue ending the Essays written to oppose M. Bayle
+will give some satisfaction to those who are well pleased to see difficult
+but important truths set forth in an easy and familiar way. I have written
+in a foreign language at the risk of making many errors in it, because that
+language has been recently used by others in treating of my subject, and
+because it is more generally read by those whom one would wish to benefit
+by this small work. It is to be hoped that the language errors will be
+pardoned: they are to be attributed not only to the printer and the
+copyist, but also to the haste of the author, who has been much distracted
+from his task. If, moreover, any error has crept into the ideas expressed,
+the author will be the first to correct it, once he has been better
+informed: he has given elsewhere such indications of his love of truth that
+he hopes this declaration will not be regarded as merely an empty phrase.
+
+                                                                       [73]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH REASON
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1. I begin with the preliminary question of the _conformity of faith with
+reason_, and the use of philosophy in theology, because it has much
+influence on the main subject of my treatise, and because M. Bayle
+introduces it everywhere. I assume that two truths cannot contradict each
+other; that the object of faith is the truth God has revealed in an
+extraordinary way; and that reason is the linking together of truths, but
+especially (when it is compared with faith) of those whereto the human mind
+can attain naturally without being aided by the light of faith. This
+definition of reason (that is to say of strict and true reason) has
+surprised some persons accustomed to inveigh against reason taken in a
+vague sense. They gave me the answer that they had never heard of any such
+explanation of it: the truth is that they have never conferred with people
+who expressed themselves clearly on these subjects. They have confessed to
+me, nevertheless, that one could not find fault with reason, understood in
+the sense which I gave to it. It is in the same sense that sometimes reason
+is contrasted with experience. Reason, since it consists in the linking
+together of truths, is entitled to connect also those wherewith experience
+has furnished it, in order thence to draw mixed conclusions; but reason
+pure and simple, as distinct from experience, only has to do with truths
+independent of the senses. And one may compare faith with experience, since
+faith (in respect of the motives that give it justification) depends   [74]
+upon the experience of those who have seen the miracles whereon revelation
+is founded, and upon the trustworthy tradition which has handed them down
+to us, whether through the Scriptures or by the account of those who have
+preserved them. It is rather as we rely upon the experience of those who
+have seen China and on the credibility of their account when we give
+credence to the wonders that are told us of that distant country. Yet I
+would also take into account the inward motion of the Holy Spirit, who
+takes possession of souls and persuades them and prompts them to good, that
+is, to faith and to charity, without always having need of motives.
+
+2. Now the truths of reason are of two kinds: the one kind is of those
+called the 'Eternal Verities', which are altogether necessary, so that the
+opposite implies contradiction. Such are the truths whose necessity is
+logical, metaphysical or geometrical, which one cannot deny without being
+led into absurdities. There are others which may be called _positive_,
+because they are the laws which it has pleased God to give to Nature, or
+because they depend upon those. We learn them either by experience, that
+is, _a posteriori_, or by reason and _a priori_, that is, by considerations
+of the fitness of things which have caused their choice. This fitness of
+things has also its rules and reasons, but it is the free choice of God,
+and not a geometrical necessity, which causes preference for what is
+fitting and brings it into existence. Thus one may say that physical
+necessity is founded on moral necessity, that is, on the wise one's choice
+which is worthy of his wisdom; and that both of these ought to be
+distinguished from geometrical necessity. It is this physical necessity
+that makes order in Nature and lies in the rules of motion and in some
+other general laws which it pleased God to lay down for things when he gave
+them being. It is therefore true that God gave such laws not without
+reason, for he chooses nothing from caprice and as though by chance or in
+pure indifference; but the general reasons of good and of order, which have
+prompted him to the choice, may be overcome in some cases by stronger
+reasons of a superior order.
+
+3. Thus it is made clear that God can exempt creatures from the laws he has
+prescribed for them, and produce in them that which their nature does not
+bear by performing a miracle. When they have risen to perfections and
+faculties nobler than those whereto they can by their nature attain, the
+Schoolmen call this faculty an 'Obediential Power', that is to say, a  [75]
+power which the thing acquires by obeying the command of him who can give
+that which the thing has not. The Schoolmen, however, usually give
+instances of this power which to me appear impossible: they maintain, for
+example, that God can give the creature the faculty to create. It may be
+that there are miracles which God performs through the ministry of angels,
+where the laws of Nature are not violated, any more than when men assist
+Nature by art, the skill of angels differing from ours only by degree of
+perfection. Nevertheless it still remains true that the laws of Nature are
+subject to be dispensed from by the Law-giver; whereas the eternal
+verities, as for instance those of geometry, admit no dispensation, and
+faith cannot contradict them. Thus it is that there cannot be any
+invincible objection to truth. For if it is a question of proof which is
+founded upon principles or incontestable facts and formed by a linking
+together of eternal verities, the conclusion is certain and essential, and
+that which is contrary to it must be false; otherwise two contradictories
+might be true at the same time. If the objection is not conclusive, it can
+only form a probable argument, which has no force against faith, since it
+is agreed that the Mysteries of religion are contrary to appearances. Now
+M. Bayle declares, in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc, that he does not
+claim that there are demonstrations contrary to the truths of faith: and as
+a result all these insuperable difficulties, these so-called wars between
+reason and faith, vanish away.
+
+  _Hi motus animorum atque haec discrimina tanta,_
+  _Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt._
+
+4. Protestant theologians as well as those of the Roman confession admit
+the maxims which I have just laid down, when they handle the matter with
+attention; and all that is said against reason has no force save against a
+kind of counterfeit reason, corrupted and deluded by false appearances. It
+is the same with our notions of the justice and the goodness of God, which
+are spoken of sometimes as if we had neither any idea nor any definition of
+their nature. But in that case we should have no ground for ascribing these
+attributes to him, or lauding him for them. His goodness and his justice as
+well as his wisdom differ from ours only because they are infinitely more
+perfect. Thus the simple notions, the necessary truths and the conclusive
+results of philosophy cannot be contrary to revelation. And when some  [76]
+philosophical maxims are rejected in theology, the reason is that they are
+considered to have only a physical or moral necessity, which speaks only of
+that which takes place usually, and is consequently founded on appearances,
+but which may be withheld if God so pleases.
+
+5. It seems, according to what I have just said, that there is often some
+confusion in the expressions of those who set at variance philosophy and
+theology, or faith and reason: they confuse the terms 'explain',
+'comprehend', 'prove', 'uphold'. And I find that M. Bayle, shrewd as he is,
+is not always free from this confusion. Mysteries may be _explained_
+sufficiently to justify belief in them; but one cannot _comprehend_ them,
+nor give understanding of how they come to pass. Thus even in natural
+philosophy we explain up to a certain point sundry perceptible qualities,
+but in an imperfect manner, for we do not comprehend them. Nor is it
+possible for us, either, to prove Mysteries by reason; for all that which
+can be proved _a priori_, or by pure reason, can be comprehended. All that
+remains for us then, after having believed in the Mysteries by reason of
+the proofs of the truth of religion (which are called 'motives of
+credibility') is to be able to _uphold_ them against objections. Without
+that our belief in them would have no firm foundation; for all that which
+can be refuted in a sound and conclusive manner cannot but be false. And
+such proofs of the truth of religion as can give only a _moral certainty_
+would be balanced and even outweighed by such objections as would give an
+_absolute certainty_, provided they were convincing and altogether
+conclusive. This little might suffice me to remove the difficulties
+concerning the use of reason and philosophy in relation to religion if one
+had not to deal all too often with prejudiced persons. But as the subject
+is important and it has fallen into a state of confusion, it will be well
+to take it in greater detail.
+
+6. The question of the _conformity of faith with reason_ has always been a
+great problem. In the primitive Church the ablest Christian authors adapted
+themselves to the ideas of the Platonists, which were the most acceptable
+to them, and were at that time most generally in favour. Little by little
+Aristotle took the place of Plato, when the taste for systems began to
+prevail, and when theology itself became more systematic, owing to the
+decisions of the General Councils, which provided precise and positive
+formularies. St. Augustine, Boethius and Cassiodorus in the West, and  [77]
+St. John of Damascus in the East contributed most towards reducing theology
+to scientific form, not to mention Bede, Alcuin, St. Anselm and some other
+theologians versed in philosophy. Finally came the Schoolmen. The leisure
+of the cloisters giving full scope for speculation, which was assisted by
+Aristotle's philosophy translated from the Arabic, there was formed at last
+a compound of theology and philosophy wherein most of the questions arose
+from the trouble that was taken to reconcile faith with reason. But this
+had not met with the full success hoped for, because theology had been much
+corrupted by the unhappiness of the times, by ignorance and obstinacy.
+Moreover, philosophy, in addition to its own faults, which were very great,
+found itself burdened with those of theology, which in its turn was
+suffering from association with a philosophy that was very obscure and very
+imperfect. One must confess, notwithstanding, with the incomparable
+Grotius, that there is sometimes gold hidden under the rubbish of the
+monks' barbarous Latin. I have therefore oft-times wished that a man of
+talent, whose office had necessitated his learning the language of the
+Schoolmen, had chosen to extract thence whatever is of worth, and that
+another Petau or Thomasius had done in respect of the Schoolmen what these
+two learned men have done in respect of the Fathers. It would be a very
+curious work, and very important for ecclesiastical history, and it would
+continue the History of Dogmas up to the time of the Revival of Letters
+(owing to which the aspect of things has changed) and even beyond that
+point. For sundry dogmas, such as those of physical predetermination, of
+mediate knowledge, philosophical sin, objective precisions, and many other
+dogmas in speculative theology and even in the practical theology of cases
+of conscience, came into currency even after the Council of Trent.
+
+7. A little before these changes, and before the great schism in the West
+that still endures, there was in Italy a sect of philosophers which
+disputed this conformity of faith with reason which I maintain. They were
+dubbed 'Averroists' because they were adherents of a famous Arab author,
+who was called the Commentator by pre-eminence, and who appeared to be the
+one of all his race that penetrated furthest into Aristotle's meaning. This
+Commentator, extending what Greek expositors had already taught, maintained
+that according to Aristotle, and even according to reason (and at that time
+the two were considered almost identical) there was no case for the    [78]
+immortality of the soul. Here is his reasoning. The human kind is eternal,
+according to Aristotle, therefore if individual souls die not, one must
+resort to the metempsychosis rejected by that philosopher. Or, if there are
+always new souls, one must admit the infinity of these souls existing from
+all eternity; but actual infinity is impossible, according to the doctrine
+of the same Aristotle. Therefore it is a necessary conclusion that the
+souls, that is, the forms of organic bodies, must perish with the bodies,
+or at least this must happen to the passive understanding that belongs to
+each one individually. Thus there will only remain the active understanding
+common to all men, which according to Aristotle comes from outside, and
+which must work wheresoever the organs are suitably disposed; even as the
+wind produces a kind of music when it is blown into properly adjusted organ
+pipes.
+
+8. Nothing could have been weaker than this would-be proof. It is not true
+that Aristotle refuted metempsychosis, or that he proved the eternity of
+the human kind; and after all, it is quite untrue that an actual infinity
+is impossible. Yet this proof passed as irresistible amongst Aristotelians,
+and induced in them the belief that there was a certain sublunary
+intelligence and that our active intellect was produced by participation in
+it. But others who adhered less to Aristotle went so far as to advocate a
+universal soul forming the ocean of all individual souls, and believed this
+universal soul alone capable of subsisting, whilst individual souls are
+born and die. According to this opinion the souls of animals are born by
+being separated like drops from their ocean, when they find a body which
+they can animate; and they die by being reunited to the ocean of souls when
+the body is destroyed, as streams are lost in the sea. Many even went so
+far as to believe that God is that universal soul, although others thought
+that this soul was subordinate and created. This bad doctrine is very
+ancient and apt to dazzle the common herd. It is expressed in these
+beautiful lines of Vergil (_Aen._, VI, v. 724):
+
+  _Principio coelum ac terram camposque liquentes,_
+  _Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra,_
+  _Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus_
+  _Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet._
+  _Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitaeque volantum._
+
+                                                                       [79]
+And again elsewhere (_Georg._, IV, v. 221):
+
+      _Deum namque ire per omnes_
+  _Terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum:_
+  _Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,_
+  _Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas._
+  _Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri._
+
+9. Plato's Soul of the World has been taken in this sense by some, but
+there is more indication that the Stoics succumbed to that universal soul
+which swallows all the rest. Those who are of this opinion might be called
+'Monopsychites', since according to them there is in reality only one soul
+that subsists. M. Bernier observes that this is an opinion almost
+universally accepted amongst scholars in Persia and in the States of the
+Grand Mogul; it appears even that it has gained a footing with the
+Cabalists and with the mystics. A certain German of Swabian birth,
+converted to Judaism some years ago, who taught under the name Moses
+Germanus, having adopted the dogmas of Spinoza, believed that Spinoza
+revived the ancient Cabala of the Hebrews. And a learned man who confuted
+this proselyte Jew appears to be of the same opinion. It is known that
+Spinoza recognizes only substance in the world, whereof individual souls
+are but transient modifications. Valentin Weigel, Pastor of Zschopau in
+Saxony, a man of wit, even of excessive wit, although people would have it
+that he was a visionary, was perhaps to some extent of that opinion; as was
+also a man known as Johann Angelus Silesius, author of certain quite
+pleasing little devotional verses in German, in the form of epigrams, which
+have just been reprinted. In general, the mystics' doctrine of deification
+was liable to such a sinister interpretation. Gerson already has written
+opposing Ruysbroek, a mystical writer, whose intention was evidently good
+and whose expressions are excusable. But it would be better to write in a
+manner that has no need of excuses: although I confess that oft-times
+expressions which are extravagant, and as it were poetical, have greater
+force to move and to persuade than correct forms of statement.
+
+10. The annihilation of all that belongs to us in our own right, carried to
+great lengths by the Quietists, might equally well be veiled irreligion in
+certain minds, as is related, for example, concerning the Quietism of Foe,
+originator of a great Chinese sect. After having preached his religion [80]
+for forty years, when he felt death was approaching, he declared to his
+disciples that he had hidden the truth from them under the veil of
+metaphors, and that all reduced itself to Nothingness, which he said was
+the first source of all things. That was still worse, so it would seem,
+than the opinion of the Averroists. Both of these doctrines are
+indefensible and even extravagant; nevertheless some moderns have made no
+difficulty about adopting this one and universal Soul that engulfs the
+rest. It has met with only too much applause amongst the so-called
+freethinkers, and M. de Preissac, a soldier and man of wit, who dabbled in
+philosophy, at one time aired it publicly in his discourses. The System of
+Pre-established Harmony is the one best qualified to cure this evil. For it
+shows that there are of necessity substances which are simple and without
+extension, scattered throughout all Nature; that these substances must
+subsist independently of every other except God; and that they are never
+wholly separated from organic body. Those who believe that souls capable of
+feeling but incapable of reason are mortal, or who maintain that none but
+reasoning souls can have feeling, offer a handle to the Monopsychites. For
+it will ever be difficult to persuade men that beasts feel nothing; and
+once the admission has been made that that which is capable of feeling can
+die, it is difficult to found upon reason a proof of the immortality of our
+souls.
+
+11. I have made this short digression because it appeared to me seasonable
+at a time when there is only too much tendency to overthrow natural
+religion to its very foundations. I return then to the Averroists, who were
+persuaded that their dogma was proved conclusively in accordance with
+reason. As a result they declared that man's soul is, according to
+philosophy, mortal, while they protested their acquiescence in Christian
+theology, which declares the soul's immortality. But this distinction was
+held suspect, and this divorce between faith and reason was vehemently
+rejected by the prelates and the doctors of that time, and condemned in the
+last Lateran Council under Leo X. On that occasion also, scholars were
+urged to work for the removal of the difficulties that appeared to set
+theology and philosophy at variance. The doctrine of their incompatibility
+continued to hold its ground _incognito_. Pomponazzi was suspected of it,
+although he declared himself otherwise; and that very sect of the
+Averroists survived as a school. It is thought that Caesar Cremoninus, [81]
+a philosopher famous in his time, was one of its mainstays. Andreas
+Cisalpinus, a physician (and an author of merit who came nearest after
+Michael Servetus to the discovery of the circulation of the blood), was
+accused by Nicolas Taurel (in a book entitled _Alpes Caesae_) of belonging
+to these anti-religious Peripatetics. Traces of this doctrine are found
+also in the _Circulus Pisanus Claudii Berigardi_, an author of French
+nationality who migrated to Italy and taught philosophy at Pisa: but
+especially the writings and the letters of Gabriel Naude, as well as the
+_Naudaeana_, show that Averroism still lived on when this learned physician
+was in Italy. Corpuscular philosophy, introduced shortly after, appears to
+have extinguished this excessively Peripatetic sect, or perhaps to have
+been intermixed with its teaching. It may be indeed that there have been
+Atomists who would be inclined to teach dogmas like those of the
+Averroists, if circumstances so permitted: but this abuse cannot harm such
+good as there is in Corpuscular philosophy, which can very well be combined
+with all that is sound in Plato and in Aristotle, and bring them both into
+harmony with true theology.
+
+12. The Reformers, and especially Luther, as I have already observed, spoke
+sometimes as if they rejected philosophy, and deemed it inimical to faith.
+But, properly speaking, Luther understood by philosophy only that which is
+in conformity with the ordinary course of Nature, or perhaps even
+philosophy as it was taught in the schools. Thus for example he says that
+it is impossible in philosophy, that is, in the order of Nature, that the
+word be made flesh; and he goes so far as to maintain that what is true in
+natural philosophy might be false in ethics. Aristotle was the object of
+his anger; and so far back as the year 1516 he contemplated the purging of
+philosophy, when he perhaps had as yet no thoughts of reforming the Church.
+But at last he curbed his vehemence and in the _Apology for the Augsburg
+Confession_ allowed a favourable mention of Aristotle and his _Ethics_.
+Melanchthon, a man of sound and moderate ideas, made little systems from
+the several parts of philosophy, adapted to the truths of revelation and
+useful in civic life, which deserve to be read even now. After him, Pierre
+de la Ramee entered the lists. His philosophy was much in favour: the sect
+of the Ramists was powerful in Germany, gaining many adherents among the
+Protestants, and even concerning itself with theology, until the revival of
+Corpuscular philosophy, which caused that of Ramee to fall into        [82]
+oblivion and weakened the authority of the Peripatetics.
+
+13. Meanwhile sundry Protestant theologians, deviating as far as they could
+from Scholastic philosophy, which prevailed in the opposite party, went so
+far as to despise philosophy itself, which to them was suspect. The
+controversy blazed up finally owing to the rancour of Daniel Hoffmann. He
+was an able theologian, who had previously gained a reputation at the
+Conference of Quedlinburg, when Tilemann Heshusius and he had supported
+Duke Julius of Brunswick in his refusal to accept the Formula of Concord.
+For some reason or other Dr. Hoffmann flew into a passion with philosophy,
+instead of being content to find fault with the wrong uses made thereof by
+philosophers. He was, however, aiming at the famous Caselius, a man
+esteemed by the princes and scholars of his time; and Henry Julius, Duke of
+Brunswick (son of Julius, founder of the University), having taken the
+trouble himself to investigate the matter, condemned the theologian. There
+have been some small disputes of the kind since, but it has always been
+found that they were misunderstandings. Paul Slevogt, a famous Professor at
+Jena in Thuringia, whose still extant treatises prove how well versed he
+was in Scholastic philosophy, as also in Hebrew literature, had published
+in his youth under the title of _Pervigilium_ a little book 'de dissidio
+Theologi et Philosophi in utriusque principiis fundato', bearing on the
+question whether God is accidentally the cause of sin. But it was easy to
+see that his aim was to demonstrate that theologians sometimes misuse
+philosophical terms.
+
+14. To come now to the events of my own time, I remember that when in 1666
+Louis Meyer, a physician of Amsterdam, published anonymously the book
+entitled _Philosophia Scripturae Interpres_ (by many persons wrongly
+attributed to Spinoza, his friend) the theologians of Holland bestirred
+themselves, and their written attacks upon this book gave rise to great
+disputes among them. Divers of them held the opinion that the Cartesians,
+in confuting the anonymous philosopher, had conceded too much to
+philosophy. Jean de Labadie (before he had seceded from the Reformed
+Church, his pretext being some abuses which he said had crept into public
+observance and which he considered intolerable) attacked the book by Herr
+von Wollzogen, and called it pernicious. On the other hand Herr Vogelsang,
+Herr van der Weye and some other anti-Cocceians also assailed the same [83]
+book with much acrimony. But the accused won his case in a Synod.
+Afterwards in Holland people spoke of 'rational' and 'non-rational'
+theologians, a party distinction often mentioned by M. Bayle, who finally
+declared himself against the former. But there is no indication that any
+precise rules have yet been defined which the rival parties accept or
+reject with regard to the use of reason in the interpretation of Holy
+Scripture.
+
+15. A like dispute has threatened of late to disturb the peace in the
+Churches of the Augsburg Confession. Some Masters of Arts in the University
+of Leipzig gave private lessons at their homes, to students who sought them
+out in order to learn what is called 'Sacra Philologia', according to the
+practice of this university and of some others where this kind of study is
+not restricted to the Faculty of Theology. These masters pressed the study
+of the Holy Scriptures and the practice of piety further than their fellows
+had been wont to do. It is alleged that they had carried certain things to
+excess, and aroused suspicions of certain doctrinal innovations. This
+caused them to be dubbed 'Pietists', as though they were a new sect; and
+this name is one which has since caused a great stir in Germany. It has
+been applied somehow or other to those whom one suspected, or pretended to
+suspect, of fanaticism, or even of hypocrisy, concealed under some
+semblance of reform. Now some of the students attending these masters had
+become conspicuous for behaviour which gave general offence, and amongst
+other things for their scorn of philosophy, even, so it was said, burning
+their notebooks. In consequence the belief arose that their masters
+rejected philosophy: but they justified themselves very well; nor could
+they be convicted either of this error or of the heresies that were being
+imputed to them.
+
+16. The question of the use of philosophy in theology was debated much
+amongst Christians, and difficulty was experienced over settling the limits
+of its use when it came to detailed consideration. The Mysteries of the
+Trinity, of the Incarnation and of the Holy Communion gave most occasion
+for dispute. The new Photinians, disputing the first two Mysteries, made
+use of certain philosophic maxims which Andreas Kessler, a theologian of
+the Augsburg Confession, summarized in the various treatises that he
+published on the parts of the Socinian philosophy. But as to their
+metaphysics, one might instruct oneself better therein by reading the  [84]
+work of Christopher Stegmann the Socinian. It is not yet in print; but I
+saw it in my youth and it has been recently again in my hands.
+
+17. Calovius and Scherzer, authors well versed in Scholastic philosophy,
+and sundry other able theologians answered the Socinians at great length,
+and often with success: for they would not content themselves with the
+general and somewhat cavalier answers that were commonly used against that
+sect. The drift of such answers was: that their maxims were good in
+philosophy and not in theology; that it was the fault of heterogeneousness
+called [Greek: metabasis eis allo genos] to apply those maxims to a matter
+transcending reason; and that philosophy should be treated as a servant and
+not a mistress in relation to theology, according to the title of the book
+by a Scot named Robert Baronius, _Philosophia Theologiae ancillans_. In
+fine, philosophy was a Hagar beside Sara and must be driven from the house
+with her Ishmael when she was refractory. There is something good in these
+answers: but one might abuse them, and set natural truths and truths of
+revelation at variance. Scholars therefore applied themselves to
+distinguishing between what is necessary and indispensable in natural or
+philosophic truths and that which is not so.
+
+18. The two Protestant parties are tolerably in agreement when it is a
+question of making war on the Socinians; and as the philosophy of these
+sectaries is not of the most exact, in most cases the attack succeeded in
+reducing it. But the Protestants themselves had dissensions on the matter
+of the Eucharistic Sacrament. A section of those who are called Reformed
+(namely those who on that point follow rather Zwingli than Calvin) seemed
+to reduce the participation in the body of Jesus Christ in the Holy
+Communion to a mere figurative representation, employing the maxim of the
+philosophers which states that a body can only be in one place at a time.
+Contrariwise the Evangelicals (who name themselves thus in a particular
+sense to distinguish themselves from the Reformed), being more attached to
+the literal sense of Scripture, opined with Luther that this participation
+was real, and that here there lay a supernatural Mystery. They reject, in
+truth, the dogma of Transubstantiation, which they believe to be without
+foundation in the Text; neither do they approve that of Consubstantiation
+or of Impanation, which one could only impute to them if one were
+ill-informed on their opinion. For they admit no inclusion of the body [85]
+of Jesus Christ in the bread, nor do they even require any union of the one
+with the other: but they demand at least a concomitance, so that these two
+substances be received both at the same time. They believe that the
+ordinary sense of the words of Jesus Christ on an occasion so important as
+that which concerned the expression of his last wishes ought to be
+preserved. Thus in order to show that this sense is free from all absurdity
+which could make it repugnant to us, they maintain that the philosophic
+maxim restricting the existence of, and partaking in, bodies to one place
+alone is simply a consequence of the ordinary course of Nature. They make
+that no obstacle to the presence, in the ordinary sense of the word, of the
+body of our Saviour in such form as may be in keeping with the most
+glorified body. They do not resort to a vague diffusion of ubiquity, which
+would disperse the body and leave it nowhere in particular; nor do they
+admit the multiple-reduplication theory of some Schoolmen, as if to say one
+and the same body could be at the same time seated here and standing
+elsewhere. In fine, they so express themselves that many consider the
+opinion of Calvin, authorized by sundry confessions of faith from the
+Churches that have accepted his teaching, to be not so far removed from the
+Augsburg Confession as one might think: for he affirmed a partaking in the
+substance. The divergence rests perhaps only upon the fact that Calvin
+demands true faith in addition to the oral reception of the symbols, and
+consequently excludes the unworthy.
+
+19. Thence we see that the dogma of real and substantial participation can
+be supported (without resorting to the strange opinions of some Schoolmen)
+by a properly understood analogy between _immediate operation_ and
+_presence_. Many philosophers have deemed that, even in the order of
+Nature, a body may operate from a distance immediately on many remote
+bodies at the same time. So do they believe, all the more, that nothing can
+prevent divine Omnipotence from causing one body to be present in many
+bodies together, since the transition from immediate operation to presence
+is but slight, the one perhaps depending upon the other. It is true that
+modern philosophers for some time now have denied the immediate natural
+operation of one body upon another remote from it, and I confess that I am
+of their opinion. Meanwhile remote operation has just been revived in
+England by the admirable Mr. Newton, who maintains that it is the nature of
+bodies to be attracted and gravitate one towards another, in proportion[86]
+to the mass of each one, and the rays of attraction it receives.
+Accordingly the famous Mr. Locke, in his answer to Bishop Stillingfleet,
+declares that having seen Mr. Newton's book he retracts what he himself
+said, following the opinion of the moderns, in his _Essay concerning Human
+Understanding_, to wit, that a body cannot operate immediately upon another
+except by touching it upon its surface and driving it by its motion. He
+acknowledges that God can put properties into matter which cause it to
+operate from a distance. Thus the theologians of the Augsburg Confession
+claim that God may ordain not only that a body operate immediately on
+divers bodies remote from one another, but that it even exist in their
+neighbourhood and be received by them in a way with which distances of
+place and dimensions of space have nothing to do. Although this effect
+transcends the forces of Nature, they do not think it possible to show that
+it surpasses the power of the Author of Nature. For him it is easy to annul
+the laws that he has given or to dispense with them as seems good to him,
+in the same way as he was able to make iron float upon water and to stay
+the operation of fire upon the human body.
+
+20. I found in comparing the _Rationale Theologicum_ of Nicolaus Vedelius
+with the refutation by Johann Musaeus that these two authors, of whom one
+died while a Professor at Franecker after having taught at Geneva and the
+other finally became the foremost theologian at Jena, are more or less in
+agreement on the principal rules for the use of reason, but that it is in
+the application of these rules they disagree. For they both agree that
+revelation cannot be contrary to the truths whose necessity is called by
+philosophers 'logical' or 'metaphysical', that is to say, whose opposite
+implies contradiction. They both admit also that revelation will be able to
+combat maxims whose necessity is called 'physical' and is founded only upon
+the laws that the will of God has prescribed for Nature. Thus the question
+whether the presence of one and the same body in divers places is possible
+in the supernatural order only touches the application of the rule; and in
+order to decide this question conclusively by reason, one must needs
+explain exactly wherein the essence of body consists. Even the Reformed
+disagree thereon amongst themselves; the Cartesians confine it to
+extension, but their adversaries oppose that; and I think I have even
+observed that Gisbertus Voetius, a famous theologian of Utrecht,       [87]
+doubted the alleged impossibility of plurality of locations.
+
+21. Furthermore, although the two Protestant parties agree that one must
+distinguish these two necessities which I have just indicated, namely
+metaphysical necessity and physical necessity, and that the first excludes
+exceptions even in the case of Mysteries, they are not yet sufficiently
+agreed upon the rules of interpretation, which serve to determine in what
+cases it is permitted to desert the letter of Scripture when one is not
+certain that it is contrary to strictly universal truths. It is agreed that
+there are cases where one must reject a literal interpretation that is not
+absolutely impossible, when it is otherwise unsuitable. For instance, all
+commentators agree that when our Lord said that Herod was a fox he meant it
+metaphorically; and one must accept that, unless one imagine with some
+fanatics that for the time the words of our Lord lasted Herod was actually
+changed into a fox. But it is not the same with the texts on which
+Mysteries are founded, where the theologians of the Augsburg Confession
+deem that one must keep to the literal sense. Since, moreover, this
+discussion belongs to the art of interpretation and not to that which is
+the proper sphere of logic, we will not here enter thereon, especially as
+it has nothing in common with the disputes that have arisen recently upon
+the conformity of faith with reason.
+
+22. Theologians of all parties, I believe (fanatics alone excepted), agree
+at least that no article of faith must imply contradiction or contravene
+proofs as exact as those of mathematics, where the opposite of the
+conclusion can be reduced _ad absurdum_, that is, to contradiction. St.
+Athanasius with good reason made sport of the preposterous ideas of some
+writers of his time, who maintained that God had suffered without any
+suffering. _'Passus est impassibiliter. O ludicram doctrinam aedificantem
+simul et demolientem!'_ It follows thence that certain writers have been
+too ready to grant that the Holy Trinity is contrary to that great
+principle which states that two things which are the same as a third are
+also the same as each other: that is to say, if A is the same as B, and if
+C is the same as B, then A and C must also be the same as each other. For
+this principle is a direct consequence of that of contradiction, and forms
+the basis of all logic; and if it ceases, we can no longer reason with
+certainty. Thus when one says that the Father is God, that the Son is God
+and that the Holy Spirit is God, and that nevertheless there is only   [88]
+one God, although these three Persons differ from one another, one must
+consider that this word _God_ has not the same sense at the beginning as at
+the end of this statement. Indeed it signifies now the Divine Substance and
+now a Person of the Godhead. In general, one must take care never to
+abandon the necessary and eternal truths for the sake of upholding
+Mysteries, lest the enemies of religion seize upon such an occasion for
+decrying both religion and Mysteries.
+
+23. The distinction which is generally drawn between that which is _above_
+reason and that which is _against_ reason is tolerably in accord with the
+distinction which has just been made between the two kinds of necessity.
+For what is contrary to reason is contrary to the absolutely certain and
+inevitable truths; and what is above reason is in opposition only to what
+one is wont to experience or to understand. That is why I am surprised that
+there are people of intelligence who dispute this distinction, and that M.
+Bayle should be of this number. The distinction is assuredly very well
+founded. A truth is above reason when our mind (or even every created mind)
+cannot comprehend it. Such is, as it seems to me, the Holy Trinity; such
+are the miracles reserved for God alone, as for instance Creation; such is
+the choice of the order of the universe, which depends upon universal
+harmony, and upon the clear knowledge of an infinity of things at once. But
+a truth can never be contrary to reason, and once a dogma has been disputed
+and refuted by reason, instead of its being incomprehensible, one may say
+that nothing is easier to understand, nor more obvious, than its absurdity.
+For I observed at the beginning that by REASON here I do not mean the
+opinions and discourses of men, nor even the habit they have formed of
+judging things according to the usual course of Nature, but rather the
+inviolable linking together of truths.
+
+24. I must come now to the great question which M. Bayle brought up
+recently, to wit, whether a truth, and especially a truth of faith, can
+prove to be subject to irrefutable objections. This excellent author
+appears to answer with a bold affirmative: he quotes theologians of repute
+in his party, and even in the Church of Rome, who appear to say the same as
+he affirms; and he cites philosophers who have believed that there are even
+philosophical truths whose champions cannot answer the objections that are
+brought up against them. He believes that the theological doctrine of  [89]
+predestination is of this nature, and in philosophy that of the composition
+of the _Continuum_. These are, indeed, the two labyrinths which have ever
+exercised theologians and philosophers. Libertus Fromondus, a theologian of
+Louvain (a great friend of Jansenius, whose posthumous book entitled
+_Augustinus_ he in fact published), who also wrote a book entitled
+explicitly _Labyrinthus de Compositione Continui_, experienced in full
+measure the difficulties inherent in both doctrines; and the renowned
+Ochino admirably presented what he calls 'the labyrinths of
+predestination'.
+
+25. But these writers have not denied the possibility of finding thread in
+the labyrinth; they have recognized the difficulty, but they have surely
+not turned difficulty into sheer impossibility. As for me, I confess that I
+cannot agree with those who maintain that a truth can admit of irrefutable
+objections: for is an _objection_ anything but an argument whose conclusion
+contradicts our thesis? And is not an irrefutable argument a
+_demonstration_? And how can one know the certainty of demonstrations
+except by examining the argument in detail, the form and the matter, in
+order to see if the form is good, and then if each premiss is either
+admitted or proved by another argument of like force, until one is able to
+make do with admitted premisses alone? Now if there is such an objection
+against our thesis we must say that the falsity of this thesis is
+demonstrated, and that it is impossible for us to have reasons sufficient
+to prove it; otherwise two contradictories would be true at once. One must
+always yield to proofs, whether they be proposed in positive form or
+advanced in the shape of objections. And it is wrong and fruitless to try
+to weaken opponents' proofs, under the pretext that they are only
+objections, since the opponent can play the same game and can reverse the
+denominations, exalting his arguments by naming them 'proofs' and sinking
+ours under the blighting title of 'objections'.
+
+26. It is another question whether we are always obliged to examine the
+objections we may have to face, and to retain some doubt in respect of our
+own opinion, or what is called _formido oppositi_, until this examination
+has been made. I would venture to say no, for otherwise one would never
+attain to certainty and our conclusion would be always provisional. I
+believe that able geometricians will scarce be troubled by the objections
+of Joseph Scaliger against Archimedes, or by those of Mr. Hobbes       [90]
+against Euclid; but that is because they have fully understood and are sure
+of the proofs. Nevertheless it is sometimes well to show oneself ready to
+examine certain objections. On the one hand it may serve to rescue people
+from their error, while on the other we ourselves may profit by it; for
+specious fallacies often contain some useful solution and bring about the
+removal of considerable difficulties. That is why I have always liked
+ingenious objections made against my own opinions, and I have never
+examined them without profit: witness those which M. Bayle formerly made
+against my System of Pre-established Harmony, not to mention those which M.
+Arnauld, M. l'Abbe Foucher and Father Lami, O.S.B., made to me on the same
+subject. But to return to the principal question, I conclude from reasons I
+have just set forth that when an objection is put forward against some
+truth, it is always possible to answer it satisfactorily.
+
+27. It may be also that M. Bayle does not mean 'insoluble objections' in
+the sense that I have just explained. I observe that he varies, at least in
+his expressions: for in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc he does not
+admit that one can bring demonstrations against the truths of faith. It
+appears therefore that he takes the objections to be insoluble only in
+respect of our present degree of enlightenment; and in this Reply, p. 35,
+he even does not despair of the possibility that one day a solution
+hitherto unknown may be found by someone. Concerning that more will be said
+later. I hold an opinion, however, that will perchance cause surprise,
+namely that this solution has been discovered entire, and is not even
+particularly difficult. Indeed a mediocre intelligence capable of
+sufficient care, and using correctly the rules of common logic, is in a
+position to answer the most embarrassing objection made against truth, when
+the objection is only taken from reason, and when it is claimed to be a
+'demonstration'. Whatever scorn the generality of moderns have to-day for
+the logic of Aristotle, one must acknowledge that it teaches infallible
+ways of resisting error in these conjunctures. For one has only to examine
+the argument according to the rules and it will always be possible to see
+whether it is lacking in form or whether there are premisses such as are
+not yet proved by a good argument.
+
+28. It is quite another matter when there is only a question of
+_probabilities_, for the art of judging from probable reasons is not yet
+well established; so that our logic in this connexion is still very    [91]
+imperfect, and to this very day we have little beyond the art of judging
+from demonstrations. But this art is sufficient here: for when it is a
+question of opposing reason to an article of our faith, one is not
+disturbed by objections that only attain probability. Everyone agrees that
+appearances are against Mysteries, and that they are by no means probable
+when regarded only from the standpoint of reason; but it suffices that they
+have in them nothing of absurdity. Thus demonstrations are required if they
+are to be refuted.
+
+29. And doubtless we are so to understand it when Holy Scripture warns us
+that the wisdom of God is foolishness before men, and when St. Paul
+observed that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is foolishness unto the Greeks, as
+well as unto the Jews a stumbling-block. For, after all, one truth cannot
+contradict another, and the light of reason is no less a gift of God than
+that of revelation. Also it is a matter of no difficulty among theologians
+who are expert in their profession, that the motives of credibility
+justify, once for all, the authority of Holy Scripture before the tribunal
+of reason, so that reason in consequence gives way before it, as before a
+new light, and sacrifices thereto all its probabilities. It is more or less
+as if a new president sent by the prince must show his letters patent in
+the assembly where he is afterwards to preside. That is the tendency of
+sundry good books that we have on the truth of religion, such as those of
+Augustinus Steuchus, of Du Plessis-Mornay or of Grotius: for the true
+religion must needs have marks that the false religions have not, else
+would Zoroaster, Brahma, Somonacodom and Mahomet be as worthy of belief as
+Moses and Jesus Christ. Nevertheless divine faith itself, when it is
+kindled in the soul, is something more than an opinion, and depends not
+upon the occasions or the motives that have given it birth; it advances
+beyond the intellect, and takes possession of the will and of the heart, to
+make us act with zeal and joyfully as the law of God commands. Then we have
+no further need to think of reasons or to pause over the difficulties of
+argument which the mind may anticipate.
+
+30. Thus what we have just said of human reason, which is extolled and
+decried by turns, and often without rule or measure, may show our lack of
+exactitude and how much we are accessary to our own errors. Nothing would
+be so easy to terminate as these disputes on the rights of faith and of
+reason if men would make use of the commonest rules of logic and reason[92]
+with even a modicum of attention. Instead of that, they become involved in
+oblique and ambiguous phrases, which give them a fine field for
+declamation, to make the most of their wit and their learning. It would
+seem, indeed, that they have no wish to see the naked truth, peradventure
+because they fear that it may be more disagreeable than error: for they
+know not the beauty of the Author of all things, who is the source of
+truth.
+
+31. This negligence is a general defect of humanity, and one not to be laid
+to the charge of any particular person. _Abundamus dulcibus vitiis_, as
+Quintilian said of the style of Seneca, and we take pleasure in going
+astray. Exactitude incommodes us and rules we regard as puerilities. Thus
+it is that common logic (although it is more or less sufficient for the
+examination of arguments that tend towards certainty) is relegated to
+schoolboys; and there is not even a thought for a kind of logic which
+should determine the balance between probabilities, and would be so
+necessary in deliberations of importance. So true is it that our mistakes
+for the most part come from scorn or lack of the art of thinking: for
+nothing is more imperfect than our logic when we pass beyond necessary
+arguments. The most excellent philosophers of our time, such as the authors
+of _The Art of Thinking_, of _The Search for Truth_ and of the _Essay
+concerning Human Understanding_, have been very far from indicating to us
+the true means fitted to assist the faculty whose business it is to make us
+weigh the probabilities of the true and the false: not to mention the art
+of discovery, in which success is still more difficult of attainment, and
+whereof we have nothing beyond very imperfect samples in mathematics.
+
+32. One thing which might have contributed most towards M. Bayle's belief
+that the difficulties of reason in opposition to faith cannot be obviated
+is that he seems to demand that God be justified in some such manner as
+that commonly used for pleading the cause of a man accused before his
+judge. But he has not remembered that in the tribunals of men, which cannot
+always penetrate to the truth, one is often compelled to be guided by signs
+and probabilities, and above all by presumptions or prejudices; whereas it
+is agreed, as we have already observed, that Mysteries are not probable.
+For instance, M. Bayle will not have it that one can justify the goodness
+of God in the permission of sin, because probability would be against a man
+that should happen to be in circumstances comparable in our eyes to    [93]
+this permission. God foresees that Eve will be deceived by the serpent if
+he places her in the circumstances wherein she later found herself; and
+nevertheless he placed her there. Now if a father or a guardian did the
+same in regard to his child or his ward, if a friend did so in regard to a
+young person whose behaviour was his concern, the judge would not be
+satisfied by the excuses of an advocate who said that the man only
+permitted the evil, without doing it or willing it: he would rather take
+this permission as a sign of ill intention, and would regard it as a sin of
+omission, which would render the one convicted thereof accessary in
+another's sin of commission.
+
+33. But it must be borne in mind that when one has foreseen the evil and
+has not prevented it although it seems as if one could have done so with
+ease, and one has even done things that have facilitated it, it does not
+follow on that account _necessarily_ that one is accessary thereto. It is
+only a very strong presumption, such as commonly replaces truth in human
+affairs, but which would be destroyed by an exact consideration of the
+facts, supposing we were capable of that in relation to God. For amongst
+lawyers that is called 'presumption' which must provisionally pass for
+truth in case the contrary is not proved; and it says more than
+'conjecture', although the _Dictionary_ of the Academy has not sifted the
+difference. Now there is every reason to conclude unquestionably that one
+would find through this consideration, if only it were attainable, that
+reasons most just, and stronger than those which appear contrary to them,
+have compelled the All-Wise to permit the evil, and even to do things which
+have facilitated it. Of this some instances will be given later.
+
+34. It is none too easy, I confess, for a father, a guardian, a friend to
+have such reasons in the case under consideration. Yet the thing is not
+absolutely impossible, and a skilled writer of fiction might perchance find
+an extraordinary case that would even justify a man in the circumstances I
+have just indicated. But in reference to God there is no need to suppose or
+to establish particular reasons such as may have induced him to permit the
+evil; general reasons suffice. One knows that he takes care of the whole
+universe, whereof all the parts are connected; and one must thence infer
+that he has had innumerable considerations whose result made him deem it
+inadvisable to prevent certain evils.
+
+35. It should even be concluded that there must have been great or     [94]
+rather invincible reasons which prompted the divine Wisdom to the
+permission of the evil that surprises us, from the mere fact that this
+permission has occurred: for nothing can come from God that is not
+altogether consistent with goodness, justice and holiness. Thus we can
+judge by the event (or _a posteriori_) that the permission was
+indispensable, although it be not possible for us to show this (_a priori_)
+by the detailed reasons that God can have had therefor; as it is not
+necessary either that we show this to justify him. M. Bayle himself aptly
+says concerning that (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III,
+ch. 165, p. 1067): Sin made its way into the world; God therefore was able
+to permit it without detriment to his perfections; _ab actu ad potentiam
+valet consequentia._ In God this conclusion holds good: he did this,
+therefore he did it well. It is not, then, that we have no notion of
+justice in general fit to be applied also to God's justice; nor is it that
+God's justice has other rules than the justice known of men, but that the
+case in question is quite different from those which are common among men.
+Universal right is the same for God and for men; but the question of fact
+is quite different in their case and his.
+
+36. We may even assume or pretend (as I have already observed) that there
+is something similar among men to this circumstance in God's actions. A man
+might give such great and strong proofs of his virtue and his holiness that
+all the most apparent reasons one could put forward against him to charge
+him with an alleged crime, for instance a larceny or murder, would deserve
+to be rejected as the calumnies of false witnesses or as an extraordinary
+play of chance which sometimes throws suspicion on the most innocent. Thus
+in a case where every other would run the risk of being condemned or put to
+the torture (according to the laws of the country), this man would be
+absolved by his judges unanimously. Now in this case, which indeed is rare,
+but which is not impossible, one might say in a sense (_sano sensu_) that
+there is a conflict between reason and faith, and that the rules of law are
+other in respect of this person than they are in respect of the remainder
+of mankind. But that, when explained, will signify only that appearances of
+reason here give way before the faith that is due to the word and the
+integrity of this great and holy man, and that he is privileged above other
+men; not indeed as if there were one law for others and another for him,
+nor as if one had no understanding of what justice is in relation to him.
+It is rather because the rules of universal justice do not find here   [95]
+the application that they receive elsewhere, or because they favour him
+instead of accusing him, since there are in this personage qualities so
+admirable, that by virtue of a good logic of probabilities one should place
+more faith in his word than in that of many others.
+
+37. Since it is permitted here to imagine possible cases, may one not
+suppose this incomparable man to be the Adept or the Possessor of
+
+                  _'that blessed Stone_
+  _Able to enrich all earthly Kings alone'_
+
+and that he spends every day prodigious sums in order to feed and to rescue
+from distress countless numbers of poor men? Be there never so many
+witnesses or appearances of every kind tending to prove that this great
+benefactor of the human race has just committed some larceny, is it not
+true that the whole earth would make mock of the accusation, however
+specious it might be? Now God is infinitely above the goodness and the
+power of this man, and consequently there are no reasons at all, however
+apparent they be, that can hold good against faith, that is, against the
+assurance or the confidence in God wherewith we can and ought to say that
+God has done all things well. The objections are therefore not insoluble.
+They only involve prejudices and probabilities, which are, however,
+overthrown by reasons incomparably stronger. One must not say either that
+what we call _justice_ is nothing in relation to God, that he is the
+absolute Master of all things even to the point of being able to condemn
+the innocent without violating his justice, or finally that justice is
+something arbitrary where he is concerned. Those are rash and dangerous
+expressions, whereunto some have been led astray to the discredit of the
+attributes of God. For if such were the case there would be no reason for
+praising his goodness and his justice: rather would it be as if the most
+wicked spirit, the Prince of evil genii, the evil principle of the
+Manichaeans, were the sole master of the universe, just as I observed
+before. What means would there be of distinguishing the true God from the
+false God of Zoroaster if all things depended upon the caprice of an
+arbitrary power and there were neither rule nor consideration for anything
+whatever?
+
+38. It is therefore more than evident that nothing compels us to commit
+ourselves to a doctrine so strange, since it suffices to say that we   [96]
+have not enough knowledge of the facts when there is a question of
+answering probabilities which appear to throw doubt upon the justice and
+the goodness of God, and which would vanish away if the facts were well
+known to us. We need neither renounce reason in order to listen to faith
+nor blind ourselves in order to see clearly, as Queen Christine used to
+say: it is enough to reject ordinary appearances when they are contrary to
+Mysteries; and this is not contrary to reason, since even in natural things
+we are very often undeceived about appearances either by experience or by
+superior reasons. All that has been set down here in advance, only with the
+object of showing more plainly wherein the fault of the objections and the
+abuse of reason consists in the present case, where the claim is made that
+reason has greatest force against faith: we shall come afterwards to a more
+exact discussion of that which concerns the origin of evil and the
+permission of sin with its consequences.
+
+39. For now, it will be well to continue our examination of the important
+question of the use of reason in theology, and to make reflexions upon what
+M. Bayle has said thereon in divers passages of his works. As he paid
+particular attention in his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_ to
+expounding the objections of the Manichaeans and those of the Pyrrhonians,
+and as this procedure had been criticized by some persons zealous for
+religion, he placed a dissertation at the end of the second edition of this
+_Dictionary_, which aimed at showing, by examples, by authorities and by
+reasons, the innocence and usefulness of his course of action. I am
+persuaded (as I have said above) that the specious objections one can urge
+against truth are very useful, and that they serve to confirm and to
+illumine it, giving opportunity to intelligent persons to find new openings
+or to turn the old to better account. But M. Bayle seeks therein a
+usefulness quite the reverse of this: it would be that of displaying the
+power of faith by showing that the truths it teaches cannot sustain the
+attacks of reason and that it nevertheless holds its own in the heart of
+the faithful. M. Nicole seems to call that 'the triumph of God's authority
+over human reason', in the words of his quoted by M. Bayle in the third
+volume of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_ (ch. 177, p. 120).
+But since reason is a gift of God, even as faith is, contention between
+them would cause God to contend against God; and if the objections of
+reason against any article of faith are insoluble, then it must be said
+that this alleged article will be false and not revealed: this will be [97]
+a chimera of the human mind, and the triumph of this faith will be capable
+of comparison with bonfires lighted after a defeat. Such is the doctrine of
+the damnation of unbaptized children, which M. Nicole would have us assume
+to be a consequence of original sin; such would be the eternal damnation of
+adults lacking the light that is necessary for the attainment of salvation.
+
+40. Yet everyone need not enter into theological discussions; and persons
+whose condition allows not of exact researches should be content with
+instruction on faith, without being disturbed by the objections; and if
+some exceeding great difficulty should happen to strike them, it is
+permitted to them to avert the mind from it, offering to God a sacrifice of
+their curiosity: for when one is assured of a truth one has no need to
+listen to the objections. As there are many people whose faith is rather
+small and shallow to withstand such dangerous tests, I think one must not
+present them with that which might be poisonous for them; or, if one cannot
+hide from them what is only too public, the antidote must be added to it;
+that is to say, one must try to add the answer to the objection, certainly
+not withhold it as unobtainable.
+
+41. The passages from the excellent theologians who speak of this triumph
+of faith can and should receive a meaning appropriate to the principles I
+have just affirmed. There appear in some objects of faith two great
+qualities capable of making it triumph over reason, the one is
+_incomprehensibility_, the other is _the lack of probability_. But one must
+beware of adding thereto the third quality whereof M. Bayle speaks, and of
+saying that what one believes is _indefensible_: for that would be to cause
+reason in its turn to triumph in a manner that would destroy faith.
+Incomprehensibility does not prevent us from believing even natural truths.
+For instance (as I have already pointed out) we do not comprehend the
+nature of odours and savours, and yet we are persuaded, by a kind of faith
+which we owe to the evidence of the senses, that these perceptible
+qualities are founded upon the nature of things and that they are not
+illusions.
+
+42. There are also things contrary to appearances, which we admit when they
+are sufficiently verified. There is a little romance of Spanish origin,
+whose title states that one must not always believe what one sees. What was
+there more specious than the lie of the false Martin Guerre, who was
+acknowledged as the true Martin by the true Martin's wife and          [98]
+relatives, and caused the judges and the relatives to waver for a long time
+even after the arrival of the other? Nevertheless the truth was known in
+the end. It is the same with faith. I have already observed that all one
+can oppose to the goodness and the justice of God is nothing but
+appearances, which would be strong against a man, but which are nullified
+when they are applied to God and when they are weighed against the proofs
+that assure us of the infinite perfection of his attributes. Thus faith
+triumphs over false reasons by means of sound and superior reasons that
+have made us embrace it; but it would not triumph if the contrary opinion
+had for it reasons as strong as or even stronger than those which form the
+foundation of faith, that is, if there were invincible and conclusive
+objections against faith.
+
+43. It is well also to observe here that what M. Bayle calls a 'triumph of
+faith' is in part a triumph of demonstrative reason against apparent and
+deceptive reasons which are improperly set against the demonstrations. For
+it must be taken into consideration that the objections of the Manichaeans
+are hardly less contrary to natural theology than to revealed theology. And
+supposing one surrendered to them Holy Scripture, original sin, the grace
+of God in Jesus Christ, the pains of hell and the other articles of our
+religion, one would not even so be delivered from their objections: for one
+cannot deny that there is in the world physical evil (that is, suffering)
+and moral evil (that is, crime) and even that physical evil is not always
+distributed here on earth according to the proportion of moral evil, as it
+seems that justice demands. There remains, then, this question of natural
+theology, how a sole Principle, all-good, all-wise and all-powerful, has
+been able to admit evil, and especially to permit sin, and how it could
+resolve to make the wicked often happy and the good unhappy?
+
+44. Now we have no need of revealed faith to know that there is such a sole
+Principle of all things, entirely good and wise. Reason teaches us this by
+infallible proofs; and in consequence all the objections taken from the
+course of things, in which we observe imperfections, are only based on
+false appearances. For, if we were capable of understanding the universal
+harmony, we should see that what we are tempted to find fault with is
+connected with the plan most worthy of being chosen; in a word, we _should
+see_, and should not _believe_ only, that what God has done is the best. I
+call 'seeing' here what one knows _a priori_ by the causes; and        [99]
+'believing' what one only judges by the effects, even though the one be as
+certainly known as the other. And one can apply here too the saying of St.
+Paul (2 Cor. v. 7), that we walk by _faith_ and not by _sight_. For the
+infinite wisdom of God being known to us, we conclude that the evils we
+experience had to be permitted, and this we conclude from the effect or _a
+posteriori_, that is to say, because they exist. It is what M. Bayle
+acknowledges; and he ought to content himself with that, and not claim that
+one must put an end to the false appearances which are contrary thereto. It
+is as if one asked that there should be no more dreams or optical
+illusions.
+
+45. And it is not to be doubted that this faith and this confidence in God,
+who gives us insight into his infinite goodness and prepares us for his
+love, in spite of the appearances of harshness that may repel us, are an
+admirable exercise for the virtues of Christian theology, when the divine
+grace in Jesus Christ arouses these motions within us. That is what Luther
+aptly observed in opposition to Erasmus, saying that it is love in the
+highest degree to love him who to flesh and blood appears so unlovable, so
+harsh toward the unfortunate and so ready to condemn, and to condemn for
+evils in which he appears to be the cause or accessary, at least in the
+eyes of those who allow themselves to be dazzled by false reasons. One may
+therefore say that the triumph of true reason illumined by divine grace is
+at the same time the triumph of faith and love.
+
+46. M. Bayle appears to have taken the matter quite otherwise: he declares
+himself against reason, when he might have been content to censure its
+abuse. He quotes the words of Cotta in Cicero, where he goes so far as to
+say that if reason were a gift of the gods providence would be to blame for
+having given it, since it tends to our harm. M. Bayle also thinks that
+human reason is a source of destruction and not of edification (_Historical
+and Critical Dictionary_, p. 2026, col. 2), that it is a runner who knows
+not where to stop, and who, like another Penelope, herself destroys her own
+work.
+
+  _Destruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis._
+
+(_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, p. 725). But he takes
+pains especially to pile up many authorities one upon the other, in order
+to show that theologians of all parties reject the use of reason just as he
+does, and that they call attention to such gleams of reason as oppose
+religion only that they may sacrifice them to faith by a mere         [100]
+repudiation, answering nothing but the conclusion of the argument that is
+brought against them. He begins with the New Testament. Jesus Christ was
+content to say: 'Follow Me' (Luke v. 27; ix. 59). The Apostles said:
+'Believe, and thou shalt be saved' (Acts xvi. 3). St. Paul acknowledges
+that his 'doctrine is obscure' (1 Cor. xiii. 12), that 'one can comprehend
+nothing therein' unless God impart a spiritual discernment, and without
+that it only passes for foolishness (1 Cor. ii. 14). He exhorts the
+faithful 'to beware of philosophy' (Col. ii. 8) and to avoid disputations
+in that science, which had caused many persons to lose faith.
+
+47. As for the Fathers of the Church, M. Bayle refers us to the collection
+of passages from them against the use of philosophy and of reason which M.
+de Launoy made (_De Varia Aristotelis Fortuna,_ cap. 2) and especially to
+the passages from St. Augustine collected by M. Arnauld (against Mallet),
+which state: that the judgements of God are inscrutable; that they are not
+any the less just for that they are unknown to us; that it is a deep abyss,
+which one cannot fathom without running the risk of falling down the
+precipice; that one cannot without temerity try to elucidate that which God
+willed to keep hidden; that his will cannot but be just; that many men,
+having tried to explain this incomprehensible depth, have fallen into vain
+imaginations and opinions full of error and bewilderment.
+
+48. The Schoolmen have spoken in like manner. M. Bayle quotes a beautiful
+passage from Cardinal Cajetan (Part I, _Summ._, qu. 22, art. 4) to this
+effect: 'Our mind', he says, 'rests not upon the evidence of known truth
+but upon the impenetrable depth of hidden truth. And as St. Gregory says:
+He who believes touching the Divinity only that which he can gauge with his
+mind belittles the idea of God. Yet I do not surmise that it is necessary
+to deny any of the things which we know, or which we see as appertaining to
+the immutability, the actuality, the certainty, the universality, etc., of
+God: but I think that there is here some secret, either in regard to the
+relation which exists between God and the event, or in respect of what
+connects the event itself with his prevision. Thus, reflecting that the
+understanding of our soul is the eye of the owl, I find the soul's repose
+only in ignorance. For it is better both for the Catholic Faith and for
+Philosophic Faith to confess our blindness, than to affirm as evident what
+does not afford our mind the contentment which self-evidence gives. I do
+not accuse of presumption, on that account, all the learned men who   [101]
+stammeringly have endeavoured to suggest, as far as in them lay, the
+immobility and the sovereign and eternal efficacy of the understanding, of
+the will and of the power of God, through the infallibility of divine
+election and divine relation to all events. Nothing of all that interferes
+with my surmise that there is some depth which is hidden from us.' This
+passage of Cajetan is all the more notable since he was an author competent
+to reach the heart of the matter.
+
+49. Luther's book against Erasmus is full of vigorous comments hostile to
+those who desire to submit revealed truths to the tribunal of our reason.
+Calvin often speaks in the same tone, against the inquisitive daring of
+those who seek to penetrate into the counsels of God. He declares in his
+treatise on predestination that God had just causes for damning some men,
+but causes unknown to us. Finally M. Bayle quotes sundry modern writers who
+have spoken to the same effect (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_,
+ch. 161 et seq.).
+
+50. But all these expressions and innumerable others like them do not prove
+that the objections opposed to faith are so insoluble as M. Bayle supposes.
+It is true that the counsels of God are inscrutable, but there is no
+invincible objection which tends to the conclusion that they are unjust.
+What appears injustice on the part of God, and foolishness in our faith,
+only appears so. The famous passage of Tertullian (_De Carne Christi_),
+'mortuus est Dei filius, credibile est, quia ineptum est; et sepultus
+revixit, certum est, quia impossibile', is a sally that can only be meant
+to concern appearances of absurdity. There are others like them in Luther's
+book on _Freewill in Bondage_, as when he says (ch. 174): 'Si placet tibi
+Deus indignos coronans, non debet displicere immeritos damnans.' Which
+being reduced to more temperate phrasing, means: If you approve that God
+give eternal glory to those who are not better than the rest, you should
+not disapprove that he abandon those who are not worse than the rest. And
+to judge that he speaks only of appearances of injustice, one only has to
+weigh these words of the same author taken from the same book: 'In all the
+rest', he says, 'we recognize in God a supreme majesty; there is only
+justice that we dare to question: and we will not believe provisionally
+[tantisper] that he is just, albeit he has promised us that the time shall
+come when his glory being revealed all men shall see clearly that he has
+been and that he is just.'
+
+                                                                      [102]
+51. It will be found also that when the Fathers entered into a discussion
+they did not simply reject reason. And, in disputations with the pagans,
+they endeavour usually to show how paganism is contrary to reason, and how
+the Christian religion has the better of it on that side also. Origen
+showed Celsus how reasonable Christianity is and why, notwithstanding, the
+majority of Christians should believe without examination. Celsus had
+jeered at the behaviour of Christians, 'who, willing', he said, 'neither to
+listen to your reasons nor to give you any for what they believe, are
+content to say to you: Examine not, only believe, or: Your faith will save
+you; and they hold this as a maxim, that the wisdom of the world is an
+evil.'
+
+52. Origen gives the answer of a wise man, and in conformity with the
+principles we have established in the matter. For reason, far from being
+contrary to Christianity, serves as a foundation for this religion, and
+will bring about its acceptance by those who can achieve the examination of
+it. But, as few people are capable of this, the heavenly gift of plain
+faith tending towards good suffices for men in general. 'If it were
+possible', he says, 'for all men, neglecting the affairs of life, to apply
+themselves to study and meditation, one need seek no other way to make them
+accept the Christian religion. For, to say nothing likely to offend anyone'
+(he insinuates that the pagan religion is absurd, but he will not say so
+explicitly), 'there will be found therein no less exactitude than
+elsewhere, whether in the discussion of its dogmas, or in the elucidation
+of the enigmatical expressions of its prophets, or in the interpretation of
+the parables of its gospels and of countless other things happening or
+ordained symbolically. But since neither the necessities of life nor the
+infirmities of men permit of this application to study, save for a very
+small number of persons, what means could one find more qualified to
+benefit everyone else in the world than those Jesus Christ wished to be
+used for the conversion of the nations? And I would fain ask with regard to
+the great number of those who believe, and who thereby have withdrawn
+themselves from the quagmire of vices wherein before they were plunged,
+which would be the better: to have thus changed one's morals and reformed
+one's life, believing without examination that there are punishments for
+sin and rewards for good actions; or to have waited for one's conversion
+until one not only believed but had examined with care the foundations of
+these dogmas? It is certain that, were this method to be followed, few[103]
+indeed would reach that point whither they are led by their plain and
+simple faith, but the majority would remain in their corruption.'
+
+53. M. Bayle (in his explanation concerning the objections of the
+Manichaeans, placed at the end of the second edition of the _Dictionary_)
+takes those words where Origen points out that religion can stand the test
+of having her dogmas discussed, as if it were not meant in relation to
+philosophy, but only in relation to the accuracy wherewith the authority
+and the true meaning of Holy Scripture is established. But there is nothing
+to indicate this restriction. Origen wrote against a philosopher whom such
+a restriction would not have suited. And it appears that this Father wished
+to point out that among Christians there was no less exactitude than among
+the Stoics and some other philosophers, who established their doctrine as
+much by reason as by authorities, as, for example, Chrysippus did, who
+found his philosophy even in the symbols of pagan antiquity.
+
+54. Celsus brings up still another objection to the Christians, in the same
+place. 'If they withdraw', he says, 'regularly into their "Examine not,
+only believe", they must tell me at least what are the things they wish me
+to believe.' Therein he is doubtless right, and that tells against those
+who would say that God is good and just, and who yet would maintain that we
+have no notion of goodness and of justice when we attribute these
+perfections to him. But one must not always demand what I call 'adequate
+notions', involving nothing that is not explained, since even perceptible
+qualities, like heat, light, sweetness, cannot give us such notions. Thus
+we agreed that Mysteries should receive an explanation, but this
+explanation is imperfect. It suffices for us to have some analogical
+understanding of a Mystery such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, to the
+end that in accepting them we pronounce not words altogether devoid of
+meaning: but it is not necessary that the explanation go as far as we would
+wish, that is, to the extent of comprehension and to the _how_.
+
+55. It appears strange therefore that M. Bayle rejects the tribunal of
+_common notions_ (in the third volume of his _Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, pp. 1062 and 1140) as if one should not consult the idea of
+goodness in answering the Manichaeans; whereas he had declared himself
+quite differently in his _Dictionary_. Of necessity there must be agreement
+upon the meaning of _good_ and _bad_, amongst those who are in dispute[104]
+over the question whether there is only one principle, altogether good, or
+whether there are two, the one good and the other bad. We understand
+something by union when we are told of the union of one body with another
+or of a substance with its accident, of a subject with its adjunct, of the
+place with the moving body, of the act with the potency; we also mean
+something when we speak of the union of the soul with the body to make
+thereof one single person. For albeit I do not hold that the soul changes
+the laws of the body, or that the body changes the laws of the soul, and I
+have introduced the Pre-established Harmony to avoid this derangement, I
+nevertheless admit a true union between the soul and the body, which makes
+thereof a suppositum. This union belongs to the metaphysical, whereas a
+union of influence would belong to the physical. But when we speak of the
+union of the Word of God with human nature we should be content with an
+analogical knowledge, such as the comparison of the union of the soul with
+the body is capable of giving us. We should, moreover, be content to say
+that the Incarnation is the closest union that can exist between the
+Creator and the creature; and further we should not want to go.
+
+56. It is the same with the other Mysteries, where moderate minds will ever
+find an explanation sufficient for belief, but never such as would be
+necessary for understanding. A certain _what it is_ ([Greek: ti esti]) is
+enough for us, but the _how_ ([Greek: pos]) is beyond us, and is not
+necessary for us. One may say concerning the explanations of Mysteries
+which are given out here and there, what the Queen of Sweden inscribed upon
+a medal concerning the crown she had abandoned, 'Non mi bisogna, e non mi
+basta.' Nor have we any need either (as I have already observed) to prove
+the Mysteries _a priori_, or to give a reason for them; it suffices us
+_that the thing is thus_ ([Greek: to hoti]) even though we know not the
+_why_ ([Greek: to dioti]), which God has reserved for himself. These lines,
+written on that theme by Joseph Scaliger, are beautiful and renowned:
+
+  _Ne curiosus quaere causas omnium,_
+  _Quaecumque libris vis Prophetarum indidit_
+  _Afflata caelo, plena veraci Deo:_
+  _Nec operta sacri supparo silentii_
+  _Irrumpere aude, sed pudenter praeteri._
+  [Page 105]
+  _Nescire velle, quae Magister optimus_
+  _Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est._
+
+M. Bayle, who quotes them (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol.
+III, p. 1055), holds the likely opinion that Scaliger made them upon the
+disputes between Arminius and Gomarus. I think M. Bayle repeated them from
+memory, for he put _sacrata_ instead of _afflata_. But it is apparently the
+printer's fault that _prudenter_ stands in place of _pudenter_ (that is,
+modestly) which the metre requires.
+
+57. Nothing can be more judicious than the warning these lines contain; and
+M. Bayle is right in saying (p. 729) that those who claim that the
+behaviour of God with respect to sin and the consequences of sin contains
+nothing but what they can account for, deliver themselves up to the mercy
+of their adversary. But he is not right in combining here two very
+different things, 'to account for a thing', and 'to uphold it against
+objections'; as he does when he presently adds: 'They are obliged to follow
+him [their adversary] everywhere whither he shall wish to lead them, and it
+would be to retire ignominiously and ask for quarter, if they were to admit
+that our intelligence is too weak to remove completely all the objections
+advanced by a philosopher.'
+
+58. It seems here that, according to M. Bayle, 'accounting for' comes short
+of 'answering objections', since he threatens one who should undertake the
+first with the resulting obligation to pass on to the second. But it is
+quite the opposite: he who maintains a thesis (the _respondens_) is not
+bound to account for it, but he is bound to meet the objections of an
+opponent. A defendant in law is not bound (as a general rule) to prove his
+right or to produce his title to possession; but he is obliged to reply to
+the arguments of the plaintiff. I have marvelled many times that a writer
+so precise and so shrewd as M. Bayle so often here confuses things where so
+much difference exists as between these three acts of reason: to
+comprehend, to prove, and to answer objections; as if when it is a question
+of the use of reason in theology one term were as good as another. Thus he
+says in his posthumous Conversations, p. 73: 'There is no principle which
+M. Bayle has more often inculcated than this, that the incomprehensibility
+of a dogma and the insolubility of the objections that oppose it provide no
+legitimate reason for rejecting it.' This is true as regards the
+incomprehensibility, but it is not the same with the insolubility. And it
+is indeed just as if one said that an invincible reason against a     [106]
+thesis was not a legitimate reason for rejecting it. For what other
+legitimate reason for rejecting an opinion can one find, if an invincible
+opposing argument is not such an one? And what means shall one have
+thereafter of demonstrating the falsity, and even the absurdity, of any
+opinion?
+
+59. It is well to observe also that he who proves a thing _a priori_
+accounts for it through the efficient cause; and whosoever can thus account
+for it in a precise and adequate manner is also in a position to comprehend
+the thing. Therefore it was that the Scholastic theologians had already
+censured Raymond Lully for having undertaken to demonstrate the Trinity by
+philosophy. This so-called demonstration is to be found in his _Works_; and
+Bartholomaeus Keckermann, a writer renowned in the Reformed party, having
+made an attempt of just the same kind upon the same Mystery, has been no
+less censured for it by some modern theologians. Therefore censure will
+fall upon those who shall wish to account for this Mystery and make it
+comprehensible, but praise will be given to those who shall toil to uphold
+it against the objections of adversaries.
+
+60. I have said already that theologians usually distinguish between what
+is above reason and what is against reason. They place _above_ reason that
+which one cannot comprehend and which one cannot account for. But _against_
+reason will be all opinion that is opposed by invincible reasons, or the
+contrary of which can be proved in a precise and sound manner. They avow,
+therefore, that the Mysteries are above reason, but they do not admit that
+they are contrary to it. The English author of a book which is ingenious,
+but has met with disapproval, entitled _Christianity not Mysterious_,
+wished to combat this distinction; but it does not seem to me that he has
+at all weakened it. M. Bayle also is not quite satisfied with this accepted
+distinction. This is what he says on the matter (vol. III of the _Reply to
+the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 158). Firstly (p. 998) he
+distinguishes, together with M. Saurin, between these two theses: the one,
+_all the dogmas of Christianity are in conformity with reason_; the other,
+_human reason knows that they are in conformity with reason_. He affirms
+the first and denies the second. I am of the same opinion, if in saying
+'that a dogma conforms to reason' one means that it is possible to account
+for it or to explain its _how_ by reason; for God could doubtless do so,
+and we cannot. But I think that one must affirm both theses if by     [107]
+'knowing that a dogma conforms to reason' one means that we can
+demonstrate, if need be, that there is no contradiction between this dogma
+and reason, repudiating the objections of those who maintain that this
+dogma is an absurdity.
+
+61. M. Bayle explains himself here in a manner not at all convincing. He
+acknowledges fully that our Mysteries are in accordance with the supreme
+and universal reason that is in the divine understanding, or with reason in
+general; yet he denies that they are in accordance with that part of reason
+which man employs to judge things. But this portion of reason which we
+possess is a gift of God, and consists in the natural light that has
+remained with us in the midst of corruption; thus it is in accordance with
+the whole, and it differs from that which is in God only as a drop of water
+differs from the ocean or rather as the finite from the infinite. Therefore
+Mysteries may transcend it, but they cannot be contrary to it. One cannot
+be contrary to one part without being contrary to the whole. That which
+contradicts a proposition of Euclid is contrary to the _Elements_ of
+Euclid. That which in us is contrary to the Mysteries is not reason nor is
+it the natural light or the linking together of truths; it is corruption,
+or error, or prejudice, or darkness.
+
+62. M. Bayle (p. 1002) is not satisfied with the opinion of Josua Stegman
+and of M. Turretin, Protestant theologians who teach that the Mysteries are
+contrary only to corrupt reason. He asks, mockingly, whether by right
+reason is meant perchance that of an orthodox theologian and by corrupt
+reason that of an heretic; and he urges the objection that the evidence of
+the Mystery of the Trinity was no greater in the soul of Luther than in the
+soul of Socinius. But as M. Descartes has well observed, good sense is
+distributed to all: thus one must believe that both the orthodox and
+heretics are endowed therewith. Right reason is a linking together of
+truths, corrupt reason is mixed with prejudices and passions. And in order
+to discriminate between the two, one need but proceed in good order, admit
+no thesis without proof, and admit no proof unless it be in proper form,
+according to the commonest rules of logic. One needs neither any other
+criterion nor other arbitrator in questions of reason. It is only through
+lack of this consideration that a handle has been given to the sceptics,
+and that even in theology Francois Veron and some others, who         [108]
+exacerbated the dispute with the Protestants, even to the point of
+dishonesty, plunged headlong into scepticism in order to prove the
+necessity of accepting an infallible external judge. Their course meets
+with no approval from the most expert, even in their own party: Calixtus
+and Daille derided it as it deserved, and Bellarmine argued quite
+otherwise.
+
+63. Now let us come to what M. Bayle says (p. 999) on the distinction we
+are concerned with. 'It seems to me', he says, 'that an ambiguity has crept
+into the celebrated distinction drawn between things that are above reason
+and things that are against reason. The Mysteries of the Gospel are above
+reason, so it is usually said, but they are not contrary to reason. I think
+that the same sense is not given to the word reason in the first part of
+this axiom as in the second: by the first is understood rather the reason
+of man, or reason _in concreto_ and by the second reason in general, or
+reason _in abstracto_. For supposing that it is understood always as reason
+in general or the supreme reason, the universal reason that is in God, it
+is equally true that the Mysteries of the Gospels are not above reason and
+that they are not against reason. But if in both parts of the axiom human
+reason is meant, I do not clearly see the soundness of the distinction: for
+the most orthodox confess that we know not how our Mysteries can conform to
+the maxims of philosophy. It seems to us, therefore, that they are not in
+conformity with our reason. Now that which appears to us not to be in
+conformity with our reason appears contrary to our reason, just as that
+which appears to us not in conformity with truth appears contrary to truth.
+Thus why should not one say, equally, that the Mysteries are against our
+feeble reason, and that they are above our feeble reason?' I answer, as I
+have done already, that 'reason' here is the linking together of the truths
+that we know by the light of nature, and in this sense the axiom is true
+and without any ambiguity. The Mysteries transcend our reason, since they
+contain truths that are not comprised in this sequence; but they are not
+contrary to our reason, and they do not contradict any of the truths
+whereto this sequence can lead us. Accordingly there is no question here of
+the universal reason that is in God, but of our reason. As for the question
+whether we know the Mysteries to conform with our reason, I answer that at
+least we never know of any non-conformity or any opposition between the
+Mysteries and reason. Moreover, we can always abolish such alleged    [109]
+opposition, and so, if this can be called reconciling or harmonizing faith
+with reason, or recognizing the conformity between them, it must be said
+that we can recognize this conformity and this harmony. But if the
+conformity consists in a reasonable explanation of the _how_, we cannot
+recognize it.
+
+64. M. Bayle makes one more ingenious objection, which he draws from the
+example of the sense of sight. 'When a square tower', he says, 'from a
+distance appears to us round, our eyes testify very clearly not only that
+they perceive nothing square in this tower, but also that they discover
+there a round shape, incompatible with the square shape. One may therefore
+say that the truth which is the square shape is not only above, but even
+against, the witness of our feeble sight.' It must be admitted that this
+observation is correct, and although it be true that the appearance of
+roundness comes simply from the effacement of the angles, which distance
+causes to disappear, it is true, notwithstanding, that the round and the
+square are opposites. Therefore my answer to this objection is that the
+representation of the senses, even when they do all that in them lies, is
+often contrary to the truth; but it is not the same with the faculty of
+reasoning, when it does its duty, since a strictly reasoned argument is
+nothing but a linking together of truths. And as for the sense of sight in
+particular, it is well to consider that there are yet other false
+appearances which come not from the 'feebleness of our eyes' nor from the
+loss of visibility brought about by distance, but from the very _nature of
+vision_, however perfect it be. It is thus, for instance, that the circle
+seen sideways is changed into that kind of oval which among geometricians
+is known as an ellipse, and sometimes even into a parabola or a hyperbola,
+or actually into a straight line, witness the ring of Saturn.
+
+65. The _external_ senses, properly speaking, do not deceive us. It is our
+inner sense which often makes us go too fast. That occurs also in brute
+beasts, as when a dog barks at his reflexion in the mirror: for beasts have
+_consecutions_ of perception which resemble reasoning, and which occur also
+in the inner sense of men, when their actions have only an empirical
+quality. But beasts do nothing which compels us to believe that they have
+what deserves to be properly called a _reasoning_ sense, as I have shown
+elsewhere. Now when the understanding uses and follows the false decision
+of the inner sense (as when the famous Galileo thought that Saturn had[110]
+two handles) it is deceived by the judgement it makes upon the effect of
+appearances, and it infers from them more than they imply. For the
+appearances of the senses do not promise us absolutely the truth of things,
+any more than dreams do. It is we who deceive ourselves by the use we make
+of them, that is, by our consecutions. Indeed we allow ourselves to be
+deluded by probable arguments, and we are inclined to think that phenomena
+such as we have found linked together often are so always. Thus, as it
+happens usually that that which appears without angles has none, we readily
+believe it to be always thus. Such an error is pardonable, and sometimes
+inevitable, when it is necessary to act promptly and choose that which
+appearances recommend; but when we have the leisure and the time to collect
+our thoughts, we are in fault if we take for certain that which is not so.
+It is therefore true that appearances are often contrary to truth, but our
+reasoning never is when it proceeds strictly in accordance with the rules
+of the art of reasoning. If by _reason_ one meant generally the faculty of
+reasoning whether well or ill, I confess that it might deceive us, and does
+indeed deceive us, and the appearances of our understanding are often as
+deceptive as those of the senses: but here it is a question of the linking
+together of truths and of objections in due form, and in this sense it is
+impossible for reason to deceive us.
+
+66. Thus it may be seen from all I have just said that M. Bayle carries too
+far _the being above reason_, as if it included the insoluble nature of
+objections: for according to him (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_,
+vol. III, ch. 130, p. 651) 'once a dogma is above reason, philosophy can
+neither explain it nor comprehend it, nor meet the difficulties that are
+urged against it'. I agree with regard to comprehension, but I have already
+shown that the Mysteries receive a necessary verbal explanation, to the end
+that the terms employed be not _sine mente soni_, words signifying nothing.
+I have shown also that it is necessary for one to be capable of answering
+the objections, and that otherwise one must needs reject the thesis.
+
+67. He adduces the authority of theologians, who appear to recognize the
+insoluble nature of the objections against the Mysteries. Luther is one of
+the chief of these; but I have already replied, in Sec. 12, to the passage
+where he seems to say that philosophy contradicts theology. There is
+another passage (_De Servo Arbitrio_, ch. 246) where he says that the
+apparent injustice of God is proved by arguments taken from the       [111]
+adversity of good people and the prosperity of the wicked, an argument
+irresistible both for all reason and for natural intelligence ('Argumentis
+talibus traducta, quibus nulla ratio aut lumen naturae potest resistere').
+But soon afterwards he shows that he means it only of those who know
+nothing of the life to come, since he adds that an expression in the Gospel
+dissipates this difficulty, teaching us that there is another life, where
+that which has not been punished and rewarded in this life shall receive
+its due. The objection is then far from being insuperable, and even without
+the aid of the Gospel one could bethink oneself of this answer. There is
+also quoted (_Reply_, vol. III, p. 652) a passage from Martin Chemnitz,
+criticized by Vedelius and defended by Johann Musaeus, where this famous
+theologian seems to say clearly that there are truths in the word of God
+which are not only above reason but also against reason. But this passage
+must be taken as referring only to the principles of reason that are in
+accordance with the order of Nature, as Musaeus also interprets it.
+
+68. It is true nevertheless that M. Bayle finds some authorities who are
+more favourable to him, M. Descartes being one of the chief. This great man
+says positively (Part I of his _Principles_, art. 41) 'that we shall have
+not the slightest trouble in ridding ourselves of the difficulty' (which
+one may have in harmonizing the freedom of our will with the order of the
+eternal providence of God) 'if we observe that our thought is finite, and
+that the Knowledge and the Omnipotence of God, whereby he has not only
+known from all eternity all that which is or which can be, but also has
+willed it, is infinite. We have therefore quite enough intelligence to
+recognize clearly and distinctly that this knowledge and this power are in
+God; but we have not enough so to comprehend their scope that we can know
+how they leave the actions of men entirely free and undetermined. Yet the
+Power and the Knowledge of God must not prevent us from believing that we
+have a free will; for we should be wrong to doubt of that whereof we are
+inwardly conscious, and which we know by experience to be within us, simply
+because we do not comprehend some other thing which we know to be
+incomprehensible in its nature.'
+
+69. This passage from M. Descartes, followed by his adherents (who rarely
+think of doubting what he asserts), has always appeared strange to me. Not
+content with saying that, as for him, he sees no way of reconciling   [112]
+the two dogmas, he puts the whole human race, and even all rational
+creatures, in the same case. Yet could he have been unaware that there is
+no possibility of an insuperable objection against truth? For such an
+objection could only be a necessary linking together of other truths whose
+result would be contrary to the truth that one maintains; and consequently
+there would be contradiction between the truths, which would be an utter
+absurdity. Moreover, albeit our mind is finite and cannot comprehend the
+infinite, of the infinite nevertheless it has proofs whose strength or
+weakness it comprehends; why then should it not have the same comprehension
+in regard to the objections? And since the power and the wisdom of God are
+infinite and comprehend everything, there is no pretext for doubting their
+scope. Further, M. Descartes demands a freedom which is not needed, by his
+insistence that the actions of the will of man are altogether undetermined,
+a thing which never happens. Finally, M. Bayle himself maintains that this
+experience or this inward sense of our independence, upon which M.
+Descartes founds the proof of our freedom, does not prove it: for from the
+fact that we are not conscious of the causes whereon we depend, it does not
+follow, according to M. Bayle, that we are independent. But that is
+something we will speak of in its proper place.
+
+70. It seems that M. Descartes confesses also, in a passage of his
+_Principles_, that it is impossible to find an answer to the difficulties
+on the division of matter to infinity, which he nevertheless recognizes as
+actual. Arriaga and other Schoolmen make well-nigh the same confession: but
+if they took the trouble to give to the objections the form these ought to
+have, they would see that there are faults in the reasoning, and sometimes
+false assumptions which cause confusion. Here is an example. A man of parts
+one day brought up to me an objection in the following form: Let the
+straight line BA be cut in two equal parts at the point C, and the part CA
+at the point D, and the part DA at the point E, and so on to infinity; all
+the halves, BC, CD, DE, etc., together make the whole BA; therefore there
+must be a last half, since the straight line BA finishes at A. But this
+last half is absurd: for since it is a line, it will be possible again to
+cut it in two. Therefore division to infinity cannot be admitted. But I
+pointed out to him that one is not justified in the inference that there
+must be a last half, although there be a last point A, for this last point
+belongs to all the halves of its side. And my friend acknowledged it  [113]
+himself when he endeavoured to prove this deduction by a formal argument;
+on the contrary, just because the division goes on to infinity, there is no
+last half. And although the straight line AB be finite, it does not follow
+that the process of dividing it has any final end. The same confusion
+arises with the series of numbers going on to infinity. One imagines a
+final end, a number that is infinite, or infinitely small; but that is all
+simple fiction. Every number is finite and specific; every line is so
+likewise, and the infinite or infinitely small signify only magnitudes that
+one may take as great or as small as one wishes, to show that an error is
+smaller than that which has been specified, that is to say, that there is
+no error; or else by the infinitely small is meant the state of a magnitude
+at its vanishing point or its beginning, conceived after the pattern of
+magnitudes already actualized.
+
+71. It will, however, be well to consider the argument that M. Bayle puts
+forward to show that one cannot refute the objections which reason opposes
+to the Mysteries. It is in his comment on the Manichaeans (p. 3140 of the
+second edition of his _Dictionary_). 'It is enough for me', he says, 'that
+it be unanimously acknowledged that the Mysteries of the Gospel are above
+reason. For thence comes the necessary conclusion that it is impossible to
+settle the difficulties raised by the philosophers, and in consequence that
+a dispute where only the light of Nature is followed will always end
+unfavourably for the theologians, and that they will see themselves forced
+to give way and to take refuge in the canon of the supernatural light.' I
+am surprised that M. Bayle speaks in such general terms, since he has
+acknowledged himself that the light of Nature is against the Manichaeans,
+and for the oneness of the Principle, and that the goodness of God is
+proved incontrovertibly by reason. Yet this is how he continues:
+
+72. 'It is evident that reason can never attain to that which is above it.
+Now if it could supply answers to the objections which are opposed to the
+dogma of the Trinity and that of hypostatic union, it would attain to those
+two Mysteries, it would have them in subjection and submit them to the
+strictest examination by comparison with its first principles, or with the
+aphorisms that spring from common notions, and proceed until finally it had
+drawn the conclusion that they are in accordance with natural light. It
+would therefore do what exceeds its powers, it would soar above its   [114]
+confines, and that is a formal contradiction. One must therefore say that
+it cannot provide answers to its own objections, and that thus they remain
+victorious, so long as one does not have recourse to the authority of God
+and to the necessity of subjugating one's understanding to the obedience of
+faith.' I do not find that there is any force in this reasoning. We can
+attain to that which is above us not by penetrating it but by maintaining
+it; as we can attain to the sky by sight, and not by touch. Nor is it
+necessary that, in order to answer the objections which are made against
+the Mysteries, one should have them in subjection to oneself, and submit
+them to examination by comparison with the first principles that spring
+from common notions. For if he who answers the objections had to go so far,
+he who proposes the objections needs must do it first. It is the part of
+the objection to open up the subject, and it is enough for him who answers
+to say Yes or No. He is not obliged to counter with a distinction: it will
+do, in case of need, if he denies the universality of some proposition in
+the objection or criticizes its form, and one may do both these things
+without penetrating beyond the objection. When someone offers me a proof
+which he maintains is invincible, I can keep silence while I compel him
+merely to prove in due form all the enunciations that he brings forward,
+and such as appear to me in the slightest degree doubtful. For the purpose
+of doubting only, I need not at all probe to the heart of the matter; on
+the contrary, the more ignorant I am the more shall I be justified in
+doubting. M. Bayle continues thus:
+
+73. 'Let us endeavour to clarify that. If some doctrines are above reason
+they are beyond its reach, it cannot attain to them; if it cannot attain to
+them, it cannot comprehend them.' (He could have begun here with the
+'comprehend', saying that reason cannot comprehend that which is above it.)
+'If it cannot comprehend them, it can find in them no idea' (_Non valet
+consequentia_: for, to 'comprehend' something, it is not enough that one
+have some ideas thereof; one must have all the ideas of everything that
+goes to make it up, and all these ideas must be clear, distinct,
+_adequate_. There are a thousand objects in Nature in which we understand
+something, but which we do not therefore necessarily comprehend. We have
+some ideas on the rays of light, we demonstrate upon them up to a certain
+point; but there ever remains something which makes us confess that we do
+not yet comprehend the whole nature of light.) 'nor any principle such[115]
+as may give rise to a solution;' (Why should not evident principles be
+found mingled with obscure and confused knowledge?) 'and consequently the
+objections that reason has made will remain unanswered;' (By no means; the
+difficulty is rather on the side of the opposer. It is for him to seek an
+evident principle such as may give rise to some objection; and the more
+obscure the subject, the more trouble he will have in finding such a
+principle. Moreover, when he has found it he will have still more trouble
+in demonstrating an opposition between the principle and the Mystery: for,
+if it happened that the Mystery was evidently contrary to an evident
+principle, it would not be an obscure Mystery, it would be a manifest
+absurdity.) 'or what is the same thing, answer will be made with some
+distinction as obscure as the very thesis that will have been attacked.'
+(One can do without distinctions, if need be, by denying either some
+premiss or some conclusion; and when one is doubtful of the meaning of some
+term used by the opposer one may demand of him its definition. Thus the
+defender has no need to incommode himself when it is a question of
+answering an adversary who claims that he is offering us an invincible
+proof. But even supposing that the defender, perchance being kindly
+disposed, or for the sake of brevity, or because he feels himself strong
+enough, should himself vouchsafe to show the ambiguity concealed in the
+objection, and to remove it by making some distinction, this distinction
+need not of necessity lead to anything clearer than the first thesis, since
+the defender is not obliged to elucidate the Mystery itself.)
+
+74. 'Now it is certain', so M. Bayle continues, 'that an objection which is
+founded on distinct notions remains equally victorious, whether you give to
+it no answer, or you make an answer where none can comprehend anything. Can
+the contest be equal between a man who alleges in objection to you that
+which you and he very clearly conceive, and you, who can only defend
+yourself by answers wherein neither of you understands anything?' (It is
+not enough that the objection be founded on quite distinct notions, it is
+necessary also that one apply it in contradiction of the thesis. And when I
+answer someone by denying some premiss, in order to compel him to prove it,
+or some conclusion, to compel him to put it in good form, it cannot be said
+that I answer nothing or that I answer nothing intelligible. For as it is
+the doubtful premiss of the adversary that I deny, my denial will be  [116]
+as intelligible as his affirmation. Finally, when I am so obliging as to
+explain myself by means of some distinction, it suffices that the terms I
+employ have some meaning, as in the Mystery itself. Thus something in my
+answer will be comprehended: but one need not of necessity comprehend all
+that it involves; otherwise one would comprehend the Mystery also.)
+
+75. M. Bayle continues thus: 'Every philosophical dispute assumes that the
+disputant parties agree on certain definitions' (This would be desirable,
+but usually it is only in the dispute itself that one reaches such a point,
+if the necessity arises.) 'and that they admit the rules of Syllogisms, and
+the signs for the recognition of bad arguments. After that everything lies
+in the investigation as to whether a thesis conforms mediately or
+immediately to the principles one is agreed upon' (which is done by means
+of the syllogisms of him who makes objections); 'whether the premisses of a
+proof (advanced by the opposer) 'are true; whether the conclusion is
+properly drawn; whether a four-term Syllogism has been employed; whether
+some aphorism of the chapter _de oppositis_ or _de sophisticis elenchis_,
+etc., has not been violated.' (It is enough, putting it briefly, to deny
+some premiss or some conclusion, or finally to explain or get explained
+some ambiguous term.) 'One comes off victorious either by showing that the
+subject of dispute has no connexion with the principles which had been
+agreed upon' (that is to say, by showing that the objection proves nothing,
+and then the defender wins the case), 'or by reducing the defender to
+absurdity' (when all the premisses and all the conclusions are well
+proved). 'Now one can reduce him to that point either by showing him that
+the conclusions of his thesis are "yes" and "no" at once, or by
+constraining him to say only intelligible things in answer.' (This last
+embarrassment he can always avoid, because he has no need to advance new
+theses.) 'The aim in disputes of this kind is to throw light upon
+obscurities and to arrive at self-evidence.' (It is the aim of the opposer,
+for he wishes to demonstrate that the Mystery is false; but this cannot
+here be the aim of the defender, for in admitting Mystery he agrees that
+one cannot demonstrate it.) 'This leads to the opinion that during the
+course of the proceedings victory sides more or less with the defender or
+with the opposer, according to whether there is more or less clarity in the
+propositions of the one than in the propositions of the other.' (That [117]
+is speaking as if the defender and the opposer were equally unprotected;
+but the defender is like a besieged commander, covered by his defence
+works, and it is for the attacker to destroy them. The defender has no need
+here of self-evidence, and he seeks it not: but it is for the opposer to
+find it against him, and to break through with his batteries in order that
+the defender may be no longer protected.)
+
+76. 'Finally, it is judged that victory goes against him whose answers are
+such that one comprehends nothing in them,' (It is a very equivocal sign of
+victory: for then one must needs ask the audience if they comprehend
+anything in what has been said, and often their opinions would be divided.
+The order of formal disputes is to proceed by arguments in due form and to
+answer them by denying or making a distinction.) 'and who confesses that
+they are incomprehensible.' (It is permitted to him who maintains the truth
+of a Mystery to confess that this mystery is incomprehensible; and if this
+confession were sufficient for declaring him vanquished there would be no
+need of objection. It will be possible for a truth to be incomprehensible,
+but never so far as to justify the statement that one comprehends nothing
+at all therein. It would be in that case what the ancient Schools called
+_Scindapsus_ or _Blityri_ (Clem. Alex., _Stromateis_, 8), that is, words
+devoid of meaning.) 'He is condemned thenceforth by the rules for awarding
+victory; and even when he cannot be pursued in the mist wherewith he has
+covered himself, and which forms a kind of abyss between him and his
+antagonists, he is believed to be utterly defeated, and is compared to an
+army which, having lost the battle, steals away from the pursuit of the
+victor only under cover of night.' (Matching allegory with allegory, I will
+say that the defender is not vanquished so long as he remains protected by
+his entrenchments; and if he risks some sortie beyond his need, it is
+permitted to him to withdraw within his fort, without being open to blame
+for that.)
+
+77. I was especially at pains to analyse this long passage where M. Bayle
+has put down his strongest and most skilfully reasoned statements in
+support of his opinion: and I hope that I have shown clearly how this
+excellent man has been misled. That happens all too easily to the ablest
+and shrewdest persons when they give free rein to their wit without
+exercising the patience necessary for delving down to the very foundations
+of their systems. The details we have entered into here will serve as [118]
+answer to some other arguments upon the subject which are dispersed through
+the works of M. Bayle, as for instance when he says in his _Reply to the
+Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, ch. 133, p. 685): 'To prove that one
+has brought reason and religion into harmony one must show not only that
+one has philosophic maxims favourable to our faith, but also that the
+particular maxims cast up against us as not being consistent with our
+Catechism are in reality consistent with it in a clearly conceived way.' I
+do not see that one has need of all that, unless one aspire to press
+reasoning as far as the _how_ of the Mystery. When one is content to uphold
+its truth, without attempting to render it comprehensible, one has no need
+to resort to philosophic maxims, general or particular, for the proof; and
+when another brings up some philosophic maxims against us, it is not for us
+to prove clearly and distinctly that these maxims are consistent with our
+dogma, but it is for our opponent to prove that they are contrary thereto.
+
+78. M. Bayle continues thus in the same passage: 'For this result we need
+an answer as clearly evident as the objection.' I have already shown that
+it is obtained when one denies the premisses, but that for the rest it is
+not necessary for him who maintains the truth of the Mystery always to
+advance evident propositions, since the principal thesis concerning the
+Mystery itself is not evident. He adds further: 'If we must make reply and
+rejoinder, we must never rest in our positions, nor claim that we have
+accomplished our design, so long as our opponent shall make answer with
+things as evident as our reasons can be.' But it is not for the defender to
+adduce reasons; it is enough for him to answer those of his opponent.
+
+79. Finally the author draws the conclusion: 'If it were claimed that, on
+making an evident objection, a man has to be satisfied with an answer which
+we can only state as a thing possible though incomprehensible to us, that
+would be unfair.' He repeats this in the posthumous Dialogues, against M.
+Jacquelot, p. 69. I am not of this opinion. If the objection were
+completely evident, it would triumph, and the thesis would be overthrown.
+But when the objection is only founded on appearances or on instances of
+the most frequent occurrence, and when he who makes it desires to draw from
+it a universal and certain conclusion, he who upholds the Mystery may
+answer with the instance of a bare possibility. For such an instance  [119]
+suffices to show that what one wished to infer from the premisses, is
+neither certain nor general; and it suffices for him who upholds the
+Mystery to maintain that it is possible, without having to maintain that it
+is probable. For, as I have often said, it is agreed that the Mysteries are
+against appearances. He who upholds the Mystery need not even adduce such
+an instance; and should he adduce it, it were indeed a work of
+supererogation, or else an instrument of greater confusion to the
+adversary.
+
+80. There are passages of M. Bayle in the posthumous reply that he made to
+M. Jacquelot which seem to me still worthy of scrutiny. 'M. Bayle'
+(according to pp. 36, 37) 'constantly asserts in his _Dictionary_, whenever
+the subject allows, that our reason is more capable of refuting and
+destroying than of proving and building; that there is scarcely any
+philosophical or theological matter in respect of which it does not create
+great difficulties. Thus', he says, 'if one desired to follow it in a
+disputatious spirit, as far as it can go, one would often be reduced to a
+state of troublesome perplexity; and in fine, there are doctrines certainly
+true, which it disputes with insoluble objections.' I think that what is
+said here in reproach of reason is to its advantage. When it overthrows
+some thesis, it builds up the opposing thesis. And when it seems to be
+overthrowing the two opposing theses at the same time, it is then that it
+promises us something profound, provided that we follow it _as far as it
+can go_, not in a disputatious spirit but with an ardent desire to search
+out and discover the truth, which will always be recompensed with a great
+measure of success.
+
+81. M. Bayle continues: 'that one must then ridicule these objections,
+recognizing the narrow bounds of the human mind.' And I think, on the other
+hand, that one must recognize the signs of the force of the human mind,
+which causes it to penetrate into the heart of things. These are new
+openings and, as it were, rays of the dawn which promises us a greater
+light: I mean in philosophical subjects or those of natural theology. But
+when these objections are made against revealed faith it is enough that one
+be able to repel them, provided that one do so in a submissive and zealous
+spirit, with intent to sustain and exalt the glory of God. And when we
+succeed in respect of his justice, we shall likewise be impressed by his
+greatness and charmed by his goodness, which will show themselves through
+the clouds of a seeming reason that is deceived by outward            [120]
+appearances, in proportion as the mind is elevated by true reason to that
+which to us is invisible, but none the less sure.
+
+82. 'Thus' (to continue with M. Bayle) 'reason will be compelled to lay
+down its arms, and to subjugate itself to the obedience of the faith, which
+it can and ought to do, in virtue of some of its most incontestable maxims.
+Thus also in renouncing some of its other maxims it acts nevertheless in
+accordance with that which it is, that is to say, in reason.' But one must
+know 'that such maxims of reason as must be renounced in this case are only
+those which make us judge by appearances or according to the ordinary
+course of things.' This reason enjoins upon us even in philosophical
+subjects, when there are invincible proofs to the contrary. It is thus
+that, being made confident by demonstrations of the goodness and the
+justice of God, we disregard the appearances of harshness and injustice
+which we see in this small portion of his Kingdom that is exposed to our
+gaze. Hitherto we have been illumined by the _light of Nature_ and by that
+of _grace_, but not yet by that of _glory_. Here on earth we see apparent
+injustice, and we believe and even know the truth of the hidden justice of
+God; but we shall see that justice when at last the Sun of Justice shall
+show himself as he is.
+
+83. It is certain that M. Bayle can only be understood as meaning those
+ostensible maxims which must give way before the eternal verities; for he
+acknowledges that reason is not in reality contrary to faith. In these
+posthumous Dialogues he complains (p. 73, against M. Jacquelot) of being
+accused of the belief that our Mysteries are in reality against reason, and
+(p. 9, against M. le Clerc) of the assertion made that he who acknowledges
+that a doctrine is exposed to irrefutable objections acknowledges also by a
+necessary consequence the falsity of this doctrine. Nevertheless one would
+be justified in the assertion if the irrefutability were more than an
+outward appearance.
+
+84. It may be, therefore, that having long contended thus against M. Bayle
+on the matter of the use of reason I shall find after all that his opinions
+were not fundamentally so remote from mine as his expressions, which have
+provided matter for our considerations, have led one to believe. It is true
+that frequently he appears to deny absolutely that one can ever answer the
+objections of reason against faith, and that he asserts the necessity of
+comprehending, in order to achieve such an end, how the Mystery comes [121]
+to be or exists. Yet there are passages where he becomes milder, and
+contents himself with saying that the answers to these objections are
+unknown to him. Here is a very precise passage, taken from the excursus on
+the Manichaeans, which is found at the end of the second edition of his
+_Dictionary_: 'For the greater satisfaction of the most punctilious
+readers, I desire to declare here' (he says, p. 3148) 'that wherever the
+statement is to be met with in my _Dictionary_ that such and such arguments
+are irrefutable I do not wish it to be taken that they are so in actuality.
+I mean naught else than that they appear to me irrefutable. That is of no
+consequence: each one will be able to imagine, if he pleases, that if I
+deem thus of a matter it is owing to my lack of acumen.' I do not imagine
+such a thing; his great acumen is too well known to me: but I think that,
+after having applied his whole mind to magnifying the objections, he had
+not enough attention left over for the purpose of answering them.
+
+85. M. Bayle confesses, moreover, in his posthumous work against M. le
+Clerc, that the objections against faith have not the force of proofs. It
+is therefore _ad hominem_ only, or rather _ad homines_, that is, in
+relation to the existing state of the human race, that he deems these
+objections irrefutable and the subject unexplainable. There is even a
+passage where he implies that he despairs not of the possibility that the
+answer or the explanation may be found, and even in our time. For here is
+what he says in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc (p. 35): 'M. Bayle
+dared to hope that his toil would put on their mettle some of those great
+men of genius who create new systems, and that they could discover a
+solution hitherto unknown.' It seems that by this 'solution' he means such
+an explanation of Mystery as would penetrate to the _how_: but that is not
+necessary for replying to the objections.
+
+86. Many have undertaken to render this _how_ comprehensible, and to prove
+the possibility of Mysteries. A certain writer named Thomas Bonartes
+Nordtanus Anglus, in his _Concordia Scientiae cum Fide,_ claimed to do so.
+This work seemed to me ingenious and learned, but crabbed and involved, and
+it even contains indefensible opinions. I learned from the _Apologia
+Cyriacorum_ of the Dominican Father Vincent Baron that that book was
+censured in Rome, that the author was a Jesuit, and that he suffered for
+having published it. The Reverend Father des Bosses, who now teaches
+Theology in the Jesuit College of Hildesheim, and who has combined    [122]
+rare erudition with great acumen, which he displays in philosophy and
+theology, has informed me that the real name of Bonartes was Thomas Barton,
+and that after leaving the Society he retired to Ireland, where the manner
+of his death brought about a favourable verdict on his last opinions. I
+pity the men of talent who bring trouble upon themselves by their toil and
+their zeal. Something of like nature happened in time past to Pierre
+Abelard, to Gilbert de la Porree, to John Wyclif, and in our day to the
+Englishman Thomas Albius, as well as to some others who plunged too far
+into the explanation of the Mysteries.
+
+87. St. Augustine, however (as well as M. Bayle), does not despair of the
+possibility that the desired solution may be found upon earth; but this
+Father believes it to be reserved for some holy man illumined by a peculiar
+grace: 'Est aliqua causa fortassis occultior, quae melioribus
+sanctioribusque reservatur, illius gratia potius quam meritis illorum' (in
+_De Genesi ad Literam_, lib. 11, c. 4). Luther reserves the knowledge of
+the Mystery of Election for the academy of heaven (lib. _De Servo
+Arbitrio_, c. 174): 'Illic [Deus] gratiam et misericordiam spargit in
+indignos, his iram et severitatem spargit in immeritos; utrobique nimius et
+iniquus apud homines, sed justus et verax apud se ipsum. Nam quomodo hoc
+justum sit ut indignos coronet, incomprehensibile est modo, videbimus
+autem, cum illuc venerimus, ubi jam non credetur, sed revelata facie
+videbitur. Ita quomodo hoc justum sit, ut immeritos damnet,
+incomprehensibile est modo, creditur tamen, donec revelabitur filius
+hominis.' It is to be hoped that M. Bayle now finds himself surrounded by
+that light which is lacking to us here below, since there is reason to
+suppose that he was not lacking in good will.
+
+  VIRGIL
+    _Candidus insueti miratur limen Olympi,_
+    _Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis._
+
+  LUCAN
+    _...Illic postquam se lumine vero_
+    _Implevit, stellasque vagas miratur et astra_
+    _Fixa polis, vidit quanta sub nocte jaceret_
+    _Nostra dies._
+
+                                                                      [123]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PART ONE
+
+1. Having so settled the rights of faith and of reason as rather to place
+reason at the service of faith than in opposition to it, we shall see how
+they exercise these rights to support and harmonize what the light of
+nature and the light of revelation teach us of God and of man in relation
+to evil. The _difficulties_ are distinguishable into two classes. The one
+kind springs from man's freedom, which appears incompatible with the divine
+nature; and nevertheless freedom is deemed necessary, in order that man may
+be deemed guilty and open to punishment. The other kind concerns the
+conduct of God, and seems to make him participate too much in the existence
+of evil, even though man be free and participate also therein. And this
+conduct appears contrary to the goodness, the holiness and the justice of
+God, since God co-operates in evil as well physical as moral, and
+co-operates in each of them both morally and physically; and since it seems
+that these evils are manifested in the order of nature as well as in that
+of grace, and in the future and eternal life as well as, nay, more than, in
+this transitory life.
+
+2. To present these difficulties in brief, it must be observed that freedom
+is opposed, to all appearance, by determination or certainty of any kind
+whatever; and nevertheless the common dogma of our philosophers states that
+the truth of contingent futurities is determined. The foreknowledge of[124]
+God renders all the future certain and determined, but his providence and
+his foreordinance, whereon foreknowledge itself appears founded, do much
+more: for God is not as a man, able to look upon events with unconcern and
+to suspend his judgement, since nothing exists save as a result of the
+decrees of his will and through the action of his power. And even though
+one leave out of account the co-operation of God, all is perfectly
+connected in the order of things, since nothing can come to pass unless
+there be a cause so disposed as to produce the effect, this taking place no
+less in voluntary than in all other actions. According to which it appears
+that man is compelled to do the good and evil that he does, and in
+consequence that he deserves therefor neither recompense nor chastisement:
+thus is the morality of actions destroyed and all justice, divine and
+human, shaken.
+
+3. But even though one should grant to man this freedom wherewith he arrays
+himself to his own hurt, the conduct of God could not but provide matter
+for a criticism supported by the presumptuous ignorance of men, who would
+wish to exculpate themselves wholly or in part at the expense of God. It is
+objected that all the reality and what is termed the substance of the act
+in sin itself is a production of God, since all creatures and all their
+actions derive from him that reality they have. Whence one could infer not
+only that he is the physical cause of sin, but also that he is its moral
+cause, since he acts with perfect freedom and does nothing without a
+complete knowledge of the thing and the consequences that it may have. Nor
+is it enough to say that God has made for himself a law to co-operate with
+the wills or resolutions of man, whether we express ourselves in terms of
+the common opinion or in terms of the system of occasional causes. Not only
+will it be found strange that he should have made such a law for himself,
+of whose results he was not ignorant, but the principal difficulty is that
+it seems the evil will itself cannot exist without co-operation, and even
+without some predetermination, on his part, which contributes towards
+begetting this will in man or in some other rational creature. For an
+action is not, for being evil, the less dependent on God. Whence one will
+come at last to the conclusion that God does all, the good and the evil,
+indifferently; unless one pretend with the Manichaeans that there are two
+principles, the one good and the other evil. Moreover, according to the
+general opinion of theologians and philosophers, conservation being a [125]
+perpetual creation, it will be said that man is perpetually created corrupt
+and erring. There are, furthermore, modern Cartesians who claim that God is
+the sole agent, of whom created beings are only the purely passive organs;
+and M. Bayle builds not a little upon that idea.
+
+4. But even granting that God should co-operate in actions only with a
+general co-operation, or even not at all, at least in those that are bad,
+it suffices, so it is said, to inculpate him and to render him the moral
+cause that nothing comes to pass without his permission. To say nothing of
+the fall of the angels, he knows all that which will come to pass, if,
+having created man, he places him in such and such circumstances; and he
+places him there notwithstanding. Man is exposed to a temptation to which
+it is known that he will succumb, thereby causing an infinitude of
+frightful evils, by which the whole human race will be infected and brought
+as it were into a necessity of sinning, a state which is named 'original
+sin'. Thus the world will be brought into a strange confusion, by this
+means death and diseases being introduced, with a thousand other
+misfortunes and miseries that in general afflict the good and the bad;
+wickedness will even hold sway and virtue will be oppressed on earth, so
+that it will scarce appear that a providence governs affairs. But it is
+much worse when one considers the life to come, since but a small number of
+men will be saved and since all the rest will perish eternally. Furthermore
+these men destined for salvation will have been withdrawn from the corrupt
+mass through an unreasoning election, whether it be said that God in
+choosing them has had regard to their future actions, to their faith or to
+their works, or one claim that he has been pleased to give them these good
+qualities and these actions because he has predestined them to salvation.
+For though it be said in the most lenient system that God wished to save
+all men, and though in the other systems commonly accepted it be granted,
+that he has made his Son take human nature upon him to expiate their sins,
+so that all they who shall believe in him with a lively and final faith
+shall be saved, it still remains true that this lively faith is a gift of
+God; that we are dead to all good works; that even our will itself must be
+aroused by a prevenient grace, and that God gives us the power to will and
+to do. And whether that be done through a grace efficacious of itself, that
+is to say, through a divine inward motion which wholly determines our [126]
+will to the good that it does; or whether there be only a sufficient grace,
+but such as does not fail to attain its end, and to become efficacious in
+the inward and outward circumstances wherein the man is and has been placed
+by God: one must return to the same conclusion that God is the final reason
+of salvation, of grace, of faith and of election in Jesus Christ. And be
+the election the cause or the result of God's design to give faith, it
+still remains true that he gives faith or salvation to whom he pleases,
+without any discernible reason for his choice, which falls upon but few
+men.
+
+5. So it is a terrible judgement that God, giving his only Son for the
+whole human race and being the sole author and master of the salvation of
+men, yet saves so few of them and abandons all others to the devil his
+enemy, who torments them eternally and makes them curse their Creator,
+though they have all been created to diffuse and show forth his goodness,
+his justice and his other perfections. And this outcome inspires all the
+more horror, as the sole cause why all these men are wretched to all
+eternity is God's having exposed their parents to a temptation that he knew
+they would not resist; as this sin is inherent and imputed to men before
+their will has participated in it; as this hereditary vice impels their
+will to commit actual sins; and as countless men, in childhood or maturity,
+that have never heard or have not heard enough of Jesus Christ, Saviour of
+the human race, die before receiving the necessary succour for their
+withdrawal from this abyss of sin. These men too are condemned to be for
+ever rebellious against God and plunged in the most horrible miseries, with
+the wickedest of all creatures, though in essence they have not been more
+wicked than others, and several among them have perchance been less guilty
+than some of that little number of elect, who were saved by a grace without
+reason, and who thereby enjoy an eternal felicity which they had not
+deserved. Such in brief are the difficulties touched upon by sundry
+persons; but M. Bayle was one who insisted on them the most, as will appear
+subsequently when we examine his passages. I think that now I have recorded
+the main essence of these difficulties: but I have deemed it fitting to
+refrain from some expressions and exaggerations which might have caused
+offence, while not rendering the objections any stronger.
+
+6. Let us now turn the medal and let us also point out what can be said in
+answer to those objections; and here a course of explanation through  [127]
+fuller dissertation will be necessary: for many difficulties can be opened
+up in few words, but for their discussion one must dilate upon them. Our
+end is to banish from men the false ideas that represent God to them as an
+absolute prince employing a despotic power, unfitted to be loved and
+unworthy of being loved. These notions are the more evil in relation to God
+inasmuch as the essence of piety is not only to fear him but also to love
+him above all things: and that cannot come about unless there be knowledge
+of his perfections capable of arousing the love which he deserves, and
+which makes the felicity of those that love him. Feeling ourselves animated
+by a zeal such as cannot fail to please him, we have cause to hope that he
+will enlighten us, and that he will himself aid us in the execution of a
+project undertaken for his glory and for the good of men. A cause so good
+gives confidence: if there are plausible appearances against us there are
+proofs on our side, and I would dare to say to an adversary:
+
+  _Aspice, quam mage sit nostrum penetrabile telum._
+
+7. _God is the first reason of things_: for such things as are bounded, as
+all that which we see and experience, are contingent and have nothing in
+them to render their existence necessary, it being plain that time, space
+and matter, united and uniform in themselves and indifferent to everything,
+might have received entirely other motions and shapes, and in another
+order. Therefore one must seek the reason for the existence of the world,
+which is the whole assemblage of _contingent_ things, and seek it in the
+substance which carries with it the reason for its existence, and which in
+consequence is _necessary_ and eternal. Moreover, this cause must be
+intelligent: for this existing world being contingent and an infinity of
+other worlds being equally possible, and holding, so to say, equal claim to
+existence with it, the cause of the world must needs have had regard or
+reference to all these possible worlds in order to fix upon one of them.
+This regard or relation of an existent substance to simple possibilities
+can be nothing other than the _understanding_ which has the ideas of them,
+while to fix upon one of them can be nothing other than the act of the
+_will_ which chooses. It is the _power_ of this substance that renders its
+will efficacious. Power relates to _being_, wisdom or understanding to
+_truth_, and will to _good_. And this intelligent cause ought to be
+infinite in all ways, and absolutely perfect in _power_, in _wisdom_ and in
+_goodness_, since it relates to all that which is possible.           [128]
+Furthermore, since all is connected together, there is no ground for
+admitting more than _one_. Its understanding is the source of _essences_,
+and its will is the origin of _existences_. There in few words is the proof
+of one only God with his perfections, and through him of the origin of
+things.
+
+8. Now this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite,
+cannot but have chosen the best. For as a lesser evil is a kind of good,
+even so a lesser good is a kind of evil if it stands in the way of a
+greater good; and there would be something to correct in the actions of God
+if it were possible to do better. As in mathematics, when there is no
+maximum nor minimum, in short nothing distinguished, everything is done
+equally, or when that is not possible nothing at all is done: so it may be
+said likewise in respect of perfect wisdom, which is no less orderly than
+mathematics, that if there were not the best (_optimum_) among all possible
+worlds, God would not have produced any. I call 'World' the whole
+succession and the whole agglomeration of all existent things, lest it be
+said that several worlds could have existed in different times and
+different places. For they must needs be reckoned all together as one world
+or, if you will, as one Universe. And even though one should fill all times
+and all places, it still remains true that one might have filled them in
+innumerable ways, and that there is an infinitude of possible worlds among
+which God must needs have chosen the best, since he does nothing without
+acting in accordance with supreme reason.
+
+9. Some adversary not being able to answer this argument will perchance
+answer the conclusion by a counter-argument, saying that the world could
+have been without sin and without sufferings; but I deny that then it would
+have been _better_. For it must be known that all things are _connected_ in
+each one of the possible worlds: the universe, whatever it may be, is all
+of one piece, like an ocean: the least movement extends its effect there to
+any distance whatsoever, even though this effect become less perceptible in
+proportion to the distance. Therein God has ordered all things beforehand
+once for all, having foreseen prayers, good and bad actions, and all the
+rest; and each thing _as an idea_ has contributed, before its existence, to
+the resolution that has been made upon the existence of all things; so that
+nothing can be changed in the universe (any more than in a number) save its
+essence or, if you will, save its _numerical individuality_. Thus, if the
+smallest evil that comes to pass in the world were missing in it, it  [129]
+would no longer be this world; which, with nothing omitted and all
+allowance made, was found the best by the Creator who chose it.
+
+10. It is true that one may imagine possible worlds without sin and without
+unhappiness, and one could make some like Utopian or Sevarambian romances:
+but these same worlds again would be very inferior to ours in goodness. I
+cannot show you this in detail. For can I know and can I present infinities
+to you and compare them together? But you must judge with me _ab effectu_,
+since God has chosen this world as it is. We know, moreover, that often an
+evil brings forth a good whereto one would not have attained without that
+evil. Often indeed two evils have made one great good:
+
+  _Et si fata volunt, bina venena juvant_.
+
+Even so two liquids sometimes produce a solid, witness the spirit of wine
+and spirit of urine mixed by Van Helmont; or so do two cold and dark bodies
+produce a great fire, witness an acid solution and an aromatic oil combined
+by Herr Hoffmann. A general makes sometimes a fortunate mistake which
+brings about the winning of a great battle; and do they not sing on the eve
+of Easter, in the churches of the Roman rite:
+
+  _O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est!_
+  _O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!_
+
+11. The illustrious prelates of the Gallican church who wrote to Pope
+Innocent XII against Cardinal Sfondrati's book on predestination, being of
+the principles of St. Augustine, have said things well fitted to elucidate
+this great point. The cardinal appears to prefer even to the Kingdom of
+Heaven the state of children dying without baptism, because sin is the
+greatest of evils, and they have died innocent of all actual sin. More will
+be said of that below. The prelates have observed that this opinion is ill
+founded. The apostle, they say (Rom. iii. 8), is right to disapprove of the
+doing of evil that good may come, but one cannot disapprove that God,
+through his exceeding power, derive from the permitting of sins greater
+goods than such as occurred before the sins. It is not that we ought to
+take pleasure in sin, God forbid! but that we believe the same apostle when
+he says (Rom. v. 20) that where sin abounded, grace did much more     [130]
+abound; and we remember that we have gained Jesus Christ himself by reason
+of sin. Thus we see that the opinion of these prelates tends to maintain
+that a sequence of things where sin enters in may have been and has been,
+in effect, better than another sequence without sin.
+
+12. Use has ever been made of comparisons taken from the pleasures of the
+senses when these are mingled with that which borders on pain, to prove
+that there is something of like nature in intellectual pleasures. A little
+acid, sharpness or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar; shadows
+enhance colours; and even a dissonance in the right place gives relief to
+harmony. We wish to be terrified by rope-dancers on the point of falling
+and we wish that tragedies shall well-nigh cause us to weep. Do men relish
+health enough, or thank God enough for it, without having ever been sick?
+And is it not most often necessary that a little evil render the good more
+discernible, that is to say, greater?
+
+13. But it will be said that evils are great and many in number in
+comparison with the good: that is erroneous. It is only want of attention
+that diminishes our good, and this attention must be given to us through
+some admixture of evils. If we were usually sick and seldom in good health,
+we should be wonderfully sensible of that great good and we should be less
+sensible of our evils. But is it not better, notwithstanding, that health
+should be usual and sickness the exception? Let us then by our reflexion
+supply what is lacking in our perception, in order to make the good of
+health more discernible. Had we not the knowledge of the life to come, I
+believe there would be few persons who, being at the point of death, were
+not content to take up life again, on condition of passing through the same
+amount of good and evil, provided always that it were not the same kind:
+one would be content with variety, without requiring a better condition
+than that wherein one had been.
+
+14. When one considers also the fragility of the human body, one looks in
+wonder at the wisdom and the goodness of the Author of Nature, who has made
+the body so enduring and its condition so tolerable. That has often made me
+say that I am not astonished men are sometimes sick, but that I am
+astonished they are sick so little and not always. This also ought to make
+us the more esteem the divine contrivance of the mechanism of animals,
+whose Author has made machines so fragile and so subject to corruption[131]
+and yet so capable of maintaining themselves: for it is Nature which cures
+us rather than medicine. Now this very fragility is a consequence of the
+nature of things, unless we are to will that this kind of creature,
+reasoning and clothed in flesh and bones, be not in the world. But that, to
+all appearance, would be a defect which some philosophers of old would have
+called _vacuum formarum_, a gap in the order of species.
+
+15. Those whose humour it is to be well satisfied with Nature and with
+fortune and not to complain about them, even though they should not be the
+best endowed, appear to me preferable to the other sort; for besides that
+these complaints are ill founded, it is in effect murmuring against the
+orders of providence. One must not readily be among the malcontents in the
+State where one is, and one must not be so at all in the city of God,
+wherein one can only wrongfully be of their number. The books of human
+misery, such as that of Pope Innocent III, to me seem not of the most
+serviceable: evils are doubled by being given an attention that ought to be
+averted from them, to be turned towards the good which by far
+preponderates. Even less do I approve books such as that of Abbe Esprit,
+_On the Falsity of Human Virtues_, of which we have lately been given a
+summary: for such a book serves to turn everything wrong side out, and
+cause men to be such as it represents them.
+
+16. It must be confessed, however, that there are disorders in this life,
+which appear especially in the prosperity of sundry evil men and in the
+misfortune of many good people. There is a German proverb which even grants
+the advantage to the evil ones, as if they were commonly the most
+fortunate:
+
+  _Je kruemmer Holz, je bessre Kruecke:_
+  _Je aerger Schalck, je groesser Gluecke._
+
+And it were to be desired that this saying of Horace should be true in our
+eyes:
+
+  _Raro antecedentem scelestum_
+  _Deseruit pede poena claudo._
+
+Yet it often comes to pass also, though this perchance not the most often,
+
+                                                                      [132]
+  _That in the world's eyes Heaven is justified,_
+
+and that one may say with Claudian:
+
+  _Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poena tumultum,_
+  _Absolvitque deos..._
+
+17. But even though that should not happen here, the remedy is all prepared
+in the other life: religion and reason itself teach us that, and we must
+not murmur against a respite which the supreme wisdom has thought fit to
+grant to men for repentance. Yet there objections multiply on another side,
+when one considers salvation and damnation: for it appears strange that,
+even in the great future of eternity, evil should have the advantage over
+good, under the supreme authority of him who is the sovereign good, since
+there will be many that are called and few that are chosen or are saved. It
+is true that one sees from some lines of Prudentius (Hymn. ante Somnum),
+
+  _Idem tamen benignus_
+  _Ultor retundit iram,_
+  _Paucosque non piorum_
+  _Patitur perire in aevum,_
+
+that divers men believed in his time that the number of those wicked enough
+to be damned would be very small. To some indeed it seems that men believed
+at that time in a sphere between Hell and Paradise; that this same
+Prudentius speaks as if he were satisfied with this sphere; that St.
+Gregory of Nyssa also inclines in that direction, and that St. Jerome leans
+towards the opinion according whereunto all Christians would finally be
+taken into grace. A saying of St. Paul which he himself gives out as
+mysterious, stating that all Israel will be saved, has provided much food
+for reflexion. Sundry pious persons, learned also, but daring, have revived
+the opinion of Origen, who maintains that good will predominate in due
+time, in all and everywhere, and that all rational creatures, even the bad
+angels, will become at last holy and blessed. The book of the eternal
+Gospel, published lately in German and supported by a great and learned
+work entitled [Greek: 'Apokatastasis panton], has caused much stir over
+this great paradox. M. le Clerc also has ingeniously pleaded the cause of
+the Origenists, but without declaring himself for them.
+
+                                                                      [133]
+18. There is a man of wit who, pushing my principle of harmony even to
+arbitrary suppositions that I in no wise approve, has created for himself a
+theology well-nigh astronomical. He believes that the present confusion in
+this world below began when the Presiding Angel of the globe of the earth,
+which was still a sun (that is, a star that was fixed and luminous of
+itself) committed a sin with some lesser angels of his department, perhaps
+rising inopportunely against an angel of a greater sun; that
+simultaneously, by the Pre-established Harmony of the Realms of Nature and
+of Grace, and consequently by natural causes occurring at the appointed
+time, our globe was covered with stains, rendered opaque and driven from
+its place; which has made it become a wandering star or planet, that is, a
+Satellite of another sun, and even perhaps of that one whose superiority
+its angel refused to recognize; and that therein consists the fall of
+Lucifer. Now the chief of the bad angels, who in Holy Scripture is named
+the prince, and even the god of this world, being, with the angels of his
+train, envious of that rational animal which walks on the surface of this
+globe, and which God has set up there perhaps to compensate himself for
+their fall, strives to render it accessary in their crimes and a
+participator in their misfortunes. Whereupon Jesus Christ came to save men.
+He is the eternal Son of God, even as he is his only Son; but (according to
+some ancient Christians, and according to the author of this hypothesis)
+having taken upon him at first, from the beginning of things, the most
+excellent nature among created beings, to bring them all to perfection, he
+set himself amongst them: and this is the second filiation, whereby he is
+the first-born of all creatures. This is he whom the Cabalists called Adam
+Kadmon. Haply he had planted his tabernacle in that great sun which
+illumines us; but he came at last into this globe where we are, he was born
+of the Virgin, and took human nature upon him to save mankind from the
+hands of their enemy and his. And when the time of judgement shall draw
+near, when the present face of our globe shall be about to perish, he will
+return to it in visible form, thence to withdraw the good, transplanting
+them, it may be, into the sun, and to punish here the wicked with the
+demons that have allured them; then the globe of the earth will begin to
+burn and will be perhaps a comet. This fire will last for aeons upon aeons.
+The tail of the comet is intended by the smoke which will rise incessantly,
+according to the Apocalypse, and this fire will be hell, or the second[134]
+death whereof Holy Scripture speaks. But at last hell will render up its
+dead, death itself will be destroyed; reason and peace will begin to hold
+sway again in the spirits that had been perverted; they will be sensible of
+their error, they will adore their Creator, and will even begin to love him
+all the more for seeing the greatness of the abyss whence they emerge.
+Simultaneously (by virtue of the _harmonic parallelism_ of the Realms of
+Nature and of Grace) this long and great conflagration will have purged the
+earth's globe of its stains. It will become again a sun; its Presiding
+Angel will resume his place with the angels of his train; humans that were
+damned shall be with them numbered amongst the good angels; this chief of
+our globe shall render homage to the Messiah, chief of created beings. The
+glory of this angel reconciled shall be greater than it was before his
+fall.
+
+  _Inque Deos iterum factorum lege receptus_
+  _Aureus aeternum noster regnabit Apollo._
+
+The vision seemed to me pleasing, and worthy of a follower of Origen: but
+we have no need of such hypothesis or fictions, where Wit plays a greater
+part than Revelation, and which even Reason cannot turn to account. For it
+does not appear that there is one principal place in the known universe
+deserving in preference to the rest to be the seat of the eldest of created
+beings; and the sun of our system at least is not it.
+
+19. Holding then to the established doctrine that the number of men damned
+eternally will be incomparably greater than that of the saved, we must say
+that the evil could not but seem to be almost as nothing in comparison with
+the good, when one contemplates the true vastness of the city of God.
+Coelius Secundus Curio wrote a little book, _De Amplitudine Regni
+Coelestis_, which was reprinted not long since; but he is indeed far from
+having apprehended the compass of the kingdom of heaven. The ancients had
+puny ideas on the works of God, and St. Augustine, for want of knowing
+modern discoveries, was at a loss when there was question of explaining the
+prevalence of evil. It seemed to the ancients that there was only one earth
+inhabited, and even of that men held the antipodes in dread: the remainder
+of the world was, according to them, a few shining globes and a few
+crystalline spheres. To-day, whatever bounds are given or not given to the
+universe, it must be acknowledged that there is an infinite number of
+globes, as great as and greater than ours, which have as much right as[135]
+it to hold rational inhabitants, though it follows not at all that they are
+human. It is only one planet, that is to say one of the six principal
+satellites of our sun; and as all fixed stars are suns also, we see how
+small a thing our earth is in relation to visible things, since it is only
+an appendix of one amongst them. It may be that all suns are peopled only
+by blessed creatures, and nothing constrains us to think that many are
+damned, for few instances or few samples suffice to show the advantage
+which good extracts from evil. Moreover, since there is no reason for the
+belief that there are stars everywhere, is it not possible that there may
+be a great space beyond the region of the stars? Whether it be the Empyrean
+Heaven, or not, this immense space encircling all this region may in any
+case be filled with happiness and glory. It can be imagined as like the
+Ocean, whither flow the rivers of all blessed creatures, when they shall
+have reached their perfection in the system of the stars. What will become
+of the consideration of our globe and its inhabitants? Will it not be
+something incomparably less than a physical point, since our earth is as a
+point in comparison with the distance of some fixed stars? Thus since the
+proportion of that part of the universe which we know is almost lost in
+nothingness compared with that which is unknown, and which we yet have
+cause to assume, and since all the evils that may be raised in objection
+before us are in this near nothingness, haply it may be that all evils are
+almost nothingness in comparison with the good things which are in the
+universe.
+
+20. But it is necessary also to meet the more speculative and metaphysical
+difficulties which have been mentioned, and which concern the cause of
+evil. The question is asked first of all, whence does evil come? _Si Deus
+est, unde malum? Si non est, unde bonum?_ The ancients attributed the cause
+of evil to _matter_, which they believed uncreate and independent of God:
+but we, who derive all being from God, where shall we find the source of
+evil? The answer is, that it must be sought in the ideal nature of the
+creature, in so far as this nature is contained in the eternal verities
+which are in the understanding of God, independently of his will. For we
+must consider that there is an _original imperfection in the creature_
+before sin, because the creature is limited in its essence; whence ensues
+that it cannot know all, and that it can deceive itself and commit other
+errors. Plato said in _Timaeus_ that the world originated in          [136]
+Understanding united to Necessity. Others have united God and Nature. This
+can be given a reasonable meaning. God will be the Understanding; and the
+Necessity, that is, the essential nature of things, will be the object of
+the understanding, in so far as this object consists in the eternal
+verities. But this object is inward and abides in the divine understanding.
+And therein is found not only the primitive form of good, but also the
+origin of evil: the Region of the Eternal Verities must be substituted for
+matter when we are concerned with seeking out the source of things.
+
+This region is the ideal cause of evil (as it were) as well as of good:
+but, properly speaking, the formal character of evil has no _efficient_
+cause, for it consists in privation, as we shall see, namely, in that which
+the efficient cause does not bring about. That is why the Schoolmen are
+wont to call the cause of evil _deficient_.
+
+21. Evil may be taken metaphysically, physically and morally. _Metaphysical
+evil_ consists in mere imperfection, _physical evil_ in suffering, and
+_moral evil_ in sin. Now although physical evil and moral evil be not
+necessary, it is enough that by virtue of the eternal verities they be
+possible. And as this vast Region of Verities contains all possibilities it
+is necessary that there be an infinitude of possible worlds, that evil
+enter into divers of them, and that even the best of all contain a measure
+thereof. Thus has God been induced to permit evil.
+
+22. But someone will say to me: why speak you to us of 'permitting'? Is it
+not God that doeth the evil and that willeth it? Here it will be necessary
+to explain what 'permission' is, so that it may be seen how this term is
+not employed without reason. But before that one must explain the nature of
+will, which has its own degrees. Taking it in the general sense, one may
+say that _will_ consists in the inclination to do something in proportion
+to the good it contains. This will is called _antecedent_ when it is
+detached, and considers each good separately in the capacity of a good. In
+this sense it may be said that God tends to all good, as good, _ad
+perfectionem simpliciter simplicem_, to speak like the Schoolmen, and that
+by an antecedent will. He is earnestly disposed to sanctify and to save all
+men, to exclude sin, and to prevent damnation. It may even be said that
+this will is efficacious _of itself (per se)_, that is, in such sort that
+the effect would ensue if there were not some stronger reason to prevent
+it: for this will does not pass into final exercise (_ad summum conatum_),
+else it would never fail to produce its full effect, God being the    [137]
+master of all things. Success entire and infallible belongs only to the
+_consequent will_, as it is called. This it is which is complete; and in
+regard to it this rule obtains, that one never fails to do what one wills,
+when one has the power. Now this consequent will, final and decisive,
+results from the conflict of all the antecedent wills, of those which tend
+towards good, even as of those which repel evil; and from the concurrence
+of all these particular wills comes the total will. So in mechanics
+compound movement results from all the tendencies that concur in one and
+the same moving body, and satisfies each one equally, in so far as it is
+possible to do all at one time. It is as if the moving body took equal
+account of these tendencies, as I once showed in one of the Paris Journals
+(7 Sept. 1693), when giving the general law of the compositions of
+movement. In this sense also it may be said that the antecedent will is
+efficacious in a sense and even effective with success.
+
+23. Thence it follows that God wills _antecedently_ the good and
+_consequently_ the best. And as for evil, God wills moral evil not at all,
+and physical evil or suffering he does not will absolutely. Thus it is that
+there is no absolute predestination to damnation; and one may say of
+physical evil, that God wills it often as a penalty owing to guilt, and
+often also as a means to an end, that is, to prevent greater evils or to
+obtain greater good. The penalty serves also for amendment and example.
+Evil often serves to make us savour good the more; sometimes too it
+contributes to a greater perfection in him who suffers it, as the seed that
+one sows is subject to a kind of corruption before it can germinate: this
+is a beautiful similitude, which Jesus Christ himself used.
+
+24. Concerning sin or moral evil, although it happens very often that it
+may serve as a means of obtaining good or of preventing another evil, it is
+not this that renders it a sufficient object of the divine will or a
+legitimate object of a created will. It must only be admitted or
+_permitted_ in so far as it is considered to be a certain consequence of an
+indispensable duty: as for instance if a man who was determined not to
+permit another's sin were to fail of his own duty, or as if an officer on
+guard at an important post were to leave it, especially in time of danger,
+in order to prevent a quarrel in the town between two soldiers of the
+garrison who wanted to kill each other.
+
+25. The rule which states, _non esse facienda mala, ut eveniant bona_, and
+which even forbids the permission of a moral evil with the end of     [138]
+obtaining a physical good, far from being violated, is here proved, and its
+source and its reason are demonstrated. One will not approve the action of
+a queen who, under the pretext of saving the State, commits or even permits
+a crime. The crime is certain and the evil for the State is open to
+question. Moreover, this manner of giving sanction to crimes, if it were
+accepted, would be worse than a disruption of some one country, which is
+liable enough to happen in any case, and would perchance happen all the
+more by reason of such means chosen to prevent it. But in relation to God
+nothing is open to question, nothing can be opposed to _the rule of the
+best_, which suffers neither exception nor dispensation. It is in this
+sense that God permits sin: for he would fail in what he owes to himself,
+in what he owes to his wisdom, his goodness, his perfection, if he followed
+not the grand result of all his tendencies to good, and if he chose not
+that which is absolutely the best, notwithstanding the evil of guilt, which
+is involved therein by the supreme necessity of the eternal verities. Hence
+the conclusion that God wills all good _in himself antecedently_, that he
+wills the best _consequently_ as an _end_, that he wills what is
+indifferent, and physical evil, sometimes as a _means_, but that he will
+only permit moral evil as the _sine quo non_ or as a hypothetical necessity
+which connects it with the best. Therefore the _consequent will_ of God,
+which has sin for its object, is only _permissive_.
+
+26. It is again well to consider that moral evil is an evil so great only
+because it is a source of physical evils, a source existing in one of the
+most powerful of creatures, who is also most capable of causing those
+evils. For an evil will is in its department what the evil principle of the
+Manichaeans would be in the universe; and reason, which is an image of the
+Divinity, provides for evil souls great means of causing much evil. One
+single Caligula, one Nero, has caused more evil than an earthquake. An evil
+man takes pleasure in causing suffering and destruction, and for that there
+are only too many opportunities. But God being inclined to produce as much
+good as possible, and having all the knowledge and all the power necessary
+for that, it is impossible that in him there be fault, or guilt, or sin;
+and when he permits sin, it is wisdom, it is virtue.
+
+27. It is indeed beyond question that we must refrain from preventing the
+sin of others when we cannot prevent their sin without sinning ourselves.
+But someone will perhaps bring up the objection that it is God himself[139]
+who acts and who effects all that is real in the sin of the creature. This
+objection leads us to consider the _physical co-operation_ of God with the
+creature, after we have examined the _moral co-operation_, which was the
+more perplexing. Some have believed, with the celebrated Durand de
+Saint-Pourcain and Cardinal Aureolus, the famous Schoolman, that the
+co-operation of God with the creature (I mean the physical cooperation) is
+only general and mediate, and that God creates substances and gives them
+the force they need; and that thereafter he leaves them to themselves, and
+does naught but conserve them, without aiding them in their actions. This
+opinion has been refuted by the greater number of Scholastic theologians,
+and it appears that in the past it met with disapproval in the writings of
+Pelagius. Nevertheless a Capuchin named Louis Pereir of Dole, about the
+year 1630, wrote a book expressly to revive it, at least in relation to
+free actions. Some moderns incline thereto, and M. Bernier supports it in a
+little book on freedom and freewill. But one cannot say in relation to God
+what 'to conserve' is, without reverting to the general opinion. Also it
+must be taken into account that the action of God in conserving should have
+some reference to that which is conserved, according to what it is and to
+the state wherein it is; thus his action cannot be general or
+indeterminate. These generalities are abstractions not to be found in the
+truth of individual things, and the conservation of a man standing is
+different from the conservation of a man seated. This would not be so if
+conservation consisted only in the act of preventing and warding off some
+foreign cause which could destroy that which one wishes to conserve; as
+often happens when men conserve something. But apart from the fact that we
+are obliged ourselves sometimes to maintain that which we conserve, we must
+bear in mind that conservation by God consists in the perpetual immediate
+influence which the dependence of creatures demands. This dependence
+attaches not only to the substance but also to the action, and one can
+perhaps not explain it better than by saying, with theologians and
+philosophers in general, that it is a continued creation.
+
+28. The objection will be made that God therefore now creates man a sinner,
+he that in the beginning created him innocent. But here it must be said,
+with regard to the moral aspect, that God being supremely wise cannot fail
+to observe certain laws, and to act according to the rules, as well   [140]
+physical as moral, that wisdom has made him choose. And the same reason
+that has made him create man innocent, but liable to fall, makes him
+re-create man when he falls; for God's knowledge causes the future to be
+for him as the present, and prevents him from rescinding the resolutions
+made.
+
+29. As for physical co-operation, here one must consider the truth which
+has made already so much stir in the Schools since St. Augustine declared
+it, that evil is a privation of being, whereas the action of God tends to
+the positive. This answer is accounted a quibble, and even something
+chimerical in the minds of many people. But here is an instance somewhat
+similar, which will serve to disabuse them.
+
+30. The celebrated Kepler and M. Descartes (in his letters) after him have
+spoken of the 'natural inertia of bodies'; and it is something which may be
+regarded as a perfect image and even as a sample of the original limitation
+of creatures, to show that privation constitutes the formal character of
+the imperfections and disadvantages that are in substance as well as in its
+actions. Let us suppose that the current of one and the same river carried
+along with it various boats, which differ among themselves only in the
+cargo, some being laden with wood, others with stone, and some more, the
+others less. That being so, it will come about that the boats most heavily
+laden will go more slowly than the others, provided it be assumed that the
+wind or the oar, or some other similar means, assist them not at all. It is
+not, properly speaking, weight which is the cause of this retardation,
+since the boats are going down and not upwards; but it is the same cause
+which also increases the weight in bodies that have greater density, which
+are, that is to say, less porous and more charged with matter that is
+proper to them: for the matter which passes through the pores, not
+receiving the same movement, must not be taken into account. It is
+therefore matter itself which originally is inclined to slowness or
+privation of speed; not indeed of itself to lessen this speed, having once
+received it, since that would be action, but to moderate by its receptivity
+the effect of the impression when it is to receive it. Consequently, since
+more matter is moved by the same force of the current when the boat is more
+laden, it is necessary that it go more slowly; and experiments on the
+impact of bodies, as well as reason, show that twice as much force    [141]
+must be employed to give equal speed to a body of the same matter but of
+twice the size. But that indeed would not be necessary if the matter were
+absolutely indifferent to repose and to movement, and if it had not this
+natural inertia whereof we have just spoken to give it a kind of repugnance
+to being moved. Let us now compare the force which the current exercises on
+boats, and communicates to them, with the action of God, who produces and
+conserves whatever is positive in creatures, and gives them perfection,
+being and force: let us compare, I say, the inertia of matter with the
+natural imperfection of creatures, and the slowness of the laden boat with
+the defects to be found in the qualities and the action of the creature;
+and we shall find that there is nothing so just as this comparison. The
+current is the cause of the boat's movement, but not of its retardation;
+God is the cause of perfection in the nature and the actions of the
+creature, but the limitation of the receptivity of the creature is the
+cause of the defects there are in its action. Thus the Platonists, St.
+Augustine and the Schoolmen were right to say that God is the cause of the
+material element of evil which lies in the positive, and not of the formal
+element, which lies in privation. Even so one may say that the current is
+the cause of the material element of the retardation, but not of the
+formal: that is, it is the cause of the boat's speed without being the
+cause of the limits to this speed. And God is no more the cause of sin than
+the river's current is the cause of the retardation of the boat. Force also
+in relation to matter is as the spirit in relation to the flesh; the spirit
+is willing and the flesh is weak, and spirits act...
+
+  _quantum non noxia corpora tardant._
+
+31. There is, then, a wholly similar relation between such and such an
+action of God, and such and such a passion or reception of the creature,
+which in the ordinary course of things is perfected only in proportion to
+its 'receptivity', such is the term used. And when it is said that the
+creature depends upon God in so far as it exists and in so far as it acts,
+and even that conservation is a continual creation, this is true in that
+God gives ever to the creature and produces continually all that in it is
+positive, good and perfect, every perfect gift coming from the Father of
+lights. The imperfections, on the other hand, and the defects in operations
+spring from the original limitation that the creature could not but   [142]
+receive with the first beginning of its being, through the ideal reasons
+which restrict it. For God could not give the creature all without making
+of it a God; therefore there must needs be different degrees in the
+perfection of things, and limitations also of every kind.
+
+32. This consideration will serve also to satisfy some modern philosophers
+who go so far as to say that God is the only agent. It is true that God is
+the only one whose action is pure and without admixture of what is termed
+'to suffer': but that does not preclude the creature's participation in
+actions, since _the action of the creature_ is a modification of the
+substance, flowing naturally from it and containing a variation not only in
+the perfections that God has communicated to the creature, but also in the
+limitations that the creature, being what it is, brings with it. Thus we
+see that there is an actual distinction between the substance and its
+modification or accidents, contrary to the opinion of some moderns and in
+particular of the late Duke of Buckingham, who spoke of that in a little
+_Discourse on Religion_ recently reprinted. Evil is therefore like
+darkness, and not only ignorance but also error and malice consist formally
+in a certain kind of privation. Here is an example of error which we have
+already employed. I see a tower which from a distance appears round
+although it is square. The thought that the tower is what it appears to be
+flows naturally from that which I see; and when I dwell on this thought it
+is an affirmation, it is a false judgement; but if I pursue the
+examination, if some reflexion causes me to perceive that appearances
+deceive me, lo and behold, I abandon my error. To abide in a certain place,
+or not to go further, not to espy some landmark, these are privations.
+
+33. It is the same in respect of malice or ill will. The will tends towards
+good in general, it must strive after the perfection that befits us, and
+the supreme perfection is in God. All pleasures have within themselves some
+feeling of perfection. But when one is limited to the pleasures of the
+senses, or to other pleasures to the detriment of greater good, as of
+health, of virtue, of union with God, of felicity, it is in this privation
+of a further aspiration that the defect consists. In general perfection is
+positive, it is an absolute reality; defect is privative, it comes from
+limitation and tends towards new privations. This saying is therefore as
+true as it is ancient: _bonum ex causa integra, malum ex quolibet defectu_;
+as also that which states: _malum causam habet non efficientem, sed   [143]
+deficientem_. And I hope that the meaning of these axioms will be better
+apprehended after what I have just said.
+
+34. The physical co-operation of God and of creatures with the will
+contributes also to the difficulties existing in regard to freedom. I am of
+opinion that our will is exempt not only from constraint but also from
+necessity. Aristotle has already observed that there are two things in
+freedom, to wit, spontaneity and choice, and therein lies our mastery over
+our actions. When we act freely we are not being forced, as would happen if
+we were pushed on to a precipice and thrown from top to bottom; and we are
+not prevented from having the mind free when we deliberate, as would happen
+if we were given a draught to deprive us of discernment. There is
+_contingency_ in a thousand actions of Nature; but when there is no
+judgement in him who acts there is no _freedom_. And if we had judgement
+not accompanied by any inclination to act, our soul would be an
+understanding without will.
+
+35. It is not to be imagined, however, that our freedom consists in an
+indetermination or an indifference of equipoise, as if one must needs be
+inclined equally to the side of yes and of no and in the direction of
+different courses, when there are several of them to take. This equipoise
+in all directions is impossible: for if we were equally inclined towards
+the courses A, B and C, we could not be equally inclined towards A and
+towards not A. This equipoise is also absolutely contrary to experience,
+and in scrutinizing oneself one will find that there has always been some
+cause or reason inclining us towards the course taken, although very often
+we be not aware of that which prompts us: just in the same way one is
+hardly aware why, on issuing from a door, one has placed the right foot
+before the left or the left before the right.
+
+36. But let us pass to the difficulties. Philosophers agree to-day that the
+truth of contingent futurities is determinate, that is to say that
+contingent futurities are future, or that they will be, that they will
+happen: for it is as sure that the future will be, as it is sure that the
+past has been. It was true already a hundred years ago that I should write
+to-day, as it will be true after a hundred years that I have written. Thus
+the contingent is not, because it is future, any the less contingent; and
+_determination_, which would be called certainty if it were known, is not
+incompatible with contingency. Often the certain and the determinate are
+taken as one thing, because a determinate truth is capable of being   [144]
+known: thus it may be said that determination is an objective certainty.
+
+37. This determination comes from the very nature of truth, and cannot
+injure freedom: but there are other determinations taken from elsewhere,
+and in the first place from the foreknowledge of God, which many have held
+to be contrary to freedom. They say that what is foreseen cannot fail to
+exist, and they say so truly; but it follows not that what is foreseen is
+necessary, for _necessary truth_ is that whereof the contrary is impossible
+or implies contradiction. Now this truth which states that I shall write
+tomorrow is not of that nature, it is not necessary. Yet supposing that God
+foresees it, it is necessary that it come to pass; that is, the consequence
+is necessary, namely, that it exist, since it has been foreseen; for God is
+infallible. This is what is termed a _hypothetical necessity_. But our
+concern is not this necessity: it is an _absolute necessity_ that is
+required, to be able to say that an action is necessary, that it is not
+contingent, that it is not the effect of a free choice. Besides it is very
+easily seen that foreknowledge in itself adds nothing to the determination
+of the truth of contingent futurities, save that this determination is
+known: and this does not augment the determination or the 'futurition' (as
+it is termed) of these events, that whereon we agreed at the outset.
+
+38. This answer is doubtless very correct. It is agreed that foreknowledge
+in itself does not make truth more determinate; truth is foreseen because
+it is determinate, because it is true; but it is not true because it is
+foreseen: and therein the knowledge of the future has nothing that is not
+also in the knowledge of the past or of the present. But here is what an
+opponent will be able to say: I grant you that foreknowledge in itself does
+not make truth more determinate, but it is the cause of the foreknowledge
+that makes it so. For it needs must be that the foreknowledge of God have
+its foundation in the nature of things, and this foundation, making the
+truth _predeterminate_, will prevent it from being contingent and free.
+
+39. It is this difficulty that has caused two parties to spring up, one of
+the _predeterminators_, the other of the supporters of _mediate knowledge_.
+The Dominicans and the Augustinians are for predetermination, the
+Franciscans and the modern Jesuits on the other hand are for mediate
+knowledge. These two parties appeared towards the middle of the sixteenth
+century and a little later. Molina himself, who is perhaps one of the [145]
+first, with Fonseca, to have systematized this point, and from whom the
+others derived their name of Molinists, says in the book that he wrote on
+the reconciliation of freewill with grace, about the year 1570, that the
+Spanish doctors (he means principally the Thomists), who had been writing
+then for twenty years, finding no other way to explain how God could have a
+certain knowledge of contingent futurities, had introduced predetermination
+as being necessary to free actions.
+
+40. As for himself, he thought to have found another way. He considers that
+there are three objects of divine knowledge, the possibles, the actual
+events and the conditional events that would happen in consequence of a
+certain condition if it were translated into action. The knowledge of
+possibilities is what is called the 'knowledge of mere intelligence'; that
+of events occurring actually in the progress of the universe is called the
+'knowledge of intuition'. And as there is a kind of mean between the merely
+possible and the pure and absolute event, to wit, the conditional event, it
+can be said also, according to Molina, that there is a mediate knowledge
+between that of intuition and that of intelligence. Instance is given of
+the famous example of David asking the divine oracle whether the
+inhabitants of the town of Keilah, where he designed to shut himself in,
+would deliver him to Saul, supposing that Saul should besiege the town. God
+answered yes; whereupon David took a different course. Now some advocates
+of this mediate knowledge are of opinion that God, foreseeing what men
+would do of their own accord, supposing they were placed in such and such
+circumstances, and knowing that they would make ill use of their free will,
+decrees to refuse them grace and favourable circumstances. And he may
+justly so decree, since in any case these circumstances and these aids
+would not have served them aught. But Molina contents himself with finding
+therein generally a reason for the decrees of God, founded on what the free
+creature would do in such and such circumstances.
+
+41. I will not enter into all the detail of this controversy; it will
+suffice for me to give one instance. Certain older writers, not acceptable
+to St. Augustine and his first disciples, appear to have had ideas somewhat
+approaching those of Molina. The Thomists and those who call themselves
+disciples of St. Augustine (but whom their opponents call Jansenists)
+combat this doctrine on philosophical and theological grounds. Some   [146]
+maintain that mediate knowledge must be included in the knowledge of mere
+intelligence. But the principal objection is aimed at the foundation of
+this knowledge. For what foundation can God have for seeing what the people
+of Keilah would do? A simple contingent and free act has nothing in itself
+to yield a principle of certainty, unless one look upon it as predetermined
+by the decrees of God, and by the causes that are dependent upon them.
+Consequently the difficulty existing in actual free actions will exist also
+in conditional free actions, that is to say, God will know them only under
+the condition of their causes and of his decrees, which are the first
+causes of things: and it will not be possible to separate such actions from
+those causes so as to know a contingent event in a way that is independent
+of the knowledge of its causes. Therefore all must of necessity be traced
+back to the predetermination of God's decrees, and this mediate knowledge
+(so it will be said) will offer no remedy. The theologians who profess to
+be adherents of St. Augustine claim also that the system of the Molinists
+would discover the source of God's grace in the good qualities of man, and
+this they deem an infringement of God's honour and contrary to St. Paul's
+teaching.
+
+42. It would be long and wearisome to enter here into the replies and
+rejoinders coming from one side and the other, and it will suffice for me
+to explain how I conceive that there is truth on both sides. For this
+result I resort to my principle of an infinitude of possible worlds,
+represented in the region of eternal verities, that is, in the object of
+the divine intelligence, where all conditional futurities must be
+comprised. For the case of the siege of Keilah forms part of a possible
+world, _which differs from ours only in all that is connected with this
+hypothesis_, and the idea of this possible world represents that which
+would happen in this case. Thus we have a principle for the certain
+knowledge of contingent futurities, whether they happen actually or must
+happen in a certain case. For in the region of the possibles they are
+represented as they are, namely, as free contingencies. Therefore neither
+the foreknowledge of contingent futurities nor the foundation for the
+certainty of this foreknowledge should cause us perplexity or seem to
+prejudice freedom. And though it were true and possible that contingent
+futurities consisting in free actions of reasonable creatures were entirely
+independent of the decrees of God and of external causes, there would [147]
+still be means of foreseeing them; for God would see them as they are in
+the region of the possibles, before he decrees to admit them into
+existence.
+
+43. But if the foreknowledge of God has nothing to do with the dependence
+or independence of our free actions, it is not so with the foreordinance of
+God, his decrees, and the sequence of causes which, as I believe, always
+contribute to the determination of the will. And if I am for the Molinists
+in the first point, I am for the predeterminators in the second, provided
+always that predetermination be taken as not necessitating. In a word, I am
+of opinion that the will is always more inclined towards the course it
+adopts, but that it is never bound by the necessity to adopt it. That it
+will adopt this course is certain, but it is not necessary. The case
+corresponds to that of the famous saying, _Astra inclinant, non
+necessitant_, although here the similarity is not complete. For the event
+towards which the stars tend (to speak with the common herd, as if there
+were some foundation for astrology) does not always come to pass, whereas
+the course towards which the will is more inclined never fails to be
+adopted. Moreover the stars would form only a part of the inclinations that
+co-operate in the event, but when one speaks of the greater inclination of
+the will, one speaks of the result of all the inclinations. It is almost as
+we have spoken above of the consequent will in God, which results from all
+the antecedent wills.
+
+44. Nevertheless, objective certainty or determination does not bring about
+the necessity of the determinate truth. All philosophers acknowledge this,
+asserting that the truth of contingent futurities is determinate, and that
+nevertheless they remain contingent. The thing indeed would imply no
+contradiction in itself if the effect did not follow; and therein lies
+contingency. The better to understand this point, we must take into account
+that there are two great principles of our arguments. The one is the
+principle of _contradiction_, stating that of two contradictory
+propositions the one is true, the other false; the other principle is that
+of the _determinant reason_: it states that nothing ever comes to pass
+without there being a cause or at least a reason determining it, that is,
+something to give an _a priori_ reason why it is existent rather than
+non-existent, and in this wise rather than in any other. This great
+principle holds for all events, and a contrary instance will never be
+supplied: and although more often than not we are insufficiently      [148]
+acquainted with these determinant reasons, we perceive nevertheless that
+there are such. Were it not for this great principle we could never prove
+the existence of God, and we should lose an infinitude of very just and
+very profitable arguments whereof it is the foundation; moreover, it
+suffers no exception, for otherwise its force would be weakened. Besides,
+nothing is so weak as those systems where all is unsteady and full of
+exceptions. That fault cannot be laid to the charge of the system I
+approve, where everything happens in accordance with general rules that at
+most are mutually restrictive.
+
+45. We must therefore not imagine with some Schoolmen, whose ideas tend
+towards the chimerical, that free contingent futurities have the privilege
+of exemption from this general rule of the nature of things. There is
+always a prevailing reason which prompts the will to its choice, and for
+the maintenance of freedom for the will it suffices that this reason should
+incline without necessitating. That is also the opinion of all the
+ancients, of Plato, of Aristotle, of St. Augustine. The will is never
+prompted to action save by the representation of the good, which prevails
+over the opposite representations. This is admitted even in relation to
+God, the good angels and the souls in bliss: and it is acknowledged that
+they are none the less free in consequence of that. God fails not to choose
+the best, but he is not constrained so to do: nay, more, there is no
+necessity in the object of God's choice, for another sequence of things is
+equally possible. For that very reason the choice is free and independent
+of necessity, because it is made between several possibles, and the will is
+determined only by the preponderating goodness of the object. This is
+therefore not a defect where God and the saints are concerned: on the
+contrary, it would be a great defect, or rather a manifest absurdity, were
+it otherwise, even in men here on earth, and if they were capable of acting
+without any inclining reason. Of such absurdity no example will ever be
+found; and even supposing one takes a certain course out of caprice, to
+demonstrate one's freedom, the pleasure or advantage one thinks to find in
+this conceit is one of the reasons tending towards it.
+
+46. There is therefore a freedom of contingency or, in a way, of
+indifference, provided that by 'indifference' is understood that nothing
+necessitates us to one course or the other; but there is never any
+_indifference of equipoise_, that is, where all is completely even on [149]
+both sides, without any inclination towards either. Innumerable great and
+small movements, internal and external, co-operate with us, for the most
+part unperceived by us. And I have already said that when one leaves a room
+there are such and such reasons determining us to put the one foot first,
+without pausing to reflect. For there is not everywhere a slave, as in
+Trimalchio's house in Petronius, to cry to us: the right foot first. All
+that we have just said agrees entirely also with the maxims of the
+philosophers, who teach that a cause cannot act without having a
+disposition towards action. It is this disposition which contains a
+predetermination, whether the doer have received it from without, or have
+had it in consequence of his own antecedent character.
+
+47. Thus we have no need to resort, in company with some new Thomists, to a
+new immediate predetermination by God, such as may cause the free creature
+to abandon his indifference, and to a decree of God for predetermining the
+creature, making it possible for God to know what the creature will do: for
+it suffices that the creature be predetermined by its preceding state,
+which inclines it to one course more than to the other. Moreover, all these
+connexions of the actions of the creature and of all creatures were
+represented in the divine understanding, and known to God through the
+knowledge of mere intelligence, before he had decreed to give them
+existence. Thus we see that, in order to account for the foreknowledge of
+God, one may dispense with both the mediate knowledge of the Molinists and
+the predetermination which a Banez or an Alvarez (writers otherwise of
+great profundity) have taught.
+
+48. By this false idea of an indifference of equipoise the Molinists were
+much embarrassed. They were asked not only how it was possible to know in
+what direction a cause absolutely indeterminate would be determined, but
+also how it was possible that there should finally result therefrom a
+determination for which there is no source: to say with Molina that it is
+the privilege of the free cause is to say nothing, but simply to grant that
+cause the privilege of being chimerical. It is pleasing to see their
+harassed efforts to emerge from a labyrinth whence there is absolutely no
+means of egress. Some teach that the will, before it is determined
+formally, must be determined virtually, in order to emerge from its state
+of equipoise; and Father Louis of Dole, in his book on the _Co-operation of
+God_, quotes Molinists who attempt to take refuge in this expedient:  [150]
+for they are compelled to acknowledge that the cause must needs be disposed
+to act. But they gain nothing, they only defer the difficulty: for they
+will still be asked how the free cause comes to be determined virtually.
+They will therefore never extricate themselves without acknowledging that
+there is a predetermination in the preceding state of the free creature,
+which inclines it to be determined.
+
+49. In consequence of this, the case also of Buridan's ass between two
+meadows, impelled equally towards both of them, is a fiction that cannot
+occur in the universe, in the order of Nature, although M. Bayle be of
+another opinion. It is true that, if the case were possible, one must say
+that the ass would starve himself to death: but fundamentally the question
+deals in the impossible, unless it be that God bring the thing about
+expressly. For the universe cannot be halved by a plane drawn through the
+middle of the ass, which is cut vertically through its length, so that all
+is equal and alike on both sides, in the manner wherein an ellipse, and
+every plane figure of the number of those I term 'ambidexter', can be thus
+halved, by any straight line passing through its centre. Neither the parts
+of the universe nor the viscera of the animal are alike nor are they evenly
+placed on both sides of this vertical plane. There will therefore always be
+many things in the ass and outside the ass, although they be not apparent
+to us, which will determine him to go on one side rather than the other.
+And although man is free, and the ass is not, nevertheless for the same
+reason it must be true that in man likewise the case of a perfect equipoise
+between two courses is impossible. Furthermore it is true that an angel, or
+God certainly, could always account for the course man has adopted, by
+assigning a cause or a predisposing reason which has actually induced him
+to adopt it: yet this reason would often be complex and incomprehensible to
+ourselves, because the concatenation of causes linked together is very
+long.
+
+50. Hence it is that the reason M. Descartes has advanced to prove the
+independence of our free actions, by what he terms an intense inward
+sensation, has no force. We cannot properly speaking be sensible of our
+independence, and we are not aware always of the causes, often
+imperceptible, whereon our resolution depends. It is as though the magnetic
+needle took pleasure in turning towards the north: for it would think that
+it was turning independently of any other cause, not being aware of the
+imperceptible movements of the magnetic matter. Nevertheless we shall [151]
+see later in what sense it is quite true that the human soul is altogether
+its own natural principle in relation to its actions, dependent upon itself
+and independent of all other creatures.
+
+51. As for _volition_ itself, to say that it is an object of free will is
+incorrect. We will to act, strictly speaking, and we do not will to will;
+else we could still say that we will to have the will to will, and that
+would go on to infinity. Besides, we do not always follow the latest
+judgement of practical understanding when we resolve to will; but we always
+follow, in our willing, the result of all the inclinations that come from
+the direction both of reasons and passions, and this often happens without
+an express judgement of the understanding.
+
+52. All is therefore certain and determined beforehand in man, as
+everywhere else, and the human soul is a kind of _spiritual automaton_,
+although contingent actions in general and free action in particular are
+not on that account necessary with an absolute necessity, which would be
+truly incompatible with contingency. Thus neither futurition in itself,
+certain as it is, nor the infallible prevision of God, nor the
+predetermination either of causes or of God's decrees destroys this
+contingency and this freedom. That is acknowledged in respect of futurition
+and prevision, as has already been set forth. Since, moreover, God's decree
+consists solely in the resolution he forms, after having compared all
+possible worlds, to choose that one which is the best, and bring it into
+existence together with all that this world contains, by means of the
+all-powerful word _Fiat_, it is plain to see that this decree changes
+nothing in the constitution of things: God leaves them just as they were in
+the state of mere possibility, that is, changing nothing either in their
+essence or nature, or even in their accidents, which are represented
+perfectly already in the idea of this possible world. Thus that which is
+contingent and free remains no less so under the decrees of God than under
+his prevision.
+
+53. But could God himself (it will be said) then change nothing in the
+world? Assuredly he could not now change it, without derogation to his
+wisdom, since he has foreseen the existence of this world and of what it
+contains, and since, likewise, he has formed this resolution to bring it
+into existence: for he cannot be mistaken nor repent, and it did not behove
+him to from an imperfect resolution applying to one part and not the  [152]
+whole. Thus, all being ordered from the beginning, it is only because of
+this hypothetical necessity, recognized by everyone, that after God's
+prevision or after his resolution nothing can be changed: and yet the
+events in themselves remain contingent. For (setting aside this supposition
+of the futurition of the thing and of the prevision or of the resolution of
+God, a supposition which already lays it down as a fact that the thing will
+happen, and in accordance with which one must say, 'Unumquodque, quando
+est, oportet esse, aut unumquodque, siquidem erit, oportet futurum esse'),
+the event has nothing in it to render it necessary and to suggest that no
+other thing might have happened in its stead. And as for the connexion
+between causes and effects, it only inclined, without necessitating, the
+free agency, as I have just explained; thus it does not produce even a
+hypothetical necessity, save in conjunction with something from outside, to
+wit, this very maxim, that the prevailing inclination always triumphs.
+
+54. It will be said also that, if all is ordered, God cannot then perform
+miracles. But one must bear in mind that the miracles which happen in the
+world were also enfolded and represented as possible in this same world
+considered in the state of mere possibility; and God, who has since
+performed them, when he chose this world had even then decreed to perform
+them. Again the objection will be made that vows and prayers, merits and
+demerits, good and bad actions avail nothing, since nothing can be changed.
+This objection causes most perplexity to people in general, and yet it is
+purely a sophism. These prayers, these vows, these good or bad actions that
+occur to-day were already before God when he formed the resolution to order
+things. Those things which happen in this existing world were represented,
+with their effects and their consequences, in the idea of this same world,
+while it was still possible only; they were represented therein, attracting
+God's grace whether natural or supernatural, requiring punishments or
+rewards, just as it has happened actually in this world since God chose it.
+The prayer or the good action were even then an _ideal cause_ or
+_condition_, that is, an inclining reason able to contribute to the grace
+of God, or to the reward, as it now does in reality. Since, moreover, all
+is wisely connected together in the world, it is clear that God, foreseeing
+that which would happen freely, ordered all other things on that basis
+beforehand, or (what is the same) he chose that possible world in     [153]
+which everything was ordered in this fashion.
+
+55. This consideration demolishes at the same time what the ancients called
+the 'Lazy Sophism' ([Greek: logos argos]) which ended in a decision to do
+nothing: for (people would say) if what I ask is to happen it will happen
+even though I should do nothing; and if it is not to happen it will never
+happen, no matter what trouble I take to achieve it. This necessity,
+supposedly existent in events, and detached from their causes, might be
+termed _Fatum Mahometanum_, as I have already observed above, because a
+similar line of reasoning, so it is said, causes the Turks not to shun
+places ravaged by plague. But the answer is quite ready: the effect being
+certain, the cause that shall produce it is certain also; and if the effect
+comes about it will be by virtue of a proportionate cause. Thus your
+laziness perchance will bring it about that you will obtain naught of what
+you desire, and that you will fall into those misfortunes which you would
+by acting with care have avoided. We see, therefore, that the _connexion of
+causes with effects_, far from causing an unendurable fatality, provides
+rather a means of obviating it. There is a German proverb which says that
+death will ever have a cause; and nothing is so true. You will die on that
+day (let us presume it is so, and that God foresees it): yes, without
+doubt; but it will be because you will do what shall lead you thither. It
+is likewise with the chastisements of God, which also depend upon their
+causes. And it will be apposite in this connexion to quote this famous
+passage from St. Ambrose (in cap. I _Lucae_), 'Novit Dominus mutare
+sententiam, si tu noveris mutare delictum', which is not to be understood
+as of reprobation, but of denunciation, such as that which Jonah dealt out
+for God to the Ninevites. This common saying: 'Si non es praedestinatus,
+fac ut praedestineris', must not be taken literally, its true sense being
+that he who has doubts of his predestination need only do what is required
+for him to obtain it by the grace of God. The sophism which ends in a
+decision to trouble oneself over nothing will haply be useful sometimes to
+induce certain people to face danger fearlessly. It has been applied in
+particular to Turkish soldiers: but it seems that hashish is a more
+important factor than this sophism, not to mention the fact that this
+resolute spirit in the Turks has greatly belied itself in our days.
+
+56. A learned physician of Holland named Johan van Beverwyck took the
+trouble to write _De Termino Vitae_ and to collect sundry answers,    [154]
+letters and discourses of some learned men of his time on this subject.
+This collection has been printed, and it is astonishing to see there how
+often people are misled, and how they have confused a problem which,
+properly speaking, is the easiest in the world. After that it is no wonder
+that there are very many doubts which the human race cannot abandon. The
+truth is that people love to lose themselves, and this is a kind of ramble
+of the mind, which is unwilling to subject itself to attention, to order,
+to rules. It seems as though we are so accustomed to games and jesting that
+we play the fool even in the most serious occupations, and when we least
+think to do so.
+
+57. I fear that in the recent dispute between the theologians of the
+Augsburg Confession, _De Termino Paenitentiae Peremptorio_, which has
+called forth so many treatises in Germany, some misunderstanding, though of
+a different nature, has slipped in. The terms prescribed by the laws are
+amongst lawyers known as _fatalia_. It may be said, in a sense, that the
+_peremptory term_, prescribed to man for his repentance and amendment, is
+certain in the sight of God, with whom all is certain. God knows when a
+sinner will be so hardened that thereafter nothing can be done for him: not
+indeed that it would be impossible for him to do penance or that sufficient
+grace needs must be refused to him after a certain term, a grace that never
+fails; but because there will be a time whereafter he will no more approach
+the ways of salvation. But we never have certain marks for recognizing this
+term, and we are never justified in considering a man utterly abandoned:
+that would be to pass a rash judgement. It were better always to have room
+for hope; and this is an occasion, with a thousand others, where our
+ignorance is beneficial.
+
+  _Prudens futuri temporis exitum_
+  _Caliginosa nocte premit Deus_.
+
+58. The whole future is doubtless determined: but since we know not what it
+is, nor what is foreseen or resolved, we must do our duty, according to the
+reason that God has given us and according to the rules that he has
+prescribed for us; and thereafter we must have a quiet mind, and leave to
+God himself the care for the outcome. For he will never fail to do that
+which shall be the best, not only in general but also in particular, for
+those who have true confidence in him, that is, a confidence composed [155]
+of true piety, a lively faith and fervent charity, by virtue of which we
+will, as far as in us lies, neglect nothing appertaining to our duty and
+his service. It is true that we cannot 'render service' to him, for he has
+need of nothing: but it is 'serving him', in our parlance, when we strive
+to carry out his presumptive will, co-operating in the good as it is known
+to us, wherever we can contribute thereto. For we must always presume that
+God is prompted towards the good we know, until the event shows us that he
+had stronger reasons, although perhaps unknown to us, which have made him
+subordinate this good that we sought to some other greater good of his own
+designing, which he has not failed or will not fail to effect.
+
+59. I have just shown how the action of the will depends upon its causes;
+that there is nothing so appropriate to human nature as this dependence of
+our actions; and that otherwise one would slip into a preposterous and
+unendurable fatality, namely into the _Fatum Mahometanum_, which is the
+worst of all because it overthrows foresight and good counsel. It is well
+to show, notwithstanding, how this dependence of voluntary actions does not
+fundamentally preclude the existence within us of a wonderful
+_spontaneity_, which in a certain sense makes the soul in its resolves
+independent of the physical influence of all other creatures. This
+spontaneity, hitherto little recognized, which exalts our command over our
+actions to the highest pitch, is a consequence of the System of
+Pre-established Harmony, of which I must give some explanation here. The
+Scholastic philosophers believed that there was a reciprocal physical
+influence between body and soul: but since it has been recognized that
+thought and dimensional mass have no mutual connexion, and that they are
+creatures differing _toto genere_, many moderns have acknowledged that
+there is no _physical communication_ between soul and body, despite the
+_metaphysical communication_ always subsisting, which causes soul and body
+to compose one and the same _suppositum_, or what is called a person. This
+physical communication, if there were such, would cause the soul to change
+the degree of speed and the directional line of some motions that are in
+the body, and _vice versa_ the body to change the sequence of the thoughts
+that are in the soul. But this effect cannot be inferred from any notion
+conceived in the body and in the soul; though nothing be better known to us
+than the soul, since it is inmost to us, that is to say inmost to itself.
+
+                                                                      [156]
+60. M. Descartes wished to compromise and to make a part of the body's
+action dependent upon the soul. He believed in the existence of a rule of
+Nature to the effect, according to him, that the same quantity of movement
+is conserved in bodies. He deemed it not possible that the influence of the
+soul should violate this law of bodies, but he believed that the soul
+notwithstanding might have power to change the direction of the movements
+that are made in the body; much as a rider, though giving no force to the
+horse he mounts, nevertheless controls it by guiding that force in any
+direction he pleases. But as that is done by means of the bridle, the bit,
+the spurs and other material aids, it is conceivable how that can be; there
+are, however, no instruments such as the soul may employ for this result,
+nothing indeed either in the soul or in the body, that is, either in
+thought or in the mass, which may serve to explain this change of the one
+by the other. In a word, that the soul should change the quantity of force
+and that it should change the line of direction, both these things are
+equally inexplicable.
+
+61. Moreover, two important truths on this subject have been discovered
+since M. Descartes' day. The first is that the quantity of absolute force
+which is in fact conserved is different from the quantity of movement, as I
+have demonstrated elsewhere. The second discovery is that the same
+direction is still conserved in all bodies together that are assumed as
+interacting, in whatever way they come into collision. If this rule had
+been known to M. Descartes, he would have taken the direction of bodies to
+be as independent of the soul as their force; and I believe that that would
+have led direct to the Hypothesis of Pre-established Harmony, whither these
+same rules have led me. For apart from the fact that the physical influence
+of one of these substances on the other is inexplicable, I recognized that
+without a complete derangement of the laws of Nature the soul could not act
+physically upon the body. And I did not believe that one could here listen
+to philosophers, competent in other respects, who produce a God, as it
+were, _ex machina_, to bring about the final solution of the piece,
+maintaining that God exerts himself deliberately to move bodies as the soul
+pleases, and to give perceptions to the soul as the body requires. For this
+system, which is called that of _occasional causes_ (because it teaches
+that God acts on the body at the instance of the soul, and _vice versa_),
+besides introducing perpetual miracles to establish communication     [157]
+between these two substances, does not obviate the derangement of the
+natural laws obtaining in each of these same substances, which, in the
+general opinion, their mutual influence would cause.
+
+62. Being on other considerations already convinced of the principle of
+Harmony in general, I was in consequence convinced likewise of the
+_preformation_ and the Pre-established Harmony of all things amongst
+themselves, of that between nature and grace, between the decrees of God
+and our actions foreseen, between all parts of matter, and even between the
+future and the past, the whole in conformity with the sovereign wisdom of
+God, whose works are the most harmonious it is possible to conceive. Thus I
+could not fail to arrive at the system which declares that God created the
+soul in the beginning in such a fashion that it must produce and represent
+to itself successively that which takes place within the body, and the body
+also in such a fashion that it must do of itself that which the soul
+ordains. Consequently the laws that connect the thoughts of the soul in the
+order of final causes and in accordance with the evolution of perceptions
+must produce pictures that meet and harmonize with the impressions of
+bodies on our organs; and likewise the laws of movements in the body, which
+follow one another in the order of efficient causes, meet and so harmonize
+with the thoughts of the soul that the body is induced to act at the time
+when the soul wills it.
+
+63. Far from its being prejudicial, nothing can be more favourable to
+freedom than that system. And M. Jacquelot has demonstrated well in his
+book on the _Conformity of Faith with Reason_, that it is just as if he who
+knows all that I shall order a servant to do the whole day long on the
+morrow made an automaton entirely resembling this servant, to carry out
+to-morrow at the right moment all that I should order; and yet that would
+not prevent me from ordering freely all that I should please, although the
+action of the automaton that would serve me would not be in the least free.
+
+64. Moreover, since all that passes in the soul depends, according to this
+system, only upon the soul, and its subsequent state is derived only from
+it and from its present state, how can one give it a greater
+_independence_? It is true that there still remains some imperfection in
+the constitution of the soul. All that happens to the soul depends upon it,
+but depends not always upon its will; that were too much. Nor are such[158]
+happenings even recognized always by its understanding or perceived with
+distinctness. For there is in the soul not only an order of distinct
+perceptions, forming its dominion, but also a series of confused
+perceptions or passions, forming its bondage: and there is no need for
+astonishment at that; the soul would be a Divinity if it had none but
+distinct perceptions. It has nevertheless some power over these confused
+perceptions also, even if in an indirect manner. For although it cannot
+change its passions forthwith, it can work from afar towards that end with
+enough success, and endue itself with new passions and even habits. It even
+has a like power over the more distinct perceptions, being able to endue
+itself indirectly with opinions and intentions, and to hinder itself from
+having this one or that, and stay or hasten its judgement. For we can seek
+means beforehand to arrest ourselves, when occasion arises, on the sliding
+step of a rash judgement; we can find some incident to justify postponement
+of our resolution even at the moment when the matter appears ready to be
+judged. Although our opinion and our act of willing be not directly objects
+of our will (as I have already observed), one sometimes, takes measures
+nevertheless, to will and even to believe in due time, that which one does
+not will, or believe, now. So great is the profundity of the spirit of man.
+
+65. And now, to bring to a conclusion this question of _spontaneity_, it
+must be said that, on a rigorous definition, the soul has within it the
+principle of all its actions, and even of all its passions, and that the
+same is true in all the simple substances scattered throughout Nature,
+although there be freedom only in those that are intelligent. In the
+popular sense notwithstanding, speaking in accordance with appearances, we
+must say that the soul depends in some way upon the body and upon the
+impressions of the senses: much as we speak with Ptolemy and Tycho in
+everyday converse, and think with Copernicus, when it is a question of the
+rising and the setting of the sun.
+
+66. One may however give a true and philosophic sense to this _mutual
+dependence_ which we suppose between the soul and the body. It is that the
+one of these two substances depends upon the other ideally, in so far as
+the reason of that which is done in the one can be furnished by that which
+is in the other. This had already happened when God ordered beforehand the
+harmony that there would be between them. Even so would that          [159]
+automaton, that should fulfil the servant's function, depend upon me
+_ideally_, in virtue of the knowledge of him who, foreseeing my future
+orders, would have rendered it capable of serving me at the right moment
+all through the morrow. The knowledge of my future intentions would have
+actuated this great craftsman, who would accordingly have fashioned the
+automaton: my influence would be objective, and his physical. For in so far
+as the soul has perfection and distinct thoughts, God has accommodated the
+body to the soul, and has arranged beforehand that the body is impelled to
+execute its orders. And in so far as the soul is imperfect and as its
+perceptions are confused, God has accommodated the soul to the body, in
+such sort that the soul is swayed by the passions arising out of corporeal
+representations. This produces the same effect and the same appearance as
+if the one depended immediately upon the other, and by the agency of a
+physical influence. Properly speaking, it is by its confused thoughts that
+the soul represents the bodies which encompass it. The same thing must
+apply to all that we understand by the actions of simple substances one
+upon another. For each one is assumed to act upon the other in proportion
+to its perfection, although this be only ideally, and in the reasons of
+things, as God in the beginning ordered one substance to accord with
+another in proportion to the perfection or imperfection that there is in
+each. (Withal action and passion are always reciprocal in creatures,
+because one part of the reasons which serve to explain clearly what is
+done, and which have served to bring it into existence, is in the one of
+these substances, and another part of these reasons is in the other,
+perfections and imperfections being always mingled and shared.) Thus it is
+we attribute _action_ to the one, and _passion_ to the other.
+
+67. But after all, whatsoever dependence be conceived in voluntary actions,
+and even though there were an absolute and mathematical necessity (which
+there is not) it would not follow that there would not be a sufficient
+degree of freedom to render rewards and punishments just and reasonable. It
+is true that generally we speak as though the necessity of the action put
+an end to all merit and all demerit, all justification for praise and
+blame, for reward and punishment: but it must be admitted that this
+conclusion is not entirely correct. I am very far from sharing the opinions
+of Bradwardine, Wyclif, Hobbes and Spinoza, who advocate, so it seems,[160]
+this entirely mathematical necessity, which I think I have adequately
+refuted, and perhaps more clearly than is customary. Yet one must always
+bear testimony to the truth and not impute to a dogma anything that does
+not result from it. Moreover, these arguments prove too much, since they
+would prove just as much against hypothetical necessity, and would justify
+the lazy sophism. For the absolute necessity of the sequence of causes
+would in this matter add nothing to the infallible certainty of a
+hypothetical necessity.
+
+68. In the first place, therefore, it must be agreed that it is permitted
+to kill a madman when one cannot by other means defend oneself. It will be
+granted also that it is permitted, and often even necessary, to destroy
+venomous or very noxious animals, although they be not so by their own
+fault.
+
+69. Secondly, one inflicts punishments upon a beast, despite its lack of
+reason and freedom, when one deems that this may serve to correct it: thus
+one punishes dogs and horses, and indeed with much success. Rewards serve
+us no less in the managing of animals: when an animal is hungry, the food
+that is given to him causes him to do what otherwise would never be
+obtained from him.
+
+70. Thirdly, one would inflict even on beasts capital punishments (where it
+is no longer a question of correcting the beast that is punished) if this
+punishment could serve as an example, or inspire terror in others, to make
+them cease from evil doing. Rorarius, in his book on reason in beasts, says
+that in Africa they crucified lions, in order to drive away other lions
+from the towns and frequented places, and that he had observed in passing
+through the province of Juelich that they hanged wolves there in order to
+ensure greater safety for the sheepfolds. There are people in the villages
+also who nail birds of prey to the doors of houses, with the idea that
+other birds of the same kind will then not so readily appear. These
+measures would always be justified if they were of any avail.
+
+71. Then, in the fourth place, since experience proves that the fear of
+chastisements and the hope of rewards serves to make men abstain from evil
+and strive to do good, one would have good reason to avail oneself of such,
+even though men were acting under necessity, whatever the necessity might
+be. The objection will be raised that if good or evil is necessary it is
+useless to avail oneself of means to obtain it or to hinder it: but the
+answer has already been given above in the passage combating the lazy [161]
+sophism. If good or evil were a necessity without these means, then such
+means would be unavailing; but it is not so. These goods and evils come
+only with the aid of these means, and if these results were necessary the
+means would be a part of the causes rendering them necessary, since
+experience teaches us that often fear or hope hinders evil or advances
+good. This objection, then, differs hardly at all from the lazy sophism,
+which we raise against the certainty as well as the necessity of future
+events. Thus one may say that these objections are directed equally against
+hypothetical necessity and absolute necessity, and that they prove as much
+against the one as against the other, that is to say, nothing at all.
+
+72. There was a great dispute between Bishop Bramhall and Mr. Hobbes, which
+began when they were both in Paris, and which was continued after their
+return to England; all the parts of it are to be found collected in a
+quarto volume published in London in the year 1656. They are all in
+English, and have not been translated as far as I know, nor inserted in the
+Collection of Works in Latin by Mr. Hobbes. I had already read these
+writings, and have obtained them again since. And I had observed at the
+outset that he had not at all proved the absolute necessity of all things,
+but had shown sufficiently that necessity would not overthrow all the rules
+of divine or human justice, and would not prevent altogether the exercise
+of this virtue.
+
+73. There is, however, a kind of justice and a certain sort of rewards and
+of punishments which appear not so applicable to those who should act by an
+absolute necessity, supposing such necessity existed. It is that kind of
+justice which has for its goal neither improvement nor example, nor even
+redress of the evil. This justice has its foundation only in the fitness of
+things, which demands a certain satisfaction for the expiation of an evil
+action. The Socinians, Hobbes and some others do not admit this punitive
+justice, which properly speaking is avenging justice. God reserves it for
+himself in many cases; but he does not fail to grant it to those who are
+entitled to govern others, and he exercises it through their agency,
+provided that they act under the influence of reason and not of passion.
+The Socinians believe it to be without foundation, but it always has some
+foundation in that fitness of things which gives satisfaction not only to
+the injured but also to the wise who see it; even as a beautiful piece of
+music, or again a good piece of architecture, satisfies cultivated    [162]
+minds. And the wise lawgiver having threatened, and having, so to speak,
+promised a chastisement, it befits his consistency not to leave the action
+completely unpunished, even though the punishment would no longer avail to
+correct anyone. But even though he should have promised nothing, it is
+enough that there is a fitness of things which could have prompted him to
+make this promise, since the wise man likewise promises only that which is
+fitting. And one may even say that there is here a certain compensation of
+the mind, which would be scandalized by disorder if the chastisement did
+not contribute towards restoring order. One can also consult what Grotius
+wrote against the Socinians, of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ, and the
+answer of Crellius thereto.
+
+74. Thus it is that the pains of the damned continue, even when they no
+longer serve to turn them away from evil, and that likewise the rewards of
+the blessed continue, even when they no longer serve for strengthening them
+in good. One may say nevertheless that the damned ever bring upon
+themselves new pains through new sins, and that the blessed ever bring upon
+themselves new joys by new progress in goodness: for both are founded on
+the _principle of the fitness of things_, which has seen to it that affairs
+were so ordered that the evil action must bring upon itself a chastisement.
+There is good reason to believe, following the parallelism of the two
+realms, that of final causes and that of efficient causes, that God has
+established in the universe a connexion between punishment or reward and
+bad or good action, in accordance wherewith the first should always be
+attracted by the second, and virtue and vice obtain their reward and their
+punishment in consequence of the natural sequence of things, which contains
+still another kind of pre-established harmony than that which appears in
+the communication between the soul and the body. For, in a word, all that
+God does, as I have said already, is harmonious to perfection. Perhaps then
+this principle of the fitness of things would no longer apply to beings
+acting without true freedom or exemption from absolute necessity; and in
+that case corrective justice alone would be administered, and not punitive
+justice. That is the opinion of the famous Conringius, in a dissertation he
+published on what is just. And indeed, the reasons Pomponazzi employed in
+his book on fate, to prove the usefulness of chastisements and rewards,
+even though all should come about in our actions by a fatal necessity,[163]
+concern only amendment and not satisfaction, [Greek: kolasin ou timorian].
+Moreover, it is only for the sake of outward appearances that one destroys
+animals accessary to certain crimes, as one razes the houses of rebels,
+that is, to inspire terror. Thus it is an act of corrective justice,
+wherein punitive justice has no part at all.
+
+75. But we will not amuse ourselves now by discussing a question more
+curious than necessary, since we have shown sufficiently that there is no
+such necessity in voluntary actions. Nevertheless it was well to show that
+_imperfect freedom_ alone, that is, freedom which is exempt only from
+constraint, would suffice as foundation for chastisements and rewards of
+the kind conducive to the avoidance of evil, and to amendment. One sees
+also from this that some persons of intelligence, who persuade themselves
+that everything is necessary, are wrong in saying that none must be praised
+or blamed, rewarded or punished. Apparently they say so only to exercise
+their wit: the pretext is that all being necessary nothing would be in our
+power. But this pretext is ill founded: necessary actions would be still in
+our power, at least in so far as we could perform them or omit them, when
+the hope or the fear of praise or blame, of pleasure or pain prompted our
+will thereto, whether they prompted it of necessity, or in prompting it
+they left spontaneity, contingency and freedom all alike unimpaired. Thus
+praise and blame, rewards and punishments would preserve always a large
+part of their use, even though there were a true necessity in our actions.
+We can praise and blame also natural good and bad qualities, where the will
+has no part--in a horse, in a diamond, in a man; and he who said of Cato of
+Utica that he acted virtuously through the goodness of his nature, and that
+it was impossible for him to behave otherwise, thought to praise him the
+more.
+
+76. The difficulties which I have endeavoured up to now to remove have been
+almost all common to natural and revealed theology. Now it will be
+necessary to come to a question of revealed theology, concerning the
+election or the reprobation of men, with the dispensation or use of divine
+grace in connexion with these acts of the mercy or the justice of God. But
+when I answered the preceding objections, I opened up a way to meet those
+that remain. This confirms the observation I made thereon (_Preliminary
+Dissertation,_ 43) that there is rather a conflict between the true   [164]
+reasons of natural theology and the false reasons of human appearances,
+than between revealed faith and reason. For on this subject scarcely any
+difficulty arises that is new, and not deriving its origin from those which
+can be placed in the way of the truths discerned by reason.
+
+77. Now as theologians of all parties are divided among themselves on this
+subject of predestination and grace, and often give different answers to
+the same objections, according to their various principles, one cannot
+avoid touching on the differences which prevail among them. One may say in
+general that some look upon God more metaphysically and others more
+morally: and it has already been stated on other occasions that the
+Counter-Remonstrants took the first course and the Remonstrants the second.
+But to act rightly we must affirm alike on one side the independence of God
+and the dependence of creatures, and on the other side the justice and
+goodness of God, which makes him dependent upon himself, his will upon his
+understanding or his wisdom.
+
+78. Some gifted and well-intentioned authors, desiring to show the force of
+the reasons advocated by the two principal parties, in order to persuade
+them to a mutual tolerance, deem that the whole controversy is reduced to
+this essential point, namely: What was God's principal aim in making his
+decrees with regard to man? Did he make them solely in order to show forth
+his glory by manifesting his attributes, and forming, to that end, the
+great plan of creation and providence? Or has he had regard rather to the
+voluntary movements of intelligent substances which he designed to create,
+considering what they would will and do in the different circumstances and
+situations wherein he might place them, so as to form a fitting resolve
+thereupon? It appears to me that the two answers to this great question
+thus given as opposites to one another are easy to reconcile, and that in
+consequence the two parties would be agreed in principle, without any need
+of tolerance, if all were reduced to this point. In truth God, in designing
+to create the world, purposed solely to manifest and communicate his
+perfections in the way that was most efficacious, and most worthy of his
+greatness, his wisdom and his goodness. But that very purpose pledged him
+to consider all the actions of creatures while still in the state of pure
+possibility, that he might form the most fitting plan. He is like a great
+architect whose aim in view is the satisfaction or the glory of having[165]
+built a beautiful palace, and who considers all that is to enter into this
+construction: the form and the materials, the place, the situation, the
+means, the workmen, the expense, before he forms a complete resolve. For a
+wise person in laying his plans cannot separate the end from the means; he
+does not contemplate any end without knowing if there are means of
+attaining thereto.
+
+79. I know not whether there are also perchance persons who imagine that,
+God being the absolute master of all things, one can thence infer that
+everything outside him is indifferent to him, that he considers himself
+alone, without concern for others, and that thus he has made some happy and
+others unhappy without any cause, without choice, without reason. But to
+teach so about God were to deprive him of wisdom and of goodness. We need
+only observe that he considers himself and neglects nothing of what he owes
+to himself, to conclude that he considers his creatures also, and that he
+uses them in the manner most consistent with order. For the more a great
+and good prince is mindful of his glory, the more he will think of making
+his subjects happy, even though he were the most absolute of all monarchs,
+and though his subjects were slaves from birth, bondsmen (in lawyers'
+parlance), people entirely in subjection to arbitrary power. Calvin himself
+and some others of the greatest defenders of the absolute decree rightly
+maintained that God had _great and just reasons_ for his election and the
+dispensation of his grace, although these reasons be unknown to us in
+detail: and we must judge charitably that the most rigid predestinators
+have too much reason and too much piety to depart from this opinion.
+
+80. There will therefore be no argument for debate on that point (as I
+hope) with people who are at all reasonable. But there will always be
+argument among those who are called Universalists and Particularists,
+according to what they teach of the grace and the will of God. Yet I am
+somewhat inclined to believe that the heated dispute between them on the
+will of God to save all men, and on that which depends upon it (when one
+keeps separate the doctrine _de Auxiliis_, or of the assistance of grace),
+rests rather in expressions than in things. For it is sufficient to
+consider that God, as well as every wise and beneficent mind, is inclined
+towards all possible good, and that this inclination is proportionate to
+the excellence of the good. Moreover, this results (if we take the    [166]
+matter precisely and in itself) from an 'antecedent will', as it is termed,
+which, however, is not always followed by its complete effect, because this
+wise mind must have many other inclinations besides. Thus it is the result
+of all the inclinations together that makes his will complete and
+decretory, as I have already explained. One may therefore very well say
+with ancient writers that God wills to save all men according to his
+antecedent will, but not according to his consequent will, which never
+fails to be followed by its effect. And if those who deny this universal
+will do not allow that the antecedent inclination be called a will, they
+are only troubling themselves about a question of name.
+
+81. But there is a question more serious in regard to predestination to
+eternal life and to all other destination by God, to wit, whether this
+destination is absolute or respective. There is destination to good and
+destination to evil; and as evil is moral or physical, theologians of all
+parties agree that there is no destination to moral evil, that is to say,
+that none is destined to sin. As for the greatest physical evil, which is
+damnation, one can distinguish between destination and predestination: for
+predestination appears to contain within itself an absolute destination,
+which is anterior to the consideration of the good or evil actions of those
+whom it concerns. Thus one may say that the reprobate are _destined_ to be
+condemned, because they are known to be impenitent. But it cannot so well
+be said that the reprobate are _predestined_ to damnation: for there is no
+_absolute_ reprobation, its foundation being final foreseen impenitence.
+
+82. It is true that there are writers who maintain that God, wishing to
+manifest his mercy and his justice in accordance with reasons worthy of
+him, but unknown to us, chose the elect, and in consequence rejected the
+damned, prior to all thought of sin, even of Adam, that after this resolve
+he thought fit to permit sin in order to be able to exercise these two
+virtues, and that he has bestowed grace in Jesus Christ to some in order to
+save them, while he has refused it to others in order to be able to punish
+them. Hence these writers are named 'Supralapsarians', because the decree
+to punish precedes, according to them, the knowledge of the future
+existence of sin. But the opinion most common to-day amongst those who are
+called Reformed, and one that is favoured by the Synod of Dordrecht, is
+that of the 'Infralapsarians', corresponding somewhat to the conception of
+St. Augustine. For he asserts that God having resolved to permit the  [167]
+sin of Adam and the corruption of the human race, for reasons just but
+hidden, his mercy made him choose some of the corrupt mass to be freely
+saved by the merit of Jesus Christ, and his justice made him resolve to
+punish the others by the damnation that they deserved. That is why, with
+the Schoolmen, only the saved were called _Praedestinati_ and the damned
+were called _Praesciti_. It must be admitted that some Infralapsarians and
+others speak sometimes of predestination to damnation, following the
+example of Fulgentius and of St. Augustine himself: but that signifies the
+same as destination to them, and it avails nothing to wrangle about words.
+That pretext, notwithstanding, was in time past used for maltreating that
+Godescalc who caused a stir about the middle of the ninth century, and who
+took the name of Fulgentius to indicate that he followed that author.
+
+83. As for the destination of the elect to eternal life, the Protestants,
+as well as those of the Roman Church, dispute much among themselves as to
+whether election is absolute or is founded on the prevision of final living
+faith. Those who are called Evangelicals, that is, those of the Augsburg
+Confession, hold the latter opinion: they believe that one need not go into
+the hidden causes of election while one may find a manifest cause of it
+shown in Holy Scripture, which is faith in Jesus Christ; and it appears to
+them that the prevision of the cause is also the cause of the prevision of
+the effect. Those who are called Reformed are of a different opinion: they
+admit that salvation comes from faith in Jesus Christ, but they observe
+that often the cause anterior to the effect in execution is posterior in
+intention, as when the cause is the means and the effect is the end. Thus
+the question is, whether faith or salvation is anterior in the intention of
+God, that is, whether God's design is rather to save man than to make him a
+believer.
+
+84. Hence we see that the question between the Supralapsarians and the
+Infralapsarians in part, and again between them and the Evangelicals, comes
+back to a right conception of the order that is in God's decrees. Perhaps
+one might put an end to this dispute at once by saying that, properly
+speaking, all the decrees of God that are here concerned are simultaneous,
+not only in respect of time, as everyone agrees, but also _in signo
+rationis_, or in the order of nature. And indeed, the Formula of Concord,
+building upon some passages of St. Augustine, comprised in the same   [168]
+Decree of Election salvation and the means that conduce to it. To
+demonstrate this synchronism of destinations or of decrees with which we
+are concerned, we must revert to the expedient that I have employed more
+than once, which states that God, before decreeing anything, considered
+among other possible sequences of things that one which he afterwards
+approved. In the idea of this is represented how the first parents sin and
+corrupt their posterity; how Jesus Christ redeems the human race; how some,
+aided by such and such graces, attain to final faith and to salvation; and
+how others, with or without such or other graces, do not attain thereto,
+continue in sin, and are damned. God grants his sanction to this sequence
+only after having entered into all its detail, and thus pronounces nothing
+final as to those who shall be saved or damned without having pondered upon
+everything and compared it with other possible sequences. Thus God's
+pronouncement concerns the whole sequence at the same time; he simply
+decrees its existence. In order to save other men, or in a different way,
+he must needs choose an altogether different sequence, seeing that all is
+connected in each sequence. In this conception of the matter, which is that
+most worthy of the All-wise, all whose actions are connected together to
+the highest possible degree, there would be only one total decree, which is
+to create such a world. This total decree comprises equally all the
+particular decrees, without setting one of them before or after another.
+Yet one may say also that each particular act of antecedent will entering
+into the total result has its value and order, in proportion to the good
+whereto this act inclines. But these acts of antecedent will are not called
+decrees, since they are not yet inevitable, the outcome depending upon the
+total result. According to this conception of things, all the difficulties
+that can here be made amount to the same as those I have already stated and
+removed in my inquiry concerning the origin of evil.
+
+85. There remains only one important matter of discussion, which has its
+peculiar difficulties. It is that of the dispensation of the means and
+circumstances contributing to salvation and to damnation. This comprises
+amongst others the subject of the Aids of Grace (_de auxiliis gratiae_), on
+which Rome (since the Congregation _de Auxiliis_ under Clement VIII, when a
+debate took place between the Dominicans and the Jesuits) does not readily
+permit books to be published. Everyone must agree that God is         [169]
+altogether good and just, that his goodness makes him contribute the least
+possible to that which can render men guilty, and the most possible to that
+which serves to save them (possible, I say, subject to the general order of
+things); that his justice prevents him from condemning innocent men, and
+from leaving good actions without reward; and that he even keeps an exact
+proportion in punishments and rewards. Nevertheless, this idea that one
+should have of the goodness and the justice of God does not appear enough
+in what we know of his actions with regard to the salvation and the
+damnation of men: and it is that which makes difficulties concerning sin
+and its remedies.
+
+86. The first difficulty is how the soul could be infected with original
+sin, which is the root of actual sins, without injustice on God's part in
+exposing the soul thereto. This difficulty has given rise to three opinions
+on the origin of the soul itself. The first is that of the _pre-existence
+of human souls_ in another world or in another life, where they had sinned
+and on that account had been condemned to this prison of the human body, an
+opinion of the Platonists which is attributed to Origen and which even
+to-day finds adherents. Henry More, an English scholar, advocated something
+like this dogma in a book written with that express purpose. Some of those
+who affirm this pre-existence have gone as far as metempsychosis. The
+younger van Helmont held this opinion, and the ingenious author of some
+metaphysical _Meditations_, published in 1678 under the name of William
+Wander, appears to have some leaning towards it. The second opinion is that
+of _Traduction_, as if the soul of children were engendered (_per
+traducem_) from the soul or souls of those from whom the body is
+engendered. St. Augustine inclined to this judgement the better to explain
+original sin. This doctrine is taught also by most of the theologians of
+the Augsburg Confession. Nevertheless it is not completely established
+among them, since the Universities of Jena and Helmstedt, and others
+besides, have long been opposed to it. The third opinion, and that most
+widely accepted to-day, is that of _Creation_: it is taught in the majority
+of the Christian Schools, but it is fraught with the greatest difficulty in
+respect of original sin.
+
+87. Into this controversy of theologians on the origin of the human soul
+has entered the philosophic dispute on _the origin of forms._ Aristotle and
+scholastic philosophy after him called _Form_ that which is a         [170]
+principle of action and is found in that which acts. This inward principle
+is either substantial, being then termed 'Soul', when it is in an organic
+body, or accidental, and customarily termed 'Quality'. The same philosopher
+gave to the soul the generic name of 'Entelechy' or _Act_. This word
+'Entelechy' apparently takes its origin from the Greek word signifying
+'perfect', and hence the celebrated Ermolao Barbaro expressed it literally
+in Latin by _perfectihabia_: for Act is a realization of potency. And he
+had no need to consult the Devil, as men say he did, in order to learn
+that. Now the Philosopher of Stagira supposes that there are two kinds of
+Act, the permanent act and the successive act. The permanent or lasting act
+is nothing but the Substantial or Accidental Form: the substantial form (as
+for example the soul) is altogether permanent, at least according to my
+judgement, and the accidental is only so for a time. But the altogether
+momentary act, whose nature is transitory, consists in action itself. I
+have shown elsewhere that the notion of Entelechy is not altogether to be
+scorned, and that, being permanent, it carries with it not only a mere
+faculty for action, but also that which is called 'force', 'effort',
+'conatus', from which action itself must follow if nothing prevents it.
+Faculty is only an _attribute_, or rather sometimes a mode; but force, when
+it is not an ingredient of substance itself (that is, force which is not
+primitive but derivative), is a _quality_, which is distinct and separable
+from substance. I have shown also how one may suppose that the soul is a
+primitive force which is modified and varied by derivative forces or
+qualities, and exercised in actions.
+
+88. Now philosophers have troubled themselves exceedingly on the question
+of the origin of substantial forms. For to say that the compound of form
+and matter is produced and that the form is only _comproduced_ means
+nothing. The common opinion was that forms were derived from the potency of
+matter, this being called _Eduction_. That also meant in fact nothing, but
+it was explained in a sense by a comparison with shapes: for that of a
+statue is produced only by removal of the superfluous marble. This
+comparison might be valid if form consisted in a mere limitation, as in the
+case of shape. Some have thought that forms were sent from heaven, and even
+created expressly, when bodies were produced. Julius Scaliger hinted that
+it was possible that forms were rather derived from the active potency of
+the efficient cause (that is to say, either from that of God in the   [171]
+case of Creation or from that of other forms in the case of generation),
+than from the passive potency of matter. And that, in the case of
+generation, meant a return to traduction. Daniel Sennert, a famous doctor
+and physicist at Wittenberg, cherished this opinion, particularly in
+relation to animate bodies which are multiplied through seed. A certain
+Julius Caesar della Galla, an Italian living in the Low Countries, and a
+doctor of Groningen named Johan Freitag wrote with much vehemence in
+opposition to Sennert. Johann Sperling, a professor at Wittenberg, made a
+defence of his master, and finally came into conflict with Johann Zeisold,
+a professor at Jena, who upheld the belief that the human soul is created.
+
+89. But traduction and eduction are equally inexplicable when it is a
+question of finding the origin of the soul. It is not the same with
+accidental forms, since they are only modifications of the substance, and
+their origin may be explained by eduction, that is, by variation of
+limitations, in the same way as the origin of shapes. But it is quite
+another matter when we are concerned with the origin of a substance, whose
+beginning and destruction are equally difficult to explain. Sennert and
+Sperling did not venture to admit the subsistence and the indestructibility
+of the souls of beasts or of other primitive forms, although they allowed
+that they were indivisible and immaterial. But the fact is that they
+confused indestructibility with immortality, whereby is understood in the
+case of man that not only the soul but also the personality subsists. In
+saying that the soul of man is immortal one implies the subsistence of what
+makes the identity of the person, something which retains its moral
+qualities, conserving the _consciousness_, or the reflective inward
+feeling, of what it is: thus it is rendered susceptible to chastisement or
+reward. But this conservation of personality does not occur in the souls of
+beasts: that is why I prefer to say that they are imperishable rather than
+to call them immortal. Yet this misapprehension appears to have been the
+cause of a great inconsistency in the doctrine of the Thomists and of other
+good philosophers: they recognized the immateriality or indivisibility of
+all souls, without being willing to admit their indestructibility, greatly
+to the prejudice of the immortality of the human soul. John Scot, that is,
+the Scotsman (which formerly signified Hibernian or Erigena), a famous
+writer of the time of Louis the Debonair and of his sons, was for the
+conservation of all souls: and I see not why there should be less     [172]
+objection to making the atoms of Epicurus or of Gassendi endure, than to
+affirming the subsistence of all truly simple and indivisible substances,
+which are the sole and true atoms of Nature. And Pythagoras was right in
+saying generally, as Ovid makes him say:
+
+  _Morte carent animae_.
+
+90. Now as I like maxims which hold good and admit of the fewest exceptions
+possible, here is what has appeared to me most reasonable in every sense on
+this important question. I consider that souls and simple substances
+altogether cannot begin except by creation, or end except by annihilation.
+Moreover, as the formation of organic animate bodies appears explicable in
+the order of nature only when one assumes a _preformation_ already organic,
+I have thence inferred that what we call generation of an animal is only a
+transformation and augmentation. Thus, since the same body was already
+furnished with organs, it is to be supposed that it was already animate,
+and that it had the same soul: so I assume _vice versa_, from the
+conservation of the soul when once it is created, that the animal is also
+conserved, and that apparent death is only an envelopment, there being no
+likelihood that in the order of nature souls exist entirely separated from
+all body, or that what does not begin naturally can cease through natural
+forces.
+
+91. Considering that so admirable an order and rules so general are
+established in regard to animals, it does not appear reasonable that man
+should be completely excluded from that order, and that everything in
+relation to his soul should come about in him by miracle. Besides I have
+pointed out repeatedly that it is of the essence of God's wisdom that all
+should be harmonious in his works, and that nature should be parallel with
+grace. It is thus my belief that those souls which one day shall be human
+souls, like those of other species, have been in the seed, and in the
+progenitors as far back as Adam, and have consequently existed since the
+beginning of things, always in a kind of organic body. On this point it
+seems that M. Swammerdam, Father Malebranche, M. Bayle, Mr. Pitcairne, M.
+Hartsoeker and numerous other very able persons share my opinion. This
+doctrine is also sufficiently confirmed by the microscope observations of
+M. Leeuwenhoek and other good observers. But it also for divers reasons
+appears likely to me that they existed then as sentient or animal     [173]
+souls only, endowed with perception and feeling, and devoid of reason.
+Further I believe that they remained in this state up to the time of the
+generation of the man to whom they were to belong, but that then they
+received reason, whether there be a natural means of raising a sentient
+soul to the degree of a reasoning soul (a thing I find it difficult to
+imagine) or whether God may have given reason to this soul through some
+special operation, or (if you will) by a kind of _transcreation_. This
+latter is easier to admit, inasmuch as revelation teaches much about other
+forms of immediate operation by God upon our souls. This explanation
+appears to remove the obstacles that beset this matter in philosophy or
+theology. For the difficulty of the origin of forms thus disappears
+completely; and besides it is much more appropriate to divine justice to
+give the soul, already corrupted _physically_ or on the animal side by the
+sin of Adam, a new perfection which is reason, than to put a reasoning
+soul, by creation or otherwise, in a body wherein it is to be corrupted
+_morally_.
+
+92. Now the soul being once under the domination of sin, and ready to
+commit sin in actual fact as soon as the man is fit to exercise reason, a
+new question arises, to wit: whether this tendency in a man who has not
+been regenerated by baptism suffices to damn him, even though he should
+never come to commit sin, as may happen, and happens often, whether he die
+before reaching years of discretion or he become dull of sense before he
+has made use of his reason. St. Gregory of Nazianzos is supposed to have
+denied this (_Orat. de Baptismo_); but St. Augustine is for the
+affirmative, and maintains that original sin of itself is sufficient to
+earn the flames of hell, although this opinion is, to say the least, very
+harsh. When I speak here of damnation or of hell, I mean pains, and not
+mere deprivation of supreme felicity; I mean _poenam sensus, non damni_.
+Gregory of Rimini, General of the Augustinians, with a few others followed
+St. Augustine in opposition to the accepted opinion of the Schools of his
+time, and for that reason he was called the torturer of children, _tortor
+infantum_. The Schoolmen, instead of sending them into the flames of hell,
+have assigned to them a special Limbo, where they do not suffer, and are
+only punished by privation of the beatific vision. The Revelations of St.
+Birgitta (as they are called), much esteemed in Rome, also uphold this
+dogma. Salmeron and Molina, and before them Ambrose Catharin and      [174]
+others, grant them a certain natural bliss; and Cardinal Sfondrati, a man
+of learning and piety, who approves this, latterly went so far as to prefer
+in a sense their state, which is the state of happy innocence, to that of a
+sinner saved, as we may see in his _Nodus Praedestinationis Solutus_. That,
+however, seems to go too far. Certainly a soul truly enlightened would not
+wish to sin, even though it could by this means obtain all imaginable
+pleasures. But the case of choosing between sin and true bliss is simply
+chimerical, and it is better to obtain bliss (even after repentance) than
+to be deprived of it for ever.
+
+93. Many prelates and theologians of France who are well pleased to differ
+from Molina, and to join with St. Augustine, seem to incline towards the
+opinion of this great doctor, who condemns to eternal flames children that
+die in the age of innocence before having received baptism. This is what
+appears from the letter mentioned above, written by five distinguished
+prelates of France to Pope Innocent XII, against that posthumous book by
+Cardinal Sfondrati. But therein they did not venture to condemn the
+doctrine of the purely privative punishment of children dying without
+baptism, seeing it approved by the venerable Thomas Aquinas, and by other
+great men. I do not speak of those who are called on one side Jansenists
+and on the other disciples of St. Augustine, for they declare themselves
+entirely and firmly for the opinion of this Father. But it must be
+confessed that this opinion has not sufficient foundation either in reason
+or in Scripture, and that it is outrageously harsh. M. Nicole makes rather
+a poor apology for it in his book on the _Unity of the Church_, written to
+oppose M. Jurieu, although M. Bayle takes his side in chapter 178 of the
+_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III. M. Nicole makes use of
+this pretext, that there are also other dogmas in the Christian religion
+which appear harsh. On the one hand, however, that does not lead to the
+conclusion that these instances of harshness may be multiplied without
+proof; and on the other we must take into account that the other dogmas
+mentioned by M. Nicole, namely original sin and eternity of punishment, are
+only harsh and unjust to outward appearance, while the damnation of
+children dying without actual sin and without regeneration would in truth
+be harsh, since it would be in effect the damning of innocents. For that
+reason I believe that the party which advocates this opinion will never
+altogether have the upper hand in the Roman Church itself. Evangelical[175]
+theologians are accustomed to speak with fair moderation on this question,
+and to surrender these souls to the judgement and the clemency of their
+Creator. Nor do we know all the wonderful ways that God may choose to
+employ for the illumination of souls.
+
+94. One may say that those who condemn for original sin alone, and who
+consequently condemn children dying unbaptized or outside the Covenant,
+fall, in a sense, without being aware of it, into a certain attitude to
+man's inclination and God's foreknowledge which they disapprove in others.
+They will not have it that God should refuse his grace to those whose
+resistance to it he foresees, nor that this expectation and this tendency
+should cause the damnation of these persons: and yet they claim that the
+tendency which constitutes original sin, and in which God foresees that the
+child will sin as soon as he shall reach years of discretion, suffices to
+damn this child beforehand. Those who maintain the one and reject the other
+do not preserve enough uniformity and connexion in their dogmas.
+
+95. There is scarcely less difficulty in the matter of those who reach
+years of discretion and plunge into sin, following the inclination of
+corrupt nature, if they receive not the succour of the grace necessary for
+them to stop on the edge of the precipice, or to drag themselves from the
+abyss wherein they have fallen. For it seems hard to damn them eternally
+for having done that which they had no power to prevent themselves from
+doing. Those that damn even children, who are without discretion, trouble
+themselves even less about adults, and one would say that they have become
+callous through the very expectation of seeing people suffer. But it is not
+the same with other theologians, and I would be rather on the side of those
+who grant to all men a grace sufficient to draw them away from evil,
+provided they have a sufficient tendency to profit by this succour, and not
+to reject it voluntarily. The objection is made that there has been and
+still is a countless multitude of men, among civilized peoples and among
+barbarians, who have never had this knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ
+which is necessary for those who would tread the wonted paths to salvation.
+But without excusing them on the plea of a sin purely philosophical, and
+without stopping at a mere penalty of privation, things for which there is
+no opportunity of discussion here, one may doubt the fact: for how do we
+know whether they do not receive ordinary or extraordinary succour of [176]
+kinds unknown to us? This maxim, _Quod facienti, quod in se est, non
+denegatur gratia necessaria_, appears to me to have eternal truth. Thomas
+Aquinas, Archbishop Bradwardine and others have hinted that, in regard to
+this, something comes to pass of which we are not aware. (Thom. quest. XIV,
+_De Veritate_, artic. XI, ad I et alibi. Bradwardine, _De Causa Dei_, non
+procul ab initio.) And sundry theologians of great authority in the Roman
+Church itself have taught that a sincere act of the love of God above all
+things, when the grace of Jesus Christ arouses it, suffices for salvation.
+Father Francis Xavier answered the Japanese that if their ancestors had
+used well their natural light God would have given them the grace necessary
+for salvation; and the Bishop of Geneva, Francis of Sales, gives full
+approval to this answer (Book 4, _On the Love of God,_ ch. 5).
+
+96. This I pointed out some time ago to the excellent M Pelisson, to show
+him that the Roman Church, going further than the Protestants, does not
+damn utterly those who are outside its communion, and even outside
+Christianity, by using as its only criterion explicit faith. Nor did he
+refute it, properly speaking, in the very kind answer he gave me, and which
+he published in the fourth part of his _Reflexions_, also doing me the
+honour of adding to it my letter. I offered him then for consideration what
+a famous Portuguese theologian, by name Jacques Payva Andradius, envoy to
+the Council of Trent, wrote concerning this, in opposition to Chemnitz,
+during this same Council. And now, without citing many other authors of
+eminence, I will content myself with naming Father Friedrich Spee, the
+Jesuit, one of the most excellent in his Society, who also held this common
+opinion upon the efficacy of the love of God, as is apparent in the preface
+to the admirable book which he wrote in Germany on the Christian virtues.
+He speaks of this observation as of a highly important secret of piety, and
+expatiates with great clearness upon the power of divine love to blot out
+sin, even without the intervention of the Sacraments of the Catholic
+Church, provided one scorn them not, for that would not at all be
+compatible with this love. And a very great personage, whose character was
+one of the most lofty to be found in the Roman Church, was the first to
+make me acquainted with it. Father Spee was of a noble family of Westphalia
+(it may be said in passing) and he died in the odour of sanctity, according
+to the testimony of him who published this book in Cologne with the   [177]
+approval of the Superiors.
+
+97. The memory of this excellent man ought to be still precious to persons
+of knowledge and good sense, because he is the author of the book entitled:
+_Cautio Criminalis circa Processus contra Sagas_, which has caused much
+stir, and has been translated into several languages. I learnt from the
+Grand Elector of Mainz, Johann Philipp von Schonborn, uncle of His Highness
+the present Elector, who walks gloriously in the footsteps of that worthy
+predecessor, the story that follows. That Father was in Franconia when
+there was a frenzy there for burning alleged sorcerers. He accompanied even
+to the pyre many of them, all of whom he recognized as being innocent, from
+their confessions and the researches that he had made thereon. Therefore in
+spite of the danger incurred at that time by one telling the truth in this
+matter, he resolved to compile this work, without however naming himself.
+It bore great fruit and on this matter converted that Elector, at that time
+still a simple canon and afterwards Bishop of Wuerzburg, finally also
+Archbishop of Mainz, who, as soon as he came to power, put an end to these
+burnings. Therein he was followed by the Dukes of Brunswick, and finally by
+the majority of the other princes and states of Germany.
+
+98. This digression appeared to me to be seasonable, because that writer
+deserves to be more widely known. Returning now to the subject I make a
+further observation. Supposing that to-day a knowledge of Jesus Christ
+according to the flesh is absolutely necessary to salvation, as indeed it
+is safest to teach, it will be possible to say that God will give that
+knowledge to all those who do, humanly speaking, that which in them lies,
+even though God must needs give it by a miracle. Moreover, we cannot know
+what passes in souls at the point of death; and if sundry learned and
+serious theologians claim that children receive in baptism a kind of faith,
+although they do not remember it afterwards when they are questioned about
+it, why should one maintain that nothing of a like nature, or even more
+definite, could come about in the dying, whom we cannot interrogate after
+their death? Thus there are countless paths open to God, giving him means
+of satisfying his justice and his goodness: and the only thing one may
+allege against this is that we know not what way he employs; which is far
+from being a valid objection.
+
+                                                                      [178]
+99. Let us pass on to those who lack not power to amend, but good will.
+They are doubtless not to be excused; but there always remains a great
+difficulty concerning God, since it rested with him to give them this same
+good will. He is the master of wills, the hearts of kings and those of all
+other men are in his hand. Holy Scripture goes so far as to say that God at
+times hardened the wicked in order to display his power by punishing them.
+This hardening is not to be taken as meaning that God inspires men with a
+kind of anti-grace, that is, a kind of repugnance to good, or even an
+inclination towards evil, just as the grace that he gives is an inclination
+towards good. It is rather that God, having considered the sequence of
+things that he established, found it fitting, for superior reasons, to
+permit that Pharaoh, for example, should be in such _circumstances_ as
+should increase his wickedness, and divine wisdom willed to derive a good
+from this evil.
+
+100. Thus it all often comes down to _circumstances_, which form a part of
+the combination of things. There are countless examples of small
+circumstances serving to convert or to pervert. Nothing is more widely
+known than the _Tolle, lege_ (Take and read) cry which St. Augustine heard
+in a neighbouring house, when he was pondering on what side he should take
+among the Christians divided into sects, and saying to himself,
+
+  _Quod vitae sectabor iter?_
+
+This brought him to open at random the book of the Holy Scriptures which he
+had before him, and to read what came before his eyes: and these were words
+which finally induced him to give up Manichaeism. The good Steno, a Dane,
+who was titular Bishop of Titianopolis, Vicar Apostolic (as they say) of
+Hanover and the region around, when there was a Duke Regent of his
+religion, told us that something of that kind had happened to him. He was a
+great anatomist and deeply versed in natural science; but he unfortunately
+gave up research therein, and from being a great physicist he became a
+mediocre theologian. He would almost listen to nothing more about the
+marvels of Nature, and an express order from the Pope _in virtute sanctae
+obedientiae_ was needed to extract from him the observations M. Thevenot
+asked of him. He told us then that what had greatly helped towards inducing
+him to place himself on the side of the Roman Church had been the voice of
+a lady in Florence, who had cried out to him from a window: 'Go not on[179]
+the side where you are about to go, sir, go on the other side.' 'That voice
+struck me,' he told us, 'because I was just meditating upon religion.' This
+lady knew that he was seeking a man in the house where she was, and, when
+she saw him making his way to the other house, wished to point out where
+his friend's room was.
+
+101. Father John Davidius, the Jesuit, wrote a book entitled _Veridicus
+Christianus_, which is like a kind of _Bibliomancy_, where one takes
+passages at random, after the pattern of the _Tolle, lege_ of St.
+Augustine, and it is like a devotional game. But the chances to which, in
+spite of ourselves, we are subject, play only too large a part in what
+brings salvation to men, or removes it from them. Let us imagine twin
+Polish children, the one taken by the Tartars, sold to the Turks, brought
+to apostasy, plunged in impiety, dying in despair; the other saved by some
+chance, falling then into good hands to be educated properly, permeated by
+the soundest truths of religion, exercised in the virtues that it commends
+to us, dying with all the feelings of a good Christian. One will lament the
+misfortune of the former, prevented perhaps by a slight circumstance from
+being saved like his brother, and one will marvel that this slight chance
+should have decided his fate for eternity.
+
+102. Someone will perchance say that God foresaw by mediate knowledge that
+the former would have been wicked and damned even if he had remained in
+Poland. There are perhaps conjunctures wherein something of the kind takes
+place. But will it therefore be said that this is a general rule, and that
+not one of those who were damned amongst the pagans would have been saved
+if he had been amongst Christians? Would that not be to contradict our
+Lord, who said that Tyre and Sidon would have profited better by his
+preaching, if they had had the good fortune to hear it, than Capernaum?
+
+103. But were one to admit even here this use of mediate knowledge against
+all appearances, this knowledge still implies that God considers what a man
+would do in such and such circumstances; and it always remains true that
+God could have placed him in other circumstances more favourable, and given
+him inward or outward succour capable of vanquishing the most abysmal
+wickedness existing in any soul. I shall be told that God is not bound to
+do so, but that is not enough; it must be added that greater reasons
+prevent him from making all his goodness felt by all. Thus there must [180]
+needs be choice; but I do not think one must seek the reason altogether in
+the good or bad nature of men. For if with some people one assume that God,
+choosing the plan which produces the most good, but which involves sin and
+damnation, has been prompted by his wisdom to choose the best natures in
+order to make them objects of his grace, this grace would not sufficiently
+appear to be a free gift. Accordingly man will be distinguishable by a kind
+of inborn merit, and this assumption seems remote from the principles of
+St. Paul, and even from those of Supreme Reason.
+
+104. It is true that there are reasons for God's choice, and the
+consideration of the object, that is, the nature of man, must needs enter
+therein; but it does not seem that this choice can be subjected to a rule
+such as we are capable of conceiving, and such as may flatter the pride of
+men. Some famous theologians believe that God offers more grace, and in a
+more favourable way, to those whose resistance he foresees will be less,
+and that he abandons the rest to their self-will. We may readily suppose
+that this is often the case, and this expedient, among those which make man
+distinguishable by anything favourable in his nature, is the farthest
+removed from Pelagianism. But I would not venture, notwithstanding, to make
+of it a universal rule. Moreover, that we may not have cause to vaunt
+ourselves, it is necessary that we be ignorant of the reasons for God's
+choice. Those reasons are too diverse to become known to us; and it may be
+that God at times shows the power of his grace by overcoming the most
+obstinate resistance, to the end that none may have cause either to despair
+or to be puffed up. St. Paul, as it would seem, had this in mind when he
+offered himself as an example. God, he said, has had mercy upon me, to give
+a great example of his patience.
+
+105. It may be that fundamentally all men are equally bad, and consequently
+incapable of being distinguished the one from the other through their good
+or less bad natural qualities; but they are not bad all in the same way:
+for there is an inherent individual difference between souls, as the
+Pre-established Harmony proves. Some are more or less inclined towards a
+particular good or a particular evil, or towards their opposites, all in
+accordance with their natural dispositions. But since the general plan of
+the universe, chosen by God for superior reasons, causes men to be in
+different circumstances, those who meet with such as are more         [181]
+favourable to their nature will become more readily the least wicked, the
+most virtuous, the most happy; yet it will be always by aid of the
+influence of that inward grace which God unites with the circumstances.
+Sometimes it even comes to pass, in the progress of human life, that a more
+excellent nature succeeds less, for lack of cultivation or opportunities.
+One may say that men are chosen and ranged not so much according to their
+excellence as according to their conformity with God's plan. Even so it may
+occur that a stone of lesser quality is made use of in a building or in a
+group because it proves to be the particular one for filling a certain gap.
+
+106. But, in fine, all these attempts to find reasons, where there is no
+need to adhere altogether to certain hypotheses, serve only to make clear
+to us that there are a thousand ways of justifying the conduct of God. All
+the disadvantages we see, all the obstacles we meet with, all the
+difficulties one may raise for oneself, are no hindrance to a belief
+founded on reason, even when it cannot stand on conclusive proof, as has
+been shown and will later become more apparent, that there is nothing so
+exalted as the wisdom of God, nothing so just as his judgements, nothing so
+pure as his holiness, and nothing more vast than his goodness.
+
+                                                                      [182]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PART TWO
+
+107. Hitherto I have devoted myself to giving a full and clear exposition
+of this whole subject: and although I have not yet spoken of M. Bayle's
+objections in particular, I have endeavoured to anticipate them, and to
+suggest ways of answering them. But as I have taken upon myself the task of
+meeting them in detail, not only because there will perhaps still be
+passages calling for elucidation, but also because his arguments are
+usually full of wit and erudition, and serve to throw greater light on this
+controversy, it will be well to give an account of the chief objections
+that are dispersed through his works, and to add my answers. At the
+beginning I observed 'that God co-operates in moral evil, and in physical
+evil, and in each of them both morally and physically; and that man
+co-operates therein also morally and physically in a free and active way,
+becoming in consequence subject to blame and punishment'. I have shown also
+that each point has its own difficulty; but the greatest of these lies in
+maintaining that God co-operates morally in moral evil, that is, in sin,
+without being the originator of the sin, and even without being accessary
+thereto.
+
+108. He does this by _permitting_ it justly, and by _directing_ it wisely
+towards the good, as I have shown in a manner that appears tolerably
+intelligible. But as it is here principally that M. Bayle undertakes  [183]
+to discomfit those who maintain that there is nothing in faith which cannot
+be harmonized with reason, it is also here especially I must show that my
+dogmas are fortified (to make use of his own allegory) with a rampart, even
+of reasons, which is able to resist the fire of his strongest batteries. He
+has ranged them against me in chapter 144 of his _Reply to the Questions of
+a Provincial_ (vol. III, p. 812), where he includes the theological
+doctrine in seven propositions and opposes thereto nineteen philosophic
+maxims, like so many large cannon capable of breaching my rampart. Let us
+begin with the theological propositions.
+
+109. I. 'God,' he says, 'the Being eternal and necessary, infinitely good,
+holy, wise and powerful, possesses from all eternity a glory and a bliss
+that can never either increase or diminish.' This proposition of M. Bayle's
+is no less philosophical than theological. To say that God possesses a
+'glory' when he is alone, that depends upon the meaning of the term. One
+may say, with some, that glory is the satisfaction one finds in being aware
+of one's own perfections; and in this sense God possesses it always. But
+when glory signifies that others become aware of these perfections, one may
+say that God acquires it only when he reveals himself to intelligent
+creatures; even though it be true that God thereby gains no new good, and
+it is rather the rational creatures who thence derive advantage, when they
+apprehend aright the glory of God.
+
+110. II. 'He resolved freely upon the production of creatures, and he chose
+from among an infinite number of possible beings those whom it pleased him
+to choose, to give them existence, and to compose the universe of them,
+while he left all the rest in nothingness.' This proposition is also, just
+like the preceding one, in close conformity with that part of philosophy
+which is called natural theology. One must dwell a little on what is said
+here, that he chose the possible beings 'whom it pleased him to choose'.
+For it must be borne in mind that when I say, 'that pleases me', it is as
+though I were saying, 'I find it good'. Thus it is the ideal goodness of
+the object which pleases, and which makes me choose it among many others
+which do not please or which please less, that is to say, which contain
+less of that goodness which moves me. Now it is only the genuinely good
+that is capable of pleasing God: and consequently that which pleases God
+most, and which meets his choice, is the best.
+
+                                                                      [184]
+111. III. 'Human nature having been among the Beings that he willed to
+produce, he created a man and a woman, and granted them amongst other
+favours free will, so that they had the power to obey him; but he
+threatened them with death if they should disobey the order that he gave
+them to abstain from a certain fruit.' This proposition is in part
+revealed, and should be admitted without difficulty, provided that _free
+will_ be understood properly, according to the explanation I have given.
+
+112. IV. 'They ate thereof nevertheless, and thenceforth they were
+condemned, they and all their posterity, to the miseries of this life, to
+temporal death and eternal damnation, and made subject to such a tendency
+to sin that they abandoned themselves thereto endlessly and without
+ceasing.' There is reason to suppose that the forbidden action by itself
+entailed these evil results in accordance with a natural effect, and that
+it was for that very reason, and not by a purely arbitrary decree, that God
+had forbidden it: much as one forbids knives to children. The famous Fludde
+or de Fluctibus, an Englishman, once wrote a book _De Vita, Morte et
+Resurrectione_ under the name of R. Otreb, wherein he maintained that the
+fruit of the forbidden tree was a poison: but we cannot enter into this
+detail. It suffices that God forbade a harmful thing; one must not
+therefore suppose that God acted here simply in the character of a
+legislator who enacts a purely positive law, or of a judge who imposes and
+inflicts a punishment by an order of his will, without any connexion
+between the evil of guilt and the evil of punishment. And it is not
+necessary to suppose that God in justifiable annoyance deliberately put a
+corruption in the soul and the body of man, by an extraordinary action, in
+order to punish him: much as the Athenians gave hemlock-juice to their
+criminals. M. Bayle takes the matter thus: he speaks as if the original
+corruption had been put in the soul of the first man by an order and
+operation of God. It is that which calls forth his objection (_Reply to the
+Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 178, p. 1218) 'that reason would
+not commend the monarch who, in order to chastise a rebel, condemned him
+and his descendants to have a tendency towards rebellion'. But this
+chastisement happens naturally to the wicked, without any ordinance of a
+legislator, and they become addicted to evil. If drunkards begot children
+inclined to the same vice, by a natural consequence of what takes place in
+bodies, that would be a punishment of their progenitors, but it would [185]
+not be a penalty of law. There is something comparable to this in the
+consequences of the first man's sin. For the contemplation of divine wisdom
+leads us to believe that the realm of nature serves that of grace; and that
+God as an Architect has done all in a manner befitting God considered as a
+Monarch. We do not sufficiently know the nature of the forbidden fruit, or
+that of the action, or its effects, to judge of the details of this matter:
+nevertheless we must do God justice so far as to believe that it comprised
+something other than what painters depict for us.
+
+113. V. 'It has pleased him by his infinite mercy to deliver a very few men
+from this condemnation; and, leaving them exposed during this life to the
+corruption of sin and misery, he has given them aids which enable them to
+obtain the never-ending bliss of paradise.' Many in the past have doubted,
+as I have already observed, whether the number of the damned is so great as
+is generally supposed; and it appears that they believed in the existence
+of some intermediate state between eternal damnation and perfect bliss. But
+we have no need of these opinions, and it is enough to keep to the ideas
+accepted in the Church. In this connexion it is well to observe that this
+proposition of M. Bayle's is conceived in accordance with the principles of
+sufficient grace, given to all men, and sufficing them provided that they
+have good will. Although M. Bayle holds the opposite opinion, he wished (as
+he states in the margin) to avoid the terms that would not agree with a
+system of decrees subsequent to the prevision of contingent events.
+
+114. VI. 'He foresaw from eternity all that which should happen, he ordered
+all things and placed them each one in its own place, and he guides and
+controls them continually, according to his pleasure. Thus nothing is done
+without his permission or against his will, and he can prevent, as seems
+good to him, as much and as often as seems good to him, all that does not
+please him, and in consequence sin, which is the thing in the world that
+most offends him and that he most detests; and he can produce in each human
+soul all the thoughts that he approves.' This thesis is also purely
+philosophic, that is, recognizable by the light of natural reason. It is
+opportune also, as one has dwelt in thesis II on _that which pleases_, to
+dwell here upon _that which seems good_, that is, upon that which God finds
+good to do. He can avoid or put away as 'seems good to him' all 'that does
+not please him'. Nevertheless it must be borne in mind that some objects of
+his aversion, such as certain evils, and especially sin, which his    [186]
+antecedent will repelled, could only have been rejected by his consequent
+or decretory will, in so far as it was prompted by the rule of the best,
+which the All-wise must choose after having taken all into account. When
+one says 'that sin offends God most, and that he detests it most', these
+are human ways of speaking. God cannot, properly speaking, be _offended_,
+that is, injured, disturbed, disquieted or angered; and he _detests_
+nothing of that which exists, in the sense that to detest something is to
+look upon it with abomination and in a way that causes us disgust, that
+greatly pains and distresses us; for God cannot suffer either vexation, or
+grief or discomfort; he is always altogether content and at ease. Yet these
+expressions in their true sense are justified. The supreme goodness of God
+causes his antecedent will to repel all evil, but moral evil more than any
+other: it only admits evil at all for irresistible superior reasons, and
+with great correctives which repair its ill effects to good advantage. It
+is true also that God could produce in each human soul all the thoughts
+that he approves: but this would be to act by miracles, more than his most
+perfectly conceived plan admits.
+
+115. VII. 'He offers grace to people that he knows are destined not to
+accept it, and so destined by this refusal to make themselves more criminal
+than they would be if he had not offered them that grace; he assures them
+that it is his ardent wish that they accept it, and he does not give them
+the grace which he knows they would accept.' It is true that these people
+become more criminal through their refusal than if one had offered them
+nothing, and that God knows this. Yet it is better to permit their crime
+than to act in a way which would render God himself blameworthy, and
+provide the criminals with some justification for the complaint that it was
+not possible for them to do better, even though they had or might have
+wished it. God desires that they receive such grace from him as they are
+fit to receive, and that they accept it; and he desires to give them in
+particular that grace whose acceptance by them he foresees: but it is
+always by a will antecedent, detached or particular, which cannot always be
+carried out in the general plan of things. This thesis also is among the
+number of those which philosophy establishes no less than revelation, like
+three others of the seven that we have just stated here, the third, fourth
+and fifth being the only ones where revelation is necessary.
+
+                                                                      [187]
+116. Here now are the nineteen philosophic maxims which M. Bayle opposes to
+the seven theological propositions.
+
+I. 'As the infinitely perfect Being finds in himself a glory and a bliss
+that can never either diminish or increase, his goodness alone has
+determined him to create this universe: neither the ambition to be praised,
+nor any interested motive of preserving or augmenting his bliss and his
+glory, has had any part therein.' This maxim is very good: praises of God
+do him no service, but they are of service to the men who praise him, and
+he desired their good. Nevertheless, when one says that _goodness_ alone
+determined God to create this universe, it is well to add that his GOODNESS
+prompted him _antecedently_ to create and to produce all possible good; but
+that his WISDOM made the choice and caused him to select the best
+_consequently_; and finally that his POWER gave him the means to carry out
+_actually_ the great design which he had formed.
+
+117. II. 'The goodness of the infinitely perfect Being is infinite, and
+would not be infinite if one could conceive of a goodness greater than
+this. This characteristic of infinity is proper also to all his other
+perfections, to love of virtue, hatred of vice, etc., they must be the
+greatest one can imagine. (See M. Jurieu in the first three sections of the
+_Judgement on Methods_, where he argues constantly upon this principle, as
+upon a primary notion. See also in Wittich, _De Providentia Dei_, n. 12,
+these words of St. Augustine, lib. I, _De Doctrina Christiana_, c. 7: "Cum
+cogitatur Deus, ita cogitatur, ut aliquid, quo nihil melius sit atque
+sublimius. Et paulo post: Nec quisquam inveniri potest, qui hoc Deum credat
+esse, quo melius aliquid est.")'
+
+This maxim is altogether to my liking, and I draw from it this conclusion,
+that God does the very best possible: otherwise the exercise of his
+goodness would be restricted, and that would be restricting his _goodness_
+itself, if it did not prompt him to the best, if he were lacking in good
+will. Or again it would be restricting his _wisdom_ and his _power_, if he
+lacked the knowledge necessary for discerning the best and for finding the
+means to obtain it, or if he lacked the strength necessary for employing
+these means. There is, however, ambiguity in the assertion that love of
+virtue and hatred of vice are infinite in God: if that were absolutely and
+unreservedly true, in practice there would be no vice in the world. But
+although each one of God's perfections is infinite in itself, it is
+exercised only in proportion to the object and as the nature of things
+prompts it. Thus love of the best in the whole carries the day over   [188]
+all other individual inclinations or hatreds; it is the only impulse whose
+very exercise is absolutely infinite, nothing having power to prevent God
+from declaring himself for the best; and some vice being combined with the
+best possible plan, God permits it.
+
+118. III. 'An infinite goodness having guided the Creator in the production
+of the world, all the characteristics of knowledge, skill, power and
+greatness that are displayed in his work are destined for the happiness of
+intelligent creatures. He wished to show forth his perfections only to the
+end that creatures of this kind should find their felicity in the
+knowledge, the admiration and the love of the Supreme Being.'
+
+This maxim appears to me not sufficiently exact. I grant that the happiness
+of intelligent creatures is the principal part of God's design, for they
+are most like him; but nevertheless I do not see how one can prove that to
+be his sole aim. It is true that the realm of nature must serve the realm
+of grace: but, since all is connected in God's great design, we must
+believe that the realm of grace is also in some way adapted to that of
+nature, so that nature preserves the utmost order and beauty, to render the
+combination of the two the most perfect that can be. And there is no reason
+to suppose that God, for the sake of some lessening of moral evil, would
+reverse the whole order of nature. Each perfection or imperfection in the
+creature has its value, but there is none that has an infinite value. Thus
+the moral or physical good and evil of rational creatures does not
+infinitely exceed the good and evil which is simply metaphysical, namely
+that which lies in the perfection of the other creatures; and yet one would
+be bound to say this if the present maxim were strictly true. When God
+justified to the Prophet Jonah the pardon that he had granted to the
+inhabitants of Nineveh, he even touched upon the interest of the beasts who
+would have been involved in the ruin of this great city. No substance is
+absolutely contemptible or absolutely precious before God. And the abuse or
+the exaggerated extension of the present maxim appears to be in part the
+source of the difficulties that M. Bayle puts forward. It is certain that
+God sets greater store by a man than a lion; nevertheless it can hardly be
+said with certainty that God prefers a single man in all respects to the
+whole of lion-kind. Even should that be so, it would by no means follow
+that the interest of a certain number of men would prevail over the   [189]
+consideration of a general disorder diffused through an infinite number of
+creatures. This opinion would be a remnant of the old and somewhat
+discredited maxim, that all is made solely for man.
+
+119. IV. 'The benefits he imparts to the creatures that are capable of
+felicity tend only to their happiness. He therefore does not permit that
+these should serve to make them unhappy, and, if the wrong use that they
+made of them were capable of destroying them, he would give them sure means
+of always using them well. Otherwise they would not be true benefits, and
+his goodness would be smaller than that we can conceive of in another
+benefactor. (I mean, in a Cause that united with its gifts the sure skill
+to make good use of them.)'
+
+There already is the abuse or the ill effect of the preceding maxim. It is
+not strictly true (though it appear plausible) that the benefits God
+imparts to the creatures who are capable of felicity tend solely to their
+happiness. All is connected in Nature; and if a skilled artisan, an
+engineer, an architect, a wise politician often makes one and the same
+thing serve several ends, if he makes a double hit with a single throw,
+when that can be done conveniently, one may say that God, whose wisdom and
+power are perfect, does so always. That is husbanding the ground, the time,
+the place, the material, which make up as it were his outlay. Thus God has
+more than one purpose in his projects. The felicity of all rational
+creatures is one of the aims he has in view; but it is not his whole aim,
+nor even his final aim. Therefore it happens that the unhappiness of some
+of these creatures may come about _by concomitance_, and as a result of
+other greater goods: this I have already explained, and M. Bayle has to
+some extent acknowledged it. The goods as such, considered in themselves,
+are the object of the antecedent will of God. God will produce as much
+reason and knowledge in the universe as his plan can admit. One can
+conceive of a mean between an antecedent will altogether pure and
+primitive, and a consequent and final will. The _primitive antecedent will_
+has as its object each good and each evil in itself, detached from all
+combination, and tends to advance the good and prevent the evil. The
+_mediate will_ relates to combinations, as when one attaches a good to an
+evil: then the will will have some tendency towards this combination when
+the good exceeds the evil therein. But the _final and decisive will_
+results from consideration of all the goods and all the evils that enter
+into our deliberation, it results from a total combination. This shows[190]
+that a mediate will, although it may in a sense pass as consequent in
+relation to a pure and primitive antecedent will, must be considered
+antecedent in relation to the final and decretory will. God gives reason to
+the human race; misfortunes arise thence by concomitance. His pure
+antecedent will tends towards giving reason, as a great good, and
+preventing the evils in question. But when it is a question of the evils
+that accompany this gift which God has made to us of reason, the compound,
+made up of the combination of reason and of these evils, will be the object
+of a mediate will of God, which will tend towards producing or preventing
+this compound, according as the good or the evil prevails therein. But even
+though it should prove that reason did more harm than good to men (which,
+however, I do not admit), whereupon the mediate will of God would discard
+it with all its concomitants, it might still be the case that it was more
+in accordance with the perfection of the universe to give reason to men,
+notwithstanding all the evil consequences which it might have with
+reference to them. Consequently, the final will or the decree of God,
+resulting from all the considerations he can have, would be to give it to
+them. And, far from being subject to blame for this, he would be
+blameworthy if he did not so. Thus the evil, or the mixture of goods and
+evils wherein the evil prevails, happens only _by concomitance_, because it
+is connected with greater goods that are outside this mixture. This
+mixture, therefore, or this compound, is not to be conceived as a grace or
+as a gift from God to us; but the good that is found mingled therein will
+nevertheless be good. Such is God's gift of reason to those who make ill
+use thereof. It is always a good in itself; but the combination of this
+good with the evils that proceed from its abuse is not a good with regard
+to those who in consequence thereof become unhappy. Yet it comes to be by
+concomitance, because it serves a greater good in relation to the universe.
+And it is doubtless that which prompted God to give reason to those who
+have made it an instrument of their unhappiness. Or, to put it more
+precisely, in accordance with my system God, having found among the
+possible beings some rational creatures who misuse their reason, gave
+existence to those who are included in the best possible plan of the
+universe. Thus nothing prevents us from admitting that God grants goods
+which turn into evil by the fault of men, this often happening to men in
+just punishment of the misuse they had made of God's grace. Aloysius  [191]
+Novarinus wrote a book _De Occultis Dei Beneficiis_: one could write one
+_De Occultis Dei Poenis_. This saying of Claudian would be in place here
+with regard to some persons:
+
+      _Tolluntur in altum,_ _Ut lapsu graviore ruant_.
+
+But to say that God should not give a good which he knows an evil will will
+abuse, when the general plan of things demands that he give it; or again to
+say that he should give certain means for preventing it, contrary to this
+same general order: that is to wish (as I have observed already) that God
+himself become blameworthy in order to prevent man from being so. To
+object, as people do here, that the goodness of God would be smaller than
+that of another benefactor who would give a more useful gift, is to
+overlook the fact that the goodness of a benefactor is not measured by a
+single benefit. It may well be that a gift from a private person is greater
+than one from a prince, but the gifts of this private person all taken
+together will be much inferior to the prince's gifts all together. Thus one
+can esteem fittingly the good things done by God only when one considers
+their whole extent by relating them to the entire universe. Moreover, one
+may say that the gifts given in the expectation that they will harm are the
+gifts of an enemy, [Greek: hechthron dora adora],
+
+    _Hostibus eveniant talia dona meis._
+
+But that applies to when there is malice or guilt in him who gives them, as
+there was in that Eutrapelus of whom Horace speaks, who did good to people
+in order to give them the means of destroying themselves. His design was
+evil, but God's design cannot be better than it is. Must God spoil his
+system, must there be less beauty, perfection and reason in the universe,
+because there are people who misuse reason? The common sayings are in place
+here: _Abusus non tollit usum_; there is _scandalum datum et scandalum
+acceptum_.
+
+120. V. 'A maleficent being is very capable of heaping magnificent gifts
+upon his enemies, when he knows that they will make thereof a use that will
+destroy them. It therefore does not beseem the infinitely good Being to
+give to creatures a free will, whereof, as he knows for certain, they would
+make a use that would render them unhappy. Therefore if he gives them free
+will he combines with it the art of using it always opportunely, and
+permits not that they neglect the practice of this art in any         [192]
+conjuncture; and if there were no sure means of determining the good use of
+this free will, he would rather take from them this faculty, than allow it
+to be the cause of their unhappiness. That is the more manifest, as free
+will is a grace which he has given them of his own choice and without their
+asking for it; so that he would be more answerable for the unhappiness it
+would bring upon them than if he had only granted it in response to their
+importunate prayers.'
+
+What was said at the end of the remark on the preceding maxim ought to be
+repeated here, and is sufficient to counter the present maxim. Moreover,
+the author is still presupposing that false maxim advanced as the third,
+stating that the happiness of rational creatures is the sole aim of God. If
+that were so, perhaps neither sin nor unhappiness would ever occur, even by
+concomitance. God would have chosen a sequence of possibles where all these
+evils would be excluded. But God would fail in what is due to the universe,
+that is, in what he owes to himself. If there were only spirits they would
+be without the required connexion, without the order of time and place.
+This order demands matter, movement and its laws; to adjust these to
+spirits in the best possible way means to return to our world. When one
+looks at things only in the mass, one imagines to be practicable a thousand
+things that cannot properly take place. To wish that God should not give
+free will to rational creatures is to wish that there be none of these
+creatures; and to wish that God should prevent them from misusing it is to
+wish that there be none but these creatures alone, together with what was
+made for them only. If God had none but these creatures in view, he would
+doubtless prevent them from destroying themselves. One may say in a sense,
+however, that God has given to these creatures the art of always making
+good use of their free will, for the natural light of reason is this art.
+But it would be necessary always to have the will to do good, and often
+creatures lack the means of giving themselves the will they ought to have;
+often they even lack the will to use those means which indirectly give a
+good will. Of this I have already spoken more than once. This fault must be
+admitted, and one must even acknowledge that God would perhaps have been
+able to exempt creatures from that fault, since there is nothing to
+prevent, so it seems, the existence of some whose nature it would be always
+to have good will. But I reply that it is not necessary, and that it was
+not feasible for all rational creatures to have so great a perfection,[193]
+and such as would bring them so close to the Divinity. It may even be that
+that can only be made possible by a special divine grace. But in this case,
+would it be proper for God to grant it to all, that is, always to act
+miraculously in respect of all rational creatures? Nothing would be less
+rational than these perpetual miracles. There are degrees among creatures:
+the general order requires it. And it appears quite consistent with the
+order of divine government that the great privilege of strengthening in the
+good should be granted more easily to those who had a good will when they
+were in a more imperfect state, in the state of struggle and of pilgrimage,
+_in Ecclesia militante, in statu viatorum_. The good angels themselves were
+not created incapable of sin. Nevertheless I would not dare to assert that
+there are no blessed creatures born, or such as are sinless and holy by
+their nature. There are perhaps people who give this privilege to the
+Blessed Virgin, since, moreover, the Roman Church to-day places her above
+the angels. But it suffices us that the universe is very great and very
+varied: to wish to limit it is to have little knowledge thereof. 'But', M.
+Bayle goes on, 'God has given free will to creatures capable of sinning,
+without their having asked him for this grace. And he who gave such a gift
+would be more answerable for the unhappiness that it brought upon those who
+made use of it, than if he had granted it only in response to their
+importunate prayers.' But importunity in prayers makes no difference to
+God; he knows better than we what we need, and he only grants what serves
+the interest of the whole. It seems that M. Bayle here makes free will
+consist in the faculty for sinning; yet he acknowledges elsewhere that God
+and the Saints are free, without having this faculty. However that may be,
+I have already shown fully that God, doing what his wisdom and his goodness
+combined ordain, is not answerable for the evil that he permits. Even men,
+when they do their duty, are not answerable for consequences, whether they
+foresee them or not.
+
+121. VI. 'It is as sure a means of taking a man's life to give him a silk
+cord that one knows certainly he will make use of freely to strangle
+himself, as to plant a few dagger thrusts in his body. One desires his
+death not less when one makes use of the first way, than when one employs
+the second: it even seems as though one desires it with a more malicious
+intention, since one tends to leave to him the whole trouble and the whole
+blame of his destruction.'
+
+                                                                      [194]
+Those who write treatises on Duties (De Officiis) as, for instance, Cicero,
+St. Ambrose, Grotius, Opalenius, Sharrok, Rachelius, Pufendorf, as well as
+the Casuists, teach that there are cases where one is not obliged to return
+to its owner a thing deposited: for example, one will not give back a
+dagger when one knows that he who has deposited it is about to stab
+someone. Let us pretend that I have in my hands the fatal draught that
+Meleager's mother will make use of to kill him; the magic javelin that
+Cephalus will unwittingly employ to kill his Procris; the horses of Theseus
+that will tear to pieces Hippolytus, his son: these things are demanded
+back from me, and I am right in refusing them, knowing the use that will be
+made of them. But how will it be if a competent judge orders me to restore
+them, when I cannot prove to him what I know of the evil consequences that
+restitution will have, Apollo perchance having given to me, as to
+Cassandra, the gift of prophecy under the condition that I shall not be
+believed? I should then be compelled to make restitution, having no
+alternative other than my own destruction: thus I cannot escape from
+contributing towards the evil. Another comparison: Jupiter promises Semele,
+the Sun Phaeton, Cupid Psyche to grant whatever favour the other shall ask.
+They swear by the Styx,
+
+  _Di cujus jurare timent et fallere Numen_.
+
+One would gladly stop, but too late, the request half heard,
+
+              _Voluit Deus ora loquentis_
+  _Opprimere; exierat jam vox properata sub auras_.
+
+One would gladly draw back after the request was made, making vain
+remonstrances; but they press you, they say to you: 'Do you make oaths that
+you will not keep?' The law of the Styx is inviolable, one must needs
+submit to it; if one has erred in making the oath, one would err more in
+not keeping it; the promise must be fulfilled, however harmful it may be to
+him who exacts it. It would be ruinous to you if you did not fulfil it. It
+seems as though the moral of these fables implies that a supreme necessity
+may constrain one to comply with evil. God, in truth, knows no other judge
+that can compel him to give what may turn to evil, he is not like Jupiter
+who fears the Styx. But his own wisdom is the greatest judge that he can
+find, there is no appeal from its judgements: they are the decrees of
+destiny. The eternal verities, objects of his wisdom, are more        [195]
+inviolable than the Styx. These laws and this judge do not constrain: they
+are stronger, for they persuade. Wisdom only shows God the best possible
+exercise of his goodness: after that, the evil that occurs is an inevitable
+result of the best. I will add something stronger: To permit the evil, as
+God permits it, is the greatest goodness.
+
+  _Si mala sustulerat, non erat ille bonus._
+
+One would need to have a bent towards perversity to say after this that it
+is more malicious to leave to someone the whole trouble and the whole blame
+of his destruction. When God does leave it to a man, it has belonged to him
+since before his existence; it was already in the idea of him as still
+merely possible, before the decree of God which makes him to exist. Can
+one, then, leave it or give it to another? There is the whole matter.
+
+122. VII. 'A true benefactor gives promptly, and does not wait to give
+until those he loves have suffered long miseries from the privation of what
+he could have imparted to them at first very easily, and without causing
+any inconvenience to himself. If the limitation of his forces does not
+permit him to do good without inflicting pain or some other inconvenience,
+he acquiesces in this, but only regretfully, and he never employs this way
+of rendering service when he can render it without mingling any kind of
+evil in his favours. If the profit one could derive from the evils he
+inflicted could spring as easily from an unalloyed good as from those
+evils, he would take the straight road of unalloyed good, and not the
+indirect road that would lead from the evil to the good. If he showers
+riches and honours, it is not to the end that those who have enjoyed them,
+when they come to lose them, should be all the more deeply afflicted in
+proportion to their previous experience of pleasure, and that thus they
+should become more unhappy than the persons who have always been deprived
+of these advantages. A malicious being would shower good things at such a
+price upon the people for whom he had the most hatred.'
+
+(Compare this passage of Aristotle, _Rhetor._, 1. 2, c. 23, p. m. 446:
+[Greek: hoion ei doie an tis tini hina aphelomenos leipesei; hothen kai
+tout' eiretai,]
+
+  [Greek: pollois ho daimon ou kat' eunoian pheron]
+  [Greek: Megala didosin eutychemat', all' hina]
+  [Greek: tas symphoras labosin epiphanesteras.]
+
+                                                                      [196]
+Id est: Veluti si quis alicui aliquid det, ut (postea) hoc (ipsi) erepto
+(ipsum) afficiat dolore. Unde etiam illud est dictum:
+
+  _Bona magna multis non amicus dat Deus,_
+  _Insigniore ut rursus his privet malo._)
+
+All these objections depend almost on the same sophism; they change and
+mutilate the fact, they only half record things: God has care for men, he
+loves the human race, he wishes it well, nothing so true. Yet he allows men
+to fall, he often allows them to perish, he gives them goods that tend
+towards their destruction; and when he makes someone happy, it is after
+many sufferings: where is his affection, where is his goodness or again
+where is his power? Vain objections, which suppress the main point, which
+ignore the fact that it is of God one speaks. It is as though one were
+speaking of a mother, a guardian, a tutor, whose well-nigh only care is
+concerned with the upbringing, the preservation, the happiness of the
+person in question, and who neglect their duty. God takes care of the
+universe, he neglects nothing, he chooses what is best on the whole. If in
+spite of all that someone is wicked and unhappy, it behoved him to be so.
+God (so they say) could have given happiness to all, he could have given it
+promptly and easily, and without causing himself any inconvenience, for he
+can do all. But should he? Since he does not so, it is a sign that he had
+to act altogether differently. If we infer from this either that God only
+regretfully, and owing to lack of power, fails to make men happy and to
+give the good first of all and without admixture of evil, or else that he
+lacks the good will to give it unreservedly and for good and all, then we
+are comparing our true God with the God of Herodotus, full of envy, or with
+the demon of the poet whose iambics Aristotle quotes, and I have just
+translated into Latin, who gives good things in order that he may cause
+more affliction by taking them away. That would be trifling with God in
+perpetual anthropomorphisms, representing him as a man who must give
+himself up completely to one particular business, whose goodness must be
+chiefly exercised upon those objects alone which are known to us, and who
+lacks either aptitude or good will. God is not lacking therein, he could do
+the good that we would desire; he even wishes it, taking it separately, but
+he must not do it in preference to other greater goods which are opposed to
+it. Moreover, one has no cause to complain of the fact that usually   [197]
+one attains salvation only through many sufferings, and by bearing the
+cross of Jesus Christ. These evils serve to make the elect imitators of
+their master, and to increase their happiness.
+
+123. VIII. 'The greatest and the most substantial glory that he who is the
+master of others can gain is to maintain amongst them virtue, order, peace,
+contentment of mind. The glory that he would derive from their unhappiness
+can be nothing but a false glory.'
+
+If we knew the city of God just as it is, we should see that it is the most
+perfect state which can be devised; that virtue and happiness reign there,
+as far as is possible, in accordance with the laws of the best; that sin
+and unhappiness (whose entire exclusion from the nature of things reasons
+of the supreme order did not permit), are well-nigh nothing there in
+comparison with the good, and even are of service for greater good. Now
+since these evils were to exist, there must needs be some appointed to be
+subject to them, and we are those people. If it were others, would there
+not be the same appearance of evil? Or rather, would not these others be
+those known as We? When God derives some glory from the evil through having
+made it serve a greater good, it was proper that he should derive that
+glory. It is not therefore a false glory, as would be that of a prince who
+overthrew his state in order to have the honour of setting it up again.
+
+124. IX. 'The way whereby that master can give proof of greatest love for
+virtue is to cause it, if he can, to be always practised without any
+mixture of vice. If it is easy for him to procure for his subjects this
+advantage, and nevertheless he permits vice to raise its head, save that he
+punishes it finally after having long tolerated it, his affection for
+virtue is not the greatest one can conceive; it is therefore not infinite.'
+
+I am not yet half way through the nineteen maxims, and already I am weary
+of refuting, and making the same answer always. M. Bayle multiplies
+unnecessarily his so-called maxims in opposition to my dogmas. If things
+connected together may be separated, the parts from their whole, the human
+kind from the universe, God's attributes the one from the other, power from
+wisdom, it may be said that God _can cause_ virtue to be in the world
+without any mixture of vice, and even that he can do so _easily_. But,
+since he has permitted vice, it must be that that order of the universe
+which was found preferable to every other plan required it. One must
+believe that it is not permitted to do otherwise, since it is not     [198]
+possible to do better. It is a hypothetical necessity, a moral necessity,
+which, far from being contrary to freedom, is the effect of its choice.
+_Quae rationi contraria sunt, ea nec fieri a Sapiente posse credendum est_.
+The objection is made here, that God's affection for virtue is therefore
+not the greatest which can be conceived, that it is not _infinite_. To that
+an answer has already been given on the second maxim, in the assertion that
+God's affection for any created thing whatsoever is proportionate to the
+value of the thing. Virtue is the noblest quality of created things, but it
+is not the only good quality of creatures. There are innumerable others
+which attract the inclination of God: from all these inclinations there
+results the most possible good, and it turns out that if there were only
+virtue, if there were only rational creatures, there would be less good.
+Midas proved to be less rich when he had only gold. And besides, wisdom
+must vary. To multiply one and the same thing only would be superfluity,
+and poverty too. To have a thousand well-bound Vergils in one's library,
+always to sing the airs from the opera of Cadmus and Hermione, to break all
+the china in order only to have cups of gold, to have only diamond buttons,
+to eat nothing but partridges, to drink only Hungarian or Shiraz
+wine--would one call that reason? Nature had need of animals, plants,
+inanimate bodies; there are in these creatures, devoid of reason, marvels
+which serve for exercise of the reason. What would an intelligent creature
+do if there were no unintelligent things? What would it think of, if there
+were neither movement, nor matter, nor sense? If it had only distinct
+thoughts it would be a God, its wisdom would be without bounds: that is one
+of the results of my meditations. As soon as there is a mixture of confused
+thoughts, there is sense, there is matter. For these confused thoughts come
+from the relation of all things one to the other by way of duration and
+extent. Thus it is that in my philosophy there is no rational creature
+without some organic body, and there is no created spirit entirely detached
+from matter. But these organic bodies vary no less in perfection than the
+spirits to which they belong. Therefore, since God's wisdom must have a
+world of bodies, a world of substances capable of perception and incapable
+of reason; since, in short, it was necessary to choose from all the things
+possible what produced the best effect together, and since vice entered in
+by this door, God would not have been altogether good, altogether wise if
+he had excluded it.
+
+                                                                      [199]
+125. X. 'The way to evince the greatest hatred for vice is not indeed to
+allow it to prevail for a long time and then chastise it, but to crush it
+before its birth, that is, prevent it from showing itself anywhere. A king,
+for example, who put his finances in such good order that no malversation
+was ever committed, would thus display more hatred for the wrong done by
+factionaries than if, after having suffered them to batten on the blood of
+the people, he had them hanged.'
+
+It is always the same song, it is anthropomorphism pure and simple. A king
+should generally have nothing so much at heart as to keep his subjects free
+from oppression. One of his greatest interests is to bring good order into
+his finances. Nevertheless there are times when he is obliged to tolerate
+vice and disorders. He has a great war on his hands, he is in a state of
+exhaustion, he has no choice of generals, it is necessary to humour those
+he has, those possessed of great authority with the soldiers: a Braccio, a
+Sforza, a Wallenstein. He lacks money for the most pressing needs, it is
+necessary to turn to great financiers, who have an established credit, and
+he must at the same time connive at their malversations. It is true that
+this unfortunate necessity arises most often from previous errors. It is
+not the same with God: he has need of no man, he commits no error, he
+always does the best. One cannot even wish that things may go better, when
+one understands them: and it would be a vice in the Author of things if he
+wished to change anything whatsoever in them, if he wished to exclude the
+vice that was found there. Is this State with perfect government, where
+good is willed and performed as far as it is possible, where evil even
+serves the greatest good, comparable with the State of a prince whose
+affairs are in ruin and who escapes as best he can? Or with that of a
+prince who encourages oppression in order to punish it, and who delights to
+see the little men with begging bowls and the great on scaffolds?
+
+126. XI. 'A ruler devoted to the interests of virtue, and to the good of
+his subjects, takes the utmost care to ensure that they never disobey his
+laws; and if he must needs chastise them for their disobedience, he sees to
+it that the penalty cures them of the inclination to evil, and restores in
+their soul a strong and constant tendency towards good: so far is he from
+any desire that the penalty for the error should incline them more and more
+towards evil.'
+
+                                                                      [200]
+To make men better, God does all that is due, and even all that can be done
+on his side without detriment to what is due. The most usual aim of
+punishment is amendment; but it is not the sole aim, nor that which God
+always intends. I have said a word on that above. Original sin, which
+disposes men towards evil, is not merely a penalty for the first sin; it is
+a natural consequence thereof. On that too a word has been said, in the
+course of an observation on the fourth theological proposition. It is like
+drunkenness, which is a penalty for excess in drinking and is at the same
+time a natural consequence that easily leads to new sins.
+
+127. XII. 'To permit the evil that one could prevent is not to care whether
+it be committed or not, or is even to wish that it be committed.'
+
+By no means. How many times do men permit evils which they could prevent if
+they turned all their efforts in that direction? But other more important
+cares prevent them from doing so. One will rarely resolve upon adjusting
+irregularities in the coinage while one is involved in a great war. And the
+action of an English Parliament in this direction a little before the Peace
+of Ryswyck will be rather praised than imitated. Can one conclude from this
+that the State has no anxiety about this irregularity, or even that it
+desires it? God has a far stronger reason, and one far more worthy of him,
+for tolerating evils. Not only does he derive from them greater goods, but
+he finds them connected with the greatest goods of all those that are
+possible: so that it would be a fault not to permit them.
+
+128. XIII. 'It is a very great fault in those who govern, if they do not
+care whether there be disorder in their States or not. The fault is still
+greater if they wish and even desire disorder there. If by hidden and
+indirect, but infallible, ways they stirred up a sedition in their States
+to bring them to the brink of ruin, in order to gain for themselves the
+glory of showing that they have the courage and the prudence necessary for
+saving a great kingdom on the point of perishing, they would be most
+deserving of condemnation. But if they stirred up this sedition because
+there were no other means than that, of averting the total ruin of their
+subjects and of strengthening on new foundations, and for several
+centuries, the happiness of nations, one must needs lament the unfortunate
+necessity (see above, pp. 146, 147, what has been said of the force of[201]
+necessity) to which they were reduced, and praise them for the use that
+they made thereof.'
+
+This maxim, with divers others set forth here, is not applicable to the
+government of God. Not to mention the fact that it is only the disorders of
+a very small part of his kingdom which are brought up in objection, it is
+untrue that he has no anxiety about evils, that he desires them, that he
+brings them into being, to have the glory of allaying them. God wills order
+and good; but it happens sometimes that what is disorder in the part is
+order in the whole. I have already stated this legal axiom: _Incivile est
+nisi tota lege inspecta judicare_. The permission of evils comes from a
+kind of moral necessity: God is constrained to this by his wisdom and by
+his goodness; _this necessity is happy_, whereas that of the prince spoken
+of in the maxim is _unhappy_. His State is one of the most corrupt; and the
+government of God is the best State possible.
+
+129. XIV. 'The permission of a certain evil is only excusable when one
+cannot remedy it without introducing a greater evil; but it cannot be
+excusable in those who have in hand a remedy more efficacious against this
+evil, and against all the other evils that could spring from the
+suppression of this one.'
+
+The maxim is true, but it cannot be brought forward against the government
+of God. Supreme reason constrains him to permit the evil. If God chose what
+would not be the best absolutely and in all, that would be a greater evil
+than all the individual evils which he could prevent by this means. This
+wrong choice would destroy his wisdom and his goodness.
+
+130. XV. 'The Being infinitely powerful, Creator of matter and of spirits,
+makes whatever he wills of this matter and these spirits. There is no
+situation or shape that he cannot communicate to spirits. If he then
+permitted a physical or a moral evil, this would not be for the reason that
+otherwise some other still greater physical or moral evil would be
+altogether inevitable. None of those reasons for the mixture of good and
+evil which are founded on the limitation of the forces of benefactors can
+apply to him.'
+
+It is true that God makes of matter and of spirits whatever he wills; but
+he is like a good sculptor, who will make from his block of marble only
+that which he judges to be the best, and who judges well. God makes of
+matter the most excellent of all possible machines; he makes of spirits the
+most excellent of all governments conceivable; and over and above all that,
+he establishes for their union the most perfect of all harmonies,     [202]
+according to the system I have proposed. Now since physical evil and moral
+evil occur in this perfect work, one must conclude (contrary to M. Bayle's
+assurance here) that _otherwise a still greater evil would have been
+altogether inevitable_. This great evil would be that God would have chosen
+ill if he had chosen otherwise than he has chosen. It is true that God is
+infinitely powerful; but his power is indeterminate, goodness and wisdom
+combined determine him to produce the best. M. Bayle makes elsewhere an
+objection which is peculiar to him, which he derives from the opinions of
+the modern Cartesians. They say that God could have given to souls what
+thoughts he would, without making them depend upon any relation to the
+body: by this means souls would be spared a great number of evils which
+only spring from derangement of the body. More will be said of this later;
+now it is sufficient to bear in mind that God cannot establish a system
+ill-connected and full of dissonances. It is to some extent the nature of
+souls to represent bodies.
+
+131. XVI. 'One is just as much the cause of an event when one brings it
+about in moral ways, as when one brings it about in physical ways. A
+Minister of State, who, without going out of his study, and simply by
+utilizing the passions of the leaders of a faction, overthrew all their
+plots, would thus be bringing about the ruin of this faction, no less than
+if he destroyed it by a surprise attack.'
+
+I have nothing to say against this maxim. Evil is always attributed to
+moral causes, and not always to physical causes. Here I observe simply that
+if I could not prevent the sin of others except by committing a sin myself,
+I should be justified in permitting it, and I should not be accessary
+thereto, or its moral cause. In God, every fault would represent a sin; it
+would be even more than sin, for it would destroy Divinity. And it would be
+a great fault in him not to choose the best. I have said so many times. He
+would then prevent sin by something worse than all sins.
+
+132. XVII. 'It is all the same whether one employ a necessary cause, or
+employ a free cause while choosing the moments when one knows it to be
+determined. If I imagine that gunpowder has the power to ignite or not to
+ignite when fire touches it, and if I know for certain that it will be
+disposed to ignite at eight o'clock in the morning, I shall be just as much
+the cause of its effects if I apply the fire to it at that hour, as I
+should be in assuming, as is the case, that it is a necessary cause.  [203]
+For where I am concerned it would no longer be a free cause. I should be
+catching it at the moment when I knew it to be necessitated by its own
+choice. It is impossible for a being to be free or indifferent with regard
+to that to which it is already determined, and at the time when it is
+determined thereto. All that which exists exists of necessity while it
+exists. [Greek: To einai to on hotan ei, kai to me einai hotan me ei,
+ananke.] "Necesse est id quod est, quando est, esse; et id quod non est,
+quando non est, non esse": Arist., _De Interpret._, cap. 9. The Nominalists
+have adopted this maxim of Aristotle. Scotus and sundry other Schoolmen
+appear to reject it, but fundamentally their distinctions come to the same
+thing. See the Jesuits of Coimbra on this passage from Aristotle, p. 380
+_et seq._)'
+
+This maxim may pass also; I would wish only to change something in the
+phraseology. I would not take 'free' and 'indifferent' for one and the same
+thing, and would not place 'free' and 'determined' in antithesis. One is
+never altogether indifferent with an indifference of equipoise; one is
+always more inclined and consequently more determined on one side than on
+another: but one is never necessitated to the choice that one makes. I mean
+here a _necessity_ absolute and metaphysical; for it must be admitted that
+God, that wisdom, is prompted to the best by a _moral_ necessity. It must
+be admitted also that one is necessitated to the choice by a hypothetical
+necessity, when one actually makes the choice; and even before one is
+necessitated thereto by the very truth of the futurition, since one will do
+it. These hypothetical necessities do no harm. I have spoken sufficiently
+on this point already.
+
+133. XVIII. 'When a whole great people has become guilty of rebellion, it
+is not showing clemency to pardon the hundred thousandth part, and to kill
+all the rest, not excepting even babes and sucklings.'
+
+It seems to be assumed here that there are a hundred thousand times more
+damned than saved, and that children dying unbaptized are included among
+the former. Both these points are disputed, and especially the damnation of
+these children. I have spoken of this above. M. Bayle urges the same
+objection elsewhere (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III,
+ch. 178, p. 1223): 'We see clearly', he says, 'that the Sovereign who
+wishes to exercise both justice and clemency when a city has revolted must
+be content with the punishment of a small number of mutineers, and    [204]
+pardon all the rest. For if the number of those who are chastised is as a
+thousand to one, in comparison with those whom he freely pardons, he cannot
+be accounted mild, but, on the contrary, cruel. He would assuredly be
+accounted an abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration,
+and if he eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would
+prefer death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to take
+revenge were more responsible for his severities than the desire to turn to
+the service of the common weal the penalty that he would inflict on almost
+all the rebels. Criminals who are executed are considered to expiate their
+crimes so completely by the loss of their life, that the public requires
+nothing more, and is indignant when executioners are clumsy. These would be
+stoned if they were known deliberately to give repeated strokes of the axe;
+and the judges who are present at the execution would not be immune from
+danger if they were thought to take pleasure in this evil sport of the
+executioners, and to have surreptitiously urged them to practise it.' (Note
+that this is not to be understood as strictly universal. There are cases
+where the people approve of the slow killing of certain criminals, as when
+Francis I thus put to death some persons accused of heresy after the
+notorious Placards of 1534. No pity was shown to Ravaillac, who was
+tortured in divers horrible ways. See the _French Mercury_, vol. I, fol.
+m., 455 _et seq._ See also Pierre Matthieu in his _History of the Death of
+Henry IV_; and do not forget what he says on page m. 99 concerning the
+discussion by the judges with regard to the torture of this parricide.)
+'Finally it is an exceptionally notorious fact that Rulers who should be
+guided by St. Paul, I mean who should condemn to the extreme penalty all
+those whom he condemns to eternal death, would be accounted enemies of the
+human kind and destroyers of their communities. It is incontestable that
+their laws, far from being fitted, in accordance with the aim of
+legislators, to uphold society, would be its complete ruin. (Apply here
+these words of Pliny the Younger, _Epist._, 22, lib. 8: Mandemus memoriae
+quod vir mitissimus, et ob hoc quoque maximus, Thrasea crebro dicere
+solebat, Qui vitia odit, homines odit.)' He adds that it was said of the
+laws of Draco, an Athenian lawgiver, that they had not been written with
+ink, but with blood, because they punished all sins with the extreme
+penalty, and because damnation is a penalty even worse than death. But it
+must be borne in mind that damnation is a consequence of sin. Thus I  [205]
+once answered a friend, who raised as an objection the disproportion
+existing between an eternal punishment and a limited crime, that there is
+no injustice when the continuation of the punishment is only a result of
+the continuation of the sin. I will speak further on this point later. As
+for the number of the damned, even though it should be incomparably greater
+among men than the number of the saved, that would not preclude the
+possibility that in the universe the happy creatures infinitely outnumber
+those who are unhappy. Such examples as that of a prince who punishes only
+the leaders of rebels or of a general who has a regiment decimated, are of
+no importance here. Self-interest compels the prince and the general to
+pardon the guilty, even though they should remain wicked. God only pardons
+those who become better: he can distinguish them; and this severity is more
+consistent with perfect justice. But if anyone asks why God gives not to
+all the grace of conversion, the question is of a different nature, having
+no relation to the present maxim. I have already answered it in a sense,
+not in order to find God's reasons, but to show that he cannot lack such,
+and that there are no opposing reasons of any validity. Moreover, we know
+that sometimes whole cities are destroyed and the inhabitants put to the
+sword, to inspire terror in the rest. That may serve to shorten a great war
+or a rebellion, and would mean a saving of blood through the shedding of
+it: there is no decimation there. We cannot assert, indeed, that the wicked
+of our globe are punished so severely in order to intimidate the
+inhabitants of the other globes and to make them better. Yet an abundance
+of reasons in the universal harmony which are unknown to us, because we
+know not sufficiently the extent of the city of God, nor the form of the
+general republic of spirits, nor even the whole architecture of bodies, may
+produce the same effect.
+
+134. XIX. 'Those physicians who chose, among many remedies capable of
+curing a sick man, whereof divers were such as they well knew he would take
+with enjoyment, precisely that one which they knew he would refuse to take,
+would vainly urge and pray him not to refuse it; we should still have just
+cause for thinking that they had no desire to cure him: for if they wished
+to do so, they would choose for him among those good medicines one which
+they knew he would willingly swallow. If, moreover, they knew that
+rejection of the remedy they offered him would augment his sickness to[206]
+the point of making it fatal, one could not help saying that, despite all
+their exhortations, they must certainly be desirous of the sick man's
+death.'
+
+God wishes to save all men: that means that he would save them if men
+themselves did not prevent it, and did not refuse to receive his grace; and
+he is not bound or prompted by reason always to overcome their evil will.
+He does so sometimes nevertheless, when superior reasons allow of it, and
+when his consequent and decretory will, which results from all his reasons,
+makes him resolve upon the election of a certain number of men. He gives
+aids to all for their conversion and for perseverance, and these aids
+suffice in those who have good will, but they do not always suffice to give
+good will. Men obtain this good will either through particular aids or
+through circumstances which cause the success of the general aids. God
+cannot refrain from offering other remedies which he knows men will reject,
+bringing upon themselves all the greater guilt: but shall one wish that God
+be unjust in order that man may be less criminal? Moreover, the grace that
+does not serve the one may serve the other, and indeed always serves the
+totality of God's plan, which is the best possible in conception. Shall God
+not give the rain, because there are low-lying places which will be thereby
+incommoded? Shall the sun not shine as much as it should for the world in
+general, because there are places which will be too much dried up in
+consequence? In short, all these comparisons, spoken of in these maxims
+that M. Bayle has just given, of a physician, a benefactor, a minister of
+State, a prince, are exceedingly lame, because it is well known what their
+duties are and what can and ought to be the object of their cares: they
+have scarce more than the one affair, and they often fail therein through
+negligence or malice. God's object has in it something infinite, his cares
+embrace the universe: what we know thereof is almost nothing, and we desire
+to gauge his wisdom and his goodness by our knowledge. What temerity, or
+rather what absurdity! The objections are on false assumptions; it is
+senseless to pass judgement on the point of law when one does not know the
+matter of fact. To say with St. Paul, _O altitudo divitiarum et
+sapientiae,_ is not renouncing reason, it is rather employing the reasons
+that we know, for they teach us that immensity of God whereof the Apostle
+speaks. But therein we confess our ignorance of the facts, and we
+acknowledge, moreover, before we see it, that God does all the best   [207]
+possible, in accordance with the infinite wisdom which guides his actions.
+It is true that we have already before our eyes proofs and tests of this,
+when we see something entire, some whole complete in itself, and isolated,
+so to speak, among the works of God. Such a whole, shaped as it were by the
+hand of God, is a plant, an animal, a man. We cannot wonder enough at the
+beauty and the contrivance of its structure. But when we see some broken
+bone, some piece of animal's flesh, some sprig of a plant, there appears to
+be nothing but confusion, unless an excellent anatomist observe it: and
+even he would recognize nothing therein if he had not before seen like
+pieces attached to their whole. It is the same with the government of God:
+that which we have been able to see hitherto is not a large enough piece
+for recognition of the beauty and the order of the whole. Thus the very
+nature of things implies that this order in the Divine City, which we see
+not yet here on earth, should be an object of our faith, of our hope, of
+our confidence in God. If there are any who think otherwise, so much the
+worse for them, they are malcontents in the State of the greatest and the
+best of all monarchs; and they are wrong not to take advantage of the
+examples he has given them of his wisdom and his infinite goodness, whereby
+he reveals himself as being not only wonderful, but also worthy of love
+beyond all things.
+
+135. I hope it will be found that nothing of what is comprised in the
+nineteen maxims of M. Bayle, which we have just considered, has been left
+without a necessary answer. It is likely that, having often before
+meditated on this subject, he will have put there all his strongest
+convictions touching the moral cause of moral evil. There are, however,
+still sundry passages here and there in his works which it will be well not
+to pass over in silence. Very often he exaggerates the difficulty which he
+assumes with regard to freeing God from the imputation of sin. He observes
+_(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 161, p. 1024) that Molina,
+if he reconciled free will with foreknowledge, did not reconcile the
+goodness and the holiness of God with sin. He praises the sincerity of
+those who bluntly declare (as he claims Piscator did) that everything is to
+be traced back to the will of God, and who maintain that God could not but
+be just, even though he were the author of sin, even though he condemned
+innocence. And on the other side, or in other passages, he seems to show
+more approval of the opinions of those who preserve God's goodness at [208]
+the expense of his greatness, as Plutarch does in his book against the
+Stoics. 'It was more reasonable', he says, 'to say' (with the Epicureans)
+'that innumerable parts' (or atoms flying about at haphazard through an
+infinite space) 'by their force prevailed over the weakness of Jupiter and,
+in spite of him and against his nature and will, did many bad and
+irrational things, than to agree that there is neither confusion nor
+wickedness but he is the author thereof.' What may be said for both these
+parties, Stoics and Epicureans, appears to have led M. Bayle to the [Greek:
+epechein] of the Pyrrhonians, the suspension of his judgement in respect of
+reason, so long as faith is set apart; and to that he professes sincere
+submission.
+
+136. Pursuing his arguments, however, he has gone as far as attempting
+almost to revive and reinforce those of the disciples of Manes, a Persian
+heretic of the third century after Christ, or of a certain Paul, chief of
+the Manichaeans in Armenia in the seventh century, from whom they were
+named Paulicians. All these heretics renewed what an ancient philosopher of
+Upper Asia, known under the name of Zoroaster, had taught, so it is said,
+of two intelligent principles of all things, the one good, the other bad, a
+dogma that had perhaps come from the Indians. Among them numbers of people
+still cling to their error, one that is exceedingly prone to overtake human
+ignorance and superstition, since very many barbarous peoples, even in
+America, have been deluded by it, without having had need of philosophy.
+The Slavs (according to Helmold) had their Zernebog or black God. The
+Greeks and Romans, wise as they seem to be, had a Vejovis or Anti-Jupiter,
+otherwise called Pluto, and numerous other maleficent divinities. The
+Goddess Nemesis took pleasure in abasing those who were too fortunate; and
+Herodotus in some passages hints at his belief that all Divinity is
+envious; which, however, is not in harmony with the doctrine of the two
+principles.
+
+137. Plutarch, in his treatise _On Isis and Osiris_, knows of no writer
+more ancient than Zoroaster the magician, as he calls him, that is likely
+to have taught the two principles. Trogus or Justin makes him a King of the
+Bactrians, who was conquered by Ninus or Semiramis; he attributes to him
+the knowledge of astronomy and the invention of magic. But this magic was
+apparently the religion of the fire-worshippers: and it appears that he
+looked upon light and heat as the good principle, while he added the  [209]
+evil, that is to say, opacity, darkness, cold. Pliny cites the testimony of
+a certain Hermippus, an interpreter of Zoroaster's books, according to whom
+Zoroaster was a disciple in the art of magic to one named Azonacus; unless
+indeed this be a corruption of Oromases, of whom I shall speak presently,
+and whom Plato in the _Alcibiades_ names as the father of Zoroaster. Modern
+Orientals give the name Zerdust to him whom the Greeks named Zoroaster; he
+is regarded as corresponding to Mercury, because with some nations
+Wednesday _(mercredi)_ takes its name from him. It is difficult to
+disentangle the story of Zoroaster and know exactly when he lived. Suidas
+puts him five hundred years before the taking of Troy. Some Ancients cited
+by Pliny and Plutarch took it to be ten times as far back. But Xanthus the
+Lydian (in the preface to Diogenes Laertius) put him only six hundred years
+before the expedition of Xerxes. Plato declares in the same passage, as M.
+Bayle observes, that the magic of Zoroaster was nothing but the study of
+religion. Mr. Hyde in his book on the religion of the ancient Persians
+tries to justify this magic, and to clear it not only of the crime of
+impiety but also of idolatry. Fire-worship prevailed among the Persians and
+the Chaldaeans also; it is thought that Abraham left it when he departed
+from Ur of the Chaldees. Mithras was the sun and he was also the God of the
+Persians; and according to Ovid's account horses were offered in sacrifice
+to him,
+
+  _Placat equo Persis radiis Hyperiona cinctum,_
+  _Ne detur celeri victima tarda Deo._
+
+But Mr. Hyde believes that they only made use of the sun and fire in their
+worship as symbols of the Divinity. It may be necessary to distinguish, as
+elsewhere, between the Wise and the Multitude. There are in the splendid
+ruins of Persepolis or of Tschelminaar (which means forty columns)
+sculptured representations of their ceremonies. An ambassador of Holland
+had had them sketched at very great cost by a painter, who had devoted a
+considerable time to the task: but by some chance or other these sketches
+fell into the hands of a well-known traveller, M. Chardin, according to
+what he tells us himself. It would be a pity if they were lost. These ruins
+are one of the most ancient and most beautiful monuments of the earth; and
+in this respect I wonder at such lack of curiosity in a century so curious
+as ours.
+
+                                                                      [210]
+138. The ancient Greeks and the modern Orientals agree in saying that
+Zoroaster called the good God Oromazes, or rather Oromasdes, and the evil
+God Arimanius. When I pondered on the fact that great princes of Upper Asia
+had the name of Hormisdas and that Irminius or Herminius was the name of a
+god or ancient hero of the Scythian Celts, that is, of the Germani, it
+occurred to me that this Arimanius or Irminius might have been a great
+conqueror of very ancient time coming from the west, just as Genghis Khan
+and Tamburlaine were later, coming from the east. Arimanius would therefore
+have come from the north-west, that is, from Germania and Sarmatia, through
+the territory of the Alani and Massagetae, to raid the dominions of one
+Ormisdas, a great king in Upper Asia, just as other Scythians did in the
+days of Cyaxares, King of the Medes, according to the account given by
+Herodotus. The monarch governing civilized peoples, and working to defend
+them against the barbarians, would have gone down to posterity, amongst the
+same peoples, as the good god; but the chief of these devastators will have
+become the symbol of the evil principle: that is altogether reasonable. It
+appears from this same mythology that these two princes contended for long,
+but that neither of them was victorious. Thus they both held their own,
+just as the two principles shared the empire of the world according to the
+hypothesis attributed to Zoroaster.
+
+139. It remains to be proved that an ancient god or hero of the Germani was
+called Herman, Arimanius or Irminius. Tacitus relates that the three tribes
+which composed Germania, the Ingaevones, the Istaevones and the Herminones
+or Hermiones, were thus named from the three sons of Mannus. Whether that
+be true or not, he wished in any case to indicate that there was a hero
+named Herminius, from whom he was told the Herminones were named.
+Herminones, Hermenner, Hermunduri all mean the same, that is, Soldiers.
+Even in the Dark Ages Arimanni were _viri militares,_ and there is _feudum
+Arimandiae_ in Lombard law.
+
+140. I have shown elsewhere that apparently the name of one part of
+Germania was given to the whole, and that from these Herminones or
+Hermunduri all the Teutonic peoples were named _Hermanni_ or _Germani_. The
+difference between these two words is only in the force of the aspiration:
+there is the same difference of initial letter between the _Germani_ of the
+Latins and _Hermanos_ of the Spaniards, or in the _Gammarus_ of the Latins
+and the _Hummer_ (that is, marine crayfish) of the Low Germans.       [211]
+Besides it is very usual for one part of a nation to give the name to the
+whole: so all the Germani were called Alemanni by the French, and yet this,
+according to the old nomenclature, only applied to the Suabians and the
+Swiss. Although Tacitus did not actually know the origin of the name of the
+Germani, he said something which supports my opinion, when he observed that
+it was a name which inspired terror, taken or given _ob metum_. In fact it
+signifies a warrior: _Heer_, _Hari_ is army, whence comes _Hariban_, or
+'call to Haro', that is, a general order to be with the army, since
+corrupted into _Arriereban_. Thus Hariman or Ariman, German _Guerre-man_,
+is a soldier. For as _Hari_, _Heer_ means army, so _Wehr_ signifies arms,
+_Wehren_ to fight, to make war, the word _Guerre_, _Guerra_ coming
+doubtless from the same source. I have already spoken of the _feudum
+Arimandiae_: not only did Herminones or Germani signify the same, but also
+that ancient Herman, so-called son of Mannus, appears to have been given
+this name as being pre-eminently a warrior.
+
+141. Now it is not the passage in Tacitus only which indicates for us this
+god or hero: we cannot doubt the existence of one of this name among these
+peoples, since Charlemagne found and destroyed near the Weser the column
+called _Irminsaeule_, erected in honour of this god. And that combined with
+the passage in Tacitus leaves us with the conclusion that it was not that
+famous Arminius who was an enemy of the Romans, but a much greater and more
+ancient hero, that this cult concerned. Arminius bore the same name as
+those who are called Hermann to-day. Arminius was not great enough, nor
+fortunate enough, nor well enough known throughout Germania to attain to
+the honour of a public cult, even at the hands of remote tribes, like the
+Saxons, who came long after him into the country of the Cherusci. And our
+Arminius, taken by the Asiatics for the evil God, provides ample
+confirmation of my opinion. For in these matters conjectures confirm one
+another without any logical circle, when their foundations tend towards one
+and the same end.
+
+142. It is not beyond belief that the Hermes (that is, Mercury) of the
+Greeks is the same Herminius or Arimanius. He may have been an inventor or
+promoter of the arts and of a slightly more civilized life among his own
+people and in the countries where he held supremacy, while amongst his
+enemies he was looked upon as the author of confusion. Who knows but that
+he may have penetrated even into Egypt, like the Scythians who in     [212]
+pursuit of Sesostris came nearly so far. Theut, Menes and Hermes were known
+and revered in Egypt. They might have been Tuiscon, his son Mannus and
+Herman, son of Mannus, according to the genealogy of Tacitus. Menes is held
+to be the most ancient king of the Egyptians; 'Theut' was with them a name
+for Mercury. At least Theut or Tuiscon, from whom Tacitus derives the
+descent of the Germani, and from whom the Teutons, _Tuitsche_ (that is,
+Germani) even to-day have their name, is the same as that _Teutates_ who
+according to Lucan was worshipped by the Gauls, and whom Caesar took _pro
+Dite Patre_, for Pluto, because of the resemblance between his Latin name
+and that of _Teut_ or _Thiet_, _Titan_, _Theodon_; this in ancient times
+signified men, people, and also an excellent man (like the word 'baron'),
+in short, a prince. There are authorities for all these significations: but
+one must not delay over this point. Herr Otto Sperling, who is well known
+for various learned writings, but has many more in readiness to appear, in
+a special dissertation has treated the question of this Teutates, God of
+the Celts. Some observations which I imparted to him on that subject have
+been published, with his reply, in the _Literary News of the Baltic Sea_.
+He interprets this passage from Lucan somewhat otherwise than I do:
+
+  _Teutates, pollensque feris altaribus Hesus,_
+  _Et Tamaris Scythicae non mitior ara Dianae._
+
+Hesus was, it appears, the God of War, who was called Ares by the Greeks
+and Erich by the ancient Germani, whence still remains _Erichtag_, Tuesday.
+The letters R and S, which are produced by the same organ, are easily
+interchanged, for instance: _Moor_ and _Moos_, _Geren_ and _Gesen_, _Er
+war_ and _Er was_, _Fer_, _Hierro_, _Eiron_, _Eisen_. Likewise _Papisius_,
+_Valesius_, _Fusius_, instead of _Papirius_, _Valerius_, _Furius_, with the
+ancient Romans. As for Taramis or perhaps Taranis, one knows that _Taran_
+was the thunder, or the God of Thunder, with the ancient Celts, called
+_Thor_ by the Germani of the north; whence the English have preserved the
+name 'Thursday', _jeudi_, _diem Jovis_. And the passage from Lucan means
+that the altar of Taran, God of the Celts, was not less cruel than that of
+Diana in Tauris: _Taranis aram non mitiorem ara Dianae Scythicae fuisse_.
+
+143. It is also not impossible that there was a time when the western [213]
+or Celtic princes made themselves masters of Greece, of Egypt and a good
+part of Asia, and that their cult remained in those countries. When one
+considers with what rapidity the Huns, the Saracens and the Tartars gained
+possession of a great part of our continent one will be the less surprised
+at this; and it is confirmed by the great number of words in the Greek and
+German tongues which correspond so closely. Callimachus, in a hymn in
+honour of Apollo, seems to imply that the Celts who attacked the Temple at
+Delphi, under their Brennus, or chief, were descendants of the ancient
+Titans and Giants who made war on Jupiter and the other gods, that is to
+say, on the Princes of Asia and of Greece. It may be that Jupiter is
+himself descended from the Titans or Theodons, that is, from the earlier
+Celto-Scythian princes; and the material collected by the late Abbe de la
+Charmoye in his _Celtic Origins_ conforms to that possibility. Yet there
+are opinions on other matters in this work by this learned writer which to
+me do not appear probable, especially when he excludes the Germani from the
+number of the Celts, not having recalled sufficiently the facts given by
+ancient writers and not being sufficiently aware of the relation between
+the ancient Gallic and Germanic tongues. Now the so-called Giants, who
+wished to scale the heavens, were new Celts who followed the path of their
+ancestors; and Jupiter, although of their kindred, as it were, was
+constrained to resist them. Just so did the Visigoths established in Gallic
+territory resist, together with the Romans, other peoples of Germania and
+Scythia, who succeeded them under Attila their leader, he being at that
+time in control of the Scythian, Sarmatic and Germanic tribes from the
+frontiers of Persia up to the Rhine. But the pleasure one feels when one
+thinks to find in the mythologies of the gods some trace of the old history
+of fabulous times has perhaps carried me too far, and I know not whether I
+shall have been any more successful than Goropius Becanus, Schrieckius,
+Herr Rudbeck and the Abbe de la Charmoye.
+
+144. Let us return to Zoroaster, who led us to Oromasdes and Arimanius, the
+sources of good and evil, and let us assume that he looked upon them as two
+eternal principles opposed to each other, although there is reason to doubt
+this assumption. It is thought that Marcion, disciple of Cerdon, was of
+this opinion before Manes. M. Bayle acknowledges that these men used
+lamentable arguments; but he thinks that they did not sufficiently    [214]
+recognize their advantages or know how to apply their principal instrument,
+which was the difficulty over the origin of evil. He believes that an able
+man on their side would have thoroughly embarrassed the orthodox, and it
+seems as though he himself, failing any other, wished to undertake a task
+so unnecessary in the opinion of many people. 'All the hypotheses' (he
+says, _Dictionary_, v., 'Marcion', p. 2039) 'that Christians have
+established parry but poorly the blows aimed at them: they all triumph when
+they act on the offensive; but they lose their whole advantage when they
+have to sustain the attack.' He confesses that the 'Dualists' (as with Mr.
+Hyde he calls them), that is, the champions of two principles, would soon
+have been routed by _a priori_ reasons, taken from the nature of God; but
+he thinks that they triumph in their turn when one comes to the _a
+posteriori_ reasons, which are taken from the existence of evil.
+
+145. He treats of the matter with abundant detail in his _Dictionary_,
+article 'Manichaeans', p. 2025, which we must examine a little, in order to
+throw greater light upon this subject: 'The surest and clearest ideas of
+order teach us', he says, 'that a Being who exists through himself, who is
+necessary, who is eternal, must be single, infinite, all powerful, and
+endowed with all kinds of perfections.' This argument deserves to have been
+developed more completely. 'Now it is necessary to see', he goes on, 'if
+the phenomena of nature can be conveniently explained by the hypothesis of
+one single principle.' I have explained it sufficiently by showing that
+there are cases where some disorder in the part is necessary for producing
+the greatest order in the whole. But it appears that M. Bayle asks a little
+too much: he wishes for a detailed exposition of how evil is connected with
+the best possible scheme for the universe. That would be a complete
+explanation of the phenomena: but I do not undertake to give it; nor am I
+bound to do so, for there is no obligation to do that which is impossible
+for us in our existing state. It is sufficient for me to point out that
+there is nothing to prevent the connexion of a certain individual evil with
+what is the best on the whole. This incomplete explanation, leaving
+something to be discovered in the life to come, is sufficient for answering
+the objections, though not for a comprehension of the matter.
+
+146. 'The heavens and all the rest of the universe', adds M. Bayle, 'preach
+the glory, the power, the oneness of God.' Thence the conclusion      [215]
+should have been drawn that this is the case (as I have already observed
+above) because there is seen in these objects something entire and
+isolated, so to speak. Every time we see such a work of God, we find it so
+perfect that we must wonder at the contrivance and the beauty thereof: but
+when we do not see an entire work, when we only look upon scraps and
+fragments, it is no wonder if the good order is not evident there. Our
+planetary system composes such an isolated work, which is complete also
+when it is taken by itself; each plant, each animal, each man furnishes one
+such work, to a certain point of perfection: one recognizes therein the
+wonderful contrivance of the author. But the human kind, so far as it is
+known to us, is only a fragment, only a small portion of the City of God or
+of the republic of Spirits, which has an extent too great for us, and
+whereof we know too little, to be able to observe the wonderful order
+therein. 'Man alone,' says M. Bayle, 'that masterpiece of his Creator among
+things visible, man alone, I say, gives rise to great objections with
+regard to the oneness of God.' Claudian made the same observation,
+unburdening his heart in these well-known lines:
+
+  _Saepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem_, etc.
+
+But the harmony existing in all the rest allows of a strong presumption
+that it would exist also in the government of men, and generally in that of
+Spirits, if the whole were known to us. One must judge the works of God as
+wisely as Socrates judged those of Heraclitus in these words: What I have
+understood thereof pleases me; I think that the rest would please me no
+less if I understood it.
+
+147. Here is another particular reason for the disorder apparent in that
+which concerns man. It is that God, in giving him intelligence, has
+presented him with an image of the Divinity. He leaves him to himself, in a
+sense, in his small department, _ut Spartam quam nactus est ornet_. He
+enters there only in a secret way, for he supplies being, force, life,
+reason, without showing himself. It is there that free will plays its game:
+and God makes game (so to speak) of these little Gods that he has thought
+good to produce, as we make game of children who follow pursuits which we
+secretly encourage or hinder according as it pleases us. Thus man is there
+like a little god in his own world or _Microcosm_, which he governs   [216]
+after his own fashion: he sometimes performs wonders therein, and his art
+often imitates nature.
+
+  _Jupiter in parvo cum cerneret aethera vitro,_
+    _Risit et ad Superos talia dicta dedit:_
+  _Huccine mortalis progressa potentia, Divi?_
+    _Jam meus in fragili luditur orbe labor._
+  _Jura poli rerumque fidem legesque Deorum_
+    _Cuncta Syracusius transtulit arte Senex._
+  _Quid falso insontem tonitru Salmonea miror?_
+    _Aemula Naturae est parva reperta manus._
+
+But he also commits great errors, because he abandons himself to the
+passions, and because God abandons him to his own way. God punishes him
+also for such errors, now like a father or tutor, training or chastising
+children, now like a just judge, punishing those who forsake him: and evil
+comes to pass most frequently when these intelligences or their small
+worlds come into collision. Man finds himself the worse for this, in
+proportion to his fault; but God, by a wonderful art, turns all the errors
+of these little worlds to the greater adornment of his great world. It is
+as in those devices of perspective, where certain beautiful designs look
+like mere confusion until one restores them to the right angle of vision or
+one views them by means of a certain glass or mirror. It is by placing and
+using them properly that one makes them serve as adornment for a room. Thus
+the apparent deformities of our little worlds combine to become beauties in
+the great world, and have nothing in them which is opposed to the oneness
+of an infinitely perfect universal principle: on the contrary, they
+increase our wonder at the wisdom of him who makes evil serve the greater
+good.
+
+148. M. Bayle continues: 'that man is wicked and miserable; that there are
+everywhere prisons and hospitals; that history is simply a collection of
+the crimes and calamities of the human race.' I think that there is
+exaggeration in that: there is incomparably more good than evil in the life
+of men, as there are incomparably more houses than prisons. With regard to
+virtue and vice, a certain mediocrity prevails. Machiavelli has already
+observed that there are few very wicked and very good men, and that this
+causes the failure of many great enterprises. I find it a great fault in
+historians that they keep their mind on the evil more than on the     [217]
+good. The chief end of history, as also of poetry, should be to teach
+prudence and virtue by examples, and then to display vice in such a way as
+to create aversion to it and to prompt men to avoid it, or serve towards
+that end.
+
+149. M. Bayle avows: 'that one finds everywhere both moral good and
+physical good, some examples of virtue, some examples of happiness, and
+that this is what makes the difficulty. For if there were only wicked and
+unhappy people', he says, 'there would be no need to resort to the
+hypothesis of the two principles.' I wonder that this admirable man could
+have evinced so great an inclination towards this opinion of the two
+principles; and I am surprised at his not having taken into account that
+this romance of human life, which makes the universal history of the human
+race, lay fully devised in the divine understanding, with innumerable
+others, and that the will of God only decreed its existence because this
+sequence of events was to be most in keeping with the rest of things, to
+bring forth the best result. And these apparent faults in the whole world,
+these spots on a Sun whereof ours is but a ray, rather enhance its beauty
+than diminish it, contributing towards that end by obtaining a greater
+good. There are in truth two principles, but they are both in God, to wit,
+his understanding and his will. The understanding furnishes the principle
+of evil, without being sullied by it, without being evil; it represents
+natures as they exist in the eternal verities; it contains within it the
+reason wherefore evil is permitted: but the will tends only towards good.
+Let us add a third principle, namely power; it precedes even understanding
+and will, but it operates as the one displays it and as the other requires
+it.
+
+150. Some (like Campanella) have called these three perfections of God the
+three primordialities. Many have even believed that there was therein a
+secret connexion with the Holy Trinity: that power relates to the Father,
+that is, to the source of Divinity, wisdom to the Eternal Word, which is
+called _logos_ by the most sublime of the Evangelists, and will or Love to
+the Holy Spirit. Well-nigh all the expressions or comparisons derived from
+the nature of the intelligent substance tend that way.
+
+151. It seems to me that if M. Bayle had taken into account what I have
+just said of the principles of things, he would have answered his own
+questions, or at the least he would not have continued to ask, as he does
+in these which follow: 'If man is the work of a single principle      [218]
+supremely good, supremely holy, supremely powerful, can he be subject to
+diseases, to cold, heat, hunger, thirst, pain, grief? Can he have so many
+evil tendencies? Can he commit so many crimes? Can supreme goodness produce
+an unhappy creature? Shall not supreme power, united to an infinite
+goodness, shower blessings upon its work, and shall it not banish all that
+might offend or grieve?' Prudentius in his _Hamartigenia_ presented the
+same difficulty:
+
+  _Si non vult Deus esse malum, cur non vetat? inquit._
+  _Non refert auctor fuerit, factorve malorum._
+  _Anne opera in vitium sceleris pulcherrima verti,_
+  _Cum possit prohibere, sinat; quod si velit omnes_
+  _Innocuos agere Omnipotens, ne sancta voluntas_
+  _Degeneret, facto nec se manus inquinet ullo?_
+  _Condidit ergo malum Dominus, quod spectat ab alto,_
+  _Et patitur fierique probat, tanquam ipse crearit._
+  _Ipse creavit enim, quod si discludere possit,_
+  _Non abolet, longoque sinit grassarier usu._
+
+But I have already answered that sufficiently. Man is himself the source of
+his evils: just as he is, he was in the divine idea. God, prompted by
+essential reasons of wisdom, decreed that he should pass into existence
+just as he is. M. Bayle would perchance have perceived this origin of evil
+in the form in which I demonstrate it here, if he had herein combined the
+wisdom of God with his power, his goodness and his holiness. I will add, in
+passing, that his _holiness_ is nothing other than the highest degree of
+goodness, just as the crime which is its opposite is the worst of all evil.
+
+152. M. Bayle places the Greek philosopher Melissus, champion of the
+oneness of the first principle (and perhaps even of the oneness of
+substance) in conflict with Zoroaster, as with the first originator of
+duality. Zoroaster admits that the hypothesis of Melissus is more
+consistent with order and _a priori_ reasons, but he denies its conformity
+with experience and _a posteriori_ reasons. 'I surpass you', he said, 'in
+the explanation of phenomena, which is the principal mark of a good
+system.' But, in my opinion, it is not a very good explanation of a
+phenomenon to assign to it an _ad hoc_ principle: to evil, a _principium
+maleficum_, to cold, a _primum frigidum_; there is nothing so easy and
+nothing so dull. It is well-nigh as if someone were to say that the   [219]
+Peripatetics surpass the new mathematicians in the explanation of the
+phenomena of the stars, by giving them _ad hoc_ intelligences to guide
+them. According to that, it is quite easy to conceive why the planets make
+their way with such precision; whereas there is need of much geometry and
+reflexion to understand how from the gravity of the planets, which bears
+them towards the sun, combined with some whirlwind which carries them
+along, or with their own motive force, can spring the elliptic movement of
+Kepler, which satisfies appearances so well. A man incapable of relishing
+deep speculations will at first applaud the Peripatetics and will treat our
+mathematicians as dreamers. Some old Galenist will do the same with regard
+to the faculties of the Schoolmen: he will admit a chylific, a chymific and
+a sanguific, and he will assign one of these _ad hoc_ to each operation; he
+will think he has worked wonders, and will laugh at what he will call the
+chimeras of the moderns, who claim to explain through mechanical structure
+what passes in the body of an animal.
+
+153. The explanation of the cause of evil by a particular principle, _per
+principium maleficum_, is of the same nature. Evil needs no such
+explanation, any more than do cold and darkness: there is neither _primum
+frigidum_ nor principle of darkness. Evil itself comes only from privation;
+the positive enters therein only by concomitance, as the active enters by
+concomitance into cold. We see that water in freezing is capable of
+breaking a gun-barrel wherein it is confined; and yet cold is a certain
+privation of force, it only comes from the diminution of a movement which
+separates the particles of fluids. When this separating motion becomes
+weakened in the water by the cold, the particles of compressed air
+concealed in the water collect; and, becoming larger, they become more
+capable of acting outwards through their buoyancy. The resistance which the
+surfaces of the proportions of air meet in the water, and which opposes the
+force exerted by these portions towards dilation, is far less, and
+consequently the effect of the air greater, in large air-bubbles than in
+small, even though these small bubbles combined should form as great a mass
+as the large. For the resistances, that is, the surfaces, increase by the
+_square_, and the forces, that is, the contents or the volumes of the
+spheres of compressed air, increase by the _cube_, of their diameters. Thus
+it is _by accident_ that privation involves action and force. I have
+already shown how privation is enough to cause error and malice, and  [220]
+how God is prompted to permit them, despite that there be no malignity in
+him. Evil comes from privation; the positive and action spring from it by
+accident, as force springs from cold.
+
+154. The statement that M. Bayle attributes to the Paulicians, p. 2323, is
+not conclusive, to wit, that free will must come from two principles, to
+the end that it may have power to turn towards good and towards evil: for,
+being simple in itself, it should rather have come from a neutral principle
+if this argument held good. But free will tends towards good, and if it
+meets with evil it is by accident, for the reason that this evil is
+concealed beneath the good, and masked, as it were. These words which Ovid
+ascribes to Medea,
+
+      _Video meliora proboque,_
+  _Deteriora sequor_,
+
+imply that the morally good is mastered by the agreeably good, which makes
+more impression on souls when they are disturbed by the passions.
+
+155. Furthermore, M. Bayle himself supplies Melissus with a good answer;
+but a little later he disputes it. Here are his words, p. 2025: 'If
+Melissus consults the notions of order, he will answer that man was not
+wicked when God made him; he will say that man received from God a happy
+state, but that not having followed the light of conscience, which in
+accordance with the intention of its author should have guided him along
+the path of virtue, he has become wicked, and has deserved that God the
+supremely good should make him feel the effects of his anger. It is
+therefore not God who is the cause of moral evil: but he is the cause of
+physical evil, that is, of the punishment of moral evil. And this
+punishment, far from being incompatible with the supremely good principle,
+of necessity emanates from that one of its attributes, I mean its justice,
+which is not less essential to it than its goodness. This answer, the most
+reasonable that Melissus can give, is fundamentally good and sound, but it
+may be disputed by something more specious and more dazzling. For indeed
+Zoroaster objects that the infinitely good principle ought to have created
+man not only without actual evil, but also without the inclination towards
+evil; that God, having foreseen sin with all its consequences, ought to
+have prevented it; that he ought to have impelled man to moral good, and
+not to have allowed him any force for tending towards crime.' That is quite
+easy to say, but it is not practicable if one follows the principles  [221]
+of order: it could not have been accomplished without perpetual miracles.
+Ignorance, error and malice follow one another naturally in animals made as
+we are: should this species, then, have been missing in the universe? I
+have no doubt but that it is too important there, despite all its
+weaknesses, for God to have consented to its abolition.
+
+156. M. Bayle, in the article entitled 'Paulicians' inserted by him in his
+_Dictionary_, follows up the pronouncements he made in the article on the
+Manichaeans. According to him (p. 2330, lit. H) the orthodox seem to admit
+two first principles, in making the devil the originator of sin. M. Becker,
+a former minister of Amsterdam, author of the book entitled _The World
+Bewitched_, has made use of this idea in order to demonstrate that one
+should not assign such power and authority to the Devil as would allow of
+his comparison with God. Therein he is right: but he pushes the conclusions
+too far. And the author of the book entitled [Greek: Apokatastasis Panton]
+believes that if the Devil had never been vanquished and despoiled, if he
+had always kept his prey, if the title of invincible had belonged to him,
+that would have done injury to the glory of God. But it is a poor advantage
+to keep those whom one has led astray in order to share their punishment
+for ever. And as for the cause of evil, it is true that the Devil is the
+author of sin. But the origin of sin comes from farther away, its source is
+in the original imperfection of creatures: that renders them capable of
+sinning, and there are circumstances in the sequence of things which cause
+this power to evince itself in action.
+
+157. The devils were angels like the rest before their fall, and it is
+thought that their leader was one of the chief among angels; but Scripture
+is not explicit enough on that point. The passage of the Apocalypse that
+speaks of the struggle with the Dragon, as of a vision, leaves much in
+doubt, and does not sufficiently develop a subject which by the other
+sacred writers is hardly mentioned. It is not in place here to enter into
+this discussion, and one must still admit that the common opinion agrees
+best with the sacred text. M. Bayle examines some replies of St. Basil, of
+Lactantius and others on the origin of evil. As, however, they are
+concerned with physical evil, I postpone discussion thereof, and I will
+proceed with the examination of the difficulties over the moral cause of
+moral evil, which arise in several passages of the works of our gifted
+author.
+
+                                                                      [222]
+158. He disputes the _permission_ of this evil, he would wish one to admit
+that God _wills_ it. He quotes these words of Calvin (on Genesis, ch. 3):
+'The ears of some are offended when one says that God willed it. But I ask
+you, what else is the permission of him who is entitled to forbid, or
+rather who has the thing in his own hands, but an act of will?' M. Bayle
+explains these words of Calvin, and those which precede them, as if he
+admitted that God willed the fall of Adam, not in so far as it was a crime,
+but under some other conception that is unknown to us. He quotes casuists
+who are somewhat lax, who say that a son can desire the death of his
+father, not in so far as it is an evil for himself but in so far as it is a
+good for his heirs _(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 147, p.
+850). It seems to me that Calvin only says that God willed man's fall for
+some reason unknown to us. In the main, when it is a question of a decisive
+will, that is, of a decree, these distinctions are useless: one wills the
+action with all its qualities, if it is true that one wills it. But when it
+is a crime, God can only will the permission of it: the crime is neither an
+end nor a means, it is only a _conditio sine qua non_; thus it is not the
+object of a direct will, as I have already demonstrated above. God cannot
+prevent it without acting against what he owes to himself, without doing
+something that would be worse than the crime of man, without violating the
+rule of the best; and that would be to destroy divinity, as I have already
+observed. God is therefore bound by a moral necessity, which is in himself,
+to permit moral evil in creatures. There is precisely the case wherein the
+will of a wise mind is only permissive. I have already said this: he is
+bound to permit the crime of others when he cannot prevent it without
+himself failing in that which he owes to himself.
+
+159. 'But among all these infinite combinations', says M. Bayle (p. 853),
+'it pleased God to choose one wherein Adam was to sin, and by his decree he
+made it, in preference to all the others, the plan that should come to
+pass.' Very good; that is speaking my language; so long as one applies it
+to the combinations which compose the whole universe. 'You will therefore
+never make us understand', he adds, 'how God did not will that Eve and Adam
+should sin, since he rejected all the combinations wherein they would not
+have sinned.' But the thing is in general very easy to understand, from all
+that I have just said. This combination that makes the whole universe is
+the best; God therefore could not refrain from choosing it without    [223]
+incurring a lapse, and rather than incur such, a thing altogether
+inappropriate to him, he permits the lapse or the sin of man which is
+involved in this combination.
+
+160. M. Jacquelot, with other able men, does not differ in opinion from me,
+when for example he says, p. 186 of his treatise on the _Conformity of
+Faith with Reason_: 'Those who are puzzled by these difficulties seem to be
+too limited in their outlook, and to wish to reduce all God's designs to
+their own interests. When God formed the universe, his whole prospect was
+himself and his own glory, so that if we had knowledge of all creatures, of
+their diverse combinations and of their different relations, we should
+understand without difficulty that the universe corresponds perfectly to
+the infinite wisdom of the Almighty.' He says elsewhere (p. 232):
+'Supposing the impossible, that God could not prevent the wrong use of free
+will without destroying it, it will be agreed that since his wisdom and his
+glory determined him to form free creatures this powerful reason must have
+prevailed over the grievous consequences which their freedom might have.' I
+have endeavoured to develop this still further through _the reason of the
+best and the moral necessity_ which led God to make this choice, despite
+the sin of some creatures which is involved therein. I think that I have
+cut down to the root of the difficulty; nevertheless I am well pleased, for
+the sake of throwing more light on the matter, to apply my principle of
+solution to the peculiar difficulties of M. Bayle.
+
+161. Here is one, set forth in these terms (ch. 148, p. 856): 'Would it in
+a prince be a mark of his kindness: 1. To give to a hundred messengers as
+much money as is needed for a journey of two hundred leagues? 2. To promise
+a recompense to all those who should finish the journey without having
+borrowed anything, and to threaten with imprisonment all those whom their
+money should not have sufficed? 3. To make choice of a hundred persons, of
+whom he would know for certain that there were but two who should earn the
+recompense, the ninety-eight others being destined to find on the way
+either a mistress or a gamester or some other thing which would make them
+incur expenses, and which he would himself have been at pains to dispose in
+certain places along their path? 4. To imprison actually ninety-eight of
+these messengers on the moment of their return? Is it not abundantly
+evident that he would have no kindness for them, and that on the contrary
+he would intend for them, not the proposed recompense, but prison?    [224]
+They would deserve it, certainly; but he who had wished them to deserve it
+and placed them in the sure way towards deserving it, should he be worthy
+of being called kind, on the pretext that he had recompensed the two
+others?' It would doubtless not be on that account that he earned the title
+of 'kind'. Yet other circumstances may contribute, which would avail to
+render him worthy of praise for having employed this artifice in order to
+know those people, and to make trial of them; just as Gideon made use of
+some extraordinary means of choosing the most valiant and the least
+squeamish among his soldiers. And even if the prince were to know already
+the disposition of all these messengers, may he not put them to this test
+in order to make them known also to the others? Even though these reasons
+be not applicable to God, they make it clear, nevertheless, that an action
+like that of this prince may appear preposterous when it is detached from
+the circumstances indicating its cause. All the more must one deem that God
+has acted well, and that we should see this if we fully knew of all that he
+has done.
+
+162. M. Descartes, in a letter to the Princess Elizabeth (vol. 1, letter
+10) has made use of another comparison to reconcile human freedom with the
+omnipotence of God. 'He imagines a monarch who has forbidden duels, and
+who, knowing for certain that two noblemen, if they meet, will fight, takes
+sure steps to bring about their meeting. They meet indeed, they fight:
+their disobedience of the law is an effect of their free will, they are
+punishable. What a king can do in such a case (he adds) concerning some
+free actions of his subjects, God, who has infinite foreknowledge and
+power, certainly does concerning all those of men. Before he sent us into
+this world he knew exactly what all the tendencies of our will would be: he
+has endued us therewith, he also has disposed all other things that are
+outside us, to cause such and such objects to present themselves to our
+senses at such and such a time. He knew that as a result of this our free
+will would determine us toward some particular thing, and he has willed it
+thus; but he has not for that willed to constrain our free will thereto. In
+this king one may distinguish two different degrees of will, the one
+whereby he willed that these noblemen should fight, since he brought about
+their meeting, and the other whereby he did not will it, since he forbade
+duels. Even so theologians distinguish in God an absolute and independent
+will, whereby he wills that all things be done just as they are done, [225]
+and another which is relative, and which concerns the merit or demerit of
+men, whereby he wills that his Laws be obeyed' (Descartes, letter 10 of
+vol. 1, pp. 51, 52. Compare with that the quotation made by M. Arnauld,
+vol. 2, p. 288 _et seqq_. of his _Reflexions on the System of Malebranche_,
+from Thomas Aquinas, on the antecedent and consequent will of God).
+
+163. Here is M. Bayle's reply to that (_Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, ch. 154, p. 943): 'This great philosopher is much mistaken, it
+seems to me. There would not be in this monarch any degree of will, either
+small or great, that these two noblemen should obey the law, and not fight.
+He would will entirely and solely that they should fight. That would not
+exculpate them, they would only follow their passion, they would be unaware
+that they conformed to the will of their sovereign: but he would be in
+truth the moral cause of their encounter, and he would not more entirely
+wish it supposing he were to inspire them with the desire or to give them
+the order for it. Imagine to yourself two princes each of whom wishes his
+eldest son to poison himself. One employs constraint, the other contents
+himself with secretly causing a grief that he knows will be sufficient to
+induce his son to poison himself. Will you be doubtful whether the will of
+the latter is less complete than the will of the former? M. Descartes is
+therefore assuming an unreal fact and does not at all solve the
+difficulty.'
+
+164. One must confess that M. Descartes speaks somewhat crudely of the will
+of God in regard to evil in saying not only that God knew that our free
+will would determine us toward some particular thing, but also _that he
+also wished it_, albeit he did not will to constrain the will thereto. He
+speaks no less harshly in the eighth letter of the same volume, saying that
+not the slightest thought enters into the mind of a man which God does not
+_will_, and has not willed from all eternity, to enter there. Calvin never
+said anything harsher; and all that can only be excused if it is to be
+understood of a permissive will. M. Descartes' solution amounts to the
+distinction between the will expressed in the sign and the will expressive
+of the good pleasure (_inter voluntatem signi et beneplaciti_) which the
+moderns have taken from the Schoolmen as regards the terms, but to which
+they have given a meaning not usual among the ancients. It is true that God
+may command something and yet not will that it be done, as when he
+commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son: he willed the obedience, and he did
+not will the action. But when God commands the virtuous action and    [226]
+forbids the sin, he wills indeed that which he ordains, but it is only by
+an antecedent will, as I have explained more than once.
+
+165. M. Descartes' comparison is therefore not satisfactory; but it may be
+made so. One must make some change in the facts, inventing some reason to
+oblige the prince to cause or permit the two enemies to meet. They must,
+for instance, be together in the army or in other obligatory functions, a
+circumstance the prince himself cannot hinder without endangering his
+State. For example, the absence of either of them might be responsible for
+the disappearance of innumerable persons of his party from the army or
+cause grumbling among the soldiers and give rise to some great disturbance.
+In this case, therefore, one may say that the prince does not will the
+duel: he knows of it, but he permits it notwithstanding, for he prefers
+permitting the sin of others to committing one himself. Thus this corrected
+comparison may serve, provided that one observe the difference between God
+and the prince. The prince is forced into this permission by his
+powerlessness; a more powerful monarch would have no need of all these
+considerations; but God, who has power to do all that is possible, only
+permits sin because it is absolutely impossible to anyone at all to do
+better. The prince's action is peradventure not free from sorrow and
+regret. This regret is due to his imperfection, of which he is sensible;
+therein lies displeasure. God is incapable of such a feeling and finds,
+moreover, no cause therefor; he is infinitely conscious of his own
+perfection, and it may even be said that the imperfection in creatures
+taken individually changes for him into perfection in relation to the
+whole, and that it is an added glory for the Creator. What more can one
+wish, when one possesses a boundless wisdom and when one is as powerful as
+one is wise; when one can do all and when one has the best?
+
+166. Having once understood these things, we are hardened sufficiently, so
+it seems to me, against the strongest and most spirited objections. I have
+not concealed them: but there are some we shall merely touch upon, because
+they are too odious. The Remonstrants and M. Bayle (_Reply to the Questions
+of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 152, end page 919) quote St. Augustine,
+saying, '_crudelem esse misericordiam velle aliquem miserum esse ut eius
+miserearis_': in the same sense is cited Seneca _De Benef._, L. 6, c. 36,
+37. I confess that one would have some reason to urge that against those
+who believed that God has no other cause for permitting sin than the  [227]
+design to have something wherewith to exercise punitive justice against the
+majority of men, and his mercy towards a small number of elect. But it must
+be considered that God had reasons for his permission of sin, more worthy
+of him and more profound in relation to us. Someone has dared to compare
+God's course of action with that of a Caligula, who has his edicts written
+in so small a hand and has them placarded in so high a place that it is not
+possible to read them; with that of a mother who neglects her daughter's
+honour in order to attain her own selfish ends; with that of Queen
+Catherine de Medicis, who is said to have abetted the love-affairs of her
+ladies in order to learn of the intrigues of the great; and even with that
+of Tiberius, who arranged, through the extraordinary services of the
+executioner, that the law forbidding the subjection of a virgin to capital
+punishment should no longer apply to the case of Sejanus's daughter. This
+last comparison was proposed by Peter Bertius, then an Armenian, but
+finally a member of the Roman communion. And a scandalous comparison has
+been made between God and Tiberius, which is related at length by Andreas
+Caroli in his _Memorabilia Ecclesiastica_ of the last century, as M. Bayle
+observes. Bertius used it against the Gomarists. I think that arguments of
+this kind are only valid against those who maintain that justice is an
+arbitrary thing in relation to God; or that he has a despotic power which
+can go so far as being able to condemn innocents; or, in short, that good
+is not the motive of his actions.
+
+167. At that same time an ingenious satire was composed against the
+Gomarists, entitled _Fur praedestinatus, de gepredestineerdedief_, wherein
+there is introduced a thief condemned to be hanged, who attributes to God
+all the evil he has done; who believes himself predestined to salvation
+notwithstanding his wicked actions; who imagines that this belief is
+sufficient for him, and who defeats by arguments _ad hominem_ a
+Counter-remonstrant minister called to prepare him for death: but this
+thief is finally converted by an old pastor who had been dismissed for his
+Arminianism, whom the gaoler, in pity for the criminal and for the weakness
+of the minister, had brought to him secretly. Replies were made to this
+lampoon, but replies to satires never please as much as the satires
+themselves. M. Bayle (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III,
+ch. 154, p. 938) says that this book was printed in England in the    [228]
+time of Cromwell, and he appears not to have been informed that it was only
+a translation of the much older original Flemish. He adds that Dr. George
+Kendal wrote a confutation of it at Oxford in the year 1657, under the
+title of _Fur pro Tribunali_, and that the dialogue is there inserted. This
+dialogue presupposes, contrary to the truth, that the Counter-remonstrants
+make God the cause of evil, and teach a kind of predestination in the
+Mahometan manner according to which it does not matter whether one does
+good or evil, and the assumption that one is predestined assures the fact.
+They by no means go so far. Nevertheless it is true that there are among
+them some Supralapsarians and others who find it hard to declare themselves
+in clear terms upon the justice of God and the principles of piety and
+morals in man. For they imagine despotism in God, and demand that man be
+convinced, without reason, of the absolute certainty of his election, a
+course that is liable to have dangerous consequences. But all those who
+acknowledge that God produces the best plan, having chosen it from among
+all possible ideas of the universe; that he there finds man inclined by the
+original imperfection of creatures to misuse his free will and to plunge
+into misery; that God prevents the sin and the misery in so far as the
+perfection of the universe, which is an emanation from his, may permit it:
+those, I say, show forth more clearly that God's intention is the one most
+right and holy in the world; that the creature alone is guilty, that his
+original limitation or imperfection is the source of his wickedness, that
+his evil will is the sole cause of his misery; that one cannot be destined
+to salvation without also being destined to the holiness of the children of
+God, and that all hope of election one can have can only be founded upon
+the good will infused into one's heart by the grace of God.
+
+168. _Metaphysical considerations_ also are brought up against my
+explanation of the moral cause of moral evil; but they will trouble me less
+since I have dismissed the objections derived from moral reasons, which
+were more impressive. These metaphysical considerations concern the nature
+of the _possible_ and of the _necessary_; they go against my fundamental
+assumption that God has chosen the best of all possible worlds. There are
+philosophers who have maintained that there is nothing possible except that
+which actually happens. These are those same people who thought or could
+have thought that all is necessary unconditionally. Some were of this [229]
+opinion because they admitted a brute and blind necessity in the cause of
+the existence of things: and it is these I have most reason for opposing.
+But there are others who are mistaken only because they misuse terms. They
+confuse moral necessity with metaphysical necessity: they imagine that
+since God cannot help acting for the best he is thus deprived of freedom,
+and things are endued with that necessity which philosophers and
+theologians endeavour to avoid. With these writers my dispute is only one
+of words, provided they admit in very deed that God chooses and does the
+best. But there are others who go further, they think that God could have
+done better. This is an opinion which must be rejected: for although it
+does not altogether deprive God of wisdom and goodness, as do the advocates
+of blind necessity, it sets bounds thereto, thus derogating from God's
+supreme perfection.
+
+169. The question of the _possibility of things that do not happen_ has
+already been examined by the ancients. It appears that Epicurus, to
+preserve freedom and to avoid an absolute necessity, maintained, after
+Aristotle, that contingent futurities were not susceptible of determinate
+truth. For if it was true yesterday that I should write to-day, it could
+therefore not fail to happen, it was already necessary; and, for the same
+reason, it was from all eternity. Thus all that which happens is necessary,
+and it is impossible for anything different to come to pass. But since that
+is not so it would follow, according to him, that contingent futurities
+have no determinate truth. To uphold this opinion, Epicurus went so far as
+to deny the first and the greatest principle of the truths of reason, he
+denied that every assertion was either true or false. Here is the way they
+confounded him: 'You deny that it was true yesterday that I should write
+to-day; it was therefore false.' The good man, not being able to admit this
+conclusion, was obliged to say that it was neither true nor false. After
+that, he needs no refutation, and Chrysippus might have spared himself the
+trouble he took to prove the great principle of contradictories, following
+the account by Cicero in his book _De Fato_: 'Contendit omnes nervos
+Chrysippus ut persuadeat omne [Greek: Axioma] aut verum esse aut falsum. Ut
+enim Epicurus veretur ne si hoc concesserit, concedendum sit, fato fieri
+quaecunque fiant; si enim alterum ex aeternitate verum sit, esse id etiam
+certum; si certum, etiam necessarium; ita et necessitatem et fatum
+confirmari putat; sic Chrysippus metuit ne non, si non obtinuerit omne[230]
+quod enuncietur aut verum esse aut falsum, omnia fato fieri possint ex
+causis aeternis rerum futurarum.' M. Bayle observes (_Dictionary_, article
+'Epicurus', let. T, p. 1141) 'that neither of these two great philosophers
+[Epicurus and Chrysippus] understood that the truth of this maxim, every
+proposition is true or false, is independent of what is called _fatum_: it
+could not therefore serve as proof of the existence of the _fatum_, as
+Chrysippus maintained and as Epicurus feared. Chrysippus could not have
+conceded, without damaging his own position, that there are propositions
+which are neither true nor false. But he gained nothing by asserting the
+contrary: for, whether there be free causes or not, it is equally true that
+this proposition, The Grand Mogul will go hunting to-morrow, is true or
+false. Men rightly regarded as ridiculous this speech of Tiresias: All that
+I shall say will happen or not, for great Apollo confers on me the faculty
+of prophesying. If, assuming the impossible, there were no God, it would
+yet be certain that everything the greatest fool in the world should
+predict would happen or would not happen. That is what neither Chrysippus
+nor Epicurus has taken into consideration.' Cicero, lib. I, _De Nat.
+Deorum_, with regard to the evasions of the Epicureans expressed the sound
+opinion (as M. Bayle observes towards the end of the same page) that it
+would be much less shameful to admit that one cannot answer one's opponent,
+than to have recourse to such answers. Yet we shall see that M. Bayle
+himself confused the certain with the necessary, when he maintained that
+the choice of the best rendered things necessary.
+
+170. Let us come now to the possibility of things that do not happen, and I
+will give the very words of M. Bayle, albeit they are somewhat discursive.
+This is what he says on the matter in his _Dictionary_ (article
+'Chrysippus', let. S, p. 929): 'The celebrated dispute on things possible
+and things impossible owed its origin to the doctrine of the Stoics
+concerning fate. The question was to know whether, among the things which
+have never been and never will be, there are some possible; or whether all
+that is not, all that has never been, all that will never be, was
+impossible. A famous dialectician of the Megaric Sect, named Diodorus, gave
+a negative answer to the first of these two questions and an affirmative to
+the second; but Chrysippus vehemently opposed him. Here are two passages of
+Cicero (epist. 4, lib. 9, _Ad Familiar._): "[Greek: peri dynaton] me scito
+[Greek: kata Diodoron krinein]. Quapropter si venturus es, scito      [231]
+necesse esse te venire. Sin autem non es, [Greek: ton adynaton] est te
+venire. Nunc vide utra te [Greek: krisis] magis delectet, [Greek:
+Chrysippeia] ne, an haec; quam noster Diodorus [a Stoic who for a long time
+had lived in Cicero's house] non concoquebat." This is quoted from a letter
+that Cicero wrote to Varro. He sets forth more comprehensively the whole
+state of the question, in the little book _De Fato_. I am going to quote a
+few pieces (Cic., _De Fato_, p. m. 65): "Vigila, Chrysippe, ne tuam causam,
+in qua tibi cum Diodoro valente Dialectico magna luctatio est, deseras ...
+omne ergo quod falsum dicitur in futuro, id fieri non potest. At hoc,
+Chrysippe, minime vis, maximeque tibi de hoc ipso cum Diodoro certamen est.
+Ille enim id solum fieri posse dicit, quod aut sit verum, aut futurum sit
+verum; et quicquid futurum sit, id dicit fieri necesse esse; et quicquid
+non sit futurum, id negat fieri posse. Tu etiam quae non sint futura, posse
+fieri dicis, ut frangi hanc gemmam, etiamsi id nunquam futurum sit: neque
+necesse fuisse Cypselum regnare Corinthi, quamquam id millesimo ante anno
+Apollinis Oraculo editum esset.... Placet Diodoro, id solum fieri posse,
+quod aut verum sit, aut verum futurum sit: qui locus attingit hanc
+quaestionem, nihil fieri, quod non necesse fuerit; et quicquid fieri
+possit, id aut esse jam, aut futurum esse: nec magis commutari ex veris in
+falsa ea posse quae futura sunt, quam ea quae facta sunt: sed in factis
+immutabilitatem apparere; in futuris quibusdam, quia non apparent, ne
+inesse quidem videri: ut in eo qui mortifero morbo urgeatur, verum sit, hic
+morietur hoc morbo: at hoc idem si vere dicatur in eo, in quo tanta vis
+morbi non appareat, nihilominus futurum sit. Ita fit ut commutatio ex vero
+in falsum, ne in futuro quidem ulla fieri possit." Cicero makes it clear
+enough that Chrysippus often found himself in difficulties in this dispute,
+and that is no matter for astonishment: for the course he had chosen was
+not bound up with his dogma of fate, and, if he had known how, or had
+dared, to reason consistently, he would readily have adopted the whole
+hypothesis of Diodorus. We have seen already that the freedom he assigned
+to the soul, and his comparison of the cylinder, did not preclude the
+possibility that in reality all the acts of the human will were unavoidable
+consequences of fate. Hence it follows that everything which does not
+happen is impossible, and that there is nothing possible but that which
+actually comes to pass. Plutarch (_De Stoicor. Repugn._, pp. 1053, 1054)
+discomfits him completely, on that point as well as on the dispute    [232]
+with Diodorus, and maintains that his opinion on possibility is altogether
+contrary to the doctrine of _fatum_. Observe that the most eminent Stoics
+had written on this matter without following the same path. Arrian (in
+_Epict._, lib. 2, c. 29, p. m. 166) named four of them, who are Chrysippus,
+Cleanthes, Archidemus and Antipater. He evinces great scorn for this
+dispute; and M. Menage need not have cited him as a writer who had spoken
+in commendation of the work of Chrysippus [Greek: peri dynaton] ("citatur
+honorifice apud Arrianum", Menag. in _Laert._, I, 7, 341) for assuredly
+these words, "[Greek: gegraphe de kai Chrysippos thaumastos], etc., de his
+rebus mira scripsit Chrysippus", etc., are not in that connexion a eulogy.
+That is shown by the passages immediately before and after it. Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus (_De Collocat. Verbor._, c. 17, p. m. 11) mentions two
+treatises by Chrysippus, wherein, under a title that promised something
+different, much of the logicians' territory had been explored. The work was
+entitled "[Greek: peri tes syntaxeos ton tou logou meron], de partium
+orationis collocatione", and treated only of propositions true and false,
+possible and impossible, contingent and equivocal, etc., matter that our
+Schoolmen have pounded down and reduced to its essence. Take note that
+Chrysippus recognized that past things were necessarily true, which
+Cleanthes had not been willing to admit. (Arrian, _ubi supra_, p. m. 165.)
+"[Greek: Ou pan de parelelythos alethes anankaion esti, kathaper hoi peri
+Kleanthen pheresthai dokousi]. Non omne praeteritum ex necessitate verum
+est, ut illi qui Cleanthem sequuntur sentiunt." We have already seen (p.
+562, col. 2) that Abelard is alleged to have taught a doctrine which
+resembles that of Diodorus. I think that the Stoics pledged themselves to
+give a wider range to possible things than to future things, for the
+purpose of mitigating the odious and frightful conclusions which were drawn
+from their dogma of fatality.'
+
+It is sufficiently evident that Cicero when writing to Varro the words that
+have just been quoted (lib. 9, Ep. 4, _Ad Familiar._) had not enough
+comprehension of the effect of Diodorus's opinion, since he found it
+preferable. He presents tolerably well in his book _De Fato_ the opinions
+of those writers, but it is a pity that he has not always added the reasons
+which they employed. Plutarch in his treatise on the contradictions of the
+Stoics and M. Bayle are both surprised that Chrysippus was not of the same
+opinion as Diodorus, since he favours fatality. But Chrysippus and even his
+master Cleanthes were on that point more reasonable than is supposed. [233]
+That will be seen as we proceed. It is open to question whether the past is
+more necessary than the future. Cleanthes held the opinion that it is. The
+objection is raised that it is necessary _ex hypothesi_ for the future to
+happen, as it is necessary _ex hypothesi_ for the past to have happened.
+But there is this difference, that it is not possible to act on the past
+state, that would be a contradiction; but it is possible to produce some
+effect on the future. Yet the hypothetical necessity of both is the same:
+the one cannot be changed, the other will not be; and once that is past, it
+will not be possible for it to be changed either.
+
+171. The famous Pierre Abelard expressed an opinion resembling that of
+Diodorus in the statement that God can do only that which he does. It was
+the third of the fourteen propositions taken from his works which were
+censured at the Council of Sens. It had been taken from the third book of
+his _Introduction to Theology_, where he treats especially of the power of
+God. The reason he gave for his statement was that God can do only that
+which he wills. Now God cannot will to do anything other than that which he
+does, because, of necessity, he must will whatever is fitting. Hence it
+follows that all that which he does not, is not fitting, that he cannot
+will to do it, and consequently that he cannot do it. Abelard admits
+himself that this opinion is peculiar to him, that hardly anyone shares in
+it, that it seems contrary to the doctrine of the saints and to reason and
+derogatory to the greatness of God. It appears that this author was a
+little too much inclined to speak and to think differently from others: for
+in reality this was only a dispute about words: he was changing the use of
+terms. Power and will are different faculties, whose objects also are
+different; it is confusing them to say that God can do only that which he
+wills. On the contrary, among various possibles, he wills only that which
+he finds the best. For all possibles are regarded as objects of power, but
+actual and existing things are regarded as the objects of his decretory
+will. Abelard himself acknowledged it. He raises this objection for
+himself: a reprobate can be saved; but he can only be saved if God saves
+him. God can therefore save him, and consequently do something that he does
+not. Abelard answers that it may indeed be said that this man can be saved
+in respect of the possibility of human nature, which is capable of
+salvation: but that it may not be said that God can save him in respect of
+God himself, because it is impossible that God should do that which he[234]
+must not do. But Abelard admits that it may very well be said in a sense,
+speaking absolutely and setting aside the assumption of reprobation, that
+such an one who is reprobate can be saved, and that thus often that which
+God does not can be done. He could therefore have spoken like the rest, who
+mean nothing different when they say that God can save this man, and that
+he can do that which he does not.
+
+172. The so-called necessity of Wyclif, which was condemned by the Council
+of Constance, seems to arise simply from this same misunderstanding. I
+think that men of talent do wrong to truth and to themselves when, without
+reason, they bring into use new and displeasing expressions. In our own
+time the celebrated Mr. Hobbes supported this same opinion, that what does
+not happen is impossible. He proves it by the statement that all the
+conditions requisite for a thing that shall not exist (_omnia rei non
+futurae requisita_) are never found together, and that the thing cannot
+exist otherwise. But who does not see that that only proves a hypothetical
+impossibility? It is true that a thing cannot exist when a requisite
+condition for it is lacking. But as we claim to be able to say that the
+thing can exist although it does not exist, we claim in the same way to be
+able to say that the requisite conditions can exist although they do not
+exist. Thus Mr. Hobbes's argument leaves the matter where it is. The
+opinion which was held concerning Mr. Hobbes, that he taught an absolute
+necessity of all things, brought upon him much discredit, and would have
+done him harm even had it been his only error.
+
+173. Spinoza went further: he appears to have explicitly taught a blind
+necessity, having denied to the Author of Things understanding and will,
+and assuming that good and perfection relate to us only, and not to him. It
+is true that Spinoza's opinion on this subject is somewhat obscure: for he
+grants God thought, after having divested him of understanding,
+_cogitationem, non intellectum concedit Deo_. There are even passages where
+he relents on the question of necessity. Nevertheless, as far as one can
+understand him, he acknowledges no goodness in God, properly speaking, and
+he teaches that all things exist through the necessity of the divine
+nature, without any act of choice by God. We will not waste time here in
+refuting an opinion so bad, and indeed so inexplicable. My own opinion is
+founded on the nature of the possibles, that is, of things that imply [235]
+no contradiction. I do not think that a Spinozist will say that all the
+romances one can imagine exist actually now, or have existed, or will still
+exist in some place in the universe. Yet one cannot deny that romances such
+as those of Mademoiselle de Scudery, or as _Octavia_, are possible. Let us
+therefore bring up against him these words of M. Bayle, which please me
+well, on page 390, 'It is to-day', he says, 'a great embarrassment for the
+Spinozists to see that, according to their hypothesis, it was as impossible
+from all eternity that Spinoza, for instance, should not die at The Hague,
+as it is impossible for two and two to make six. They are well aware that
+it is a necessary conclusion from their doctrine, and a conclusion which
+disheartens, affrights, and stirs the mind to revolt, because of the
+absurdity it involves, diametrically opposed to common sense. They are not
+well pleased that one should know they are subverting a maxim so universal
+and so evident as this one: All that which implies contradiction is
+impossible, and all that which implies no contradiction is possible.'
+
+174. One may say of M. Bayle, 'ubi bene, nemo melius', although one cannot
+say of him what was said of Origen, 'ubi male, nemo pejus'. I will only add
+that what has just been indicated as a maxim is in fact the definition of
+the _possible_ and the _impossible_. M. Bayle, however, adds here towards
+the end a remark which somewhat spoils his eminently reasonable statement.
+'Now what contradiction would there be if Spinoza had died in Leyden? Would
+Nature then have been less perfect, less wise, less powerful?' He confuses
+here what is impossible because it implies contradiction with what cannot
+happen because it is not meet to be chosen. It is true that there would
+have been no contradiction in the supposition that Spinoza died in Leyden
+and not at The Hague; there would have been nothing so possible: the matter
+was therefore indifferent in respect of the power of God. But one must not
+suppose that any event, however small it be, can be regarded as indifferent
+in respect of his wisdom and his goodness. Jesus Christ has said divinely
+well that everything is numbered, even to the hairs of our head. Thus the
+wisdom of God did not permit that this event whereof M. Bayle speaks should
+happen otherwise than it happened, not as if by itself it would have been
+more deserving of choice, but on account of its connexion with that entire
+sequence of the universe which deserved to be given preference. To say that
+what has already happened was of no interest to the wisdom of God, and[236]
+thence to infer that it is therefore not necessary, is to make a false
+assumption and argue incorrectly to a true conclusion. It is confusing what
+is necessary by moral necessity, that is, according to the principle of
+Wisdom and Goodness, with what is so by metaphysical and brute necessity,
+which occurs when the contrary implies contradiction. Spinoza, moreover,
+sought a metaphysical necessity in events. He did not think that God was
+determined by his goodness and by his perfection (which this author treated
+as chimeras in relation to the universe), but by the necessity of his
+nature; just as the semicircle is bound to enclose only right angles,
+without either knowing or willing this. For Euclid demonstrated that all
+angles enclosed between two straight lines drawn from the extremities of
+the diameter towards a point on the circumference of the circle are of
+necessity right angles, and that the contrary implies contradiction.
+
+175. There are people who have gone to the other extreme: under the pretext
+of freeing the divine nature from the yoke of necessity they wished to
+regard it as altogether indifferent, with an indifference of equipoise.
+They did not take into account that just as metaphysical necessity is
+preposterous in relation to God's actions _ad extra_, so moral necessity is
+worthy of him. It is a happy necessity which obliges wisdom to do good,
+whereas indifference with regard to good and evil would indicate a lack of
+goodness or of wisdom. And besides, the indifference which would keep the
+will in a perfect equipoise would itself be a chimera, as has been already
+shown: it would offend against the great principle of the determinant
+reason.
+
+176. Those who believe that God established good and evil by an arbitrary
+decree are adopting that strange idea of mere indifference, and other
+absurdities still stranger. They deprive God of the designation _good_: for
+what cause could one have to praise him for what he does, if in doing
+something quite different he would have done equally well? And I have very
+often been surprised that divers Supralapsarian theologians, as for
+instance Samuel Rutherford, a Professor of Theology in Scotland, who wrote
+when the controversies with the Remonstrants were at their height, could
+have been deluded by so strange an idea. Rutherford (in his _Exercitationes
+Apologeticae pro Gratia_) says positively that nothing is unjust or morally
+bad in God's eyes before he has forbidden it: thus without this prohibition
+it would be a matter of indifference whether one murdered or saved a  [237]
+man, loved God or hated him, praised or blasphemed him. Nothing is so
+unreasonable as that. One may teach that God established good and evil by a
+positive law, or one may assert that there was something good and just
+before his decree, but that he is not required to conform to it, and that
+nothing prevents him from acting unjustly and from perhaps condemning
+innocence: but it all comes to the same thing, offering almost equal
+dishonour to God. For if justice was established arbitrarily and without
+any cause, if God came upon it by a kind of hazard, as when one draws lots,
+his goodness and his wisdom are not manifested in it, and there is nothing
+at all to attach him to it. If it is by a purely arbitrary decree, without
+any reason, that he has established or created what we call justice and
+goodness, then he can annul them or change their nature. Thus one would
+have no reason to assume that he will observe them always, as it would be
+possible to say he will observe them on the assumption that they are
+founded on reasons. The same would hold good more or less if his justice
+were different from ours, if (for example) it were written in his code that
+it is just to make the innocent eternally unhappy. According to these
+principles also, nothing would compel God to keep his word or would assure
+us of its fulfilment. For why should the law of justice, which states that
+reasonable promises must be kept, be more inviolable for him than any other
+laws?
+
+177. All these three dogmas, albeit a little different from one another,
+namely, (1) that the nature of justice is arbitrary, (2) that it is fixed,
+but it is not certain that God will observe it, and finally (3) that the
+justice we know is not that which he observes, destroy the confidence in
+God that gives us tranquillity, and the love of God that makes our
+happiness. There is nothing to prevent such a God from behaving as a tyrant
+and an enemy of honest folk, and from taking pleasure in that which we call
+evil. Why should he not, then, just as well be the evil principle of the
+Manichaeans as the single good principle of the orthodox? At least he would
+be neutral and, as it were, suspended between the two, or even sometimes
+the one and sometimes the other. That would be as if someone were to say
+that Oromasdes and Arimanius reign in turns, according to which of the two
+is the stronger or the more adroit. It is like the saying of a certain
+Moghul woman. She, so it seems, having heard it said that formerly under
+Genghis Khan and his successors her nation had had dominion over most [238]
+of the North and East, told the Muscovites recently, when M. Isbrand went
+to China on behalf of the Czar, through the country of those Tartars, that
+the god of the Moghuls had been driven from Heaven, but that one day he
+would take his own place again. The true God is always the same: natural
+religion itself demands that he be essentially as good and wise as he is
+powerful. It is scarcely more contrary to reason and piety to say that God
+acts without cognition, than to maintain that he has cognition which does
+not find the eternal rules of goodness and of justice among its objects, or
+again to say that he has a will such as heeds not these rules.
+
+178. Some theologians who have written of God's right over creatures appear
+to have conceded to him an unrestricted right, an arbitrary and despotic
+power. They thought that would be placing divinity on the most exalted
+level that may be imagined for it, and that it would abase the creature
+before the Creator to such an extent that the Creator is bound by no laws
+of any kind with respect to the creature. There are passages from Twiss,
+Rutherford and some other Supralapsarians which imply that God cannot sin
+whatever he may do, because he is subject to no law. M. Bayle himself
+considers that this doctrine is monstrous and contrary to the holiness of
+God (_Dictionary_, v. 'Paulicians', p. 2332 _in initio_); but I suppose
+that the intention of some of these writers was less bad than it seems to
+be. Apparently they meant by the term right, [Greek: anypeuthynian], a
+state wherein one is responsible to none for one's actions. But they will
+not have denied that God owes to himself what goodness and justice demand
+of him. On that matter one may see M. Amyraut's _Apology for Calvin_: it is
+true that Calvin appears orthodox on this subject, and that he is by no
+means one of the extreme Supralapsarians.
+
+179. Thus, when M. Bayle says somewhere that St. Paul extricates himself
+from predestination only through the consideration of God's absolute right,
+and the incomprehensibility of his ways, it is implied that, if one
+understood them, one would find them consistent with justice, God not being
+able to use his power otherwise. St. Paul himself says that it is a
+_depth_, but a depth of wisdom (_altitudo sapientiae_), and _justice_ is
+included in _the goodness of the All-wise_. I find that M. Bayle speaks
+very well elsewhere on the application of our notions of goodness to the
+actions of God (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 81, p. 139):
+'One must not assert here', he says, 'that the goodness of the        [239]
+infinite Being is not subject to the same rules as the goodness of the
+creature. For if there is in God an attribute that can be called goodness,
+the marks of goodness in general must apply to him. Now when we reduce
+goodness to the most general abstraction, we find therein the will to do
+good. Divide and subdivide into as many kinds as you shall please this
+general goodness, into infinite goodness, finite goodness, kingly goodness,
+goodness of a father, goodness of a husband, goodness of a master, you will
+find in each, as an inseparable attribute, the will to do good.'
+
+180. I find also that M. Bayle combats admirably the opinion of those who
+assert that goodness and justice depend solely upon the arbitrary choice of
+God; who suppose, moreover, that if God had been determined by the goodness
+of things themselves to act, he would be entirely subjected to necessity in
+his actions, a state incompatible with freedom. That is confusing
+metaphysical necessity with moral necessity. Here is what M. Bayle says in
+objection to this error (_Reply_, ch. 89, p. 203): 'The consequence of this
+doctrine will be, that before God resolved upon creating the world he saw
+nothing better in virtue than in vice, and that his ideas did not show him
+that virtue was more worthy of his love than vice. That leaves no
+distinction between natural right and positive right; there will no longer
+be anything unalterable or inevitable in morals; it will have been just as
+possible for God to command people to be vicious as to command them to be
+virtuous; and one will have no certainty that the moral laws will not one
+day be abrogated, as the ceremonial laws of the Jews were. This, in a word,
+leads us straight to the belief that God was the free author, not only of
+goodness and of virtue, but also of truth and of the essence of things.
+That is what certain of the Cartesians assert, and I confess that their
+opinion (see the Continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, p. 554)
+might be of some avail in certain circumstances. Yet it is open to dispute
+for so many reasons, and subject to consequences so troublesome (see
+chapter 152 of the same Continuation) that there are scarcely any extremes
+it were not better to suffer rather than plunge into that one. It opens the
+door to the most exaggerated Pyrrhonism: for it leads to the assertion that
+this proposition, three and three make six, is only true where and during
+the time when it pleases God; that it is perhaps false in some parts of the
+universe; and that perhaps it will be so among men in the coming year.[240]
+All that depends on the free will of God could have been limited to certain
+places and certain times, like the Judaic ceremonies. This conclusion will
+be extended to all the laws of the Decalogue, if the actions they command
+are in their nature divested of all goodness to the same degree as the
+actions they forbid.'
+
+181. To say that God, having resolved to create man just as he is, could
+not but have required of him piety, sobriety, justice and chastity, because
+it is impossible that the disorders capable of overthrowing or disturbing
+his work can please him, that is to revert in effect to the common opinion.
+Virtues are virtues only because they serve perfection or prevent the
+imperfection of those who are virtuous, or even of those who have to do
+with them. And they have that power by their nature and by the nature of
+rational creatures, before God decrees to create them. To hold a different
+opinion would be as if someone were to say that the rules of proportion and
+harmony are arbitrary with regard to musicians because they occur in music
+only when one has resolved to sing or to play some instrument. But that is
+exactly what is meant by being essential to good music: for those rules
+belong to it already in the ideal state, even when none yet thinks of
+singing, since it is known that they must of necessity belong to it as soon
+as one shall sing. In the same way virtues belong to the ideal state of the
+rational creature before God decrees to create it; and it is for that very
+reason we maintain that virtues are good by their nature.
+
+182. M. Bayle has inserted a special chapter in his Continuation of _Divers
+Thoughts on the Comet_ (it is chapter 152) where he shows 'that the
+Christian Doctors teach that there are things which are just antecedently
+to God's decrees'. Some theologians of the Augsburg Confession censured
+some of the Reformed who appeared to be of a different opinion; and this
+error was regarded as if it were a consequence of the absolute decree,
+which doctrine seems to exempt the will of God from any kind of reason,
+_ubi stat pro ratione voluntas_. But, as I have observed already on various
+occasions, Calvin himself acknowledged that the decrees of God are in
+conformity with justice and wisdom, although the reasons that might prove
+this conformity in detail are unknown to us. Thus, according to him, the
+rules of goodness and of justice are anterior to the decrees of God. M.
+Bayle, in the same place, quotes a passage from the celebrated M. Turretin
+which draws a distinction between natural divine laws and positive    [241]
+divine laws. Moral laws are of the first kind and ceremonial of the second.
+Samuel Desmarests, a celebrated theologian formerly at Groningen, and Herr
+Strinesius, who is still at Frankfort on the Oder, advocated this same
+distinction; and I think that it is the opinion most widely accepted even
+among the Reformed. Thomas Aquinas and all the Thomists were of the same
+opinion, with the bulk of the Schoolmen and the theologians of the Roman
+Church. The Casuists also held to that idea: I count Grotius among the most
+eminent of them, and he was followed in this point by his commentators.
+Herr Pufendorf appeared to be of a different opinion, which he insisted on
+maintaining in the face of censure from some theologians; but he need not
+be taken into account, not having advanced far enough in subjects of this
+kind. He makes a vigorous protest against the absolute decree, in his
+_Fecialis divinus_, and yet he approves what is worst in the opinions of
+the champions of this decree, and without which this decree (as others of
+the Reformed explain) becomes endurable. Aristotle was very orthodox on
+this matter of justice, and the Schoolmen followed him: they distinguish,
+just as Cicero and the Jurists do, between perpetual right, which is
+binding on all and everywhere, and positive right, which is only for
+certain times and certain peoples. I once read with enjoyment the
+_Euthyphro_ of Plato, who makes Socrates uphold the truth on that point,
+and M. Bayle has called attention to the same passage.
+
+183. M. Bayle himself upholds this truth with considerable force in a
+certain passage, which it will be well to quote here in its entirety, long
+as it is (vol. II of the Continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_,
+ch. 152, p. 771 _seqq._): 'According to the teaching of countless writers
+of importance', he says, 'there is in nature and in the essence of certain
+things a moral good or evil that precedes the divine decree. They prove
+this doctrine principally through the frightful consequences that attend
+the opposite dogma. Thus from the proposition that to do wrong to no man
+would be a good action, not in itself but by an arbitrary dispensation of
+God's will, it would follow that God could have given to man a law directly
+opposed at all points to the commandments of the Decalogue. That is
+horrifying. But here is a more direct proof, one derived from metaphysics.
+One thing is certain, that the existence of God is not an effect of his
+will. He exists not because he wills his existence, but through the   [242]
+necessity of his infinite nature. His power and his knowledge exist through
+the same necessity. He is all-powerful, he knows all things, not because he
+wills it thus, but because these are attributes necessarily identified with
+him. The dominion of his will relates only to the exercise of his power, he
+gives effect outside himself only to that which he wills, and he leaves all
+the rest in the state of mere possibility. Thence it comes that this
+dominion extends only over the existence of creatures, and not over their
+essential being. God was able to create matter, a man, a circle, or leave
+them in nothingness, but he was not able to produce them without giving
+them their essential properties. He had of necessity to make man a rational
+animal and to give the round shape to a circle, since, according to his
+eternal ideas, independent of the free decrees of his will, the essence of
+man lay in the properties of being animal and rational, and since the
+essence of the circle lay in having a circumference equally distant from
+the centre as to all its parts. This is what has caused the Christian
+philosophers to acknowledge that the essences of things are eternal, and
+that there are propositions of eternal truth; consequently that the
+essences of things and the truth of the first principles are immutable.
+That is to be understood not only of theoretical but also of practical
+first principles, and of all the propositions that contain the true
+definition of creatures. These essences and these truths emanate from the
+same necessity of nature as the knowledge of God. Since therefore it is by
+the nature of things that God exists, that he is all-powerful, and that he
+has perfect knowledge of all things, it is also by the nature of things
+that matter, the triangle, man and certain actions of man, etc., have such
+and such properties essentially. God saw from all eternity and in all
+necessity the essential relations of numbers, and the identity of the
+subject and predicate in the propositions that contain the essence of each
+thing. He saw likewise that the term just is included in these
+propositions: to esteem what is estimable, be grateful to one's benefactor,
+fulfil the conditions of a contract, and so on, with many others relating
+to morals. One is therefore justified in saying that the precepts of
+natural law assume the reasonableness and justice of that which is
+enjoined, and that it would be man's duty to practise what they contain
+even though God should have been so indulgent as to ordain nothing in that
+respect. Pray observe that in going back with our visionary thoughts to
+that ideal moment when God has yet decreed nothing, we find in the    [243]
+ideas of God the principles of morals under terms that imply an obligation.
+We understand these maxims as certain, and derived from the eternal and
+immutable order: it beseems the rational creature to conform to reason; a
+rational creature conforming to reason is to be commended, but not
+conforming thereto is blameworthy. You would not dare to deny that these
+truths impose upon man a duty in relation to all acts which are in
+conformity with strict reason, such as these: one must esteem all that is
+estimable; render good for good; do wrong to no man; honour one's father;
+render to every man that which is his due, etc. Now since by the very
+nature of things, and before the divine laws, the truths of morality impose
+upon man certain duties, Thomas Aquinas and Grotius were justified in
+saying that if there were no God we should nevertheless be obliged to
+conform to natural law. Others have said that even supposing all rational
+beings in existence were to perish, true propositions would remain true.
+Cajetan maintained that if he remained alone in the universe, all other
+things without any exception having been destroyed, the knowledge that he
+had of the nature of a rose would nevertheless subsist.'
+
+184. The late Jacob Thomasius, a celebrated Professor at Leipzig, made the
+apt observation in his elucidations of the philosophic rules of Daniel
+Stahl, a Jena professor, that it is not advisable to go altogether beyond
+God, and that one must not say, with some Scotists, that the eternal
+verities would exist even though there were no understanding, not even that
+of God. For it is, in my judgement, the divine understanding which gives
+reality to the eternal verities, albeit God's will have no part therein.
+All reality must be founded on something existent. It is true that an
+atheist may be a geometrician: but if there were no God, geometry would
+have no object. And without God, not only would there be nothing existent,
+but there would be nothing possible. That, however, does not hinder those
+who do not see the connexion of all things one with another and with God
+from being able to understand certain sciences, without knowing their first
+source, which is in God. Aristotle, although he also scarcely knew that
+source, nevertheless said something of the same kind which was very
+apposite. He acknowledged that the principles of individual forms of
+knowledge depend on a superior knowledge which gives the reason for them;
+and this superior knowledge must have being, and consequently God, the[244]
+source of being, for its object. Herr Dreier of Koenigsberg has aptly
+observed that the true metaphysics which Aristotle sought, and which he
+called [Greek: ten zetoumenen], his _desideratum_, was theology.
+
+185. Yet the same M. Bayle, who says so much that is admirable in order to
+prove that the rules of goodness and justice, and the eternal verities in
+general, exist by their nature, and not by an arbitrary choice of God, has
+spoken very hesitatingly about them in another passage (Continuation of
+_Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, vol. II, ch. 114, towards the end). After
+having given an account of the opinion of M. Descartes and a section of his
+followers, who maintain that God is the free cause of truths and of
+essences, he adds (p. 554): 'I have done all that I could to gain true
+understanding of this dogma and to find the solution of the difficulties
+surrounding it. I confess to you quite simply that I still cannot properly
+fathom it. That does not discourage me; I suppose, as other philosophers in
+other cases have supposed, that time will unfold the meaning of this noble
+paradox. I wish that Father Malebranche had thought fit to defend it, but
+he took other measures.' Is it possible that the enjoyment of doubt can
+have such influence upon a gifted man as to make him wish and hope for the
+power to believe that two contradictories never exist together for the sole
+reason that God forbade them to, and, moreover, that God could have issued
+them an order to ensure that they always walked together? There is indeed a
+noble paradox! Father Malebranche showed great wisdom in taking other
+measures.
+
+186. I cannot even imagine that M. Descartes can have been quite seriously
+of this opinion, although he had adherents who found this easy to believe,
+and would in all simplicity follow him where he only made pretence to go.
+It was apparently one of his tricks, one of his philosophic feints: he
+prepared for himself some loophole, as when for instance he discovered a
+trick for denying the movement of the earth, while he was a Copernican in
+the strictest sense. I suspect that he had in mind here another
+extraordinary manner of speaking, of his own invention, which was to say
+that affirmations and negations, and acts of inner judgement in general,
+are operations of the will. Through this artifice the eternal verities,
+which until the time of Descartes had been named an object of the divine
+understanding, suddenly became an object of God's will. Now the acts of his
+will are free, therefore God is the free cause of the verities. That  [245]
+is the outcome of the matter. _Spectatum admissi._ A slight change in the
+meaning of terms has caused all this commotion. But if the affirmations of
+necessary truths were actions of the will of the most perfect mind, these
+actions would be anything but free, for there is nothing to choose. It
+seems that M. Descartes did not declare himself sufficiently on the nature
+of freedom, and that his conception of it was somewhat unusual: for he
+extended it so far that he even held the affirmations of necessary truths
+to be free in God. That was preserving only the name of freedom.
+
+187. M. Bayle, who with others conceives this to be a freedom of
+indifference, that God had had to establish (for instance) the truths of
+numbers, and to ordain that three times three made nine, whereas he could
+have commanded them to make ten, imagines in this strange opinion,
+supposing it were possible to defend it, some kind of advantage gained
+against the Stratonists. Strato was one of the leaders of the School of
+Aristotle, and the successor of Theophrastus; he maintained (according to
+Cicero's account) that this world had been formed such as it is by Nature
+or by a necessary cause devoid of cognition. I admit that that might be so,
+if God had so preformed matter as to cause such an effect by the laws of
+motion alone. But without God there would not even have been any reason for
+existence, and still less for any particular existence of things: thus
+Strato's system is not to be feared.
+
+188. Nevertheless M. Bayle is in difficulties over this: he will not admit
+plastic natures devoid of cognition, which Mr. Cudworth and others had
+introduced, for fear that the modern Stratonists, that is, the Spinozists,
+take advantage of it. This has involved him in disputes with M. le Clerc.
+Under the influence of this error, that a non-intelligent cause can produce
+nothing where contrivance appears, he is far from conceding to me that
+_preformation_ which produces naturally the organs of animals, and _the
+system of a harmony pre-established by God_ in bodies, to make them respond
+in accordance with their own laws to the thoughts and the wills of souls.
+But it ought to have been taken into account that this non-intelligent
+cause, which produces such beautiful things in the grains and seeds of
+plants and animals, and effects the actions of bodies as the will ordains
+them, was formed by the hand of God: and God is infinitely more skilful
+than a watchmaker, who himself makes machines and automata that are   [246]
+capable of producing as wonderful effects as if they possessed
+intelligence.
+
+189. Now to come to M. Bayle's apprehensions concerning the Stratonists, in
+case one should admit truths that are not dependent upon the will of God:
+he seems to fear lest they may take advantage against us of the perfect
+regularity of the eternal verities. Since this regularity springs only from
+the nature and necessity of things, without being directed by any
+cognition, M. Bayle fears that one might with Strato thence infer that the
+world also could have become regular through a blind necessity. But it is
+easy to answer that. In the region of the eternal verities are found all
+the possibles, and consequently the regular as well as the irregular: there
+must be a reason accounting for the preference for order and regularity,
+and this reason can only be found in understanding. Moreover these very
+truths can have no existence without an understanding to take cognizance of
+them; for they would not exist if there were no divine understanding
+wherein they are realized, so to speak. Hence Strato does not attain his
+end, which is to exclude cognition from that which enters into the origin
+of things.
+
+190. The difficulty that M. Bayle has imagined in connexion with Strato
+seems a little too subtle and far-fetched. That is termed: _timere, ubi non
+est timor_. He makes another difficulty, which has just as slight a
+foundation, namely, that God would be subjected to a kind of _fatum_. Here
+are his words (p. 555): 'If they are propositions of eternal truth, which
+are such by their nature and not by God's institution, if they are not true
+by a free decree of his will, but if on the contrary he has recognized them
+as true of necessity, because such was their nature, there is a kind of
+_fatum_ to which he is subjected; there is an absolutely insurmountable
+natural necessity. Thence comes also the result that the divine
+understanding in the infinity of its ideas has always and at the outset hit
+upon their perfect conformity with their objects, without the guidance of
+any cognition; for it would be a contradiction to say that any exemplary
+cause had served as a plan for the acts of God's understanding. One would
+never that way find eternal ideas or any first intelligence. One must say,
+then, that a nature which exists of necessity always finds its way, without
+any need for it to be shown. How then shall we overcome the obstinacy of a
+Stratonist?'
+
+191. But again it is easy to answer. This so-called _fatum_, which    [247]
+binds even the Divinity, is nothing but God's own nature, his own
+understanding, which furnishes the rules for his wisdom and his goodness;
+it is a happy necessity, without which he would be neither good nor wise.
+Is it to be desired that God should not be bound to be perfect and happy?
+Is our condition, which renders us liable to fail, worth envying? And
+should we not be well pleased to exchange it for sinlessness, if that
+depended upon us? One must be indeed weary of life to desire the freedom to
+destroy oneself and to pity the Divinity for not having that freedom. M.
+Bayle himself reasons thus elsewhere against those who laud to the skies an
+extravagant freedom which they assume in the will, when they would make the
+will independent of reason.
+
+192. Moreover, M. Bayle wonders 'that the divine understanding in the
+infinity of its ideas always and at the outset hits upon their perfect
+conformity with their objects, without the guidance of any cognition'. This
+objection is null and void. Every distinct idea is, through its
+distinctness, in conformity with its object, and in God there are distinct
+ideas only. At first, moreover, the object exists nowhere; but when it
+comes into existence, it will be formed according to this idea. Besides, M.
+Bayle knows very well that the divine understanding has no need of time for
+seeing the connexion of things. All trains of reasoning are in God in a
+transcendent form, and they preserve an order amongst them in his
+understanding, as well as in ours: but with him it is only an order and a
+_priority of nature_, whereas with us there is a _priority of time_. It is
+therefore not to be wondered at that he who penetrates all things at one
+stroke should always strike true at the outset; and it must not be said
+that he succeeds without the guidance of any cognition. On the contrary, it
+is because his knowledge is perfect that his voluntary actions are also
+perfect.
+
+193. Up to now I have shown that the Will of God is not independent of the
+rules of Wisdom, although indeed it is a matter for surprise that one
+should have been constrained to argue about it, and to do battle for a
+truth so great and so well established. But it is hardly less surprising
+that there should be people who believe that God only half observes these
+rules, and does not choose the best, although his wisdom causes him to
+recognize it; and, in a word, that there should be writers who hold that
+God could have done better. That is more or less the error of the famous
+Alfonso, King of Castile, who was elected King of the Romans by       [248]
+certain Electors, and originated the astronomical tables that bear his
+name. This prince is reported to have said that if God in making the world
+had consulted him he would have given God good advice. Apparently the
+Ptolemaic system, which prevailed at that time, was displeasing to him. He
+believed therefore that something better planned could have been made, and
+he was right. But if he had known the system of Copernicus, with the
+discoveries of Kepler, now extended by knowledge of the gravity of the
+planets, he would indeed have confessed that the contrivance of the true
+system is marvellous. We see, therefore, that here the question concerned
+the more or less only; Alfonso maintained that better could have been done,
+and his opinion was censured by everyone.
+
+194. Yet philosophers and theologians dare to support dogmatically such a
+belief; and I have many times wondered that gifted and pious persons should
+have been capable of setting bounds to the goodness and the perfection of
+God. For to assert that he knows what is best, that he can do it and that
+he does it not, is to avow that it rested with his will only to make the
+world better than it is; but that is what one calls lacking goodness. It is
+acting against that axiom already quoted: _Minus bonum habet rationem
+mali_. If some adduce experience to prove that God could have done better,
+they set themselves up as ridiculous critics of his works. To such will be
+given the answer given to all those who criticize God's course of action,
+and who from this same assumption, that is, the alleged defects of the
+world, would infer that there is an evil God, or at least a God neutral
+between good and evil. And if we hold the same opinion as King Alfonso, we
+shall, I say, receive this answer: You have known the world only since the
+day before yesterday, you see scarce farther than your nose, and you carp
+at the world. Wait until you know more of the world and consider therein
+especially the parts which present a complete whole (as do organic bodies);
+and you will find there a contrivance and a beauty transcending all
+imagination. Let us thence draw conclusions as to the wisdom and the
+goodness of the author of things, even in things that we know not. We find
+in the universe some things which are not pleasing to us; but let us be
+aware that it is not made for us alone. It is nevertheless made for us if
+we are wise: it will serve us if we use it for our service; we shall be
+happy in it if we wish to be.
+
+                                                                      [249]
+195. Someone will say that it is impossible to produce the best, because
+there is no perfect creature, and that it is always possible to produce one
+which would be more perfect. I answer that what can be said of a creature
+or of a particular substance, which can always be surpassed by another, is
+not to be applied to the universe, which, since it must extend through all
+future eternity, is an infinity. Moreover, there is an infinite number of
+creatures in the smallest particle of matter, because of the actual
+division of the _continuum_ to infinity. And infinity, that is to say, the
+accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly speaking,
+not a whole any more than the infinite number itself, whereof one cannot
+say whether it is even or uneven. That is just what serves to confute those
+who make of the world a God, or who think of God as the Soul of the world;
+for the world or the universe cannot be regarded as an animal or as a
+substance.
+
+196. It is therefore not a question of a creature, but of the universe; and
+the adversary will be obliged to maintain that one possible universe may be
+better than the other, to infinity; but there he would be mistaken, and it
+is that which he cannot prove. If this opinion were true, it would follow
+that God had not produced any universe at all: for he is incapable of
+acting without reason, and that would be even acting against reason. It is
+as if one were to suppose that God had decreed to make a material sphere,
+with no reason for making it of any particular size. This decree would be
+useless, it would carry with it that which would prevent its effect. It
+would be quite another matter if God decreed to draw from a given point one
+straight line to another given straight line, without any determination of
+the angle, either in the decree or in its circumstances. For in this case
+the determination would spring from the nature of the thing, the line would
+be perpendicular, and the angle would be right, since that is all that is
+determined and distinguishable. It is thus one must think of the creation
+of the best of all possible universes, all the more since God not only
+decrees to create a universe, but decrees also to create the best of all.
+For God decrees nothing without knowledge, and he makes no separate
+decrees, which would be nothing but antecedent acts of will: and these we
+have sufficiently explained, distinguishing them from genuine decrees.
+
+197. M. Diroys, whom I knew in Rome, theologian to Cardinal d'Estrees,
+wrote a book entitled _Proofs and Assumptions in Favour of_ _the      [250]
+Christian Religion_, published in Paris in the year 1683. M. Bayle (_Reply
+to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 165, p. 1058) recounts
+this objection brought up by M. Diroys: 'There is one more difficulty', he
+says, 'which it is no less important to meet than those given earlier,
+since it causes more trouble to those who judge goods and evils by
+considerations founded on the purest and most lofty maxims. This is that
+God being the supreme wisdom and goodness, it seems to them that he ought
+to do all things as wise and virtuous persons would wish them to be done,
+following the rules of wisdom and of goodness which God has imprinted in
+them, and as they would be obliged themselves to do these things if they
+depended upon them. Thus, seeing that the affairs of the world do not go so
+well as, in their opinion, they might go, and as they would go if they
+interfered themselves, they conclude that God, who is infinitely better and
+wiser than they, or rather wisdom and goodness itself, does not concern
+himself with these affairs.'
+
+198. M. Diroys makes some apt remarks concerning this, which I will not
+repeat, since I have sufficiently answered the objection in more than one
+passage, and that has been the chief end of all my discourse. But he makes
+one assertion with which I cannot agree. He claims that the objection
+proves too much. One must again quote his own words with M. Bayle, p. 1059:
+'If it does not behove the supreme Wisdom and Goodness to fail to do what
+is best and most perfect, it follows that all Beings are eternally,
+immutably and essentially as perfect and as good as they can be, since
+nothing can change except by passing either from a state less good to a
+better, or from a better to a less good. Now that cannot happen if it does
+not behove God to fail to do that which is best and most perfect, when he
+can do it. It will therefore be necessary that all beings be eternally and
+essentially filled with a knowledge and a virtue as perfect as God can give
+them. Now all that which is eternally and essentially as perfect as God can
+make it proceeds essentially from him; in a word, is eternally and
+essentially good as he is, and consequently it is God, as he is. That is
+the bearing of this maxim, that it is repugnant to supreme justice and
+goodness not to make things as good and perfect as they can be. For it is
+essential to essential wisdom and goodness to banish all that is repugnant
+to it altogether. One must therefore assert as a primary truth concerning
+the conduct of God in relation to creatures that there is nothing repugnant
+to this goodness and this wisdom in making things less perfect than   [251]
+they could be, or in permitting the goods that it has produced either
+completely to cease to be or to change and deteriorate. For it causes no
+offence to God that there should be other Beings than he, that is beings
+who can be not what they are, and do not what they do or do what they do
+not.'
+
+199. M. Bayle calls this answer paltry, but I find his counter-objection
+involved. M. Bayle will have those who are for the two principles to take
+their stand chiefly on the assumption of the supreme freedom of God: for if
+he were compelled to produce all that which he can, he would produce also
+sins and sorrows. Thus the Dualists could from the existence of evil
+conclude nothing contrary to the oneness of the principle, if this
+principle were as much inclined to evil as to good. There M. Bayle carries
+the notion of freedom too far: for even though God be supremely free, it
+does not follow that he maintains an indifference of equipoise: and even
+though he be inclined to act, it does not follow that he is compelled by
+this inclination to produce all that which he can. He will produce only
+that which he wills, for his inclination prompts him to good. I admit the
+supreme freedom of God, but I do not confuse it with indifference of
+equipoise, as if he could act without reason. M. Diroys therefore imagines
+that the Dualists, in their insistence that the single good principle
+produce no evil, ask too much; for by the same reason, according to M.
+Diroys, they ought also to ask that he should produce the greatest good,
+the less good being a kind of evil. I hold that the Dualists are wrong in
+respect of the first point, and that they would be right in respect of the
+second, where M. Diroys blames them without cause; or rather that one can
+reconcile the evil, or the less good, in some parts with the best in the
+whole. If the Dualists demanded that God should do the best, they would not
+be demanding too much. They are mistaken rather in claiming that the best
+in the whole should be free from evil in the parts, and that therefore what
+God has made is not the best.
+
+200. But M. Diroys maintains that if God always produces the best he will
+produce other Gods; otherwise each substance that he produced would not be
+the best nor the most perfect. But he is mistaken, through not taking into
+account the order and connexion of things. If each substance taken
+separately were perfect, all would be alike; which is neither fitting nor
+possible. If they were Gods, it would not have been possible to       [252]
+produce them. The best system of things will therefore not contain Gods; it
+will always be a system of bodies (that is, things arranged according to
+time and place) and of souls which represent and are aware of bodies, and
+in accordance with which bodies are in great measure directed. So, as the
+design of a building may be the best of all in respect of its purpose, of
+expense and of circumstances; and as an arrangement of some figured
+representations of bodies which is given to you may be the best that one
+can find, it is easy to imagine likewise that a structure of the universe
+may be the best of all, without becoming a god. The connexion and order of
+things brings it about that the body of every animal and of every plant is
+composed of other animals and of other plants, or of other living and
+organic beings; consequently there is subordination, and one body, one
+substance serves the other: thus their perfection cannot be equal.
+
+201. M. Bayle thinks (p. 1063) that M. Diroys has confused two different
+propositions. According to the one, God must do all things as wise and
+virtuous persons would wish that they should be done, by the rules of
+wisdom and of goodness that God has imprinted in them, and as they would be
+obliged themselves to do them if those things depended upon them. The other
+is that it is not consistent with supreme wisdom and goodness to fail to do
+what is best and most perfect. M. Diroys (in M. Bayle's opinion) sets up
+the first proposition as an objection for himself, and replies to the
+second. But therein he is justified, as it seems to me. For these two
+propositions are connected, the second is a result of the first: to do less
+good than one could is to be lacking in wisdom or in goodness. To be the
+best, and to be desired by those who are most virtuous and wise, comes to
+the same thing. And it may be said that, if we could understand the
+structure and the economy of the universe, we should find that it is made
+and directed as the wisest and most virtuous could wish it, since God
+cannot fail to do thus. This necessity nevertheless is only of a moral
+nature: and I admit that if God were forced by a metaphysical necessity to
+produce that which he makes, he would produce all the possibles, or
+nothing; and in this sense M. Bayle's conclusion would be fully correct.
+But as all the possibles are not compatible together in one and the same
+world-sequence, for that very reason all the possibles cannot be produced,
+and it must be said that God is not forced, metaphysically speaking,  [253]
+into the creation of this world. One may say that as soon as God has
+decreed to create something there is a struggle between all the possibles,
+all of them laying claim to existence, and that those which, being united,
+produce most reality, most perfection, most significance carry the day. It
+is true that all this struggle can only be ideal, that is to say, it can
+only be a conflict of reasons in the most perfect understanding, which
+cannot fail to act in the most perfect way, and consequently to choose the
+best. Yet God is bound by a moral necessity, to make things in such a
+manner that there can be nothing better: otherwise not only would others
+have cause to criticize what he makes, but, more than that, he would not
+himself be satisfied with his work, he would blame himself for its
+imperfection; and that conflicts with the supreme felicity of the divine
+nature. This perpetual sense of his own fault or imperfection would be to
+him an inevitable source of grief, as M. Bayle says on another occasion
+(p.953).
+
+202. M. Diroys' argument contains a false assumption, in his statement that
+nothing can change except by passing from a state less good to a better or
+from a better to a less good; and that thus, if God makes the best, what he
+has produced cannot be changed: it would be an eternal substance, a god.
+But I do not see why a thing cannot change its kind in relation to good or
+evil, without changing its degree. In the transition from enjoyment of
+music to enjoyment of painting, or _vice versa_ from the pleasure of the
+eyes to that of the ears, the degree of enjoyment may remain the same, the
+latter gaining no advantage over the former save that of novelty. If the
+quadrature of the circle should come to pass or (what is the same thing)
+the circulature of the square, that is, if the circle were changed into a
+square of the same size, or the square into a circle, it would be difficult
+to say, on the whole, without having regard to some special use, whether
+one would have gained or lost. Thus the best may be changed into another
+which neither yields to it nor surpasses it: but there will always be an
+order among them, and that the best order possible. Taking the whole
+sequence of things, the best has no equal; but one part of the sequence may
+be equalled by another part of the same sequence. Besides it might be said
+that the whole sequence of things to infinity may be the best possible,
+although what exists all through the universe in each portion of time be
+not the best. It might be therefore that the universe became even     [254]
+better and better, if the nature of things were such that it was not
+permitted to attain to the best all at once. But these are problems of
+which it is hard for us to judge.
+
+203. M. Bayle says (p. 1064) that the question whether God could have made
+things more perfect than he made them is also very difficult, and that the
+reasons for and against are very strong. But it is, so it seems to me, as
+if one were to question whether God's actions are consistent with the most
+perfect wisdom and the greatest goodness. It is a very strange thing, that
+by changing the terms a little one throws doubt upon what is, if properly
+understood, as clear as anything can be. The reasons to the contrary have
+no force, being founded only on the semblance of defects; and M. Bayle's
+objection, which tends to prove that the law of the best would impose upon
+God a true metaphysical necessity, is only an illusion that springs from
+the misuse of terms. M. Bayle formerly held a different opinion, when he
+commended that of Father Malebranche, which was akin to mine on this
+subject. But M. Arnauld having written in opposition to Father Malebranche,
+M. Bayle altered his opinion; and I suppose that his tendency towards
+doubt, which increased in him with the years, was conducive to that result.
+M. Arnauld was doubtless a great man, and his authority has great weight:
+he made sundry good observations in his writings against Father
+Malebranche, but he was not justified in contesting those of his statements
+that were akin to mine on the rule of the best.
+
+204. The excellent author of _The Search for Truth_, having passed from
+philosophy to theology, published finally an admirable treatise on Nature
+and Grace. Here he showed in his way (as M. Bayle explained in his _Divers
+Thoughts on the Comet_, ch. 234) that the events which spring from the
+enforcement of general laws are not the object of a particular will of God.
+It is true that when one wills a thing one wills also in a sense everything
+that is necessarily attached to it, and in consequence God cannot will
+general laws without also willing in a sense all the particular effects
+that must of necessity be derived from them. But it is always true that
+these particular events are not willed for their own sake, and that is what
+is meant by the expression that they are not willed by a _particular_ and
+direct _will_. There is no doubt that when God resolved to act outside
+himself, he made choice of a manner of action which should be worthy  [255]
+of the supremely perfect Being, that is, which should be infinitely simple
+and uniform, but yet of an infinite productivity. One may even suppose that
+this manner of action by _general acts of will_ appeared to him
+preferable--although there must thence result some superfluous events (and
+even bad if they are taken separately, that is my own addition)--to another
+manner more composed and more regular; such is Father Malebranche's
+opinion. Nothing is more appropriate than this assumption (according to the
+opinion of M. Bayle, when he wrote his _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_) to
+solve a thousand difficulties which are brought up against divine
+providence: 'To ask God', he says, 'why he has made things which serve to
+render men more wicked, that would be to ask why God has carried out his
+plan (which can only be of infinite beauty) by the simplest and most
+uniform methods, and why, by a complexity of decrees that would unceasingly
+cut across one another, he has not prevented the wrong use of man's free
+will.' He adds 'that miracles being particular acts of will must have an
+end worthy of God'.
+
+205. On these foundations he makes some good reflexions (ch. 231)
+concerning the injustice of those who complain of the prosperity of the
+wicked. 'I shall have no scruples', he says, 'about saying that all those
+who are surprised at the prosperity of the wicked have pondered very little
+upon the nature of God, and that they have reduced the obligations of a
+cause which directs all things, to the scope of a providence altogether
+subordinate; and that is small-minded. What then! Should God, after having
+made free causes and necessary causes, in a mixture infinitely well fitted
+to show forth the wonders of his infinite wisdom, have established laws
+consistent with the nature of free causes, but so lacking in firmness that
+the slightest trouble that came upon a man would overthrow them entirely,
+to the ruin of human freedom? A mere city governor will become an object of
+ridicule if he changes his regulations and orders as often as someone is
+pleased to murmur against him. And shall God, whose laws concern a good so
+universal that all of the world that is visible to us perchance enters into
+it as no more than a trifling accessary, be bound to depart from his laws,
+because they to-day displease the one and to-morrow the other? Or again
+because a superstitious person, deeming wrongly that a monstrosity presages
+something deadly, proceeds from his error to a criminal sacrifice? Or
+because a good soul, who yet does not value virtue highly enough to   [256]
+believe that to have none is punishment enough in itself, is shocked that a
+wicked man should become rich and enjoy vigorous health? Can one form any
+falser notions of a universal providence? Everyone agrees that this law of
+nature, the strong prevails over the weak, has been very wisely laid down,
+and that it would be absurd to maintain that when a stone falls on a
+fragile vase which is the delight of its owner, God should depart from this
+law in order to spare that owner vexation. Should one then not confess that
+it is just as absurd to maintain that God must depart from the same law to
+prevent a wicked man from growing rich at the expense of a good man? The
+more the wicked man sets himself above the promptings of conscience and of
+honour, the more does he exceed the good man in strength, so that if he
+comes to grips with the good man he must, according to the course of
+nature, ruin him. If, moreover, they are both engaged in the business of
+finance, the wicked man must, according to the same course of nature, grow
+richer than the good man, just as a fierce fire consumes more wood than a
+fire of straw. Those who would wish sickness for a wicked man are sometimes
+as unfair as those who would wish that a stone falling on a glass should
+not break it: for his organs being arranged as they are, neither the food
+that he takes nor the air that he breathes can, according to natural laws,
+be detrimental to his health. Therefore those who complain about his health
+complain of God's failure to violate the laws which he has established. And
+in this they are all the more unfair because, through combinations and
+concatenations which were in the power of God alone, it happens often
+enough that the course of nature brings about the punishment of sin.'
+
+206. It is a thousand pities that M. Bayle so soon quitted the way he had
+so auspiciously begun, of reasoning on behalf of providence: for his work
+would have been fruitful, and in saying fine things he would have said good
+things as well. I agree with Father Malebranche that God does things in the
+way most worthy of him. But I go a little further than he, with regard to
+'general and particular acts of will'. As God can do nothing without
+reasons, even when he acts miraculously, it follows that he has no will
+about individual events but what results from some general truth or will.
+Thus I would say that God never has a _particular will_ such as this Father
+implies, that is to say, _a particular primitive will_.
+
+                                                                      [257]
+207. I think even that miracles have nothing to distinguish them from other
+events in this regard: for reasons of an order superior to that of Nature
+prompt God to perform them. Thus I would not say, with this Father, that
+God departs from general laws whenever order requires it: he departs from
+one law only for another law more applicable, and what order requires
+cannot fail to be in conformity with the rule of order, which is one of the
+general laws. The distinguishing mark of miracles (taken in the strictest
+sense) is that they cannot be accounted for by the natures of created
+things. That is why, should God make a general law causing bodies to be
+attracted the one to the other, he could only achieve its operation by
+perpetual miracles. And likewise, if God willed that the organs of human
+bodies should conform to the will of the soul, according to the _system of
+occasional causes_, this law also would come into operation only through
+perpetual miracles.
+
+208. Thus one must suppose that, among the general rules which are not
+absolutely necessary, God chooses those which are the most natural, which
+it is easiest to explain, and which also are of greatest service for the
+explanation of other things. That is doubtless the conclusion most
+excellent and most pleasing; and even though the System of Pre-established
+Harmony were not necessary otherwise, because it banishes superfluous
+miracles, God would have chosen it as being the most harmonious. The ways
+of God are those most simple and uniform: for he chooses rules that least
+restrict one another. They are also the most _productive_ in proportion to
+the _simplicity of ways and means_. It is as if one said that a certain
+house was the best that could have been constructed at a certain cost. One
+may, indeed, reduce these two conditions, simplicity and productivity, to a
+single advantage, which is to produce as much perfection as is possible:
+thus Father Malebranche's system in this point amounts to the same as mine.
+Even if the effect were assumed to be greater, but the process less simple,
+I think one might say that, when all is said and done, the effect itself
+would be less great, taking into account not only the final effect but also
+the mediate effect. For the wisest mind so acts, as far as it is possible,
+that the _means_ are also in a sense _ends_, that is, they are desirable
+not only on account of what they do, but on account of what they are. The
+more intricate processes take up too much ground, too much space, too much
+place, too much time that might have been better employed.
+
+                                                                      [258]
+209. Now since everything resolves itself into this greatest perfection, we
+return to my law of the best. For perfection includes not only the _moral
+good_ and the _physical good_ of intelligent creatures, but also the good
+which is purely _metaphysical_, and concerns also creatures devoid of
+reason. It follows that the evil that is in rational creatures happens only
+by concomitance, not by antecedent will but by a consequent will, as being
+involved in the best possible plan; and the metaphysical good which
+includes everything makes it necessary sometimes to admit physical evil and
+moral evil, as I have already explained more than once. It so happens that
+the ancient Stoics were not far removed from this system. M. Bayle remarked
+upon this himself in his _Dictionary_ in the article on 'Chrysippus', rem.
+T. It is of importance to give his own words, in order sometimes to face
+him with his own objections and to bring him back to the fine sentiments
+that he had formerly pronounced: 'Chrysippus', he says (p. 930), 'in his
+work on Providence examined amongst other questions this one: Did the
+nature of things, or the providence that made the world and the human kind,
+make also the diseases to which men are subject? He answers that the chief
+design of Nature was not to make them sickly, that would not be in keeping
+with the cause of all good; but Nature, in preparing and producing many
+great things excellently ordered and of great usefulness, found that some
+drawbacks came as a result, and thus these were not in conformity with the
+original design and purpose; they came about as a sequel to the work, they
+existed only as consequences. For the formation of the human body,
+Chrysippus said, the finest idea as well as the very utility of the work
+demanded that the head should be composed of a tissue of thin, fine bones;
+but because of that it was bound to have the disadvantage of not being able
+to resist blows. Nature made health, and at the same time it was necessary
+by a kind of concomitance that the source of diseases should be opened up.
+The same thing applies with regard to virtue; the direct action of Nature,
+which brought it forth, produced by a counter stroke the brood of vices. I
+have not translated literally, for which reason I give here the actual
+Latin of Aulus Gellius, for the benefit of those who understand that
+language (Aul. Gellius, lib. 6, cap. 1): "Idem Chrysippus in eod. lib.
+(quarto, [Greek: peri pronoias]) tractat consideratque, dignumque esse id
+quaeri putat, [Greek: ei hai ton anthropon nosoi kata physin gignontai]. Id
+est, naturane ipsa rerum, vel providentia quae compagem hanc mundi et [259]
+genus hominum fecit, morbos quoque et debilitates et aegritudines corporum,
+quas patiuntur homines, fecerit. Existimat autem non fuisse hoc principale
+naturae consilium, ut faceret homines morbis obnoxios. Nunquam enim hoc
+convenisse naturae auctori parentique rerum omnium bonarum. Sed quum multa,
+inquit, atque magna gigneret, pareretque aptissima et utilissima, alia
+quoque simul agnata sunt incommoda iis ipsis, quae faciebat, cohaerentia:
+eaque non per naturam, sed per sequelas quasdam necessarias facta dicit,
+quod ipse appellat [Greek: kata parakolouthesin]. Sicut, inquit, quum
+corpora hominum natura fingeret, ratio subtilior et utilitas ipsa operis
+postulavit ut tenuissimis minutisque ossiculis caput compingeret. Sed hanc
+utilitatem rei majoris alia quaedam incommoditas extrinsecus consecuta est,
+ut fieret caput tenuiter munitum et ictibus offensionibusque parvis
+fragile. Proinde morbi quoque et aegritudines partae sunt, dum salus
+paritur. Sic Hercle, inquit, dum virtus hominibus per consilium naturae
+gignitur, vitia ibidem per affinitatem contrariam nata sunt." I do not
+think that a pagan could have said anything more reasonable, considering
+his ignorance of the first man's fall, the knowledge of which has only
+reached us through revelation, and which indeed is the true cause of our
+miseries. If we had sundry like extracts from the works of Chrysippus, or
+rather if we had his works, we should have a more favourable idea than we
+have of the beauty of his genius.'
+
+210. Let us now see the reverse of the medal in the altered M. Bayle. After
+having quoted in his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III,
+ch. 155, p. 962) these words of M. Jacquelot, which are much to my liking:
+'To change the order of the universe is something of infinitely greater
+consequence than the prosperity of a good man,' he adds: 'This thought has
+something dazzling about it: Father Malebranche has placed it in the best
+possible light; and he has persuaded some of his readers that a system
+which is simple and very productive is more consistent with God's wisdom
+than a system more composite and less productive in proportion, but more
+capable of averting irregularities. M. Bayle was one of those who believed
+that Father Malebranche in that way gave a wonderful solution.' (It is M.
+Bayle himself speaking.) 'But it is almost impossible to be satisfied with
+it after having read M. Arnauld's books against this system, and after
+having contemplated the vast and boundless idea of the supremely      [260]
+perfect Being. This idea shows us that nothing is easier for God than to
+follow a plan which is simple, productive, regular and opportune for all
+creatures simultaneously.'
+
+211. While I was in France I showed to M. Arnauld a dialogue I had composed
+in Latin on the cause of evil and the justice of God; it was not only
+before his disputes with Father Malebranche, but even before the book on
+_The Search for Truth_ appeared. That principle which I uphold here, namely
+that sin had been permitted because it had been involved in the best plan
+for the universe, was already applied there; and M. Arnauld did not seem to
+be startled by it. But the slight contentions which he has since had with
+Father Malebranche have given him cause to examine this subject with closer
+attention, and to be more severe in his judgement thereof. Yet I am not
+altogether pleased with M. Bayle's manner of expression here on this
+subject, and I am not of the opinion 'that a more composite and less
+productive plan might be more capable of averting irregularities'. Rules
+are the expression of general will: the more one observes rules, the more
+regularity there is; simplicity and productivity are the aim of rules. I
+shall be met with the objection that a uniform system will be free from
+irregularities. I answer that it would be an irregularity to be too
+uniform, that would offend against the rules of harmony. _Et citharoedus
+Ridetur chorda qui semper oberrat eadem_. I believe therefore that God can
+follow a simple, productive, regular plan; but I do not believe that the
+best and the most regular is always opportune for all creatures
+simultaneously; and I judge _a posteriori_, for the plan chosen by God is
+not so. I have, however, also shown this _a priori_ in examples taken from
+mathematics, and I will presently give another here. An Origenist who
+maintains that all rational creatures become happy in the end will be still
+easier to satisfy. He will say, in imitation of St. Paul's saying about the
+sufferings of this life, that those which are finite are not worthy to be
+compared with eternal bliss.
+
+212. What is deceptive in this subject, as I have already observed, is that
+one feels an inclination to believe that what is the best in the whole is
+also the best possible in each part. One reasons thus in geometry, when it
+is a question _de maximis et minimis_. If the road from A to B that one
+proposes to take is the shortest possible, and if this road passes by C,
+then the road from A to C, part of the first, must also be the shortest
+possible. But the inference from _quantity_ to _quality_ is not always[261]
+right, any more than that which is drawn from equals to similars. For
+_equals_ are those whose quantity is the same, and _similars_ are those not
+differing according to qualities. The late Herr Sturm, a famous
+mathematician in Altorf, while in Holland in his youth published there a
+small book under the title of _Euclides Catholicus_. Here he endeavoured to
+give exact and general rules in subjects not mathematical, being encouraged
+in the task by the late Herr Erhard Weigel, who had been his tutor. In this
+book he transfers to similars what Euclid had said of equals, and he
+formulates this axiom: _Si similibus addas similia, tota sunt similia_. But
+so many limitations were necessary to justify this new rule, that it would
+have been better, in my opinion, to enounce it at the outset with a
+reservation, by saying, _Si similibus similia addas similiter, tota sunt
+similia_. Moreover, geometricians often require _non tantum similia, sed et
+similiter posita_.
+
+213. This difference between quantity and quality appears also in our case.
+The part of the shortest way between two extreme points is also the
+shortest way between the extreme points of this part; but the part of the
+best Whole is not of necessity the best that one could have made of this
+part. For the part of a beautiful thing is not always beautiful, since it
+can be extracted from the whole, or marked out within the whole, in an
+irregular manner. If goodness and beauty always lay in something absolute
+and uniform, such as extension, matter, gold, water, and other bodies
+assumed to be homogeneous or similar, one must say that the part of the
+good and the beautiful would be beautiful and good like the whole, since it
+would always have resemblance to the whole: but this is not the case in
+things that have mutual relations. An example taken from geometry will be
+appropriate to explain my idea.
+
+214. There is a kind of geometry which Herr Jung of Hamburg, one of the
+most admirable men of his time, called 'empiric'. It makes use of
+conclusive experiments and proves various propositions of Euclid, but
+especially those which concern the equality of two figures, by cutting the
+one in pieces, and putting the pieces together again to make the other. In
+this manner, by cutting carefully in parts the squares on the two sides of
+the right-angled triangle, and arranging these parts carefully, one makes
+from them the square on the hypotenuse; that is demonstrating empirically
+the 47th proposition of the first book of Euclid. Now supposing that some
+of these pieces taken from the two smaller squares are lost, something[262]
+will be lacking in the large square that is to be formed from them; and
+this defective combination, far from pleasing, will be disagreeably ugly.
+If then the pieces that remained, composing the faulty combination, were
+taken separately without any regard to the large square to whose formation
+they ought to contribute, one would group them together quite differently
+to make a tolerably good combination. But as soon as the lost pieces are
+retrieved and the gap in the faulty combination is filled, there will ensue
+a beautiful and regular thing, the complete large square: this perfect
+combination will be far more beautiful than the tolerably good combination
+which had been made from the pieces one had not mislaid alone. The perfect
+combination corresponds to the universe in its entirety, and the faulty
+combination that is a part of the perfect one corresponds to some part of
+the universe, where we find defects which the Author of things has allowed,
+because otherwise, if he had wished to re-shape this faulty part and make
+thereof a tolerably good combination, the whole would not then have been so
+beautiful. For the parts of the faulty combination, grouped better to make
+a tolerably good combination, could not have been used properly to form the
+whole and perfect combination. Thomas Aquinas had an inkling of these
+things when he said: _ad prudentem gubernatorem pertinet, negligere aliquem
+defectum bonitatis in parte, ut faciat augmentum bonitatis in toto_ (Thom.,
+_Contra Gentiles_, lib. 2, c. 71). Thomas Gatacre, in his Notes on the book
+of Marcus Aurelius (lib. 5, cap. 8, with M. Bayle), cites also passages
+from authors who say that the evil of the parts is often the good of the
+whole.
+
+215. Let us return to M. Bayle's illustrations. He imagines a prince (p.
+963) who is having a city built, and who, in bad taste, aims rather at airs
+of magnificence therein, and a bold and unusual style of architecture, than
+at the provision of conveniences of all kinds for the inhabitants. But if
+this prince has true magnanimity he will prefer the convenient to the
+magnificent architecture. That is M. Bayle's judgement. I consider,
+however, that there are cases where one will justifiably prefer beauty of
+construction in a palace to the convenience of a few domestics. But I admit
+that the construction would be bad, however beautiful it might be, if it
+were a cause of diseases to the inhabitants; provided it was possible to
+make one that would be better, taking into account beauty, convenience and
+health all together. It may be, indeed, that one cannot have all these[263]
+advantages at once. Thus, supposing one wished to build on the northern and
+more bracing side of the mountain, if the castle were then bound to be of
+an unendurable construction, one would prefer to make it face southward.
+
+216. M. Bayle raises the further objection, that it is true that our
+legislators can never invent regulations such as are convenient for all
+individuals, 'Nulla lex satis commoda omnibus est; id modo quaeritur, si
+majori parti et in summam prodest. (Cato apud Livium, L. 34, circa init.)'
+But the reason is that the limited condition of their knowledge compels
+them to cling to laws which, when all is taken into account, are more
+advantageous than harmful. Nothing of all that can apply to God, who is as
+infinite in power and understanding as in goodness and true greatness. I
+answer that since God chooses the best possible, one cannot tax him with
+any limitation of his perfections; and in the universe not only does the
+good exceed the evil, but also the evil serves to augment the good.
+
+217. He observes also that the Stoics derived a blasphemy from this
+principle, saying that evils must be endured with patience, or that they
+were necessary, not only to the well-being and completeness of the
+universe, but also to the felicity, perfection and conservation of God, who
+directs it. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius gave expression to that in the
+eighth chapter of the fifth book of his _Meditations_. 'Duplici ratione',
+he says, 'diligas oportet, quidquid evenerit tibi; altera quod tibi natum
+et tibi coordinatum et ad te quodammodo affectum est; altera quod universi
+gubernatori prosperitatis et consummationis atque adeo permansionis ipsius
+procurandae ([Greek: tes euodias kai tes synteleias kai tes symmones
+autes]) ex parte causa est.' This precept is not the most reasonable of
+those stated by that great emperor. A _diligas oportet_ ([Greek: stergein
+chre]) is of no avail; a thing does not become pleasing just because it is
+necessary, and because it is destined for or attached to someone: and what
+for me would be an evil would not cease to be such because it would be my
+master's good, unless this good reflected back on me. One good thing among
+others in the universe is that the general good becomes in reality the
+individual good of those who love the Author of all good. But the principal
+error of this emperor and of the Stoics was their assumption that the good
+of the universe must please God himself, because they imagined God as the
+soul of the world. This error has nothing in common with my dogma,    [264]
+according to which God is _Intelligentia extramundana_, as Martianus
+Capella calls him, or rather _supramundana_. Further, he acts to do good,
+and not to receive it. _Melius est dare quam accipere_; his bliss is ever
+perfect and can receive no increase, either from within or from without.
+
+218. I come now to the principal objection M. Bayle, after M. Arnauld,
+brings up against me. It is complicated: they maintain that God would be
+under compulsion, that he would act of necessity, if he were bound to
+create the best; or at least that he would have been lacking in power if he
+could not have found a better expedient for excluding sins and other evils.
+That is in effect denying that this universe is the best, and that God is
+bound to insist upon the best. I have met this objection adequately in more
+than one passage: I have proved that God cannot fail to produce the best;
+and from that assumption it follows that the evils we experience could not
+have been reasonably excluded from the universe, since they are there. Let
+us see, however, what these two excellent men bring up, or rather let us
+see what M. Bayle's objection is, for he professes to have profited by the
+arguments of M. Arnauld.
+
+219. 'Would it be possible', he says, _Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 158, p. 890, 'that a nature whose goodness,
+holiness, wisdom, knowledge and power are infinite, who loves virtue
+supremely, and hates vice supremely, as our clear and distinct idea of him
+shows us, and as well-nigh every page of Scripture assures us, could have
+found in virtue no means fitting and suited for his ends? Would it be
+possible that vice alone had offered him this means? One would have thought
+on the contrary that nothing beseemed this nature more than to establish
+virtue in his work to the exclusion of all vice.' M. Bayle here exaggerates
+things. I agree that some vice was connected with the best plan of the
+universe, but I do not agree with him that God could not find in virtue any
+means suited for his ends. This objection would have been valid if there
+were no virtue, if vice took its place everywhere. He will say it suffices
+that vice prevails and that virtue is trifling in comparison. But I am far
+from agreeing with him there, and I think that in reality, properly
+speaking, there is incomparably more moral good than moral evil in rational
+creatures; and of these we have knowledge of but few.
+
+220. This evil is not even so great in men as it is declared to be. It[265]
+is only people of a malicious disposition or those who have become somewhat
+misanthropic through misfortunes, like Lucian's Timon, who find wickedness
+everywhere, and who poison the best actions by the interpretations they
+give to them. I speak of those who do it in all seriousness, to draw thence
+evil conclusions, by which their conduct is tainted; for there are some who
+only do it to show off their own acumen. People have found that fault in
+Tacitus, and that again is the criticism M. Descartes (in one of his
+letters) makes of Mr. Hobbes's book _De Cive_, of which only a few copies
+had at that time been printed for distribution among friends, but to which
+some notes by the author were added in the second edition which we have.
+For although M. Descartes acknowledges that this book is by a man of
+talent, he observes therein some very dangerous principles and maxims, in
+the assumption there made that all men are wicked, or the provision of them
+with motives for being so. The late Herr Jacob Thomasius said in his
+admirable _Tables of Practical Philosophy_ that the [Greek: proton
+pseudos], the primary cause of errors in this book by Mr. Hobbes, was that
+he took _statum legalem pro naturali_, that is to say that the corrupt
+state served him as a gauge and rule, whereas it is the state most
+befitting human nature which Aristotle had had in view. For according to
+Aristotle, that is termed _natural_ which conforms most closely to the
+perfection of the nature of the thing; but Mr. Hobbes applies the term
+_natural state_ to that which has least art, perhaps not taking into
+account that human nature in its perfection carries art with it. But the
+question of name, that is to say, of what may be called natural, would not
+be of great importance were it not that Aristotle and Hobbes fastened upon
+it the notion of natural right, each one following his own signification. I
+have said here already that I found in the book on the Falsity of human
+Virtues the same defect as M. Descartes found in Mr. Hobbes's _De Cive_.
+
+221. But even if we assume that vice exceeds virtue in the human kind, as
+it is assumed the number of the damned exceeds that of the elect, it by no
+means follows that vice and misery exceed virtue and happiness in the
+universe: one should rather believe the opposite, because the City of God
+must be the most perfect of all possible states, since it was formed and is
+perpetually governed by the greatest and best of all Monarchs. This answer
+confirms the observation I made earlier, when speaking of the conformity of
+faith with reason, namely, that one of the greatest sources of fallacy[266]
+in the objections is the confusion of the apparent with the real. And here
+by the apparent I mean not simply such as would result from an exact
+discussion of facts, but that which has been derived from the small extent
+of our experiences. It would be senseless to try to bring up appearances so
+imperfect, and having such slight foundation, in opposition to the proofs
+of reason and the revelations of faith.
+
+222. Finally, I have already observed that love of virtue and hatred of
+vice, which tend in an undefined way to bring virtue into existence and to
+prevent the existence of vice, are only antecedent acts of will, such as is
+the will to bring about the happiness of all men and to save them from
+misery. These acts of antecedent will make up only a portion of all the
+antecedent will of God taken together, whose result forms the consequent
+will, or the decree to create the best. Through this decree it is that love
+for virtue and for the happiness of rational creatures, which is undefined
+in itself and goes as far as is possible, receives some slight limitations,
+on account of the heed that must be paid to good in general. Thus one must
+understand that God loves virtue supremely and hates vice supremely, and
+that nevertheless some vice is to be permitted.
+
+223. M. Arnauld and M. Bayle appear to maintain that this method of
+explaining things and of establishing a best among all the plans for the
+universe, one such as may not be surpassed by any other, sets a limit to
+God's power. 'Have you considered', says M. Arnauld to Father Malebranche
+(in his _Reflexions on the New System of Nature and Grace_, vol. II, p.
+385), 'that in making such assumptions you take it upon yourself to subvert
+the first article of the creed, whereby we make profession of believing in
+God the Father Almighty?' He had said already (p. 362): 'Can one maintain,
+without trying to blind oneself, that a course of action which could not
+fail to have this grievous result, namely, that the majority of men perish,
+bears the stamp of God's goodness more than a different course of action,
+which would have caused, if God had followed it, the salvation of all men?'
+And, as M. Jacquelot does not differ from the principles I have just laid
+down, M. Bayle raises like objections in his case (_Reply to the Questions
+of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 151, p. 900): 'If one adopts such
+explanations', he says, 'one sees oneself constrained to renounce the most
+obvious notions on the nature of the supremely perfect Being. These teach
+us that all things not implying contradiction are possible for him,   [267]
+that consequently it is possible for him to save people whom he does not
+save: for what contradiction would result supposing the number of the elect
+were greater than it is? They teach us besides that, since he is supremely
+happy, he has no will which he cannot carry out. How, then, shall we
+understand that he wills to save all men and that he cannot do so? We
+sought some light to help us out of the perplexities we feel in comparing
+the idea of God with the state of the human kind, and lo! we are given
+elucidations that cast us into darkness more dense.'
+
+224. All these obstacles vanish before the exposition I have just given. I
+agree with M. Bayle's principle, and it is also mine, that everything
+implying no contradiction is possible. But as for me, holding as I do that
+God did the best that was possible, or that he could not have done better
+than he has done, deeming also that to pass any other judgement upon his
+work in its entirety would be to wrong his goodness or his wisdom, I must
+say that to make something which surpasses in goodness the best itself,
+that indeed would imply contradiction. That would be as if someone
+maintained that God could draw from one point to another a line shorter
+than the straight line, and accused those who deny this of subverting the
+article of faith whereby we believe in God the Father Almighty.
+
+225. The infinity of possibles, however great it may be, is no greater than
+that of the wisdom of God, who knows all possibles. One may even say that
+if this wisdom does not exceed the possibles extensively, since the objects
+of the understanding cannot go beyond the possible, which in a sense is
+alone intelligible, it exceeds them intensively, by reason of the
+infinitely infinite combinations it makes thereof, and its many
+deliberations concerning them. The wisdom of God, not content with
+embracing all the possibles, penetrates them, compares them, weighs them
+one against the other, to estimate their degrees of perfection or
+imperfection, the strong and the weak, the good and the evil. It goes even
+beyond the finite combinations, it makes of them an infinity of infinites,
+that is to say, an infinity of possible sequences of the universe, each of
+which contains an infinity of creatures. By this means the divine Wisdom
+distributes all the possibles it had already contemplated separately, into
+so many universal systems which it further compares the one with the other.
+The result of all these comparisons and deliberations is the choice of the
+best from among all these possible systems, which wisdom makes in     [268]
+order to satisfy goodness completely; and such is precisely the plan of the
+universe as it is. Moreover, all these operations of the divine
+understanding, although they have among them an order and a priority of
+nature, always take place together, no priority of time existing among
+them.
+
+226. The careful consideration of these things will, I hope, induce a
+different idea of the greatness of the divine perfections, and especially
+of the wisdom and goodness of God, from any that can exist in the minds of
+those who make God act at random, without cause or reason. And I do not see
+how they could avoid falling into an opinion so strange, unless they
+acknowledged that there are reasons for God's choice, and that these
+reasons are derived from his goodness: whence it follows of necessity that
+what was chosen had the advantage of goodness over what was not chosen, and
+consequently that it is the best of all the possibles. The best cannot be
+surpassed in goodness, and it is no restriction of the power of God to say
+that he cannot do the impossible. Is it possible, said M. Bayle, that there
+is no better plan than that one which God carried out? One answers that it
+is very possible and indeed necessary, namely that there is none: otherwise
+God would have preferred it.
+
+227. It seems to me that I have proved sufficiently that among all the
+possible plans of the universe there is one better than all the rest, and
+that God has not failed to choose it. But M. Bayle claims to infer thence
+that God is therefore not free. This is how he speaks on that question
+(_ubi supra_, ch. 151, p. 899): 'I thought to argue with a man who assumed
+as I do that the goodness and the power of God are infinite, as well as his
+wisdom; and now I see that in reality this man assumes that God's goodness
+and power are enclosed within rather narrow bounds.' As to that, the
+objection has already been met: I set no bounds to God's power, since I
+recognize that it extends _ad maximum, ad omnia_, to all that implies no
+contradiction; and I set none to his goodness, since it attains to the
+best, _ad optimum_. But M. Bayle goes on: 'There is therefore no freedom in
+God; he is compelled by his wisdom to create, and then to create precisely
+such a work, and finally to create it precisely in such ways. These are
+three servitudes which form a more than Stoic _fatum_, and which render
+impossible all that is not within their sphere. It seems that, according to
+this system, God could have said, even before shaping his decrees: I  [269]
+cannot save such and such a man, nor condemn such and such another, _quippe
+vetor fatis_, my wisdom permits it not.'
+
+228. I answer that it is goodness which prompts God to create with the
+purpose of communicating himself; and this same goodness combined with
+wisdom prompts him to create the best: a best that includes the whole
+sequence, the effect and the process. It prompts him thereto without
+compelling him, for it does not render impossible that which it does not
+cause him to choose. To call that _fatum_ is taking it in a good sense,
+which is not contrary to freedom: _fatum_ comes from _fari_, to speak, to
+pronounce; it signifies a judgement, a decree of God, the award of his
+wisdom. To say that one cannot do a thing, simply because one does not will
+it, is to misuse terms. The wise mind wills only the good: is it then a
+servitude when the will acts in accordance with wisdom? And can one be less
+a slave than to act by one's own choice in accordance with the most perfect
+reason? Aristotle used to say that that man is in a natural servitude
+(_natura servus_) who lacks guidance, who has need of being directed.
+Slavery comes from without, it leads to that which offends, and especially
+to that which offends with reason: the force of others and our own passions
+enslave us. God is never moved by anything outside himself, nor is he
+subject to inward passions, and he is never led to that which can cause him
+offence. It appears, therefore, that M. Bayle gives odious names to the
+best things in the world, and turns our ideas upside-down, applying the
+term slavery to the state of the greatest and most perfect freedom.
+
+229. He had also said not long before (ch. 151, p. 891): 'If virtue, or any
+other good at all, had been as appropriate as vice for the Creator's ends,
+vice would not have been given preference; it must therefore have been the
+only means that the Creator could have used; it was therefore employed
+purely of necessity. As therefore he loves his glory, not with a freedom of
+indifference, but by necessity, he must by necessity love all the means
+without which he could not manifest his glory. Now if vice, as vice, was
+the only means of attaining to this end, it will follow that God of
+necessity loves vice as vice, a thought which can only inspire us with
+horror; and he has revealed quite the contrary to us.' He observes at the
+same time that certain doctors among the Supralapsarians (like Rutherford,
+for example) denied that God wills sin as sin, whilst they admitted   [270]
+that he wills sin permissively in so far as it is punishable and
+pardonable. But he urges in objection, that an action is only punishable
+and pardonable in so far as it is vicious.
+
+230. M. Bayle makes a false assumption in these words that we have just
+read, and draws from them false conclusions. It is not true that God loves
+his glory by necessity, if thereby it is understood that he is led by
+necessity to acquire his glory through his creatures. For if that were so,
+he would acquire his glory always and everywhere. The decree to create is
+free: God is prompted to all good; the good, and even the best, inclines
+him to act; but it does not compel him, for his choice creates no
+impossibility in that which is distinct from the best; it causes no
+implication of contradiction in that which God refrains from doing. There
+is therefore in God a freedom that is exempt not only from constraint but
+also from necessity. I mean this in respect of metaphysical necessity; for
+it is a moral necessity that the wisest should be bound to choose the best.
+It is the same with the means which God chooses to attain his glory. And as
+for vice, it has been shown in preceding pages that it is not an object of
+God's decree as _means_, but as _conditio sine qua non_, and that for that
+reason alone it is permitted. One is even less justified in saying that
+vice is _the only means_; it would be at most one of the means, but one of
+the least among innumerable others.
+
+231. 'Another frightful consequence,' M. Bayle goes on, 'the fatality of
+all things, ensues: God will not have been free to arrange events in a
+different way, since the means he chose to show forth his glory was the
+only means befitting his wisdom.' This so-called fatality or necessity is
+only moral, as I have just shown: it does not affect freedom; on the
+contrary, it assumes the best use thereof; it does not render impossible
+the objects set aside by God's choice. 'What, then, will become', he adds,
+'of man's free will? Will there not have been necessity and fatality for
+Adam to sin? For if he had not sinned, he would have overthrown the sole
+plan that God had of necessity created.' That is again a misuse of terms.
+Adam sinning freely was seen of God among the ideas of the possibles, and
+God decreed to admit him into existence as he saw him. This decree does not
+change the nature of the objects: it does not render necessary that which
+was contingent in itself, or impossible that which was possible.
+
+                                                                      [271]
+232. M. Bayle goes on (p. 892): 'The subtle Scotus asserts with much
+discernment that if God had no freedom of indifference no creature could
+have this kind of freedom.' I agree provided it is not meant as an
+indifference of equipoise, where there is no reason inclining more to one
+side than the other. M. Bayle acknowledges (farther on in chapter 168, p.
+1111) that what is termed indifference does not exclude prevenient
+inclinations and pleasures. It suffices therefore that there be no
+metaphysical necessity in the action which is termed free, that is to say,
+it suffices that a choice be made between several courses possible.
+
+233. He goes on again in the said chapter 157, p. 893: 'If God is not
+determined to create the world by a free motion of his goodness, but by the
+interests of his glory, which he loves by necessity, and which is the only
+thing he loves, for it is not different from his substance; and if the love
+that he has for himself has compelled him to show forth his glory through
+the most fitting means, and if the fall of man was this same means, it is
+evident that this fall happened entirely by necessity and that the
+obedience of Eve and Adam to God's commands was impossible.' Still the same
+error. The love that God bears to himself is essential to him, but the love
+for his glory, or the will to acquire his glory, is not so by any means:
+the love he has for himself did not impel him by necessity to actions
+without; they were free; and since there were possible plans whereby the
+first parents should not sin, their sin was therefore not necessary.
+Finally, I say in effect what M. Bayle acknowledges here, 'that God
+resolved to create the world by a free motion of his goodness'; and I add
+that this same motion prompted him to the best.
+
+234. The same answer holds good against this statement of M. Bayle's (ch.
+165, p. 1071): 'The means most appropriate for attaining an end is of
+necessity one alone' (that is very well said, at least for the cases where
+God has chosen). 'Therefore if God was prompted irresistibly to employ this
+means, he employed it by necessity.' (He was certainly prompted thereto, he
+was determined, or rather he determined himself thereto: but that which is
+certain is not always necessary, or altogether irresistible; the thing
+might have gone otherwise, but that did not happen, and with good reason.
+God chose between different courses all possible: thus, metaphysically
+speaking, he could have chosen or done what was not the best; but he could
+not morally speaking have done so. Let us make use of a comparison    [272]
+from geometry. The best way from one point to another (leaving out of
+account obstacles and other considerations accidental to the medium) is one
+alone: it is that one which passes by the shortest line, which is the
+straight line. Yet there are innumerable ways from one point to another.
+There is therefore no necessity which binds me to go by the straight line;
+but as soon as I choose the best, I am determined to go that way, although
+this is only a moral necessity in the wise. That is why the following
+conclusions fail.) 'Therefore he could only do that which he did. Therefore
+that which has not happened or will never happen is absolutely impossible.'
+(These conclusions fail, I say: for since there are many things which have
+never happened and never will happen, and which nevertheless are clearly
+conceivable, and imply no contradiction, how can one say they are
+altogether impossible? M. Bayle has refuted that himself in a passage
+opposing the Spinozists, which I have already quoted here, and he has
+frequently acknowledged that there is nothing impossible except that which
+implies contradiction: now he changes style and terminology.) 'Therefore
+Adam's perseverance in innocence was always impossible; therefore his fall
+was altogether inevitable, and even antecedently to God's decree, for it
+implied contradiction that God should be able to will a thing opposed to
+his wisdom: it is, after all, the same thing to say, that it is impossible
+for God, as to say, God could do it, if he so willed, but he cannot will
+it.' (It is misusing terms in a sense to say here: one can will, one will
+will; 'can' here concerns the actions that one does will. Nevertheless it
+implies no contradiction that God should will--directly or permissively--a
+thing not implying contradiction, and in this sense it is permitted to say
+that God can will it.)
+
+235. In a word, when one speaks of the _possibility_ of a thing it is not a
+question of the causes that can bring about or prevent its actual
+existence: otherwise one would change the nature of the terms, and render
+useless the distinction between the possible and the actual. This Abelard
+did, and Wyclif appears to have done after him, in consequence of which
+they fell needlessly into unsuitable and disagreeable expressions. That is
+why, when one asks if a thing is possible or necessary, and brings in the
+consideration of what God wills or chooses, one alters the issue. For God
+chooses among the possibles, and for that very reason he chooses      [273]
+freely, and is not compelled; there would be neither choice nor freedom if
+there were but one course possible.
+
+236. One must also answer M. Bayle's syllogisms, so as to neglect none of
+the objections of a man so gifted: they occur in Chapter 151 of his _Reply
+to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, pp. 900, 901).
+
+FIRST SYLLOGISM
+
+'God can will nothing that is opposed to the necessary love which he has
+for his wisdom.
+
+'Now the salvation of all men is opposed to the necessary love which God
+has for his wisdom.
+
+'Therefore God cannot will the salvation of all men.'
+
+The major is self-evident, for one can do nothing whereof the opposite is
+necessary. But the minor cannot be accepted, for, albeit God loves his
+wisdom of necessity, the actions whereto his wisdom prompts him cannot but
+be free, and the objects whereto his wisdom does not prompt him do not
+cease to be possible. Moreover, his wisdom has prompted him to will the
+salvation of all men, but not by a consequent and decretory will. Yet this
+consequent will, being only a result of free antecedent acts of will,
+cannot fail to be free also.
+
+SECOND SYLLOGISM
+
+'The work most worthy of God's wisdom involves amongst other things the sin
+of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of men.
+
+'Now God wills of necessity the work most worthy of his wisdom.
+
+'He wills therefore of necessity the work that involves amongst other
+things the sin of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of
+men.'
+
+The major holds good, but the minor I deny. The decrees of God are always
+free, even though God be always prompted thereto by reasons which lie in
+the intention towards good: for to be morally compelled by wisdom, to be
+bound by the consideration of good, is to be free; it is not compulsion in
+the metaphysical sense. And metaphysical necessity alone, as I have
+observed so many times, is opposed to freedom.
+
+238. I shall not examine the syllogisms that M. Bayle urges in objection in
+the following chapter (Ch. 152), against the system of the Supralapsarians,
+and particularly against the oration made by Theodore de Beze at the  [274]
+Conference of Montbeliard in the year 1586. This conference also only
+served to increase the acrimony of the parties. 'God created the World to
+his glory: his glory is not known (according to Beze), if his mercy and his
+justice are not declared; for this cause simply by his grace he decreed for
+some men life eternal, and for others by a just judgement eternal
+damnation. Mercy presupposes misery, justice presupposes guilt.' (He might
+have added that misery also supposes guilt.) 'Nevertheless God being good,
+indeed goodness itself, he created man good and righteous, but unstable,
+and capable of sinning of his own free will. Man did not fall at random or
+rashly, or through causes ordained by some other God, as the Manichaeans
+hold, but by the providence of God; in such a way notwithstanding, that God
+was not involved in the fault, inasmuch as man was not constrained to sin.'
+
+239. This system is not of the best conceived: it is not well fitted to
+show forth the wisdom, the goodness and the justice of God; and happily it
+is almost abandoned to-day. If there were not other more profound reasons
+capable of inducing God to permit guilt, the source of misery, there would
+be neither guilt nor misery in the world, for the reasons alleged here do
+not suffice. He would declare his mercy better in preventing misery, and he
+would declare his justice better in preventing guilt, in advancing virtue,
+in recompensing it. Besides, one does not see how he who not only causes a
+man to be capable of falling, but who so disposes circumstances that they
+contribute towards causing his fall, is not culpable, if there are no other
+reasons compelling him thereto. But when one considers that God, altogether
+good and wise, must have produced all the virtue, goodness, happiness
+whereof the best plan of the universe is capable, and that often an evil in
+some parts may serve the greater good of the whole, one readily concludes
+that God may have given room for unhappiness, and even permitted guilt, as
+he has done, without deserving to be blamed. It is the only remedy that
+supplies what all systems lack, however they arrange the decrees. These
+thoughts have already been favoured by St. Augustine, and one may say of
+Eve what the poet said of the hand of Mucius Scaevola:
+
+  _Si non errasset, fecerat illa minus_.
+
+240. I find that the famous English prelate who wrote an ingenious book on
+the origin of evil, some passages of which were disputed by M. Bayle  [275]
+in the second volume of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, while
+disagreeing with some of the opinions that I have upheld here and appearing
+to resort sometimes to a despotic power, as if the will of God did not
+follow the rules of wisdom in relation to good or evil, but decreed
+arbitrarily that such and such a thing must be considered good or evil; and
+as if even the will of the creature, in so far as it is free, did not
+choose because the object appears good to him, but by a purely arbitrary
+determination, independent of the representation of the object; this
+bishop, I say, in other passages nevertheless says things which seem more
+in favour of my doctrine than of what appears contrary thereto in his own.
+He says that what an infinitely wise and free cause has chosen is better
+than what it has not chosen. Is not that recognizing that goodness is the
+object and the reason of his choice? In this sense one will here aptly say:
+
+  _Sic placuit superis; quaerere plura, nefas_.
+
+                                                                      [276]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PART THREE
+
+241. Now at last I have disposed of the cause of moral evil; _physical
+evil_, that is, sorrows, sufferings, miseries, will be less troublesome to
+explain, since these are results of moral evil. _Poena est malum passionis,
+quod infligitur ob malum actionis_, according to Grotius. One suffers
+because one has acted; one suffers evil because one does evil.
+
+    _Nostrorum causa malorum_
+  _Nos sumus_.
+
+It is true that one often suffers through the evil actions of others; but
+when one has no part in the offence one must look upon it as a certainty
+that these sufferings prepare for us a greater happiness. The question of
+_physical evil_, that is, of the origin of sufferings, has difficulties in
+common with that of the origin of _metaphysical evil_, examples whereof are
+furnished by the monstrosities and other apparent irregularities of the
+universe. But one must believe that even sufferings and monstrosities are
+part of order; and it is well to bear in mind not only that it was better
+to admit these defects and these monstrosities than to violate general
+laws, as Father Malebranche sometimes argues, but also that these very
+monstrosities are in the rules, and are in conformity with general acts of
+will, though we be not capable of discerning this conformity. It is   [277]
+just as sometimes there are appearances of irregularity in mathematics
+which issue finally in a great order when one has finally got to the bottom
+of them: that is why I have already in this work observed that according to
+my principles all individual events, without exception, are consequences of
+general acts of will.
+
+242. It should be no cause for astonishment that I endeavour to elucidate
+these things by comparisons taken from pure mathematics, where everything
+proceeds in order, and where it is possible to fathom them by a close
+contemplation which grants us an enjoyment, so to speak, of the vision of
+the ideas of God. One may propose a succession or series of numbers
+perfectly irregular to all appearance, where the numbers increase and
+diminish variably without the emergence of any order; and yet he who knows
+the key to the formula, and who understands the origin and the structure of
+this succession of numbers, will be able to give a rule which, being
+properly understood, will show that the series is perfectly regular, and
+that it even has excellent properties. One may make this still more evident
+in lines. A line may have twists and turns, ups and downs, points of
+reflexion and points of inflexion, interruptions and other variations, so
+that one sees neither rhyme nor reason therein, especially when taking into
+account only a portion of the line; and yet it may be that one can give its
+equation and construction, wherein a geometrician would find the reason and
+the fittingness of all these so-called irregularities. That is how we must
+look upon the irregularities constituted by monstrosities and other
+so-called defects in the universe.
+
+243. In this sense one may apply that fine adage of St. Bernard (Ep. 276,
+Ad Eugen., III): 'Ordinatissimum est, minus interdum ordinate fieri
+aliquid.' It belongs to the great order that there should be some small
+disorder. One may even say that this small disorder is apparent only in the
+whole, and it is not even apparent when one considers the happiness of
+those who walk in the ways of order.
+
+244. When I mention monstrosities I include numerous other apparent defects
+besides. We are acquainted with hardly anything but the surface of our
+globe; we scarce penetrate into its interior beyond a few hundred fathoms.
+That which we find in this crust of the globe appears to be the effect of
+some great upheavals. It seems that this globe was once on fire, and that
+the rocks forming the base of this crust of the earth are scoria remaining
+from a great fusion. In their entrails are found metal and mineral    [278]
+products, which closely resemble those emanating from our furnaces: and the
+entire sea may be a kind of _oleum per deliquium_, just as tartaric oil
+forms in a damp place. For when the earth's surface cooled after the great
+conflagration the moisture that the fire had driven into the air fell back
+upon the earth, washed its surface and dissolved and absorbed the solid
+salt that was left in the cinders, finally filling up this great cavity in
+the surface of our globe, to form the ocean filled with salt water.
+
+245. But, after the fire, one must conclude that earth and water made
+ravages no less. It may be that the crust formed by the cooling, having
+below it great cavities, fell in, so that we live only on ruins, as among
+others Thomas Burnet, Chaplain to the late King of Great Britain, aptly
+observed. Sundry deluges and inundations have left deposits, whereof traces
+and remains are found which show that the sea was in places that to-day are
+most remote from it. But these upheavals ceased at last, and the globe
+assumed the shape that we see. Moses hints at these changes in few words:
+the separation of light from darkness indicates the melting caused by the
+fire; and the separation of the moist from the dry marks the effects of
+inundations. But who does not see that these disorders have served to bring
+things to the point where they now are, that we owe to them our riches and
+our comforts, and that through their agency this globe became fit for
+cultivation by us. These disorders passed into order. The disorders, real
+or apparent, that we see from afar are sunspots and comets; but we do not
+know what uses they supply, nor the rules prevailing therein. Time was when
+the planets were held to be wandering stars: now their motion is found to
+be regular. Peradventure it is the same with the comets: posterity will
+know.
+
+246. One does not include among the disorders inequality of conditions, and
+M. Jacquelot is justified in asking those who would have everything equally
+perfect, why rocks are not crowned with leaves and flowers? why ants are
+not peacocks? And if there must needs be equality everywhere, the poor man
+would serve notice of appeal against the rich, the servant against the
+master. The pipes of an organ must not be of equal size. M. Bayle will say
+that there is a difference between a privation of good and a disorder;
+between a disorder in inanimate things, which is purely metaphysical, and a
+disorder in rational creatures, which is composed of crime and        [279]
+sufferings. He is right in making a distinction between them, and I am
+right in combining them. God does not neglect inanimate things: they do not
+feel, but God feels for them. He does not neglect animals: they have not
+intelligence, but God has it for them. He would reproach himself for the
+slightest actual defect there were in the universe, even though it were
+perceived of none.
+
+247. It seems M. Bayle does not approve any comparison between the
+disorders which may exist in inanimate things and those which trouble the
+peace and happiness of rational creatures; nor would he agree to our
+justifying the permission of vice on the pretext of the care that must be
+taken to avoid disturbing the laws of motion. One might thence conclude,
+according to him (posthumous Reply to M. Jacquelot, p. 183), 'that God
+created the world only to display his infinite skill in architecture and
+mechanics, whilst his property of goodness and love of virtue took no part
+in the construction of this great work. This God would pride himself only
+on skill; he would prefer to let the whole human kind perish rather than
+suffer some atoms to go faster or more slowly than general laws require.'
+M. Bayle would not have made this antithesis if he had been informed on the
+system of general harmony which I assume, which states that the realm of
+efficient causes and that of final causes are parallel to each other; that
+God has no less the quality of the best monarch than that of the greatest
+architect; that matter is so disposed that the laws of motion serve as the
+best guidance for spirits; and that consequently it will prove that he has
+attained the utmost good possible, provided one reckon the metaphysical,
+physical and moral goods together.
+
+248. But (M. Bayle will say) God having power to avert innumerable evils by
+one small miracle, why did he not employ it? He gives so much extraordinary
+help to fallen men; but slight help of such a kind given to Eve would have
+prevented her fall and rendered the temptation of the serpent ineffective.
+I have sufficiently met objections of this sort with this general answer,
+that God ought not to make choice of another universe since he has chosen
+the best, and has only made use of the miracles necessary thereto. I had
+answered M. Bayle that miracles change the natural order of the universe.
+He replies, that that is an illusion, and that the miracle of the wedding
+at Cana (for instance) made no change in the air of the room, except that
+instead of receiving into its pores some corpuscles of water, it      [280]
+received corpuscles of wine. But one must bear in mind that once the best
+plan of things has been chosen nothing can be changed therein.
+
+249. As for miracles (concerning which I have already said something in
+this work), they are perhaps not all of one and the same kind: there are
+many, to all appearances, which God brings about through the ministry of
+invisible substances, such as the angels, as Father Malebranche also
+believes. These angels or these substances act according to the ordinary
+laws of their nature, being combined with bodies more rarefied and more
+vigorous than those we have at our command. And such miracles are only so
+by comparison, and in relation to us; just as our works would be considered
+miraculous amongst animals if they were capable of remarking upon them. The
+changing of water into wine might be a miracle of this kind. But the
+Creation, the Incarnation and some other actions of God exceed all the
+power of creatures and are truly miracles, or indeed Mysteries. If,
+nevertheless, the changing of water into wine at Cana was a miracle of the
+highest kind, God would have thereby changed the whole course of the
+universe, because of the connexion of bodies; or else he would have been
+bound to prevent this connexion miraculously also, and cause the bodies not
+concerned in the miracle to act as if no miracle had happened. After the
+miracle was over, it would have been necessary to restore all things in
+those very bodies concerned to the state they would have reached without
+the miracle: whereafter all would have returned to its original course.
+Thus this miracle demanded more than at first appears.
+
+250. As for physical evil in creatures, to wit their sufferings, M. Bayle
+contends vigorously against those who endeavour to justify by means of
+particular reasons the course of action pursued by God in regard to this.
+Here I set aside the sufferings of animals, and I see that M. Bayle insists
+chiefly on those of men, perhaps because he thinks that brute beasts have
+no feeling. It is on account of the injustice there would be in the
+sufferings of beasts that divers Cartesians wished to prove that they are
+only machines, _quoniam sub Deo justo nemo innocens miser est_: it is
+impossible that an innocent creature should be unhappy under such a master
+as God. The principle is good, but I do not think it warrants the inference
+that beasts have no feeling, because I think that, properly speaking,
+perception is not sufficient to cause misery if it is not accompanied [281]
+by reflexion. It is the same with happiness: without reflexion there is
+none.
+
+  _O fortunatos nimium, sua qui bona norint!_
+
+One cannot reasonably doubt the existence of pain among animals; but it
+seems as if their pleasures and their pains are not so keen as they are in
+man: for animals, since they do not reflect, are susceptible neither to the
+grief that accompanies pain, nor to the joy that accompanies pleasure. Men
+are sometimes in a state approaching that of the beasts, when they act
+almost on instinct alone and simply on the impressions made by the
+experience of the senses: and, in this state, their pleasures and their
+pains are very slight.
+
+251. But let us pass from the beasts and return to rational creatures. It
+is with regard to them that M. Bayle discusses this question: whether there
+is more physical evil than physical good in the world? (_Reply to the
+Questions of a Provincial_, vol. II, ch. 75.) To settle it aright, one must
+explain wherein these goods and evils lie. We are agreed that physical evil
+is simply displeasure and under that heading I include pain, grief, and
+every other kind of discomfort. But does physical good lie solely in
+pleasure? M. Bayle appears to be of this opinion; but I consider that it
+lies also in a middle state, such as that of health. One is well enough
+when one has no ill; it is a degree of wisdom to have no folly:
+
+      _Sapientia prima est,_
+  _Stultitia caruisse_.
+
+In the same way one is worthy of praise when one cannot with justice be
+blamed:
+
+  _Si non culpabor, sat mihi laudis erit_.
+
+That being the case, all the sensations not unpleasing to us, all the
+exercises of our powers that do not incommode us, and whose prevention
+would incommode us, are physical goods, even when they cause us no
+pleasure; for privation of them is a physical evil. Besides we only
+perceive the good of health, and other like goods, when we are deprived of
+them. On those terms I would dare to maintain that even in this life goods
+exceed evils, that our comforts exceed our discomforts, and that M.
+Descartes was justified in writing (vol. I, Letter 9) 'that natural reason
+teaches us that we have more goods than evils in this life'.
+
+                                                                      [282]
+252. It must be added that pleasures enjoyed too often and to excess would
+be a very great evil. There are some which Hippocrates compared to the
+falling sickness, and Scioppius doubtless only made pretence of envying the
+sparrows in order to be agreeably playful in a learned and far from playful
+work. Highly seasoned foods are injurious to health and impair the niceness
+of a delicate sense; and in general bodily pleasures are a kind of
+expenditure of the spirit, though they be made good in some better than in
+others.
+
+253. As proof, however, that the evil exceeds the good is quoted the
+instance of M. de la Motte le Vayer (Letter 134), who would not have been
+willing to return to the world, supposing he had had to play the same part
+as providence had already assigned to him. But I have already said that I
+think one would accept the proposal of him who could re-knot the thread of
+Fate if a new part were promised to us, even though it should not be better
+than the first. Thus from M. de la Motte le Vayer's saying it does not
+follow that he would not have wished for the part he had already played,
+provided it had been new, as M. Bayle seems to take it.
+
+254. The pleasures of the mind are the purest, and of greatest service in
+making joy endure. Cardan, when already an old man, was so content with his
+state that he protested solemnly that he would not exchange it for the
+state of the richest of young men who at the same time was ignorant. M. de
+la Motte le Vayer quotes the saying himself without criticizing it.
+Knowledge has doubtless charms which cannot be conceived by those who have
+not tasted them. I do not mean a mere knowledge of facts without that of
+reasons, but knowledge like that of Cardan, who with all his faults was a
+great man, and would have been incomparable without those faults.
+
+  _Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas!_
+  _Ille metus omnes et inexorabile fatum_
+  _Subjecit pedibus._
+
+It is no small thing to be content with God and with the universe, not to
+fear what destiny has in store for us, nor to complain of what befalls us.
+Acquaintance with true principles gives us this advantage, quite other than
+that the Stoics and the Epicureans derived from their philosophy. There is
+as much difference between true morality and theirs as there is       [283]
+between joy and patience: for their tranquillity was founded only on
+necessity, while ours must rest upon the perfection and beauty of things,
+upon our own happiness.
+
+255. What, then, shall we say of bodily sufferings? May they not be
+sufficiently acute to disturb the sage's tranquillity? Aristotle assents;
+the Stoics were of a different opinion, and even the Epicureans likewise.
+M. Descartes revived the doctrine of these philosophers; he says in the
+letter just quoted: 'that even amid the worst misfortunes and the most
+overwhelming sufferings one may always be content, if only one knows how to
+exercise reason'. M. Bayle says concerning this (_Reply to the Questions of
+a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 157, p. 991) 'that it is saying nothing, that
+it is prescribing for us a remedy whose preparation hardly anyone
+understands'. I hold that the thing is not impossible, and that men could
+attain it by dint of meditation and practice. For apart from the true
+martyrs and those who have been aided in wonderful wise from on high, there
+have been counterfeits who imitated them. That Spanish slave who killed the
+Carthaginian governor in order to avenge his master and who evinced great
+joy in his deed, even in the greatest tortures, may shame the philosophers.
+Why should not one go as far as he? One may say of an advantage, as of a
+disadvantage:
+
+  _Cuivis potest accidere, quod cuiquam potest_.
+
+256. But even to-day entire tribes, such as the Hurons, the Iroquois, the
+Galibis and other peoples of America teach us a great lesson on this
+matter: one cannot read without astonishment of the intrepidity and
+well-nigh insensibility wherewith they brave their enemies, who roast them
+over a slow fire and eat them by slices. If such people could retain their
+physical superiority and their courage, and combine them with our
+acquirements, they would surpass us in every way,
+
+  _Extat ut in mediis turris aprica casis_.
+
+They would be, in comparison with us, as a giant to a dwarf, a mountain to
+a hill:
+
+  _Quantus Eryx, et quantus Athos, gaudetque nivali_
+  _Vertice se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras._
+
+                                                                      [284]
+257. All that which is effected by a wonderful vigour of body and mind in
+these savages, who persist obstinately in the strangest point of honour,
+might be acquired in our case by training, by well-seasoned mortifications,
+by an overmastering joy founded on reason, by great practice in preserving
+a certain presence of mind in the midst of the distractions and impressions
+most liable to disturb it. Something of this kind is related of the ancient
+Assassins, subjects and pupils of the Old Man or rather the Seigneur
+(_Senior_) of the Mountain. Such a school (for a better purpose) would be
+good for missionaries who would wish to return to Japan. The Gymnosophists
+of the ancient Indians had perhaps something resembling this, and that
+Calanus, who provided for Alexander the Great the spectacle of his burning
+alive, had doubtless been encouraged by the great examples of his masters
+and trained by great sufferings not to fear pain. The wives of these same
+Indians, who even to-day ask to be burned with the bodies of their
+husbands, seem still to keep something of the courage of those ancient
+philosophers of their country. I do not expect that there should
+straightway be founded a religious order whose purpose would be to exalt
+man to that high pitch of perfection: such people would be too much above
+the rest, and too formidable for the authorities. As it rarely happens that
+people are exposed to extremes where such great strength of mind would be
+needed, one will scarce think of providing for it at the expense of our
+usual comforts, albeit incomparably more would be gained than lost thereby.
+
+258. Nevertheless the very fact that one has no need of that great remedy
+is a proof that the good already exceeds the evil. Euripides also said:
+
+  [Greek: pleio ta chresta ton kakon einai brotois].
+  _Mala nostra longe judico vinci a bonis._
+
+Homer and divers other poets were of another mind, and men in general agree
+with them. The reason for this is that the evil arouses our attention
+rather than the good: but this same reason proves that the evil is more
+rare. One must therefore not credit the petulant expressions of Pliny, who
+would have it that Nature is a stepmother, and who maintains that man is
+the most unhappy and most vain of all creatures. These two epithets do not
+agree: one is not so very unhappy, when one is full of oneself. It is [285]
+true that men hold human nature only too much in contempt, apparently
+because they see no other creatures capable of arousing their emulation;
+but they have all too much self-esteem, and individually are but too easily
+satisfied. I therefore agree with Meric Casaubon, who in his notes on the
+Xenophanes of Diogenes Laertius praises exceedingly the admirable
+sentiments of Euripides, going so far as to credit him with having said
+things _quae spirant_ [Greek: theopneuston] _pectus_. Seneca (Lib. 4, c. 5,
+_De Benefic._) speaks eloquently of the blessings Nature has heaped upon
+us. M. Bayle in his _Dictionary_, article 'Xenophanes', brings up sundry
+authorities against this, and among others that of the poet Diphilus in the
+Collections of Stobaeus, whose Greek might be thus expressed in Latin:
+
+  _Fortuna cyathis bibere nos datis jubens,_
+  _Infundit uno terna pro bono mala._
+
+259. M. Bayle believes that if it were a question only of the evil of
+guilt, or of moral evil among men, the case would soon be terminated to the
+advantage of Pliny, and Euripides would lose his action. To that I am not
+opposed; our vices doubtless exceed our virtues, and this is the effect of
+original sin. It is nevertheless true that also on that point men in
+general exaggerate things, and that even some theologians disparage man so
+much that they wrong the providence of the Author of mankind. That is why I
+am not in favour of those who thought to do great honour to our religion by
+saying that the virtues of the pagans were only _splendida peccata_,
+splendid vices. It is a sally of St. Augustine's which has no foundation in
+holy Scripture, and which offends reason. But here we are only discussing a
+physical good and evil, and one must compare in detail the prosperities and
+the adversities of this life. M. Bayle would wish almost to set aside the
+consideration of health; he likens it to the rarefied bodies, which are
+scarcely felt, like air, for example; but he likens pain to the bodies that
+have much density and much weight in slight volume. But pain itself makes
+us aware of the importance of health when we are bereft of it. I have
+already observed that excess of physical pleasures would be a real evil,
+and the matter ought not to be otherwise; it is too important for the
+spirit to be free. Lactantius (_Divin. Instit._, lib. 3, cap. 18) had said
+that men are so squeamish that they complain of the slightest ill, as if it
+swallowed up all the goods they have enjoyed. M. Bayle says, concerning
+this, that the very fact that men have this feeling warrants the      [286]
+judgement that they are in evil case, since it is feeling which measures
+the extent of good or evil. But I answer that present feeling is anything
+rather than the true measure of good and evil past and future. I grant that
+one is in evil case while one makes these peevish reflexions; but that does
+not exclude a previous state of well-being, nor imply that, everything
+reckoned in and all allowance made, the good does not exceed the evil.
+
+260. I do not wonder that the pagans, dissatisfied with their gods, made
+complaints against Prometheus and Epimetheus for having forged so weak an
+animal as man. Nor do I wonder that they acclaimed the fable of old
+Silenus, foster-father of Bacchus, who was seized by King Midas, and as the
+price of his deliverance taught him that ostensibly fine maxim that the
+first and the greatest of goods was not to be born, and the second, to
+depart from this life with dispatch (Cic., _Tuscul._, lib. 1). Plato
+believed that souls had been in a happier state, and many of the ancients,
+amongst others Cicero in his Consolation (according to the account of
+Lactantius), believed that for their sins they were confined in bodies as
+in a prison. They rendered thus a reason for our ills, and asserted their
+prejudices against human life: for there is no such thing as a beautiful
+prison. But quite apart from the consideration that, even according to
+these same pagans, the evils of this life would be counterbalanced and
+exceeded by the goods of past and future lives, I make bold to say that we
+shall find, upon unbiassed scrutiny of the facts, that taking all in all
+human life is in general tolerable. And adding thereto the motives of
+religion, we shall be content with the order God has set therein. Moreover,
+for a better judgement of our goods and our evils, it will be well to read
+Cardan, _De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda_, and Novarini, _De Occultis Dei
+Beneficiis_.
+
+261. M. Bayle dilates upon the misfortunes of the great, who are thought to
+be the most fortunate: the constant experience of the fair aspect of their
+condition renders them unaware of good, but greatly aware of evil. Someone
+will say: so much the worse for them; if they know not how to enjoy the
+advantages of nature and fortune, is that the fault of either? There are
+nevertheless great men possessed of more wisdom, who know how to profit by
+the favours God has shown them, who are easily consoled for their
+misfortunes, and who even turn their own faults to account. M. Bayle  [287]
+pays no heed to that: he prefers to listen to Pliny, who thinks that
+Augustus, one of the princes most favoured by fortune, experienced at least
+as much evil as good. I admit that he found great causes of trouble in his
+family and that remorse for having crushed the Republic may have tormented
+him; but I think that he was too wise to grieve over the former, and that
+Maecenas apparently made him understand that Rome had need of a master. Had
+not Augustus been converted on this point, Vergil would never have said of
+a lost soul:
+
+  _Vendidit hic auro patriam Dominumque potentem_
+  _Imposuit, fixit leges pretio atque refixit._
+
+Augustus would have thought that he and Caesar were alluded to in these
+lines, which speak of a master given to a free state. But there is every
+indication that he applied it just as little to his dominion, which he
+regarded as compatible with liberty and as a necessary remedy for public
+evils, as the princes of to-day apply to themselves the words used of the
+kings censured in M. de Cambray's _Telemachus_. Each one considers himself
+within his rights. Tacitus, an unbiassed writer, justifies Augustus in two
+words, at the beginning of his _Annals_. But Augustus was better able than
+anyone to judge of his good fortune. He appears to have died content, as
+may be inferred from a proof he gave of contentedness with his life: for in
+dying he repeated to his friends a line in Greek, which has the
+signification of that _Plaudite_ that was wont to be spoken at the
+conclusion of a well-acted play. Suetonius quotes it:
+
+  [Greek: Dote kroton kai pantes hymeis meta charas ktypesate.]
+
+262. But even though there should have fallen to the lot of the human kind
+more evil than good, it is enough where God is concerned that there is
+incomparably more good than evil in the universe. Rabbi Maimonides (whose
+merit is not sufficiently recognized in the statement that he is the first
+of the Rabbis to have ceased talking nonsense) also gave wise judgement on
+this question of the predominance of good over evil in the world. Here is
+what he says in his _Doctor Perplexorum_ (cap. 12, p. 3): 'There arise
+often in the hearts of ill-instructed persons thoughts which persuade them
+there is more evil than good in the world: and one often finds in the poems
+and songs of the pagans that it is as it were a miracle when something good
+comes to pass, whereas evils are usual and constant. This error has   [288]
+taken hold not of the common herd only, those very persons who wish to be
+considered wise have been beguiled thereby. A celebrated writer named
+Alrasi, in his _Sepher Elohuth_, or Theosophy, amongst other absurdities
+has stated that there are more evils than goods, and that upon comparison
+of the recreations and the pleasures man enjoys in times of tranquillity
+with the pains, the torments, the troubles, faults, cares, griefs and
+afflictions whereby he is overwhelmed our life would prove to be a great
+evil, and an actual penalty inflicted upon us to punish us.' Maimonides
+adds that the cause of their extravagant error is their supposition that
+Nature was made for them only, and that they hold of no account what is
+separate from their person; whence they infer that when something
+unpleasing to them occurs all goes ill in the universe.
+
+263. M. Bayle says that this observation of Maimonides is not to the point,
+because the question is whether among men evil exceeds good. But, upon
+consideration of the Rabbi's words, I find that the question he formulates
+is general, and that he wished to refute those who decide it on one
+particular motive derived from the evils of the human race, as if all had
+been made for man; and it seems as though the author whom he refutes spoke
+also of good and evil in general. Maimonides is right in saying that if one
+took into account the littleness of man in relation to the universe one
+would comprehend clearly that the predominance of evil, even though it
+prevailed among men, need not on that account occur among the angels, nor
+among the heavenly bodies, nor among the elements and inanimate compounds,
+nor among many kinds of animals. I have shown elsewhere that in supposing
+that the number of the damned exceeds that of the saved (a supposition
+which is nevertheless not altogether certain) one might admit that there is
+more evil than good in respect of the human kind known to us. But I pointed
+out that that neither precludes the existence of incomparably more good
+than evil, both moral and physical, in rational creatures in general, nor
+prevents the city of God, which contains all creatures, from being the most
+perfect state. So also on consideration of the metaphysical good and evil
+which is in all substances, whether endowed with or devoid of intelligence,
+and which taken in such scope would include physical good and moral good,
+one must say that the universe, such as it actually is, must be the best of
+all systems.
+
+                                                                      [289]
+264. Moreover, M. Bayle will not have it that our transgression should have
+anything to do with the consideration of our sufferings. He is right when
+it is simply a matter of appraising these sufferings; but the case is not
+the same when one asks whether they should be ascribed to God, this indeed
+being the principal cause of M. Bayle's difficulties when he places reason
+or experience in opposition to religion. I know that he is wont to say that
+it is of no avail to resort to our free will, since his objections tend
+also to prove that the misuse of free will must no less be laid to the
+account of God, who has permitted it and who has co-operated therein. He
+states it as a maxim that for one difficulty more or less one must not
+abandon a system. This he advances especially in favour of the methods of
+the strict and the dogma of the Supralapsarians. For he supposes that one
+can subscribe to their opinion, although he leaves all the difficulties in
+their entirety, because the other systems, albeit they put an end to some
+of the difficulties, cannot meet them all. I hold that the true system I
+have expounded satisfies all. Nevertheless, even were that not so, I
+confess that I cannot relish this maxim of M. Bayle's, and I should prefer
+a system which would remove a great portion of the difficulties, to one
+which would meet none of them. And the consideration of the wickedness of
+men, which brings upon them well-nigh all their misfortunes, shows at least
+that they have no right to complain. No justice need trouble itself over
+the origin of a scoundrel's wickedness when it is only a question of
+punishing him: it is quite another matter when it is a question of
+prevention. One knows well that disposition, upbringing, conversation, and
+often chance itself, have much share in that origin: is the man any the
+less deserving of punishment?
+
+265. I confess that there still remains another difficulty. If God is not
+bound to account to the wicked for their wickedness, it seems as if he owes
+to himself, and to those who honour him and love him, justification for his
+course of action with regard to the permission of vice and crime. But God
+has already given that satisfaction, as far as it is needed here on earth:
+by granting us the light of reason he has bestowed upon us the means
+whereby we may meet all difficulties. I hope that I have made it plain in
+this discourse, and have elucidated the matter in the preceding portion of
+these Essays, almost as far as it can be done through general arguments.
+Thereafter, the permission of sin being justified, the other evils    [290]
+that are a consequence thereof present no further difficulty. Thus also I
+am justified in restricting myself here to the evil of guilt to account for
+the evil of punishment, as Holy Scripture does, and likewise well-nigh all
+the Fathers of the Church and the Preachers. And, to the end that none may
+say that is only good _per la predica_, it is enough to consider that,
+after the solutions I have given, nothing must seem more right or more
+exact than this method. For God, having found already among things
+possible, before his actual decrees, man misusing his freedom and bringing
+upon himself his misfortune, yet could not avoid admitting him into
+existence, because the general plan required this. Wherefore it will no
+longer be necessary to say with M. Jurieu that one must dogmatize like St.
+Augustine and preach like Pelagius.
+
+266. This method, deriving the evil of punishment from the evil of guilt,
+cannot be open to censure, and serves especially to account for the
+greatest physical evil, which is damnation. Ernst Sonner, sometime
+Professor of Philosophy at Altorf (a university established in the
+territory of the free city of Nuremberg), who was considered an excellent
+Aristotelian, but was finally recognized as being secretly a Socinian, had
+composed a little discourse entitled: _Demonstration against the Eternity
+of Punishment_. It was founded on this somewhat trite principle, that there
+is no proportion between an infinite punishment and a finite guilt. It was
+conveyed to me, printed (so it seemed) in Holland; and I replied that there
+was one thing to be considered which had escaped the late Herr Sonner:
+namely that it was enough to say that the duration of the guilt caused the
+duration of the penalty. Since the damned remained wicked they could not be
+withdrawn from their misery; and thus one need not, in order to justify the
+continuation of their sufferings, assume that sin has become of infinite
+weight through the infinite nature of the object offended, who is God. This
+thesis I had not explored enough to pass judgement thereon. I know that the
+general opinion of the Schoolmen, according to the Master of the Sentences,
+is that in the other life there is neither merit nor demerit; but I do not
+think that, taken literally, it can pass for an article of faith. Herr
+Fecht, a famous theologian at Rostock, well refuted that in his book on
+_The State of the Damned_. It is quite wrong, he says (Sec. 59); God cannot
+change his nature; justice is essential to him; death has closed the door
+of grace, but not that of justice.
+
+                                                                      [291]
+267. I have observed that sundry able theologians have accounted for the
+duration of the pains of the damned as I have just done. Johann Gerhard, a
+famous theologian of the Augsburg Confession (in _Locis Theol._, loco de
+Inferno, Sec. 60), brings forward amongst other arguments that the damned have
+still an evil will and lack the grace that could render it good. Zacharias
+Ursinus, a theologian of Heidelberg, who follows Calvin, having formulated
+this question (in his treatise _De Fide_) why sin merits an eternal
+punishment, advances first the common reason, that the person offended is
+infinite, and then also this second reason, _quod non cessante peccato non
+potest cessare poena_. And the Jesuit Father Drexler says in his book
+entitled _Nicetas, or Incontinence Overcome_ (book 2, ch. 11, Sec. 9): 'Nec
+mirum damnatos semper torqueri, continue blasphemant, et sic quasi semper
+peccant, semper ergo plectuntur.' He declares and approves the same reason
+in his work on _Eternity_ (book 2, ch. 15) saying: 'Sunt qui dicant, nec
+displicet responsum: scelerati in locis infernis semper peccant, ideo
+semper puniuntur.' And he indicates thereby that this opinion is very
+common among learned men in the Roman Church. He alleges, it is true,
+another more subtle reason, derived from Pope Gregory the Great (lib. 4,
+Dial. c. 44), that the damned are punished eternally because God foresaw by
+a kind of _mediate knowledge_ that they would always have sinned if they
+had always lived upon earth. But it is a hypothesis very much open to
+question. Herr Fecht quotes also various eminent Protestant theologians for
+Herr Gerhard's opinion, although he mentions also some who think
+differently.
+
+268. M. Bayle himself in various places has supplied me with passages from
+two able theologians of his party, which have some reference to these
+statements of mine. M. Jurieu in his book on the _Unity of the Church_, in
+opposition to that written by M. Nicole on the same subject, gives the
+opinion (p. 379) 'that reason tells us that a creature which cannot cease
+to be criminal can also not cease to be miserable'. M. Jacquelot in his
+book on _The Conformity of Faith with Reason_ (p. 220) is of opinion 'that
+the damned must remain eternally deprived of the glory of the blessed, and
+that this deprivation might well be the origin and the cause of all their
+pains, through the reflexions these unhappy creatures make upon their
+crimes which have deprived them of an eternal bliss. One knows what burning
+regrets, what pain envy causes to those who see themselves deprived of a
+good, of a notable honour which had been offered to them, and which   [292]
+they rejected, especially when they see others invested with it.' This
+position is a little different from that of M. Jurieu, but both agree in
+this sentiment, that the damned are themselves the cause of the
+continuation of their torments. M. le Clerc's Origenist does not entirely
+differ from this opinion when he says in the _Select Library_ (vol. 7, p.
+341): 'God, who foresaw that man would fall, does not condemn him on that
+account, but only because, although he has the power to recover himself, he
+yet does not do so, that is, he freely retains his evil ways to the end of
+his life.' If he carries this reasoning on beyond this life, he will
+ascribe the continuation of the pains of the wicked to the continuation of
+their guilt.
+
+269. M. Bayle says (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 175, p.
+1188) 'that this dogma of the Origenist is heretical, in that it teaches
+that damnation is not founded simply on sin, but on voluntary impenitence':
+but is not this voluntary impenitence a continuation of sin? I would not
+simply say, however, that it is because man, having the power to recover
+himself, does not; and would wish to add that it is because man does not
+take advantage of the succour of grace to aid him to recover himself. But
+after this life, though one assume that the succour ceases, there is always
+in the man who sins, even when he is damned, a freedom which renders him
+culpable, and a power, albeit remote, of recovering himself, even though it
+should never pass into action. And there is no reason why one may not say
+that this degree of freedom, exempt from necessity, but not exempt from
+certainty, remains in the damned as well as in the blessed. Moreover, the
+damned have no need of a succour that is needed in this life, for they know
+only too well what one must believe here.
+
+270. The illustrious prelate of the Anglican Church who published recently
+a book on the origin of evil, concerning which M. Bayle made some
+observations in the second volume of his _Reply_, speaks with much subtlety
+about the pains of the damned. This prelate's opinion is presented
+(according to the author of the _Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres_,
+June 1703) as if he made 'of the damned just so many madmen who will feel
+their miseries acutely, but who will nevertheless congratulate themselves
+on their own behaviour, and who will rather choose to be, and to be that
+which they are, than not to be at all. They will love their state, unhappy
+as it will be, even as angry people, lovers, the ambitious, the       [293]
+envious take pleasure in the very things that only augment their misery.
+Furthermore the ungodly will have so accustomed their mind to wrong
+judgements that they will henceforth never make any other kind, and will
+perpetually pass from one error into another. They will not be able to
+refrain from desiring perpetually things whose enjoyment will be denied
+them, and, being deprived of which, they will fall into inconceivable
+despair, while experience can never make them wiser for the future. For by
+their own fault they will have altogether corrupted their understanding,
+and will have rendered it incapable of passing a sound judgement on any
+matter.'
+
+271. The ancients already imagined that the Devil dwells remote from God
+voluntarily, in the midst of his torments, and that he is unwilling to
+redeem himself by an act of submission. They invented a tale that an
+anchorite in a vision received a promise from God that he would receive
+into grace the Prince of the bad angels if he would acknowledge his fault;
+but that the devil rebuffed this mediator in a strange manner. At the
+least, the theologians usually agree that the devils and the damned hate
+God and blaspheme him; and such a state cannot but be followed by
+continuation of misery. Concerning that, one may read the learned treatise
+of Herr Fecht on the _State of the Damned_.
+
+272. There were times when the belief was held that it was not impossible
+for a lost soul to be delivered. The story told of Pope Gregory the Great
+is well known, how by his prayers he had withdrawn from hell the soul of
+the Emperor Trajan, whose goodness was so renowned that to new emperors the
+wish was offered that they should surpass Augustus in good fortune and
+Trajan in goodness. It was this that won for the latter the pity of the
+Holy Father. God acceded to his prayers (it is said), but he forbade him to
+make the like prayers in future. According to this fable, the prayers of
+St. Gregory had the force of the remedies of Aesculapius, who recalled
+Hippolytus from Hades; and, if he had continued to make such prayers, God
+would have waxed wroth, like Jupiter in Vergil:
+
+  _At pater omnipotens aliquem indignatus ab umbris_
+  _Mortalem infernis ad lumina surgere vitae,_
+  _Ipse repertorem medicinae talis et artis_
+  _Fulmine Phoebigenam Stygias detrusit ad undas._
+
+                                                                      [294]
+Godescalc, a monk of the ninth century, who set at variance the theologians
+of his day, and even those of our day, maintained that the reprobate should
+pray God to render their pains more bearable; but one is never justified in
+believing oneself reprobate so long as one is alive. The passage in the
+Mass for the dead is more reasonable: it asks for the abatement of the
+torments of the damned, and, according to the hypothesis that I have just
+stated, one must wish for them _meliorem mentem_. Origen having applied the
+passage from Psalm lxxvii, verse 10: God will not forget to be gracious,
+neither will he shut up his loving-kindness in displeasure, St. Augustine
+replies _(Enchirid._, c. 112) that it is possible that the pains of the
+damned last eternally, and that they may nevertheless be mitigated. If the
+text implied that, the abatement would, as regards its duration, go on to
+infinity; and yet that abatement would, as regards its extent, have a _non
+plus ultra_. Even so there are asymptote figures in geometry where an
+infinite length makes only a finite progress in breadth. If the parable of
+the wicked rich man represented the state of a definitely lost soul, the
+hypothesis which makes these souls so mad and so wicked would be
+groundless. But the charity towards his brothers attributed to him in the
+parable does not seem to be consistent with that degree of wickedness which
+is ascribed to the damned. St. Gregory the Great (IX _Mor._, 39) thinks
+that the rich man was afraid lest their damnation should increase his: but
+it seems as though this fear is not sufficiently consistent with the
+disposition of a perfectly wicked will. Bonaventura, on the Master of the
+Sentences, says that the wicked rich man would have desired to see everyone
+damned; but since that was not to be, he desired the salvation of his
+brothers rather than that of the rest. This reply is by no means sound. On
+the contrary, the mission of Lazarus that he desired would have served to
+save many people; and he who takes so much pleasure in the damnation of
+others that he desires it for everyone will perhaps desire that damnation
+for some more than others; but, generally speaking, he will have no
+inclination to gain salvation for anyone. However that may be, one must
+admit that all this detail is problematical, God having revealed to us all
+that is needed to put us in fear of the greatest of misfortunes, and not
+what is needed for our understanding thereof.
+
+273. Now since it is henceforth permitted to have recourse to the misuse of
+free will, and to evil will, in order to account for other evils,     [295]
+since the divine permission of this misuse is plainly enough justified, the
+ordinary system of the theologians meets with justification at the same
+time. Now we can seek with confidence _the origin of evil in the freedom of
+creatures_. The first wickedness is well known to us, it is that of the
+Devil and his angels: the Devil sinneth from the beginning, and for this
+purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of
+the Devil (1 John iii. 8). The Devil is the father of wickedness, he was a
+murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth (John viii. 44).
+And therefore God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to
+Hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto
+judgement (2 Pet. ii. 4). And the angels which kept not their own
+habitation, he hath reserved in _eternal_ (that is to say everlasting)
+chains under darkness unto the judgement of the great day (Jude i. 6).
+Whence it is easy to observe that one of these two letters must have been
+seen by the author of the other.
+
+274. It seems as if the author of the Apocalypse wished to throw light upon
+what the other canonical writers had left obscure: he gives us an account
+of a battle that took place in Heaven. Michael and his angels fought
+against the Dragon, and the Dragon fought and his angels. 'But they
+prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the
+great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan,
+which deceiveth the whole world: and he was cast out into the earth, and
+his angels were cast out with him' (Rev. xii. 7, 8, 9). For although this
+account is placed after the flight of the woman into the wilderness, and it
+may have been intended to indicate thereby some revulsion favourable to the
+Church, it appears as though the author's design was to show simultaneously
+the old fall of the first enemy and a new fall of a new enemy.
+
+275. Lying or wickedness springs from the Devil's own nature, [Greek: ek
+ton idion] from his will, because it was written in the book of the eternal
+verities, which contains the things possible before any decree of God, that
+this creature would freely turn toward evil if it were created. It is the
+same with Eve and Adam; they sinned freely, albeit the Devil tempted them.
+God gives the wicked over to a reprobate mind (Rom. i. 28), abandoning them
+to themselves and denying them a grace which he owes them not, and indeed
+ought to deny to them.
+
+276. It is said in the Scriptures that God hardeneth (Exod. iv. 21 and[296]
+vii. 3; Isa. lxiii. 17); that God sendeth a lying spirit (1 Kings xxii.
+23); strong delusion that they should believe a lie (2 Thess. ii. 11); that
+he deceived the prophet (Ezek. xiv. 9); that he commanded Shimei to curse
+(2 Sam xvi. 10); that the children of Eli hearkened not unto the voice of
+their father, because the Lord would slay them (1 Sam. ii. 25); that the
+Lord took away Job's substance, even although that was done through the
+malice of brigands (Job i. 21); that he raised up Pharaoh, to show his
+power in him (Exod. ix. 19; Rom. ix. 17) that he is like a potter who
+maketh a vessel unto dishonour (Rom. ix. 21); that he hideth the truth from
+the wise and prudent (Matt. xi. 25); that he speaketh in parables unto them
+that are without, that seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing
+they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they might be converted,
+and their sins might be forgiven them (Mark iv. 12; Luke viii. 10); that
+Jesus was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God
+(Acts ii. 23); that Pontius Pilate and Herod with the Gentiles and the
+people of Israel did that which the hand and the counsel of God had
+determined before to be done (Acts iv. 27, 28); that it was of the Lord to
+harden the hearts of the enemy, that they should come against Israel in
+battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no
+favour (Joshua xi. 20); that the Lord mingled a perverse spirit in the
+midst of Egypt, and caused it to err in all its works, like a drunken man
+(Isa. xix. 14); that Rehoboam hearkened not unto the word of the people,
+for the cause was from the Lord (1 Kings xii. 15); that he turned the
+hearts of the Egyptians to hate his people (Ps. cv. 25). But all these and
+other like expressions suggest only that the things God has done are used
+as occasion for ignorance, error, malice and evil deeds, and contribute
+thereto, God indeed foreseeing this, and intending to use it for his ends,
+since superior reasons of perfect wisdom have determined him to permit
+these evils, and even to co-operate therein. 'Sed non sineret bonus fieri
+male, nisi omnipotens etiam de malo posset facere bene', in St. Augustine's
+words. But this has been expounded more fully in the preceding part.
+
+277. God made man in his image (Gen. i. 26); he made him upright (Eccles.
+vii. 29). But also he made him free. Man has behaved badly, he has fallen;
+but there remains still a certain freedom after the fall. Moses said as
+from God: 'I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I
+have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore   [297]
+choose life' (Deut. xxx. 19). 'Thus saith the Lord: Behold, I set before
+you the way of life, and the way of death' (Jer. xxi. 8). He has left man
+in the power of his counsel, giving him his ordinances and his
+commandments. 'If thou wilt, thou shalt keep the commandments' (or they
+shall keep thee). 'He hath set before thee fire and water, to stretch forth
+thine hand to whichever thou wilt' (Sirach xv. 14, 15, 16). Fallen and
+unregenerate man is under the domination of sin and of Satan, because it
+pleases him so to be; he is a voluntary slave through his evil lust. Thus
+it is that free will and will in bondage are one and the same thing.
+
+278. 'Let no man say, I am tempted of God'; 'but every man is tempted, when
+he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed' (Jas. i. 13, 14). And Satan
+contributes thereto. He 'blindeth the minds of them which believe not' (2
+Cor. iv. 4). But man is delivered up to the Devil by his covetous desire:
+the pleasure he finds in evil is the bait that hooks him. Plato has said so
+already, and Cicero repeats it: 'Plato voluptatem dicebat escam malorum.'
+Grace sets over against it a greater pleasure, as St. Augustine observed.
+All _pleasure_ is a feeling of some perfection; one _loves_ an object in
+proportion as one feels its perfections; nothing surpasses the divine
+perfections. Whence it follows that charity and love of God give the
+greatest pleasure that can be conceived, in that proportion in which one is
+penetrated by these feelings, which are not common among men, busied and
+taken up as men are with the objects that are concerned with their
+passions.
+
+279. Now as our corruption is not altogether invincible and as we do not
+necessarily sin even when we are under the bondage of sin, it must likewise
+be said that we are not aided invincibly; and, however efficacious divine
+grace may be, there is justification for saying that one can resist it. But
+when it indeed proves victorious, it is certain and infallible beforehand
+that one will yield to its allurements, whether it have its strength of
+itself or whether it find a way to triumph through the congruity of
+circumstances. Thus one must always distinguish between the infallible and
+the necessary.
+
+280. The system of those who call themselves Disciples of St. Augustine is
+not far removed from this, provided one exclude certain obnoxious things,
+whether in the expressions or in the dogmas themselves. In the
+_expressions_ I find that it is principally the use of terms like     [298]
+'necessary' or 'contingent', 'possible' or 'impossible', which sometimes
+gives a handle and causes much ado. That is why, as Herr Loescher the
+younger aptly observed in a learned dissertation on the _Paroxysms of the
+Absolute Decree_, Luther desired, in his book _On the Will in Bondage_, to
+find a word more fitting for that which he wished to express than the word
+necessity. Speaking generally, it appears more reasonable and more fitting
+to say that obedience to God's precepts is always _possible_, even for the
+unregenerate; that the grace of God is always _resistible_, even in those
+most holy, and that _freedom_ is exempt not only from _constraint_ but also
+from _necessity_, although it be never without infallible _certainty_ or
+without inclining _determination_.
+
+281. Nevertheless there is on the other hand a sense wherein it would be
+permitted to say, in certain conjunctures, that the _power_ to do good is
+often lacking, even in the just; that sins are often _necessary_, even in
+the regenerate; that it is _impossible_ sometimes for one not to sin; that
+grace is _irresistible_; that freedom is not exempt from _necessity_. But
+these expressions are less exact and less pleasing in the circumstances
+that prevail about us to-day. They are also in general more open to misuse;
+and moreover they savour somewhat of the speech of the people, where terms
+are employed with great latitude. There are, however, circumstances which
+render them acceptable and even serviceable. It is the case that sacred and
+orthodox writers, and even the holy Scriptures, have made use of
+expressions on both sides, and no real contradiction has arisen, any more
+than between St. Paul and St. James, or any error on either side that might
+be attributable to the ambiguity of the terms. One is so well accustomed to
+these various ways of speaking that often one is put to it to say precisely
+which sense is the more ordinary and the more natural, and even that more
+intended by the author (_quis sensus magis naturalis, obvius, intentus_).
+For the same writer has different aims in different passages, and the same
+ways of speaking are more or less accepted or acceptable before or after
+the decision of some great man or of some authority that one respects and
+follows. As a result of this one may well authorize or ban, as opportunity
+arises and at certain times, certain expressions; but it makes no
+difference to the sense, or to the content of faith, if sufficient
+explanations of the terms are not added.
+
+282. It is therefore only necessary to understand fully some distinctions,
+such as that I have very often urged between the necessary and the    [299]
+certain, and between metaphysical necessity and moral necessity. It is the
+same with possibility and impossibility, since the event whose opposite is
+possible is contingent, even as that whose opposite is impossible is
+necessary. A distinction is rightly drawn also between a proximate potency
+and a remote potency; and, according to these different senses, one says
+now that a thing may be and now that it may not be. It may be said in a
+certain sense that it is necessary that the blessed should not sin; that
+the devils and the damned should sin; that God himself should choose the
+best; that man should follow the course which after all attracts him most.
+But this necessity is not opposed to contingency; it is not of the kind
+called logical, geometrical or metaphysical, whose opposite implies
+contradiction. M. Nicole has made use somewhere of a comparison which is
+not amiss. It is considered impossible that a wise and serious magistrate,
+who has not taken leave of his senses, should publicly commit some
+outrageous action, as it would be, for instance, to run about the streets
+naked in order to make people laugh. It is the same, in a sense, with the
+blessed; they are still less capable of sinning, and the necessity that
+forbids them to sin is of the same kind. Finally I also hold that 'will' is
+a term as equivocal as potency and necessity. For I have already observed
+that those who employ this axiom, that one does not fail to do what one
+wills when one can, and who thence infer that God therefore does not will
+the salvation of all, imply a _decretory will_. Only in that sense can one
+support this proposition, that wisdom never wills what it knows to be among
+the things that shall not happen. On the other hand, one may say, taking
+will in a sense more general and more in conformity with customary use,
+that the wise will is _inclined_ antecedently to all good, although it
+_decrees_ finally to do that which is most fitting. Thus one would be very
+wrong to deny to God the serious and strong inclination to save all men,
+which Holy Scripture attributes to him; or even to attribute to him an
+original distaste which diverts him from the salvation of a number of
+persons, _odium antecedaneum_. One should rather maintain that the wise
+mind tends towards all good, as good, in proportion to his knowledge and
+his power, but that he only produces the best that can be achieved. Those
+who admit that, and yet deny to God the antecedent will to save all men,
+are wrong only in their misuse of the term, provided that they acknowledge,
+besides, that God gives to all help sufficient to enable them to win  [300]
+salvation if only they have the will to avail themselves thereof.
+
+283. In the _dogmas_ themselves held by the Disciples of St. Augustine I
+cannot approve the damnation of unregenerate children, nor in general
+damnation resulting from original sin alone. Nor can I believe that God
+condemns those who are without the necessary light. One may believe, with
+many theologians, that men receive more aid than we are aware of, were it
+only when they are at the point of death. It does not appear necessary
+either that all those who are saved should always be saved through a grace
+efficacious of itself, independently of circumstances. Also I consider it
+unnecessary to say that all the virtues of the pagans were false or that
+all their actions were sins; though it be true that what does not spring
+from faith, or from the uprightness of the soul before God, is infected
+with sin, at least virtually. Finally I hold that God cannot act as if at
+random by an absolutely absolute decree, or by a will independent of
+reasonable motives. And I am persuaded that he is always actuated, in the
+dispensation of his grace, by reasons wherein the nature of the objects
+participates. Otherwise he would not act in accordance with wisdom. I grant
+nevertheless that these reasons are not of necessity bound up with the good
+or the less evil natural qualities of men, as if God gave his grace only
+according to these good qualities. Yet I hold, as I have explained already
+here, that these qualities are taken into consideration like all the other
+circumstances, since nothing can be neglected in the designs of supreme
+wisdom.
+
+284. Save for these points, and some few others, where St. Augustine
+appears obscure or even repellent, it seems as though one can conform to
+his system. He states that from the substance of God only a God can
+proceed, and that thus the creature is derived from nothingness (Augustine
+_De Lib. Arb._, lib. 1, c. 2). That is what makes the creature imperfect,
+faulty and corruptible (_De Genesi ad Lit._, c. 15, _Contra Epistolam
+Manichaei_, c. 36). Evil comes not from nature, but from evil will
+(Augustine, in the whole book _On the Nature of Good_). God can command
+nothing that would be impossible. 'Firmissime creditur Deum justum et bonum
+impossibilia non potuisse praecipere' (_Lib. de Nat. et Grat._, c. 43, p.
+69). Nemo peccat in eo, quod caveri non potest (lib. 3, _De Lib. Arb._, c.
+16, 17, _lib._ 1 _Retract._ c. 11, 13, 15). Under a just God, none can be
+unhappy who deserves not so to be, 'neque sub Deo justo miser esse    [301]
+quisquam, nisi mereatur, potest' (lib. 1, c. 39). Free will cannot carry
+out God's commands without the aid of grace (_Ep. ad Hilar.
+Caesaraugustan._). We know that grace is not given according to deserts
+(Ep. 106, 107, 120). Man in the state of innocence had the aid necessary to
+enable him to do good if he wished; but the wish depended on free will,
+'habebat adjutorium, per quod posset, et sine quo non vellet, sed non
+adjutorium quo vellet' (_Lib. de Corrept._, c. 11 et c. 10, 12). God let
+angels and men try what they could do by their free will, and after that
+what his grace and his justice could achieve (ibid., c. 10, 11, 12). Sin
+turned man away from God, to turn him towards creatures (lib. 1, qu. 2, _Ad
+Simplicium_). To take pleasure in sinning is the freedom of a slave
+(_Enchirid._, c. 103). 'Liberum arbitrium usque adeo in peccatore non
+periit, ut per illud peccent maxime omnes, qui cum delectatione peccant'
+(lib. 1, _Ad Bonifac._, c. 2, 3).
+
+285. God said to Moses: 'I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and
+will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy' (Exod. xxxiii. 19). 'So then it
+is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
+sheweth mercy' (Rom. ix. 15, 16). That does not prevent all those who have
+good will, and who persevere therein, from being saved. But God gives them
+the willing and the doing. 'Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have
+mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth' (Rom. ix. 18). And yet the same
+Apostle says that God willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the
+knowledge of the truth; which I would not interpret in accordance with some
+passages of St. Augustine, as if it signified that no men are saved except
+those whose salvation he wills, or as if he would save _non singulos
+generum, sed genera singulorum_. But I would rather say that there is none
+whose salvation he willeth not, in so far as this is permitted by greater
+reasons. For these bring it about that God only saves those who accept the
+faith he has offered to them and who surrender themselves thereto by the
+grace he has given them, in accordance with what was consistent with the
+plan of his works in its entirety, than which none can be better conceived.
+
+286. As for predestination to salvation, it includes also, according to St.
+Augustine, the ordinance of the means that shall lead to salvation.
+'Praedestinatio sanctorum nihil aliud est, quam praescientia et praeparatio
+beneficiorum Dei, quibus certissime liberantur quicunque liberantur' (_Lib.
+de Persev._, c. 14). He does not then understand it there as an       [302]
+absolute decree; he maintains that there is a grace which is not rejected
+by any hardened heart, because it is given in order to remove especially
+the hardness of hearts (_Lib. de Praedest._, c. 8; _Lib. de Grat._, c. 13,
+14). I do not find, however, that St. Augustine conveys sufficiently that
+this grace, which subdues the heart, is always efficacious of itself. And
+one might perhaps have asserted without offence to him that the same degree
+of inward grace is victorious in the one, where it is aided by outward
+circumstances, but not in the other.
+
+287. Will is proportionate to the sense we have of the good, and follows
+the sense which prevails. 'Si utrumque tantundem diligimus, nihil horum
+dabimus. Item: Quod amplius nos delectat, secundum id operemur necesse est'
+(in c. 5, _Ad Gal._). I have explained already how, despite all that, we
+have indeed a great power over our will. St. Augustine takes it somewhat
+differently, and in a way that does not go far, when he says that nothing
+is so much within our power as the action of our will. And he gives a
+reason which is almost tautological: for (he says) this action is ready at
+the moment when we will. 'Nihil tam in nostra potestate est, quam ipsa
+voluntas, ea enim mox ut volumus praesto est' (lib. 3, _De Lib. Arb._, c.
+3; lib. 5, _De Civ. Dei_, c. 10). But that only means that we will when we
+will, and not that we will that which we wish to will. There is more reason
+for saying with him: '_aut voluntas non est, aut libera dicenda est_' (d.
+1, 3, c. 3); and that what inclines the will towards good infallibly, or
+certainly, does not prevent it from being free. 'Perquam absurdum est, ut
+ideo dicamus non pertinere ad voluntatem [libertatem] nostram, quod beati
+esse volumus, quia id omnino nolle non possumus, nescio qua bona
+constrictione naturae. Nec dicere audemus ideo Deum non voluntatem
+[libertatem], sed necessitatem habere justitiae, quia non potest velle
+peccare. Certe Deus ipse numquid quia peccare non potest, ideo liberum
+arbitrium habere negandus est?' (_De Nat. et Grat._, c. 46, 47, 48, 49). He
+also says aptly, that God gives the first good impulse, but that afterwards
+man acts also. 'Aguntur ut agant, non ut ipsi nihil agant' (_De Corrept._,
+c. 2).
+
+288. I have proved that free will is the proximate cause of the evil of
+guilt, and consequently of the evil of punishment; although it is true that
+the original imperfection of creatures, which is already presented in the
+eternal ideas, is the first and most remote cause. M. Bayle           [303]
+nevertheless always disputes this use of the notion of free will; he will
+not have the cause of evil ascribed to it. One must listen to his
+objections, but first it will be well to throw further light on the nature
+of freedom. I have shown that freedom, according to the definition required
+in the schools of theology, consists in intelligence, which involves a
+clear knowledge of the object of deliberation, in spontaneity, whereby we
+determine, and in contingency, that is, in the exclusion of logical or
+metaphysical necessity. Intelligence is, as it were, the soul of freedom,
+and the rest is as its body and foundation. The free substance is
+self-determining and that according to the motive of good perceived by the
+understanding, which inclines it without compelling it: and all the
+conditions of freedom are comprised in these few words. It is nevertheless
+well to point out that the imperfection present in our knowledge and our
+spontaneity, and the infallible determination that is involved in our
+contingency, destroy neither freedom nor contingency.
+
+289. Our knowledge is of two kinds, distinct or confused. Distinct
+knowledge, or _intelligence_, occurs in the actual use of reason; but the
+senses supply us with confused thoughts. And we may say that we are immune
+from bondage in so far as we act with a distinct knowledge, but that we are
+the slaves of passion in so far as our perceptions are confused. In this
+sense we have not all the freedom of spirit that were to be desired, and we
+may say with St. Augustine that being subject to sin we have the freedom of
+a slave. Yet a slave, slave as he is, nevertheless has freedom to choose
+according to the state wherein he is, although more often than not he is
+under the stern necessity of choosing between two evils, because a superior
+force prevents him from attaining the goods whereto he aspires. That which
+in a slave is effected by bonds and constraint in us is effected by
+passions, whose violence is sweet, but none the less pernicious. In truth
+we will only that which pleases us: but unhappily what pleases us now is
+often a real evil, which would displease us if we had the eyes of the
+understanding open. Nevertheless that evil state of the slave, which is
+also our own, does not prevent us, any more than him, from making a free
+choice of that which pleases us most, in the state to which we are reduced,
+in proportion to our present strength and knowledge.
+
+290. As for spontaneity, it belongs to us in so far as we have within us
+the source of our actions, as Aristotle rightly conceived. The        [304]
+impressions of external things often, indeed, divert us from our path, and
+it was commonly believed that, at least in this respect, some of the
+sources of our actions were outside ourselves. I admit that one is bound to
+speak thus, adapting oneself to the popular mode of expression, as one may,
+in a certain sense, without doing violence to truth. But when it is a
+question of expressing oneself accurately I maintain that our spontaneity
+suffers no exception and that external things have no physical influence
+upon us, I mean in the strictly philosophical sense.
+
+291. For better understanding of this point, one must know that true
+spontaneity is common to us and all simple substances, and that in the
+intelligent or free substance this becomes a mastery over its actions. That
+cannot be better explained than by the System of Pre-established Harmony,
+which I indeed propounded some years ago. There I pointed out that by
+nature every simple substance has perception, and that its individuality
+consists in the perpetual law which brings about the sequence of
+perceptions that are assigned to it, springing naturally from one another,
+to represent the body that is allotted to it, and through its
+instrumentality the entire universe, in accordance with the point of view
+proper to this simple substance and without its needing to receive any
+physical influence from the body. Even so the body also for its part adapts
+itself to the wishes of the soul by its own laws, and consequently only
+obeys it according to the promptings of these laws. Whence it follows that
+the soul has in itself a perfect spontaneity, so that it depends only upon
+God and upon itself in its actions.
+
+292. As this system was not known formerly, other ways were sought for
+emerging from this labyrinth, and the Cartesians themselves were in
+difficulties over the subject of free will. They were no longer satisfied
+by the 'faculties' of the Schoolmen, and they considered that all the
+actions of the soul appear to be determined by what comes from without,
+according to the impressions of the senses, and that, ultimately, all is
+controlled in the universe by the providence of God. Thence arose naturally
+the objection that there is therefore no freedom. To that M. Descartes
+replied that we are assured of God's providence by reason; but that we are
+likewise assured of our freedom by experience thereof within ourselves; and
+that we must believe in both, even though we see not how it is possible to
+reconcile them.
+
+                                                                      [305]
+293. That was cutting the Gordian knot, and answering the conclusion of an
+argument not by refuting it but by opposing thereto a contrary argument.
+Which procedure does not conform to the laws for philosophical disputes.
+Notwithstanding, most of the Cartesians contented themselves with this,
+albeit the inward experience they adduce does not prove their assertion, as
+M. Bayle has clearly shown. M. Regis (_Philos._, vol. 1, Metaph., book 2,
+part 2, c. 22) thus paraphrases M. Descartes' doctrine: 'Most
+philosophers', he says, 'have fallen into error. Some, not being able to
+understand the relation existing between free actions and the providence of
+God, have denied that God was the first efficient cause of free will: but
+that is sacrilegious. The others, not being able to apprehend the relation
+between God's efficacy and free actions, have denied that man was endowed
+with freedom: and that is a blasphemy. The mean to be found between these
+two extremes is to say' (id. ibid., p. 485) 'that, even though we were not
+able to understand all the relations existing between freedom and God's
+providence, we should nevertheless be bound to acknowledge that we are free
+and dependent upon God. For both these truths are equally known, the one
+through experience, and the other through reason; and prudence forbids one
+to abandon truths whereof one is assured, under the pretext that one cannot
+apprehend all the relations existing between them and other truths well
+known.'
+
+294. M. Bayle here remarks pertinently in the margin, 'that these
+expressions of M. Regis fail to point out that we are aware of relations
+between man's actions and God's providence, such as appear to us to be
+incompatible with our freedom.' He adds that these expressions are
+over-circumspect, weakening the statement of the problem. 'Authors assume',
+he says, 'that the difficulty arises solely from our lack of enlightenment;
+whereas they ought to say that it arises in the main from the enlightenment
+which we have, and cannot reconcile' (in M. Bayle's opinion) 'with our
+Mysteries.' That is exactly what I said at the beginning of this work, that
+if the Mysteries were irreconcilable with reason, and if there were
+unanswerable objections, far from finding the mystery incomprehensible, we
+should comprehend that it was false. It is true that here there is no
+question of a mystery, but only of natural religion.
+
+295. This is how M. Bayle combats those inward experiences, whereon   [306]
+the Cartesians make freedom rest: but he begins by reflexions with which I
+cannot agree. 'Those who do not make profound examination', he says
+(_Dictionary_, art. 'Helen.', lit. [Greek: TD]), 'of that which passes
+within them easily persuade themselves that they are free, and that, if
+their will prompts them to evil, it is their fault, it is through a choice
+whereof they are the masters. Those who judge otherwise are persons who
+have studied with care the springs and the circumstances of their actions,
+and who have thought over the progress of their soul's impulses. Those
+persons usually have doubts about their free will, and even come to
+persuade themselves that their reason and mind are slaves, without power to
+resist the force that carries them along where they would not go. It was
+principally persons of this kind who ascribed to the gods the cause of
+their evil deeds.'
+
+296. These words remind me of those of Chancellor Bacon, who says that a
+little philosophy inclineth us away from God, but that depth in philosophy
+bringeth men's minds about to him. It is the same with those who reflect
+upon their actions: it appears to them at first that all we do is only
+impulsion from others, and that all we apprehend comes from without through
+the senses, and is traced upon the void of our mind _tanquam in tabula
+rasa_. But more profound meditation shows us that all (even perceptions and
+passions) comes to us from our own inner being, with complete spontaneity.
+
+297. Yet M. Bayle cites poets who pretend to exonerate men by laying the
+blame upon the gods. Medea in Ovid speaks thus:
+
+      _Frustra, Medea, repugnas,_
+  _Nescio quid Deus obstat, ait._
+
+And a little later Ovid makes her add:
+
+  _Sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque Cupido,_
+  _Mens aliud suadet; video meliora proboque,_
+  _Deteriora sequor_.
+
+But one could set against that a passage from Vergil, who makes Nisus say
+with far more reason:
+
+  _Di ne hunc ardorem mentibus addunt,_
+  _Euryale, an sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido?_
+
+298. Herr Wittich seems to have thought that in reality our independence is
+only apparent. For in his _Diss. de providentia Dei actuali_ (n. 61)  [307]
+he makes free will consist in our being inclined towards the objects that
+present themselves to our soul for affirmation or denial, love or hate, in
+such a way that we _do not feel_ we are being determined by any outward
+force. He adds that it is when God himself causes our volitions that we act
+with most freedom; and that the more efficacious and powerful God's action
+is upon us, the more we are masters of our actions. 'Quia enim Deus
+operatur ipsum velle, quo efficacius operatur, eo magis volumus; quod
+autem, cum volumus, facimus, id maxime habemus in nostra potestate.' It is
+true that when God causes a volition in us he causes a free action. But it
+seems to me that the question here is not of the universal cause or of that
+production of our will which is proper to it in so far as it is a created
+effect, whose positive elements are actually created continually through
+God's co-operation, like all other absolute reality of things. We are
+concerned here with the reasons for willing, and the means God uses when he
+gives us a good will or permits us to have an evil will. It is always we
+who produce it, good or evil, for it is our action: but there are always
+reasons that make us act, without impairing either our spontaneity or our
+freedom. Grace does no more than give impressions which are conducive to
+making will operate through fitting motives, such as would be an attention,
+_a dic cur hic_, a prevenient pleasure. And it is quite evident that that
+does not interfere with freedom, any more than could a friend who gives
+counsel and furnishes motives. Thus Herr Wittich has not supplied an answer
+to the question, any more than M. Bayle, and recourse to God is of no avail
+here.
+
+299. But let me give another much more reasonable passage from the same M.
+Bayle, where he disputes with greater force the so-called lively sense of
+freedom, which according to the Cartesians is a proof of freedom. His words
+are indeed full of wit, and worthy of consideration, and occur in the
+_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, ch. 140, p. 761
+_seqq._). Here they are: 'By the clear and distinct sense we have of our
+existence we do not discern whether we exist through ourselves or derive
+our being from another. We discern that only by reflexion, that is, through
+meditation upon our powerlessness in the matter of conserving ourselves as
+much as we would, and of freeing ourselves from dependence upon the beings
+that surround us, etc. It is indeed certain that the pagans (the same must
+be said of the Socinians, since they deny the creation) never attained[308]
+to the knowledge of that true dogma that we were created from nothing, and
+that we are derived from nothingness at every moment of our continuance.
+They therefore thought erroneously that all substances in the universe
+exist of themselves and can never be reduced to nothing, and that thus they
+depend upon no other thing save in respect of their modifications, which
+are liable to be destroyed by the action of an external cause. Does not
+this error spring from the fact that we are unconscious of the creative
+action which conserves us, and that we are only conscious of our existence?
+That we are conscious of it, I say, in such a way that we should for ever
+remain ignorant of the cause of our being if other knowledge did not aid
+us? Let us say also, that the clear and distinct sense we have of the acts
+of our will cannot make us discern whether we give them ourselves to
+ourselves or receive them from that same cause which gives us existence. We
+must have recourse to reflexion or to meditation in order to effect this
+discrimination. Now I assert that one can never by purely philosophical
+meditations arrive at an established certainty that we are the efficient
+cause of our volitions: for every person who makes due investigation will
+recognize clearly, that if we were only passive subjects with regard to
+will we should have the same sensations of experience as we have when we
+think that we are free. Assume, for the sake of argument, that God so
+ordered the laws of the union between soul and body that all the modalities
+of the soul, without a single exception, are of necessity linked together
+with the interposition of the modalities of the brain. You will then
+understand that nothing will happen to us except that of which we are
+conscious: there will be in our soul the same sequence of thoughts from the
+perception of objects of the senses, which is its first step, up to the
+most definite volitions, which are its final step. There will be in this
+sequence the consciousness of ideas, that of affirmations, that of
+irresolutions, that of velleities and that of volitions. For whether the
+act of willing be impressed upon us by an external cause or we bring it
+about ourselves, it will be equally true that we will, and that we feel
+that we will. Moreover, as this external cause can blend as much pleasure
+as it will with the volition which it impresses upon us, we shall be able
+to feel at times that the acts of our will please us infinitely, and that
+they lead us according to the bent of our strongest inclinations. We shall
+feel no constraint; you know the maxim: _voluntas non potest cogi_. Do[309]
+you not clearly understand that a weather-vane, always having communicated
+to it simultaneously (in such a way, however, that priority of nature or,
+if one will, a real momentary priority, should attach to the desire for
+motion) movement towards a certain point on the horizon, and the wish to
+turn in that direction, would be persuaded that it moved of itself to
+fulfil the desires which it conceived? I assume that it would not know that
+there were winds, or that an external cause changed everything
+simultaneously, both its situation and its desires. That is the state we
+are in by our nature: we know not whether an invisible cause makes us pass
+sufficiently from one thought to another. It is therefore natural that men
+are persuaded that they determine their own acts. But it remains to be
+discovered whether they are mistaken in that, as in countless other things
+they affirm by a kind of instinct and without having made use of
+philosophic meditation. Since therefore there are two hypotheses as to what
+takes place in man: the one that he is only a passive subject, the other
+that he has active virtues, one cannot in reason prefer the second to the
+first, so long as one can only adduce proofs of feeling. For we should feel
+with an equal force that we wish this or that, whether all our volitions
+were imprinted upon our soul by an exterior and invisible cause, or we
+formed them ourselves.'
+
+300. There are here excellent arguments, which are valid against the usual
+systems; but they fail in respect of the System of Pre-established Harmony,
+which takes us further than we were able to go formerly. M. Bayle asserts,
+for instance, 'that by purely philosophical meditations one can never
+attain to an established certainty that we are the efficient cause of our
+volitions'. But this is a point which I do not concede to him: for the
+establishment of this system demonstrates beyond a doubt that in the course
+of nature each substance is the sole cause of all its actions, and that it
+is free of all physical influence from every other substance, save the
+customary co-operation of God. And this system shows that our spontaneity
+is real, and not only apparent, as Herr Wittich believed it to be. M. Bayle
+asserts also on the same reasons (ch. 170, p. 1132) that if there were a
+_fatum Astrologicum_ this would not destroy freedom; and I would concede
+that to him, if freedom consisted only in an apparent spontaneity.
+
+301. The spontaneity of our actions can therefore no longer be questioned;
+and Aristotle has defined it well, saying that an action is           [310]
+_spontaneous_ when its source is in him who acts. 'Spontaneum est, cujus
+principium est in agente.' Thus it is that our actions and our wills depend
+entirely upon us. It is true that we are not directly the masters of our
+will, although we be its cause; for we do not choose volitions, as we
+choose our actions by our volitions. Yet we have a certain power also over
+our will, because we can contribute indirectly towards willing another time
+that which we would fain will now, as I have here already shown: that,
+however, is no _velleity_, properly speaking. There also we have a mastery,
+individual and even perceptible, over our actions and our wills, resulting
+from a combination of spontaneity with intelligence.
+
+302. Up to this point I have expounded the two conditions of freedom
+mentioned by Aristotle, that is, _spontaneity_ and _intelligence_, which
+are found united in us in deliberation, whereas beasts lack the second
+condition. But the Schoolmen demand yet a third, which they call
+_indifference_. And indeed one must admit it, if indifference signifies as
+much as 'contingency'; for I have already said here that freedom must
+exclude an absolute and metaphysical or logical necessity. But, as I have
+declared more than once, this indifference, this contingency, this
+non-necessity, if I may venture so to speak, which is a characteristic
+attribute of freedom, does not prevent one from having stronger
+inclinations towards the course one chooses; nor does it by any means
+require that one be absolutely and equally indifferent towards the two
+opposing courses.
+
+303. I therefore admit indifference only in the one sense, implying the
+same as contingency, or non-necessity. But, as I have declared more than
+once, I do not admit an indifference of equipoise, and I do not think that
+one ever chooses when one is absolutely indifferent. Such a choice would
+be, as it were, mere chance, without determining reason, whether apparent
+or hidden. But such a chance, such an absolute and actual fortuity, is a
+chimera which never occurs in nature. All wise men are agreed that chance
+is only an apparent thing, like fortune: only ignorance of causes gives
+rise to it. But if there were such a vague indifference, or rather if we
+were to choose without having anything to prompt us to the choice, chance
+would then be something actual, resembling what, according to Epicurus,
+took place in that little deviation of the atoms, occurring without cause
+or reason. Epicurus had introduced it in order to evade necessity, and[311]
+Cicero with good reason ridiculed it.
+
+304. This deviation had a final cause in the mind of Epicurus, his aim
+being to free us from fate; but it can have no efficient cause in the
+nature of things, it is one of the most impossible of chimeras. M. Bayle
+himself refutes it admirably, as we shall see presently. And yet it is
+surprising that he appears to admit elsewhere himself something of like
+nature with this supposed deviation: here is what he says, when speaking of
+Buridan's ass (_Dictionary_, art. 'Buridan', lit. 13): 'Those who advocate
+free will properly so called admit in man a power of determining, either to
+the right hand or the left, even when the motives are perfectly uniform on
+the side of each of the two opposing objects. For they maintain that our
+soul can say, without having any reason other than that of using its
+freedom: "I prefer this to that, although I see nothing more worthy of my
+choice in the one than the other".'
+
+305. All those who admit a free will properly so called will not for that
+reason concede to M. Bayle this determination springing from an
+indeterminate cause. St. Augustine and the Thomists believe that all is
+determined. And one sees that their opponents resort also to the
+circumstances which contribute to our choice. Experience by no means
+approves the chimera of an indifference of equipoise; and one can employ
+here the argument that M. Bayle himself employed against the Cartesians'
+manner of proving freedom by the lively sense of our independence. For
+although I do not always see the reason for an inclination which makes me
+choose between two apparently uniform courses, there will always be some
+impression, however imperceptible, that determines us. The mere desire to
+make use of one's freedom has no effect of specifying, or determining us to
+the choice of one course or the other.
+
+306. M. Bayle goes on: 'There are at the very least two ways whereby man
+can extricate himself from the snares of equipoise. One, which I have
+already mentioned, is for a man to flatter himself with the pleasing fancy
+that he is master in his own house, and that he does not depend upon
+objects.' This way is blocked: for all that one might wish to play master
+in one's own house, that has no determining effect, nor does it favour one
+course more than the other. M. Bayle goes on: 'He would make this Act: I
+will prefer this to that, because it pleases me to behave thus.' But  [312]
+these words, 'because it pleases me', 'because such is my pleasure', imply
+already a leaning towards 'the object that pleases'.
+
+307. There is therefore no justification for continuing thus: 'And so that
+which determined him would not be taken from the object; the motive would
+be derived only from the ideas men have of their own perfections, or of
+their natural faculties. The other way is that of the lot or chance: the
+short straw would decide.' This way has an outlet, but it does not reach
+the goal: it would alter the issue, for in such a case it is not man who
+decides. Or again if one maintains that it is still the man who decides by
+lot, man himself is no longer in equipoise, because the lot is not, and the
+man has attached himself to it. There are always reasons in Nature which
+cause that which happens by chance or through the lot. I am somewhat
+surprised that a mind so shrewd as M. Bayle's could have allowed itself to
+be so misled on this point. I have set out elsewhere the true rejoinder to
+the Buridan sophism: it is that the case of perfect equipoise is
+impossible, since the universe can never be halved, so as to make all
+impressions equivalent on both sides.
+
+308. Let us see what M. Bayle himself says elsewhere against the chimerical
+or absolutely undefined indifference. Cicero had said (in his book _De
+Fato_) that Carneades had found something more subtle than the deviation of
+atoms, attributing the cause of a so-called absolutely undefined
+indifference to the voluntary motions of souls, because these motions have
+no need of an external cause, coming as they do from our nature. But M.
+Bayle (_Dictionary_, art. 'Epicurus', p. 1143) aptly replies that all that
+which springs from the nature of a thing is determined: thus determination
+always remains, and Carneades' evasion is of no avail.
+
+309. He shows elsewhere (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 90,
+l. 2, p. 229) 'that a freedom far removed from this so-called equipoise is
+incomparably more beneficial. I mean', he says, 'a freedom such as may
+always follow the judgements of the mind, and such as cannot resist objects
+clearly recognized as good. I know of no people who do not agree that truth
+clearly recognized necessitates' (determines rather, unless one speak of a
+moral necessity) 'the assent of the soul; experience teaches us that. In
+the schools they teach constantly that as the true is the object of   [313]
+the understanding, so the good is the object of the will. So likewise they
+teach that as the understanding can never affirm anything save that which
+is shown to it under the semblance of truth, the will can never love
+anything which to it does not appear to be good. One never believes the
+false as such, and one never loves evil as evil. There is in the
+understanding a natural determination towards the true in general, and
+towards each individual truth clearly recognized. There is in the will a
+natural determination towards good in general; whence many philosophers
+conclude that from the moment when individual goods are clearly recognized
+by us we are of necessity compelled to love them. The understanding
+suspends its actions only when its objects show themselves obscurely, so
+that there is cause for doubt as to whether they are false or true. That
+leads many persons to the conclusion that the will remains in equipoise
+only when the soul is uncertain whether the object presented to it is a
+good with regard to it; but that also, the moment the soul decides in the
+affirmative, it of necessity clings to that object until other judgements
+of the mind determine it otherwise. Those who expound freedom in this
+fashion think to find therein plentiful enough material for merit or
+demerit. For they assume that these judgements of the mind proceed from a
+free attention of the soul in examining the objects, comparing them
+together, and discriminating between them. I must not forget that there are
+very learned men' (such as Bellarmine, lib. 3, _De Gratia et Libero
+Arbitrio_, c. 8, et 9, and Cameron, in _Responsione ad Epistolam Viri
+Docti, id est Episcopii_) 'who maintain with very cogent reasons that the
+will always of necessity follows the last practical act of the
+understanding.'
+
+310. One must make some observations on this discourse. A very clear
+recognition of the best _determines_ the will; but it does not necessitate
+it, properly speaking. One must always distinguish between the necessary
+and the certain or infallible, as I have already observed more than once,
+and distinguish metaphysical necessity from moral necessity. I think also
+that it is only God's will which always follows the judgements of the
+understanding: all intelligent creatures are subject to some passions, or
+to perceptions at least, that are not composed entirely of what I call
+_adequate ideas_. And although in the blessed these passions always tend
+towards the true good, by virtue of the laws of Nature and the system of
+things pre-established in relation to them, yet this does not always  [314]
+happen in such a way that they have a perfect knowledge of that good. It is
+the same with them as with us, who do not always understand the reason for
+our instincts. The angels and the blessed are created beings, even as we
+are, in whom there is always some confused perception mingled with distinct
+knowledge. Suarez said something similar concerning them. He thinks
+(_Treatise on Prayer_, book I, ch. 11) that God has so ordered things
+beforehand that their prayers, when they are made with a full will, always
+succeed: that is an example of a pre-established harmony. As for us, in
+addition to the judgement of the understanding, of which we have an express
+knowledge, there are mingled therewith confused perceptions of the senses,
+and these beget passions and even imperceptible inclinations, of which we
+are not always aware. These movements often thwart the judgement of the
+practical understanding.
+
+311. As for the parallel between the relation of the understanding to the
+true and that of the will to the good, one must know that a clear and
+distinct perception of a truth contains within it actually the affirmation
+of this truth: thus the understanding is necessitated in that direction.
+But whatever perception one may have of the good, the effort to act in
+accordance with the judgement, which in my opinion forms the essence of the
+will, is distinct from it. Thus, since there is need of time to raise this
+effort to its climax, it may be suspended, and even changed, by a new
+perception or inclination which passes athwart it, which diverts the mind
+from it, and which even causes it sometimes to make a contrary judgement.
+Hence it comes that our soul has so many means of resisting the truth which
+it knows, and that the passage from mind to heart is so long. Especially is
+this so when the understanding to a great extent proceeds only by faint
+_thoughts_, which have only slight power to affect, as I have explained
+elsewhere. Thus the connexion between judgement and will is not so
+necessary as one might think.
+
+312. M. Bayle goes on to say, with truth (p. 221): 'Indeed, it cannot be a
+fault in man's soul that it has no freedom of indifference as regards good
+in general. It would be rather a disorder, an inordinate imperfection, if
+one could say truthfully: It is all one to me whether I am happy or
+unhappy; I have no more determination to love the good than to hate it; I
+can do both equally. Now if it is a praiseworthy and advantageous quality
+to be determinate as regards good in general, it cannot be a fault if [315]
+one is necessitated as regards each individual good recognized plainly as
+for our good. It seems even as though it were a necessary conclusion, that
+if the soul has no freedom of indifference as regards good in general, it
+also has none in respect of particular goods which after due examination it
+judges to be goods in relation to it. What should we think of a soul which,
+having formed that judgement, had, and prided itself on having, the power
+not to love these goods, and even to hate them, and which said: I recognize
+clearly that these are goods for me, I have all the enlightenment necessary
+on that point; nevertheless I will not love them, I will hate them; my
+decision is made, I act upon it; it is not that any reason' (that is, any
+other reason than that which is founded upon 'Such is my good pleasure')
+'urges me thereto, but it pleases me so to behave: what should we think, I
+say, of such a soul? Should we not find it more imperfect and more unhappy
+than if it had not this freedom of indifference?
+
+313. 'Not only does the doctrine that subjects the will to the final acts
+of the understanding give a more favourable idea of the state of the soul,
+but it shows also that it is easier to lead man to happiness along that
+road than along the road of indifference. It will suffice to enlighten his
+mind upon his true interests, and straightway his will will comply with the
+judgements that reason shall have pronounced. But if he has a freedom
+independent of reason and of the quality of objects clearly recognized, he
+will be the most intractable of all animals, and it will never be possible
+to rely upon making him choose the right course. All the counsels, all the
+arguments in the world may prove unavailing; you will give him
+explanations, you will convince his mind, and yet his will will play the
+haughty madam and remain motionless as a rock. Vergil, _Aen_., lib. 6, v.
+470:
+
+  _Non magis incepto vultum sermone movetur,_
+  _Quam si dura silex, aut stet Marpesia cautes_.
+
+A caprice, an empty whim will make her stiffen against reasons of all
+kinds; it will not please her to love her clearly recognized good, it will
+please her to hate it. Do you consider such a faculty, sir, to be the
+richest present God can have made to man, and the sole instrument of our
+happiness? Is it not rather an obstacle to our felicity? Is there cause for
+boasting in being able to say: "I have scorned all the judgements of  [316]
+my reason, and I have followed an altogether different path, simply from
+considerations of my own good pleasure?" With what regrets would one not be
+torn, in that case, if the determination made had an ill result? Such a
+freedom would therefore be more harmful than profitable to men, because the
+understanding would not present all the goodness of the objects clearly
+enough to deprive the will of the power of rejection. It would be therefore
+infinitely better for man to be always of necessity determined by the
+judgement of the understanding, than to permit the will to suspend its
+action. For by this means it would achieve its aim with greater ease and
+certainty.'
+
+314. Upon this discourse I make the further observation, that it is very
+true that a freedom of indifference, undefined and without any determining
+reason, would be as harmful, and even objectionable, as it is impracticable
+and chimerical. The man who wished to behave thus, or at the least appear
+to be acting without due cause, would most certainly be looked upon as
+irrational. But it is very true also that the thing is impossible, when it
+is taken strictly in accordance with the assumption. As soon as one tries
+to give an example of it one misses one's aim and stumbles upon the case of
+a man who, while he does not come to a decision without cause, does so
+rather under the influence of inclination or passion than of judgement. As
+soon as one says: 'I scorn the judgements of my reason simply from
+considerations of my own good pleasure, it pleases me to behave thus', it
+is as if one were to say: I prefer my inclination to my interest, my
+pleasure to my profit.
+
+315. Even so some capricious man, fancying that it is ignominious for him
+to follow the advice of his friends or his servants, might prefer the
+satisfaction of contradicting them to the profit he could derive from their
+counsel. It may happen, however, that in a matter of small moment a wise
+man acts irregularly and against his own interest in order to thwart
+another who tries to restrain him or direct him, or that he may disconcert
+those who watch his steps. It is even well at times to imitate Brutus by
+concealing one's wit, and even to feign madness, as David did before the
+King of the Philistines.
+
+316. M. Bayle admirably supplements his remarks with the object of showing
+that to act against the judgement of the understanding would be a great
+imperfection. He observes (p. 225) that, even according to the        [317]
+Molinists, 'the understanding which does its DUTY well indicates that which
+is THE BEST'. He introduces God (ch. 91, p. 227) saying to our first
+parents in the Garden of Eden: 'I have given you my knowledge, the faculty
+of judging things, and full power to dispose your wills. I shall give you
+instructions and orders; but the free will that I have bestowed upon you is
+of such a nature that you have equal power (according to circumstances) to
+obey me and to disobey me. You will be tempted: if you make a good use of
+your freedom you will be happy; and if you use it ill you will be unhappy.
+It is for you to see if you wish to ask of me, as a new grace, either that
+I permit you to abuse your freedom when you shall make resolve to do so, or
+that I prevent you from doing so. Consider carefully, I give you four and
+twenty hours. Do you not clearly understand' (adds M. Bayle) 'that their
+reason, which had not yet been obscured by sin, would have made them
+conclude that they must ask God, as the crowning point of the favours
+wherewith he had honoured them, not to permit them to destroy themselves by
+an ill use of their powers? And must one not admit that if Adam, through
+wrongly making it a point of honour to order his own goings, had refused a
+divine direction that would have safeguarded his happiness, he would have
+been the prototype of all such as Phaeton and Icarus? He would have been
+well-nigh as ungodly as the Ajax of Sophocles, who wished to conquer
+without the aid of the gods, and who said that the most craven would put
+their enemies to flight with such aid.'
+
+317. M. Bayle also shows (ch. 80) that one congratulates oneself no less,
+or even takes more credit to oneself, for having been aided from above,
+than for owing one's happiness to one's own choice. And if one does well
+through having preferred a tumultuous instinct, which arose suddenly, to
+reasons maturely considered, one feels an extraordinary joy in this; for
+one assumes that either God, or our Guardian Angel, or something or other
+which one pictures to oneself under the vague name of _good luck_ has
+impelled us thereto. Indeed, Sulla and Caesar boasted more of their good
+luck than of their prudence. The pagans, and particularly the poets (Homer
+especially), determined their heroes' acts by divine promptings. The hero
+of the _Aeneid_ proceeds only under the direction of a God. It was very
+great praise offered to the Emperors if one said that they were victorious
+both through their troops and through their gods whom they lent to    [318]
+their generals: 'Te copias, te consilium et tuos praebente Divos,' said
+Horace. The generals fought under the auspices of the Emperors, as if
+trusting to the Emperor's good luck, for subordinate officers had no rights
+regarding the auspices. One takes credit to oneself for being a favourite
+of heaven, one rates oneself more highly for the possession of good fortune
+than of talent. There are no people that think themselves more fortunate
+than the mystics, who imagine that they keep still while God acts within
+them.
+
+318. 'On the other hand', M. Bayle adds (ch. 83), 'a Stoic philosopher, who
+attaches to everything an inevitable necessity, is as susceptible as
+another man to the pleasure of having chosen well. And every man of sense
+will find that, far from taking pleasure in the thought of having
+deliberated long and finally chosen the most honourable course, one feels
+incredible satisfaction in persuading oneself that one is so firmly rooted
+in the love of virtue that without the slightest resistance one would repel
+a temptation. A man to whom is suggested the doing of a deed contrary to
+his duty, his honour and his conscience, who answers forthwith that he is
+incapable of such a crime, and who is certainly not capable of it, is far
+more contented with himself than if he asked for time to consider it, and
+were for some hours in a state of indecision as to which course to take.
+One is on many occasions regretful over not being able to make up one's
+mind between two courses, and one would be well pleased that the counsel of
+a good friend, or some succour from above, should impel us to make a good
+choice.' All that demonstrates for us the advantage a determinate judgement
+has over that vague indifference which leaves us in uncertainty. But indeed
+I have proved sufficiently that only ignorance or passion has power to keep
+us in doubt, and have thus given the reason why God is never in doubt. The
+nearer one comes to him, the more perfect is freedom, and the more it is
+determined by the good and by reason. The character of Cato, of whom
+Velleius said that it was impossible for him to perform a dishonourable
+action, will always be preferred to that of a man who is capable of
+wavering.
+
+319. I have been well pleased to present and to support these arguments of
+M. Bayle against vague indifference, as much for the elucidation of the
+subject as to confront him with himself, and to demonstrate that he ought
+therefore not to complain of the alleged necessity imposed upon God,  [319]
+of choosing the best way that is possible. For either God will act through
+a vague indifference and at random, or again he will act on caprice or
+through some other passion, or finally he must act through a prevailing
+inclination of reason which prompts him to the best. But passions, which
+come from the confused perception of an apparent good, cannot occur in God;
+and vague indifference is something chimerical. It is therefore only the
+strongest reason that can regulate God's choice. It is an imperfection in
+our freedom that makes us capable of choosing evil instead of good, a
+greater evil instead of the lesser evil, the lesser good instead of the
+greater good. That arises from the appearances of good and evil, which
+deceive us; whereas God is always prompted to the true and the greatest
+good, that is, to the absolutely true good, which he cannot fail to know.
+
+320. This false idea of freedom, conceived by those who, not content with
+exempting it, I do not say from constraint, but from necessity itself,
+would also exempt it from certainty and determination, that is, from reason
+and perfection, nevertheless pleased some Schoolmen, people who often
+become entangled in their own subtleties, and take the straw of terms for
+the grain of things. They assume some chimerical notion, whence they think
+to derive some use, and which they endeavour to maintain by quibblings.
+Complete indifference is of this nature: to concede it to the will is to
+grant it a privilege of the kind that some Cartesians and some mystics find
+in the divine nature, of being able to do the impossible, to produce
+absurdities, to cause two contradictory propositions to be true
+simultaneously. To claim that a determination comes from a complete
+indifference absolutely indeterminate is to claim that it comes naturally
+from nothing. Let it be assumed that God does not give this determination:
+it has accordingly no fountainhead in the soul, nor in the body, nor in
+circumstances, since all is assumed to be indeterminate; and yet there it
+is, appearing and existing without preparation, nothing making ready for
+it, no angel, not even God himself, being able to see or to show how it
+exists. That would be not only the emergence of something from nothing, but
+its emergence thence _of itself_. This doctrine introduces something as
+preposterous as the theory already mentioned, of the deviation of atoms,
+whereby Epicurus asserted that one of these small bodies, going in a
+straight line, would turn aside all at once from its path, without any[320]
+reason, simply because the will so commands. Take note moreover that he
+resorted to that only to justify this alleged freedom of complete
+indifference, a chimerical notion which appears to be of very ancient
+origin; and one may with good reason say: _Chimaera Chimaeram parit_.
+
+321. This is the way Signor Marchetti has expressed it in his admirable
+translation of Lucretius into Italian verse, which has not yet been
+published (Book 2):
+
+  _Ma ch'i principii poi non corran punto_
+  _Della lor dritta via, chi veder puote?_
+  _Si finalmente ogni lor moto sempre_
+  _Insieme s'aggruppa, e dall' antico_
+  _Sempre con ordin certo il nuovo nasce;_
+  _Ne tracciando i primi semi, fanno_
+  _Di moto un tal principio, il qual poi rompa_
+  _I decreti del fato, accio non segua_
+  _L'una causa dell' altra in infinito;_
+  _Onde han questa, dich' io_, del fato sciolta
+  Libera volunta, _per cui ciascuno_
+  _Va dove piu l'agrada? I moti ancora_
+  _Si declinan sovente, e non in tempo_
+  _Certo, ne certa region, ma solo_
+  _Quando e dove commanda il nostro arbitrio;_
+  _Poiche senz' alcun dubbio a queste cose_
+  _Da sol principio il voler proprio, e quindi_
+  _Van poi scorrendo per le membra i moti._
+
+It is comical that a man like Epicurus, after having discarded the gods and
+all incorporeal substances, could have supposed that the will, which he
+himself takes as composed of atoms, could have had control over the atoms,
+and diverted them from their path, without its being possible for one to
+say how.
+
+322. Carneades, not going so far back as to the atoms, claimed to find at
+once in the soul of man the reason for the so-called vague indifference,
+assuming as reason for the thing just that for which Epicurus sought a
+reason. Carneades gained nothing thereby, except that he more easily
+deceived careless people, in transferring the absurdity from one subject,
+where it is somewhat too evident, to another subject where it is easier to
+confuse matters, that is to say, from the body to the soul. For most
+philosophers had not very distinct notions of the nature of the soul. [321]
+Epicurus, who composed it of atoms, was at least right in seeking the
+origin of its determination in that which he believed to be the origin of
+the soul itself. That is why Cicero and M. Bayle were wrong to find so much
+fault with him, and to be indulgent towards, and even praise, Carneades,
+who is no less irrational. I do not understand how M. Bayle, who was so
+clear-sighted, was thus satisfied by a disguised absurdity, even to the
+extent of calling it the greatest effort the human mind can make on this
+matter. It is as if the soul, which is the seat of reason, were more
+capable than the body of acting without being determined by some reason or
+cause, internal or external; or as if the great principle which states that
+nothing comes to pass without cause only related to the body.
+
+323. It is true that the Form or the Soul has this advantage over matter,
+that it is the source of action, having within itself the principle of
+motion or of change, in a word, [Greek: to autokineton], as Plato calls it;
+whereas matter is simply passive, and has need of being impelled to act,
+_agitur, ut agat_. But if the soul is active of itself (as it indeed is),
+for that very reason it is not of itself absolutely indifferent to the
+action, like matter, and it must find in itself a ground of determination.
+According to the System of Pre-established Harmony the soul finds in
+itself, and in its ideal nature anterior to existence, the reasons for its
+determinations, adjusted to all that shall surround it. That way it was
+determined from all eternity in its state of mere possibility to act
+freely, as it does, when it attains to existence.
+
+324. M. Bayle himself remarks aptly that freedom of indifference (such as
+must be admitted) does not exclude inclinations and does not demand
+equipoise. He demonstrates amply enough (_Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, ch. 139, p. 748 _seqq_.) that the soul may be compared to a
+balance, where reasons and inclinations take the place of weights.
+According to him, one can explain what passes in our resolutions by the
+hypothesis that the will of man is like a balance which is at rest when the
+weights of its two pans are equal, and which always inclines either to one
+side or the other according to which of the pans is the more heavily laden.
+A new reason makes a heavier weight, a new idea shines more brightly than
+the old; the fear of a heavy penalty prevails over some pleasure; when two
+passions dispute the ground, it is always the stronger which gains the
+mastery, unless the other be assisted by reason or by some other      [322]
+contributing passion. When one flings away merchandise in order to save
+oneself, the action, which the Schoolmen call mixed, is voluntary and free;
+and yet love of life indubitably prevails over love of possessions. Grief
+arises from remembrance of lost possessions, and one has all the greater
+difficulty in making one's resolve, the nearer the approach to even weight
+in the opposing reasons, as also we see that the balance is determined more
+promptly when there is a great difference between the weights.
+
+325. Nevertheless, as very often there are divers courses to choose from,
+one might, instead of the balance, compare the soul with a force which puts
+forth effort on various sides simultaneously, but which acts only at the
+spot where action is easiest or there is least resistance. For instance,
+air if it is compressed too firmly in a glass vessel will break it in order
+to escape. It puts forth effort at every part, but finally flings itself
+upon the weakest. Thus do the inclinations of the soul extend over all the
+goods that present themselves: they are antecedent acts of will; but the
+consequent will, which is their result, is determined in the direction of
+that which touches most closely.
+
+326. This ascendancy of inclinations, however, does not prevent man from
+being master in his own domain, provided that he knows how to make use of
+his power. His dominion is that of reason: he has only to prepare himself
+in good time to resist the passions, and he will be capable of checking the
+vehemence of the most furious. Let us assume that Augustus, about to give
+orders for putting to death Fabius Maximus, acts, as is his wont, upon the
+advice a philosopher had given him, to recite the Greek alphabet before
+doing anything in the first heat of his anger: this reflexion will be
+capable of saving the life of Fabius and the glory of Augustus. But without
+some fortunate reflexion, which one owes sometimes to a special divine
+mercy, or without some skill acquired beforehand, like that of Augustus,
+calculated to make us reflect fittingly as to time and place, passion will
+prevail over reason. The driver is master over the horses if he controls
+them as he should, and as he can; but there are occasions when he becomes
+negligent, and then for a time he will have to let go the reins:
+
+  _Fertur equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas_.
+
+327. One must admit that there is always within us enough power over  [323]
+our will, but we do not always bethink ourselves of employing it. That
+shows, as I have observed more than once, that the power of the soul over
+its inclinations is a control which can only be exercised in an _indirect_
+manner, almost as Bellarmine would have had the Popes exercise rights over
+the temporal power of kings. In truth, the external actions that do not
+exceed our powers depend absolutely upon our will; but our volitions depend
+upon our will only through certain artful twists which give us means of
+suspending our resolutions, or of changing them. We are masters in our own
+house, not as God is in the world, he having but to speak, but as a wise
+prince is in his dominions or as a good father of a family is in his home.
+M. Bayle sometimes takes the matter differently, as though we must have, in
+order to boast of a free will, an absolute power over ourselves,
+independent of reasons and of means. But even God has not such a power, and
+must not have in this sense, in relation to his will: he cannot change his
+nature, nor act otherwise than according to method; and how could man
+transform himself all of a sudden? I have already said God's dominion, the
+dominion of wisdom, is that of reason. It is only God, however, who always
+wills what is most to be desired, and consequently he has no need of the
+power to change his will. 328. If the soul is mistress in its own house
+(says M. Bayle, p. 753) it has only to will, and straightway that vexation
+and pain which is attendant upon victory over the passions will vanish
+away. For this effect it would suffice, in his opinion, to give oneself
+indifference to the objects of the passions (p. 758). Why, then, do men not
+give themselves this indifference (he says), if they are masters in their
+own house? But this objection is exactly as if I were to ask why a father
+of a family does not give himself gold when he has need thereof? He can
+acquire some, but through skill, and not, as in the age of the fairies, or
+of King Midas, through a mere command of the will or by his touch. It would
+not suffice to be master in one's own house; one must be master of all
+things in order to give oneself all that one wishes; for one does not find
+everything in one's own house. Working thus upon oneself, one must do as in
+working upon something else; one must have knowledge of the constitution
+and the qualities of one's object, and adapt one's operations thereto. It
+is therefore not in a moment and by a mere act of the will that one
+corrects oneself, and that one acquires a better will.
+
+                                                                      [324]
+329. Nevertheless it is well to observe that the vexations and pains
+attendant upon victory over the passions in some people turn into pleasure,
+through the great satisfaction they find in the lively sense of the force
+of their mind, and of the divine grace. Ascetics and true mystics can speak
+of this from experience; and even a true philosopher can say something
+thereof. One can attain to that happy state, and it is one of the principal
+means the soul can use to strengthen its dominion.
+
+330. If the Scotists and the Molinists appear to favour vague indifference
+(appear, I say, for I doubt whether they do so in reality, once they have
+learnt to know it), the Thomists and the disciples of Augustine are for
+predetermination. For one must have either the one or the other. Thomas
+Aquinas is a writer who is accustomed to reason on sound principles, and
+the subtle Scotus, seeking to contradict him, often obscures matters
+instead of throwing light upon them. The Thomists as a general rule follow
+their master, and do not admit that the soul makes its resolve without the
+existence of some predetermination which contributes thereto. But the
+predetermination of the new Thomists is not perhaps exactly that which one
+needs. Durand de Saint-Pourcain, who often enough formed a party of his
+own, and who opposed the idea of the special co-operation of God, was
+nevertheless in favour of a certain predetermination. He believed that God
+saw in the state of the soul, and of its surroundings, the reason for his
+determinations.
+
+331. The ancient Stoics were in that almost of the same opinion as the
+Thomists. They were at the same time in favour of determination and against
+necessity, although they have been accused of attaching necessity to
+everything. Cicero says in his book _De Fato_ that Democritus, Heraclitus,
+Empedocles and Aristotle believed that fate implied necessity; that others
+were opposed to that (he means perhaps Epicurus and the Academicians); and
+that Chrysippus sought a middle course. I think that Cicero is mistaken as
+regards Aristotle, who fully recognized contingency and freedom, and went
+even too far, saying (inadvertently, as I think) that propositions on
+contingent futurities had no determinate truth; on which point he was
+justifiably abandoned by most of the Schoolmen. Even Cleanthes, the teacher
+of Chrysippus, although he upheld the determinate truth of future events,
+denied their necessity. Had the Schoolmen, so fully convinced of this [325]
+determination of contingent futurities (as were for instance the Fathers of
+Coimbra, authors of a famous Course of Philosophy), seen the connexion
+between things in the form wherein the System of General Harmony proclaims
+it, they would have judged that one cannot admit preliminary certainty, or
+determination of futurition, without admitting a predetermination of the
+thing in its causes and in its reasons.
+
+332. Cicero has endeavoured to expound for us the middle course taken by
+Chrysippus; but Justus Lipsius observed, in his _Stoic Philosophy_, that
+the passage from Cicero was mutilated, and that Aulus Gellius has preserved
+for us the whole argument of the Stoic philosopher (_Noct. Att._, lib. 6,
+c. 2). Here it is in epitome. Fate is the inevitable and eternal connexion
+of all events. Against this is urged in objection, that it follows that the
+acts of the will would be necessary, and that criminals, being coerced into
+evil, should not be punished. Chrysippus answers that evil springs from the
+original constitution of souls, which forms part of the destined sequence;
+that souls which are of a good natural disposition offer stronger
+resistance to the impressions of external causes; but that those whose
+natural defects had not been corrected by discipline allowed themselves to
+be perverted. Next he distinguishes (according to Cicero) between principal
+causes and accessary causes, and uses the comparison of a cylinder, whose
+rotatory force and speed or ease in motion comes chiefly from its shape,
+whereas it would be retarded by any roughness in formation. Nevertheless it
+has need of impulsion, even as the soul needs to be acted upon by the
+objects of the senses, and receives this impression according to its own
+constitution.
+
+333. Cicero considers that Chrysippus becomes so confused that, whether he
+will or no, he confirms the necessity of fate. M. Bayle is almost of the
+same opinion (_Dictionary_, art. 'Chrysippus', lit. H). He says that this
+philosopher does not get out of the bog, since the cylinder is regular or
+uneven according to what the craftsman has made it; and thus God,
+providence, fate will be the causes of evil in such a way as to render it
+necessary. Justus Lipsius answers that, according to the Stoics, evil came
+from matter. That is (to my mind) as if he had said that the stone on which
+the craftsman worked was sometimes too rough and too irregular to produce a
+good cylinder. M. Bayle cites against Chrysippus the fragments of Onomaus
+and Diogenianus that Eusebius has preserved for us in the _Praeparatio[326]
+Evangelica_ (lib. 6, c. 7, 8); and above all he relies upon Plutarch's
+refutation in his book against the Stoics, quoted art. 'Paulicians', lit.
+G. But this refutation does not amount to very much. Plutarch maintains
+that it would be better to deny power to God than to impute to him the
+permission of evils; and he will not admit that evil may serve a greater
+good. I have already shown, on the contrary, that God cannot but be
+all-powerful, even though he can do no better than produce the best, which
+includes the permission of evil. Moreover, I have pointed out repeatedly
+that what is to the disadvantage of a part taken separately may serve the
+perfection of the whole.
+
+334. Chrysippus had already made an observation to this effect, not only in
+his fourth book on Providence, as given by Aulus Gellius (lib. 6, c. 1)
+where he asserts that evil serves to bring the good to notice (a reason
+which is not sufficient here), but still better when he applies the
+comparison of a stage play, in his second book on Nature (as Plutarch
+quotes it himself). There he says that there are sometimes portions in a
+comedy which are of no worth in themselves and which nevertheless lend
+grace to the whole poem. He calls these portions epigrams or inscriptions.
+We have not enough acquaintance with the nature of the ancient comedy for
+full understanding of this passage from Chrysippus; but since Plutarch
+assents to the fact, there is reason to believe that this comparison was
+not a poor one. Plutarch replies in the first place that the world is not
+like a play to provide entertainment. But that is a poor answer: the
+comparison lies in this point alone, that one bad part may make the whole
+better. He replies secondly that this bad passage is only a small part of
+the comedy, whereas human life swarms with evils. This reply is of no value
+either: for he ought to have taken into account that what we know is also a
+very small part of the universe.
+
+335. But let us return to the cylinder of Chrysippus. He is right in saying
+that vice springs from the original constitution of some minds. He was met
+with the objection that God formed them, and he could only reply by
+pointing to the imperfection of matter, which did not permit God to do
+better. This reply is of no value, for matter in itself is indifferent to
+all forms, and God made it. Evil springs rather from the _Forms_ themselves
+in their detached state, that is, from the ideas that God has not produced
+by an act of his will, any more than he thus produced numbers and     [327]
+figures, and all possible essences which one must regard as eternal and
+necessary; for they are in the ideal region of the possibles, that is, in
+the divine understanding. God is therefore not the author of essences in so
+far as they are only possibilities. But there is nothing actual to which he
+has not decreed and given existence; and he has permitted evil because it
+is involved in the best plan existing in the region of possibles, a plan
+which supreme wisdom could not fail to choose. This notion satisfies at
+once the wisdom, the power and the goodness of God, and yet leaves a way
+open for the entrance of evil. God gives perfection to creatures in so far
+as it is possible in the universe. One gives a turn to the cylinder, but
+any roughness in its shape restricts the swiftness of its motion. This
+comparison made by Chrysippus does not greatly differ from mine, which was
+taken from a laden boat that is carried along by the river current, its
+pace becoming slower as the load grows heavier. These comparisons tend
+towards the same end; and that shows that if we were sufficiently informed
+concerning the opinions of ancient philosophers, we should find therein
+more reason than is supposed.
+
+336. M. Bayle himself commends the passage from Chrysippus (art.
+'Chrysippus', lit. T) that Aulus Gellius quotes in the same place, where
+this philosopher maintains that evil has come _by concomitance._ That also
+is made clear by my system. For I have demonstrated that the evil which God
+permitted was not an object of his will, as an end or a means, but simply
+as a condition, since it had to be involved in the best. Yet one must
+confess that the cylinder of Chrysippus does not answer the objection of
+necessity. He ought to have added, in the first place, that it is by the
+free choice of God that some of the possibles exist; secondly, that
+rational creatures act freely also, in accordance with their original
+nature, which existed already in the eternal ideas; and lastly, that the
+motive power of good inclines the will without compelling it.
+
+337. The advantage of freedom which is in the creature without doubt exists
+to an eminent degree in God. That must be understood in so far as it is
+genuinely an advantage and in so far as it presupposes no imperfection. For
+to be able to make a mistake and go astray is a disadvantage, and to have
+control over the passions is in truth an advantage, but one that
+presupposes an imperfection, namely passion itself, of which God is   [328]
+incapable. Scotus was justified in saying that if God were not free and
+exempt from necessity, no creature would be so. But God is incapable of
+being indeterminate in anything whatsoever: he cannot be ignorant, he
+cannot doubt, he cannot suspend his judgement; his will is always decided,
+and it can only be decided by the best. God can never have a primitive
+particular will, that is, independent of laws or general acts of will; such
+a thing would be unreasonable. He cannot determine upon Adam, Peter, Judas
+or any individual without the existence of a reason for this determination;
+and this reason leads of necessity to some general enunciation. The wise
+mind always acts _according to principles_; always _according to rules_,
+and never _according to exceptions_, save when the rules come into
+collision through opposing tendencies, where the strongest carries the day:
+or else, either they will stop one another or some third course will emerge
+as a result. In all these cases one rule serves as an exception to the
+other, and there are never any _original exceptions_ with one who always
+acts in a regular way.
+
+338. If there are people who believe that election and reprobation are
+accomplished on God's part by a despotic absolute power, not only without
+any apparent reason but actually without any reason, even a concealed one,
+they maintain an opinion that destroys alike the nature of things and the
+divine perfections. Such an _absolutely absolute decree_ (so to speak)
+would be without doubt insupportable. But Luther and Calvin were far from
+such a belief: the former hopes that the life to come will make us
+comprehend the just reasons of God's choice; and the latter protests
+explicitly that these reasons are just and holy, although they be unknown
+to us. I have already in that connexion quoted Calvin's treatise on
+predestination, and here are the actual words: 'God before the fall of Adam
+had reflected upon what he had to do, and that for causes concealed from
+us.... It is evident therefore that he had just causes for the reprobation
+of some of mankind, but causes to us UNKNOWN.'
+
+339. This truth, that all God does is reasonable and cannot be better done,
+strikes at the outset every man of good sense, and extorts, so to speak,
+his approbation. And yet the most subtle of philosophers have a fatal
+propensity for offending sometimes without observing it, during the course
+and in the heat of disputes, against the first principles of good sense,
+when these are shrouded in terms that disguise them. We have here     [329]
+already seen how the excellent M. Bayle, with all his shrewdness, has
+nevertheless combated this principle which I have just indicated, and which
+is a sure consequence of the supreme perfection of God. He thought to
+defend in that way the cause of God and to exempt him from an imaginary
+necessity, by leaving him the freedom to choose from among various goods
+the least. I have already spoken of M. Diroys and others who have also been
+deluded by this strange opinion, one that is far too commonly accepted.
+Those who uphold it do not observe that it implies a wish to preserve for,
+or rather bestow upon, God a false freedom, which is the freedom to act
+unreasonably. That is rendering his works subject to correction, and making
+it impossible for us to say or even to hope that anything reasonable can be
+said upon the permission of evil.
+
+340. This error has much impaired M. Bayle's arguments, and has barred his
+way of escape from many perplexities. That appears again in relation to the
+laws of the realm of Nature: he believes them to be arbitrary and
+indifferent, and he objects that God could better have attained his end in
+the realm of grace if he had not clung to these laws, if he had more often
+dispensed with their observance, or even if he had made others. He believed
+this especially with regard to the law of the union between the soul and
+the body. For he is persuaded, with the modern Cartesians, that the ideas
+of the perceptible qualities that God gives (according to them) to the
+soul, occasioned by movements of the body, have nothing representing these
+movements or resembling them. Accordingly it was a purely arbitrary act on
+God's part to give us the ideas of heat, cold, light and other qualities
+which we experience, rather than to give us quite different ideas
+occasioned in the same way. I have often wondered that people so talented
+should have been capable of relishing notions so unphilosophic and so
+contrary to the fundamental maxims of reason. For nothing gives clearer
+indication of the imperfection of a philosophy than the necessity
+experienced by the philosopher to confess that something comes to pass, in
+accordance with his system, for which there is no reason. That applies to
+the idea of Epicurus on the deviation of atoms. Whether it be God or Nature
+that operates, the operation will always have its reasons. In the
+operations of Nature, these reasons will depend either upon necessary
+truths or upon the laws that God has found the most reasonable; and in the
+operations of God, they will depend upon the choice of the supreme    [330]
+reason which causes them to act.
+
+341. M. Regis, a famous Cartesian, had asserted in his 'Metaphysics' (part
+2, book 2, c. 29) that the faculties God has given to men are the most
+excellent that they were capable of in conformity with the general order of
+nature. 'Considering only', he says, 'the power of God and the nature of
+man by themselves, it is very easy to conceive that God could have made man
+more perfect: but if one will consider man, not in himself and separately
+from all other creatures, but as a member of the universe and a portion
+which is subject to the general laws of motions, one will be bound to
+acknowledge that man is as perfect as he could have been.' He adds 'that we
+cannot conceive that God could have employed any other means more
+appropriate than pain for the conservation of our bodies'. M. Regis is
+right in a general way in saying that God cannot do better than he has done
+in relation to all. And although there be apparently in some places in the
+universe rational animals more perfect than man, one may say that God was
+right to create every kind of species, some more perfect than others. It is
+perhaps not impossible that there be somewhere a species of animals much
+resembling man and more perfect than we are. It may be even that the human
+race will attain in time to a greater perfection than that which we can now
+envisage. Thus the laws of motions do not prevent man from being more
+perfect: but the place God has assigned to man in space and in time limits
+the perfections he was able to receive.
+
+342. I also doubt, with M. Bayle, whether pain be necessary in order to
+warn men of peril. But this writer goes too far (_Reply to the Questions of
+a Provincial_, vol. II, ch. 77, p. 104): he seems to think that a feeling
+of pleasure could have the same effect, and that, in order to prevent a
+child from going too near the fire, God could give him ideas of pleasure in
+proportion to the distance he kept from it. This expedient does not appear
+very practicable with regard to all evils, unless a miracle were involved.
+It is more natural that what if it were too near would cause an evil should
+cause some foreboding of evil when it is a little less near. Yet I admit
+that it is possible such a foreboding will be something less than pain, and
+usually this is the case. Thus it indeed appears that pain is not necessary
+for causing one to shun present peril; it is wont rather to serve as a
+penalty for having actually plunged into evil, and a warning against  [331]
+further lapse. There are also many painful evils the avoidance whereof
+rests not with us. As a dissolution of the continuity of our body is a
+consequence of many accidents that may happen to us, it was natural that
+this imperfection of the body should be represented by some sense of
+imperfection in the soul. Nevertheless I would not guarantee that there
+were no animals in the universe whose structure was cunning enough to cause
+a sense of indifference as accompaniment to this dissolution of continuity,
+as for instance when a gangrenous limb is cut off; or even a sense of
+pleasure, as if one were only scratching oneself. For the imperfection that
+attends the dissolution of the body might lead to the sense of a greater
+perfection, which was suspended or checked by the continuity which is now
+broken: and in this respect the body would be as it were a prison.
+
+343. There is also nothing to preclude the existence in the universe of
+animals resembling that one which Cyrano de Bergerac encountered in the
+sun. The body of this animal being a sort of fluid composed of innumerable
+small animals, that were capable of ranging themselves in accordance with
+the desires of the great animal, by this means it transformed itself in a
+moment, just as it pleased; and the dissolution of continuity caused it no
+more hurt than the stroke of an oar can cause to the sea. But, after all,
+these animals are not men, they are not in our globe or in our present
+century; and God's plan ensured that there should not be lacking here on
+earth a rational animal clothed in flesh and bones, whose structure
+involves susceptibility to pain.
+
+344. But M. Bayle further opposes this on another principle, one which I
+have already mentioned. It seems that he thinks the ideas which the soul
+conceives in relation to the feelings of the body are arbitrary. Thus God
+might have caused the dissolution of continuity to give us pleasure. He
+even maintains that the laws of motion are entirely arbitrary. 'I would
+wish to know', he says (vol. III, ch. 166, p. 1080), 'whether God
+established by an act of his freedom of indifference general laws on the
+communication of movements, and the particular laws on the union of the
+human soul with an organic body? In this case, he could have established
+quite different laws, and adopted a system whose results involved neither
+moral evil nor physical evil. But if the answer is given that God was
+constrained by supreme wisdom to establish the laws that he has
+established, there we have neither more nor less than the _Fatum_ of  [332]
+the Stoics. Wisdom will have marked out a way for God, the abandonment
+whereof will have been as impossible to him as his own self-destruction.'
+This objection has been sufficiently overthrown: it is only a moral
+necessity; and it is always a happy necessity to be bound to act in
+accordance with the rules of perfect wisdom.
+
+345. Moreover, it appears to me that the reason for the belief held by many
+that the laws of motion are arbitrary comes from the fact that few people
+have properly examined them. It is known now that M. Descartes was much
+mistaken in his statement of them. I have proved conclusively that
+conservation of the same quantity of motion cannot occur, but I consider
+that the same quantity of force is conserved, whether absolute or directive
+and respective, whether total or partial. My principles, which carry this
+subject as far as it can go, have not yet been published in full; but I
+have communicated them to friends competent to judge of them, who have
+approved them, and have converted some other persons of acknowledged
+erudition and ability. I discovered at the same time that the laws of
+motion actually existing in Nature, and confirmed by experiments, are not
+in reality absolutely demonstrable, as a geometrical proposition would be;
+but neither is it necessary that they be so. They do not spring entirely
+from the principle of necessity, but rather from the principle of
+perfection and order; they are an effect of the choice and the wisdom of
+God. I can demonstrate these laws in divers ways, but must always assume
+something that is not of an absolutely geometrical necessity. Thus these
+admirable laws are wonderful evidence of an intelligent and free being, as
+opposed to the system of absolute and brute necessity, advocated by Strato
+or Spinoza.
+
+346. I have found that one may account for these laws by assuming that the
+effect is always equal in force to its cause, or, which amounts to the same
+thing, that the same force is conserved always: but this axiom of higher
+philosophy cannot be demonstrated geometrically. One may again apply other
+principles of like nature, for instance the principle that action is always
+equal to reaction, one which assumes in things a distaste for external
+change, and cannot be derived either from extension or impenetrability; and
+that other principle, that a simple movement has the same properties as
+those which might belong to a compound movement such as would produce [333]
+the same phenomena of locomotion. These assumptions are very plausible, and
+are successful as an explanation of the laws of motion: nothing is so
+appropriate, all the more since they are in accord with each other. But
+there is to be found in them no absolute necessity, such as may compel us
+to admit them, in the way one is compelled to admit the rules of logic, of
+arithmetic and geometry.
+
+347. It seems, when one considers the indifference of matter to motion and
+to rest, that the largest body at rest could be carried along without any
+resistance by the smallest body in motion, in which case there would be
+action without reaction and an effect greater than its cause. There is also
+no necessity to say of the motion of a ball which runs freely on an even,
+horizontal plane, with a certain degree of speed, termed A, that this
+motion must have the properties of that motion which it would have if it
+were going with lesser speed in a boat, itself moving in the same direction
+with the residue of the speed, to ensure that the ball, seen from the bank,
+advance with the same degree A. For, although the same appearance of speed
+and of direction results through this medium of the boat, it is not because
+it is the same thing. Nevertheless it happens that the effects of the
+collision of the balls in the boat, the motion in each one separately
+combined with that of the boat giving the appearance of that which goes on
+outside the boat, also give the appearance of the effects that these same
+balls colliding would have outside the boat. All that is admirable, but one
+does not see its absolute necessity. A movement on the two sides of the
+right-angled triangle composes a movement on the hypotenuse; but it does
+not follow that a ball moving on the hypotenuse must produce the effect of
+two balls of its own size moving on the two sides: yet that is true.
+Nothing is so appropriate as this result, and God has chosen the laws that
+produce it: but one sees no geometrical necessity therein. Yet it is this
+very lack of necessity which enhances the beauty of the laws that God has
+chosen, wherein divers admirable axioms exist in conjunction, and it is
+impossible for one to say which of them is the primary.
+
+348. I have also shown that therein is observed that excellent law of
+continuity, which I have perhaps been the first to state, and which is a
+kind of touchstone whose test the rules of M. Descartes, of Father Fabry,
+Father Pardies, Father de Malebranche and others cannot pass. In virtue of
+this law, one must be able to regard rest as a movement vanishing     [334]
+after having continually diminished, and likewise equality as an inequality
+that vanishes also, as would happen through the continual diminution of the
+greater of two unequal bodies, while the smaller retains its size. As a
+consequence of this consideration, the general rule for unequal bodies, or
+bodies in motion, must apply also to equal bodies or to bodies one of which
+is at rest, as to a particular case of the rule. This does result in the
+true laws of motion, and does not result in certain laws invented by M.
+Descartes and by some other men of talent, which already on that score
+alone prove to be ill-concerted, so that one may predict that experiment
+will not favour them.
+
+349. These considerations make it plain that the laws of Nature regulating
+movements are neither entirely necessary nor entirely arbitrary. The middle
+course to be taken is that they are a choice of the most perfect wisdom.
+And this great example of the laws of motion shows with the utmost clarity
+how much difference there is between these three cases, to wit, firstly _an
+absolute necessity_, metaphysical or geometrical, which may be called
+blind, and which does not depend upon any but efficient causes; in the
+second place, _a moral necessity_, which comes from the free choice of
+wisdom in relation to final causes; and finally in the third place,
+_something absolutely arbitrary_, depending upon an indifference of
+equipoise, which is imagined, but which cannot exist, where there is no
+sufficient reason either in the efficient or in the final cause.
+Consequently one must conclude how mistaken it is to confuse either that
+which is absolutely necessary with that which is determined by the reason
+of the best, or the freedom that is determined by reason with a vague
+indifference.
+
+350. This also settles M. Bayle's difficulty, for he fears that, if God is
+always determinate, Nature could dispense with him and bring about that
+same effect which is attributed to him, through the necessity of the order
+of things. That would be true if the laws of motion for instance, and all
+the rest, had their source in a geometrical necessity of efficient causes;
+but in the last analysis one is obliged to resort to something depending
+upon final causes and upon what is fitting. This also utterly destroys the
+most plausible reasoning of the Naturalists. Dr. Johann Joachim Becher, a
+German physician, well known for his books on chemistry, had composed a
+prayer which looked like getting him into trouble. It began: 'O sancta[335]
+mater natura, aeterne rerum ordo'. And it ended by saying that this Nature
+must forgive him his errors, since she herself was their cause. But the
+nature of things, if taken as without intelligence and without choice, has
+in it nothing sufficiently determinant. Herr Becher did not sufficiently
+take into account that the Author of things (_natura naturans_) must be
+good and wise, and that we can be evil without complicity on his part in
+our acts of wickedness. When a wicked man exists, God must have found in
+the region of possibles the idea of such a man forming part of that
+sequence of things, the choice of which was demanded by the greatest
+perfection of the universe, and in which errors and sins are not only
+punished but even repaired to greater advantage, so that they contribute to
+the greatest good.
+
+351. M. Bayle, however, has extended the free choice of God a little too
+far. Speaking of the Peripatetic Strato (_Reply to the Questions of a
+Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 180, p. 1239), who asserted that everything had
+been brought forth by the necessity of a nature devoid of intelligence, he
+maintains that this philosopher, on being asked why a tree has not the
+power to form bones and veins, might have asked in his turn: Why has matter
+precisely three dimensions? why should not two have sufficed for it? why
+has it not four? 'If one had answered that there can be neither more nor
+less than three dimensions he would have demanded the cause of this
+impossibility.' These words lead one to believe that M. Bayle suspected
+that the number of the dimensions of matter depended upon God's choice,
+even as it depended upon him to cause or not to cause trees to produce
+animals. Indeed, how do we know whether there are not planetary globes or
+earths situated in some more remote place in the universe where the fable
+of the Barnacle-geese of Scotland (birds that were said to be born of
+trees) proves true, and even whether there are not countries where one
+could say:
+
+  _... populos umbrosa creavit_
+  _Fraxinus, et foeta viridis puer excidit alno?_
+
+But with the dimensions of matter it is not thus: the ternary number is
+determined for it not by the reason of the best, but by a geometrical
+necessity, because the geometricians have been able to prove that there are
+only three straight lines perpendicular to one another which can intersect
+at one and the same point. Nothing more appropriate could have been   [336]
+chosen to show the difference there is between the moral necessity that
+accounts for the choice of wisdom and the brute necessity of Strato and the
+adherents of Spinoza, who deny to God understanding and will, than a
+consideration of the difference existing between the reason for the laws of
+motion and the reason for the ternary number of the dimensions: for the
+first lies in the choice of the best and the second in a geometrical and
+blind necessity.
+
+352. Having spoken of the laws of bodies, that is, of the rules of motion,
+let us come to the laws of the union between body and soul, where M. Bayle
+believes that he finds again some vague indifference, something absolutely
+arbitrary. Here is the way he speaks of it in his _Reply_ (vol. II, ch. 84,
+p. 163): 'It is a puzzling question whether bodies have some natural
+property of doing harm or good to man's soul. If one answers yes, one
+plunges into an insane labyrinth: for, as man's soul is an immaterial
+substance, one will be bound to say that the local movement of certain
+bodies is an efficient cause of the thoughts in a mind, a statement
+contrary to the most obvious notions that philosophy imparts to us. If one
+answers no, one will be constrained to admit that the influence of our
+organs upon our thoughts depends neither upon the internal qualities of
+matter, nor upon the laws of motion, but upon an _arbitrary institution_ of
+the creator. One must then admit that it depended altogether upon God's
+freedom to combine particular thoughts of our soul with particular
+modifications of our body, even when he had once established all the laws
+for the action of bodies one upon another. Whence it results that there is
+in the universe no portion of matter which by its proximity can harm us,
+save when God wills it; and consequently, that the earth is as capable as
+any other place of being the abode of the happy man.... In short it is
+evident that there is no need, in order to prevent the wrong choices of
+freedom, to transport man outside the earth. God could do on earth with
+regard to all the acts of the will what he does in respect of the good
+works of the predestined when he settles their outcome, whether by
+efficacious or by sufficient grace: and that grace, without in any way
+impairing freedom, is always followed by the assent of the soul. It would
+be as easy for him on earth as in heaven to bring about the determination
+of our souls to a good choice.'
+
+353. I agree with M. Bayle that God could have so ordered bodies and  [337]
+souls on this globe of earth, whether by ways of nature or by extraordinary
+graces, that it would have been a perpetual paradise and a foretaste of the
+celestial state of the blessed. There is no reason why there should not be
+worlds happier than ours; but God had good reasons for willing that ours
+should be such as it is. Nevertheless, in order to prove that a better
+state would have been possible here, M. Bayle had no need to resort to the
+system of occasional causes: it abounds in miracles and in hypotheses for
+which their very originators confess there is no justification; and these
+are two defects such as will most of all estrange a system from true
+philosophy. It is a cause for surprise, in the first place, that M. Bayle
+did not bethink himself of the System of Pre-established Harmony which he
+had examined before, and which for this matter was so opportune. But as in
+this system all is connected and harmonious, all following from reasons and
+nothing being left incomplete or exposed to the rash discretion of perfect
+indifference, it seems that it was not pleasing to M. Bayle: for he was
+here somewhat biassed in favour of such indifference, which,
+notwithstanding, he contested so strongly on other occasions. He was much
+given to passing from one extreme to the other, not with an ill intention
+or against his own conviction, but because there was as yet nothing settled
+in his mind on the question concerned. He contented himself with whatever
+suited him for frustrating the opponent he had in mind, his aim being only
+to perplex philosophers, and show the weakness of our reason; and never, in
+my opinion, did either Arcesilaus or Carneades argue for and against with
+more eloquence and more wit. But, after all, one must not doubt for the
+sake of doubting: doubts must serve us as a gangway to the truth. That is
+what I often said to the late Abbe Foucher, a few specimens of whose work
+prove that he designed to do with regard to the Academicians what Lipsius
+and Scioppius had done for the Stoics, and M. Gassendi for Epicurus, and
+what M. Dacier has so well begun for Plato. It must not be possible for us
+to offer true philosophers such a reproach as that implied in the
+celebrated Casaubon's answer to those who, in showing him the hall of the
+Sorbonne, told him that debate had been carried on there for some
+centuries. What conclusions have been reached? he said to them.
+
+354. M. Bayle goes on (p. 166): 'It is true that since the laws of motion
+were instituted in such forms as we see now in the world, it is an
+inevitable necessity that a hammer striking a nut should break it, and[338]
+that a stone falling on a man's foot should cause some bruise or some
+derangement of its parts. But that is all that can follow the action of
+this stone upon the human body. If you want it in addition to cause a
+feeling of pain, then one must assume the institution of a code other than
+that one which regulates the action and reaction of bodies one upon
+another; one must, I say, have recourse to the particular system of the
+laws of union between the soul and certain bodies. Now as this system is
+not of necessity connected with the other, the indifference of God does not
+cease in relation to the one immediately upon his choice of the other. He
+therefore combined these two systems with a complete freedom, like two
+things which did not follow naturally the one from the other. Thus it is by
+an arbitrary institution he has ordained that wounds in the body should
+cause pain in the soul which is united to this body. It therefore only
+rested with him to have chosen another system of union between soul and
+body: he was therefore able to choose one in accordance wherewith wounds
+only evoke the idea of the remedy and an intense but agreeable desire to
+apply it. He was able to arrange that all bodies which were on the point of
+breaking a man's head or piercing his heart should evoke a lively sense of
+danger, and that this sense should cause the body to remove itself promptly
+out of reach of the blow. All that would have come to pass without
+miracles, since there would have been general laws on this subject. The
+system which we know by experience teaches us that the determination of the
+movement of certain bodies changes in pursuance of our desires. It was
+therefore possible for a combination to be effected between our desires and
+the movement of certain bodies, whereby the nutritive juices were so
+modified that the good arrangement of our organs was never affected.'
+
+355. It is evident that M. Bayle believes that everything accomplished
+through general laws is accomplished without miracles. But I have shown
+sufficiently that if the law is not founded on reasons and does not serve
+to explain the event through the nature of things, it can only be put into
+execution by a miracle. If, for example, God had ordained that bodies must
+have a circular motion, he would have needed perpetual miracles, or the
+ministry of angels, to put this order into execution: for that is contrary
+to the nature of motion, whereby the body naturally abandons the circular
+line to continue in the tangent straight line if nothing holds it     [339]
+back. Therefore it is not enough for God to ordain simply that a wound
+should excite an agreeable sensation: natural means must be found for that
+purpose. The real means whereby God causes the soul to be conscious of what
+happens in the body have their origin in the nature of the soul, which
+represents the bodies, and is so made beforehand that the representations
+which are to spring up one from another within it, by a natural sequence of
+thoughts, correspond to the changes in the body.
+
+356. The representation has a natural relation to that which is to be
+represented. If God should have the round shape of a body represented by
+the idea of a square, that would be an unsuitable representation: for there
+would be angles or projections in the representation, while all would be
+even and smooth in the original. The representation often suppresses
+something in the objects when it is imperfect; but it can add nothing: that
+would render it, not more than perfect, but false. Moreover, the
+suppression is never complete in our perceptions, and there is in the
+representation, confused as it is, more than we see there. Thus there is
+reason for supposing that the ideas of heat, cold, colours, etc., also only
+represent the small movements carried out in the organs, when one is
+conscious of these qualities, although the multiplicity and the diminutive
+character of these movements prevents their clear representation. Almost in
+the same way it happens that we do not distinguish the blue and the yellow
+which play their part in the representation as well as in the composition
+of the green, when the microscope shows that what appears to be green is
+composed of yellow and blue parts.
+
+357. It is true that the same thing may be represented in different ways;
+but there must always be an exact relation between the representation and
+the thing, and consequently between the different representations of one
+and the same thing. The projections in perspective of the conic sections of
+the circle show that one and the same circle may be represented by an
+ellipse, a parabola and a hyperbola, and even by another circle, a straight
+line and a point. Nothing appears so different nor so dissimilar as these
+figures; and yet there is an exact relation between each point and every
+other point. Thus one must allow that each soul represents the universe to
+itself according to its point of view, and through a relation which is
+peculiar to it; but a perfect harmony always subsists therein. God, if he
+wished to effect representation of the dissolution of continuity of   [340]
+the body by an agreeable sensation in the soul, would not have neglected to
+ensure that this very dissolution should serve some perfection in the body,
+by giving it some new relief, as when one is freed of some burden or loosed
+from some bond. But organic bodies of such kinds, although possible, do not
+exist upon our globe, which doubtless lacks innumerable inventions that God
+may have put to use elsewhere. Nevertheless it is enough that, due
+allowance being made for the place our world holds in the universe, nothing
+can be done for it better than what God does. He makes the best possible
+use of the laws of nature which he has established and (as M. Regis also
+acknowledged in the same passage) 'the laws that God has established in
+nature are the most excellent it is possible to conceive'.
+
+358. I will add to that the remark from the _Journal des Savants_ of the
+16th March 1705, which M. Bayle has inserted in chapter 162 of the _Reply
+to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, p. 1030). The matter in
+question is the extract from a very ingenious modern book on the Origin of
+Evil, to which I have already referred here. It is stated: 'that the
+general solution in respect of physical evil which this book gives is that
+the universe must be regarded as a work composed of various pieces which
+form a whole; that, according to the laws established in nature, some parts
+cannot be better unless others become worse, whence would result a system
+less perfect as a whole. This principle', the writer goes on, 'is good; but
+if nothing is added to it, it does not appear sufficient. Why has God
+established laws that give rise to so many difficulties? philosophers who
+are somewhat precise will say. Could he not have established others of a
+kind not subject to any defects? And to cut the matter short, how comes it
+that he has prescribed laws for himself? Why does he not act without
+general laws, in accordance with all his power and all his goodness? The
+writer has not carried the difficulty as far as that. By disentangling his
+ideas one might indeed possibly find means of solving the difficulty, but
+there is no development of the subject in his work.'
+
+359. I suppose that the gifted author of this extract, when he thought the
+difficulty could be solved, had in mind something akin to my principles on
+this matter. If he had vouchsafed to declare himself in this passage, he
+would to all appearance have replied, like M. Regis, that the laws God
+established were the most excellent that could be established. He would
+have acknowledged, at the same time, that God could not have refrained[341]
+from establishing laws and following rules, because laws and rules are what
+makes order and beauty; that to act without rules would be to act without
+reason; and that because God _called into action all his goodness_ the
+exercise of his omnipotence was consistent with the laws of wisdom, to
+secure as much good as was possible of attainment. Finally, he would have
+said, the existence of certain particular disadvantages which strike us is
+a sure indication that the best plan did not permit of their avoidance, and
+that they assist in the achievement of the total good, an argument
+wherewith M. Bayle in more than one place expresses agreement.
+
+360. Now that I have proved sufficiently that everything comes to pass
+according to determinate reasons, there cannot be any more difficulty over
+these principles of God's foreknowledge. Although these determinations do
+not compel, they cannot but be certain, and they foreshadow what shall
+happen. It is true that God sees all at once the whole sequence of this
+universe, when he chooses it, and that thus he has no need of the connexion
+of effects and causes in order to foresee these effects. But since his
+wisdom causes him to choose a sequence in perfect connexion, he cannot but
+see one part of the sequence in the other. It is one of the rules of my
+system of general harmony, _that the present is big with the future_, and
+that he who sees all sees in that which is that which shall be. What is
+more, I have proved conclusively that God sees in each portion of the
+universe the whole universe, owing to the perfect connexion of things. He
+is infinitely more discerning than Pythagoras, who judged the height of
+Hercules by the size of his footprint. There must therefore be no doubt
+that effects follow their causes determinately, in spite of contingency and
+even of freedom, which nevertheless exist together with certainty or
+determination.
+
+361. Durand de Saint-Pourcain, among others, has indicated this clearly in
+saying that contingent futurities are seen determinately in their causes,
+and that God, who knows all, seeing all that shall have power to tempt or
+repel the will, will see therein the course it shall take. I could cite
+many other authors who have said the same thing, and reason does not allow
+the possibility of thinking otherwise. M. Jacquelot implies also
+(_Conformity of Faith with Reason_, p. 318 _et seqq._), as M. Bayle
+observes (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 142, p.
+796), that the dispositions of the human heart and those of circumstances
+acquaint God unerringly with the choice that man shall make. M. Bayle [342]
+adds that some Molinists say the same, and refers us to those who are
+quoted in the _Suavis Concordia_ of Pierre de S. Joseph, the Feuillant (pp.
+579, 580).
+
+362. Those who have confused this determination with necessity have
+fabricated monsters in order to fight them. To avoid a reasonable thing
+which they had disguised under a hideous shape, they have fallen into great
+absurdities. For fear of being obliged to admit an imaginary necessity, or
+at least one different from that in question, they have admitted something
+which happens without the existence of any cause or reason for it. This
+amounts to the same as the absurd deviation of atoms, which according to
+Epicurus happened without any cause. Cicero, in his book on Divination, saw
+clearly that if the cause could produce an effect towards which it was
+entirely indifferent there would be a true chance, a genuine luck, an
+actual fortuitous case, that is, one which would be so not merely in
+relation to us and our ignorance, according to which one may say:
+
+                                _Sed Te_
+  _Nos facimus, Fortuna, Deam, caeloque locamus,_
+
+but even in relation to God and to the nature of things. Consequently it
+would be impossible to foresee events by judging of the future by the past.
+He adds fittingly in the same passage: 'Qui potest provideri, quicquam
+futurum esse, quod neque causam habet ullam, neque notam cur futurum sit?'
+and soon after: 'Nihil est tam contrarium rationi et constantiae, quam
+fortuna; ut mihi ne in Deum quidem cadere videatur, ut sciat quid casu et
+fortuito futurum sit. Si enim scit, certe illud eveniet: sin certe eveniet,
+nulla fortuna est.' If the future is certain, there is no such thing as
+luck. But he wrongly adds: 'Est autum fortuna; rerum igitur fortuitarum
+nulla praesensio est.' There is luck, therefore future events cannot be
+foreseen. He ought rather to have concluded that, events being
+predetermined and foreseen, there is no luck. But he was then speaking
+against the Stoics, in the character of an Academician.
+
+363. The Stoics already derived from the decrees of God the prevision of
+events. For, as Cicero says in the same book: 'Sequitur porro nihil Deos
+ignorare, quod omnia ab iis sint constituta.' And, according to my system,
+God, having seen the possible world that he desired to create, foresaw[343]
+everything therein. Thus one may say that the _divine knowledge of vision
+differs from the knowledge of simple intelligence_ only in that it adds to
+the latter the acquaintance with the actual decree to choose this sequence
+of things which simple intelligence had already presented, but only as
+possible; and this decree now makes the present universe.
+
+364. Thus the Socinians cannot be excused for denying to God the certain
+knowledge of future events, and above all of the future resolves of a free
+creature. For even though they had supposed that there is a freedom of
+complete indifference, so that the will can choose without cause, and that
+thus this effect could not be seen in its cause (which is a great
+absurdity), they ought always to take into account that God was able to
+foresee this event in the idea of the possible world that he resolved to
+create. But the idea which they have of God is unworthy of the Author of
+things, and is not commensurate with the skill and wit which the writers of
+this party often display in certain particular discussions. The author of
+the _Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism_ was not altogether mistaken
+in saying that the God of the Socinians would be ignorant and powerless,
+like the God of Epicurus, every day confounded by events and living from
+one day to the next, if he only knows by conjecture what the will of men is
+to be.
+
+365. The whole difficulty here has therefore only come from a wrong idea of
+contingency and of freedom, which was thought to have need of a complete
+indifference or equipoise, an imaginary thing, of which neither a notion
+nor an example exists, nor ever can exist. Apparently M. Descartes had been
+imbued with the idea in his youth, at the College of la Fleche. That caused
+him to say (part I of his _Principles_, art. 41): 'Our thought is finite,
+and the knowledge and omnipotence of God, whereby he has not only known
+from all eternity everything that is, or that can be, but also has willed
+it, is infinite. Thus we have enough intelligence to recognize clearly and
+distinctly that this power and this knowledge are in God; but we have not
+enough so to comprehend their extent that we can know how they leave the
+actions of men entirely free and indeterminate.' The continuation has
+already been quoted above. 'Entirely free', that is right; but one spoils
+everything by adding 'entirely indeterminate'. One has no need of infinite
+knowledge in order to see that the foreknowledge and the providence of God
+allow freedom to our actions, since God has foreseen those actions in [344]
+his ideas, just as they are, that is, free. Laurentius Valla indeed, in his
+_Dialogue against Boethius_ (which I will presently quote in epitome) ably
+undertakes to reconcile freedom with foreknowledge, but does not venture to
+hope that he can reconcile it with providence. Yet there is no more
+difficulty in the one than the other, because the decree to give existence
+to this action no more changes its nature than does one's mere
+consciousness thereof. But there is no knowledge, however infinite it be,
+which can reconcile the knowledge and providence of God with actions of an
+indeterminate cause, that is to say, with a chimerical and impossible
+being. The actions of the will are determined in two ways, by the
+foreknowledge or providence of God, and also by the dispositions of the
+particular immediate cause, which lie in the inclinations of the soul. M.
+Descartes followed the Thomists on this point; but he wrote with his usual
+circumspection, so as not to come into conflict with some other
+theologians.
+
+366. M. Bayle relates (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III,
+ch. 142, p. 804) that Father Gibieuf of the Oratory published a Latin
+treatise on the freedom of God and of the creature, in the year 1639; that
+he was met with protests, and was shown a collection of seventy
+contradictions taken from the first book of his work; and that, twenty
+years after, Father Annat, Confessor to the King of France, reproached him
+in his book _De Incoacta Libertate_ (ed. Rome, 1654, in 4to.), for the
+silence he still maintained. Who would not think (adds M. Bayle), after the
+uproar of the _de Auxiliis_ Congregations, that the Thomists taught things
+touching the nature of free will which were entirely opposed to the opinion
+of the Jesuits? When, however, one considers the passages that Father Annat
+quoted from the works of the Thomists (in a pamphlet entitled: _Jansenius a
+Thomistis, gratiae per se ipsam efficacis defensoribus, condemnatus_,
+printed in Paris in the year 1654 in 4to.) one can in reality only see
+verbal controversies between the two sects. The grace efficacious of
+itself, according to the one side, leaves to free will quite as much power
+of resistance as the congruent grace of the others. M. Bayle thinks one can
+say almost as much of Jansenius himself. He was (so he says) an able man,
+of a methodical mind and of great assiduity. He worked for twenty-two years
+at his _Augustinus_. One of his aims was to refute the Jesuits on the dogma
+of free will; yet no decision has yet been reached as to whether he rejects
+or adopts freedom of indifference. From his work innumerable passages [345]
+are quoted for and against this opinion, as Father Annat has himself shown
+in the work that has just been mentioned, _De Incoacta Libertate_. So easy
+is it to render this subject obscure, as M. Bayle says at the conclusion of
+this discourse. As for Father Gibieuf, it must be admitted that he often
+alters the meaning of his terms, and that consequently he does not answer
+the question in the main, albeit he often writes with good sense.
+
+367. Indeed, confusion springs, more often than not, from ambiguity in
+terms, and from one's failure to take trouble over gaining clear ideas
+about them. That gives rise to these eternal, and usually mistaken,
+contentions on necessity and contingency, on the possible and the
+impossible. But provided that it is understood that necessity and
+possibility, taken metaphysically and strictly, depend solely upon this
+question, whether the object in itself or that which is opposed to it
+implies contradiction or not; and that one takes into account that
+contingency is consistent with the inclinations, or reasons which
+contribute towards causing determination by the will; provided also that
+one knows how to distinguish clearly between necessity and determination or
+certainty, between metaphysical necessity, which admits of no choice,
+presenting only one single object as possible, and moral necessity, which
+constrains the wisest to choose the best; finally, provided that one is rid
+of the chimera of complete indifference, which can only be found in the
+books of philosophers, and on paper (for they cannot even conceive the
+notion in their heads, or prove its reality by an example in things) one
+will easily escape from a labyrinth whose unhappy Daedalus was the human
+mind. That labyrinth has caused infinite confusion, as much with the
+ancients as with those of later times, even so far as to lead men into the
+absurd error of the Lazy Sophism, which closely resembles fate after the
+Turkish fashion. I do not wonder if in reality the Thomists and the
+Jesuits, and even the Molinists and the Jansenists, agree together on this
+matter more than is supposed. A Thomist and even a wise Jansenist will
+content himself with certain determination, without going on to necessity:
+and if someone goes so far, the error mayhap will lie only in the word. A
+wise Molinist will be content with an indifference opposed to necessity,
+but such as shall not exclude prevalent inclinations.
+
+368. These difficulties, however, have greatly impressed M. Bayle, who[346]
+was more inclined to dwell on them than to solve them, although he might
+perhaps have had better success than anyone if he had thought fit to turn
+his mind in that direction. Here is what he says of them in his
+_Dictionary_, art. 'Jansenius', lit. G, p. 1626: 'Someone has said that the
+subject of Grace is an ocean which has neither shore nor bottom. Perhaps he
+would have spoken more correctly if he had compared it to the Strait of
+Messina, where one is always in danger of striking one reef while
+endeavouring to avoid another.
+
+  _Dextrum Scylla latus, laevum implacata Charybdis_
+  _Obsidet._
+
+Everything comes back in the end to this: Did Adam sin freely? If you
+answer yes, then you will be told, his fall was not foreseen. If you answer
+no, then you will be told, he is not guilty. You may write a hundred
+volumes against the one or the other of these conclusions, and yet you will
+confess, either that the infallible prevision of a contingent event is a
+mystery impossible to conceive, or that the way in which a creature which
+acts without freedom sins nevertheless is altogether incomprehensible.'
+
+369. Either I am greatly mistaken or these two alleged
+incomprehensibilities are ended altogether by my solutions. Would to God it
+were as easy to answer the question how to cure fevers, and how to avoid
+the perils of two chronic sicknesses that may originate, the one from not
+curing the fever, the other from curing it wrongly. When one asserts that a
+free event cannot be foreseen, one is confusing freedom with
+indetermination, or with indifference that is complete and in equipoise;
+and when one maintains that the lack of freedom would prevent man from
+being guilty, one means a freedom exempt, not from determination or from
+certainty, but from necessity and from constraint. This shows that the
+dilemma is not well expressed, and that there is a wide passage between the
+two perilous reefs. One will reply, therefore, that Adam sinned freely, and
+that God saw him sinning in the possible state of Adam, which became actual
+in accordance with the decree of the divine permission. It is true that
+Adam was determined to sin in consequence of certain prevailing
+inclinations: but this determination destroys neither contingency nor
+freedom. Moreover, the certain determination to sin which exists in man
+does not deprive him of the power to avoid sinning (speaking generally) or,
+since he does sin, prevent him from being guilty and deserving        [347]
+punishment. This is more especially so since the punishment may be of
+service to him or others, to contribute towards determining them another
+time not to sin. There is besides punitive justice, which goes beyond
+compensation and amendment, and wherein also there is nothing liable to be
+shaken by the certain determination of the contingent resolutions of the
+will. It may be said, on the contrary, that the penalties and rewards would
+be to some extent unavailing, and would fail in one of their aims, that of
+amendment, if they could not contribute towards determining the will to do
+better another time.
+
+370. M. Bayle continues: 'Where freedom is concerned there are only two
+courses to take: one is to say that all the causes distinct from the soul,
+and co-operating with it, leave it the power to act or not to act; the
+other is to say that they so determine it to act that it cannot forbear to
+do so. The first course is that taken by the Molinists, the other is that
+of the Thomists and Jansenists and the Protestants of the Geneva
+Confession. Yet the Thomists have clamorously maintained that they were not
+Jansenists; and the latter have maintained with equal warmth that where
+freedom was concerned they were not Calvinists. On the other hand, the
+Molinists have maintained that St. Augustine did not teach Jansenism. Thus
+the one side not wishing to admit that they were in conformity with people
+who were considered heretics, and the other side not wishing to admit that
+they were in opposition to a learned saint whose opinions were always
+considered orthodox, have both performed a hundred feats of contortion,
+etc.'
+
+371. The two courses which M. Bayle distinguishes here do not exclude a
+third course, according to which the determination of the soul does not
+come solely from the co-operation of all the causes distinct from the soul,
+but also from the state of the soul itself and its inclinations which
+mingle with the impressions of the senses, strengthening or weakening them.
+Now all the internal and external causes taken together bring it about that
+the soul is determined certainly, but not of necessity: for no
+contradiction would be implied if the soul were to be determined
+differently, it being possible for the will to be inclined, but not
+possible for it to be compelled by necessity. I will not venture upon a
+discussion of the difference existing between the Jansenists and the
+Reformed on this matter. They are not perhaps always fully in accord  [348]
+with themselves as regards things, or as regards expressions, on a matter
+where one often loses one's way in bewildering subtleties. Father Theophile
+Raynaud, in his book entitled _Calvinismus Religio Bestiarum_, wished to
+strike at the Dominicans, without naming them. On the other hand, those who
+professed to be followers of St. Augustine reproached the Molinists with
+Pelagianism or at the least semi-Pelagianism. Things were carried to excess
+at times by both sides, whether in their defence of a vague indifference
+and the granting of too much to man, or in their teaching _determinationem
+ad unum secundum qualitatem actus licet non quoad ejus substantiam_, that
+is to say, a determination to evil in the non-regenerate, as if they did
+nothing but sin. After all, I think one must not reproach any but the
+adherents of Hobbes and Spinoza with destroying freedom and contingency;
+for they think that that which happens is alone possible, and must happen
+by a brute geometrical necessity. Hobbes made everything material and
+subjected it to mathematical laws alone; Spinoza also divested God of
+intelligence and choice, leaving him a blind power, whence all emanates of
+necessity. The theologians of the two Protestant parties are equally
+zealous in refuting an unendurable necessity. Although those who follow the
+Synod of Dordrecht teach sometimes that it suffices for freedom to be
+exempt from constraint, it seems that the necessity they leave in it is
+only hypothetical, or rather that which is more appropriately termed
+certainty and infallibility. Thus it results that very often the
+difficulties only lie in the terms. I say as much with regard to the
+Jansenists, although I do not wish to make excuse for those people in
+everything.
+
+372. With the Hebrew Cabalists, _Malcuth_ or the Kingdom, the last of the
+Sephiroth, signified that God controls everything irresistibly, but gently
+and without violence, so that man thinks he is following his own will while
+he carries out God's. They said that Adam's sin had been _truncatio Malcuth
+a caeteris plantis_, that is to say, that Adam had cut back the last of the
+Sephiroth, by making a dominion for himself within God's dominion, and by
+assuming for himself a freedom independent of God, but that his fall had
+taught him that he could not subsist of himself, and that men must needs be
+redeemed by the Messiah. This doctrine may receive a good interpretation.
+But Spinoza, who was versed in the Cabala of the writers of his race, and
+who says (_Tractatus Politicus_, c. 2, n. 6) that men, conceiving of
+freedom as they do, establish a dominion within God's dominion, has   [349]
+gone too far. The dominion of God is with Spinoza nothing but the dominion
+of necessity, and of a blind necessity (as with Strato), whereby everything
+emanates from the divine nature, while no choice is left to God, and man's
+choice does not exempt him from necessity. He adds that men, in order to
+establish what is termed _Imperium in Imperio_, supposed that their soul
+was a direct creation of God, something which could not be produced by
+natural causes, furthermore that it had an absolute power of determination,
+a state of things contrary to experience. Spinoza is right in opposing an
+absolute power of determination, that is, one without any grounds; it does
+not belong even to God. But he is wrong in thinking that a soul, that a
+simple substance, can be produced naturally. It seems, indeed, that the
+soul to him was only a transient modification; and when he pretends to make
+it lasting, and even perpetual, he substitutes for it the idea of the body,
+which is purely a notion and not a real and actual thing.
+
+373. The story M. Bayle relates of Johan Bredenburg, a citizen of Rotterdam
+(_Dictionary_, art. 'Spinoza', lit. H, p. 2774) is curious. He published a
+book against Spinoza, entitled: _Enervatio Tractatus Theologico-politici,
+una cum demonstratione geometrico ordine disposita, Naturam non esse Deum,
+cujus effati contrario praedictus Tractatus unice innititur_. One was
+surprised to see that a man who did not follow the profession of letters,
+and who had but slight education (having written his book in Flemish, and
+had it translated into Latin), had been able to penetrate with such
+subtlety all the principles of Spinoza, and succeed in overthrowing them,
+after having reduced them by a candid analysis to a state wherein they
+could appear in their full force. I have been told (adds M. Bayle) that
+this writer after copious reflexion upon his answer, and upon the principle
+of his opponent, finally found that this principle could be reduced to the
+form of a demonstration. He undertook therefore to prove that there is no
+cause of all things other than a nature which exists necessarily, and which
+acts according to an immutable, inevitable and irrevocable necessity. He
+examined the whole system of the geometricians, and after having
+constructed his demonstration he scrutinized it from every imaginable
+angle, he endeavoured to find its weak spot and was never able to discover
+any means of destroying it, or even of weakening it. That caused him real
+distress: he groaned over it and begged the most talented of his      [350]
+friends to help him in searching out the defects of this demonstration. For
+all that, he was not well pleased that copies of the book were made. Franz
+Cuper, a Socinian (who had written _Arcana Atheismi Revelata_ against
+Spinoza, Rotterdam, 1676, in 4to.), having obtained a copy, published it
+just as it was, that is, in Flemish, with some reflexions, and accused the
+author of being an atheist. The accused made his defence in the same
+tongue. Orobio, a very able Jewish physician (that one who was refuted by
+M. Limbourg, and who replied, so I have heard say, in a work posthumously
+circulated, but unpublished), brought out a book opposing Bredenburg's
+demonstration, entitled: _Certamen Philosophicum Propugnatae Veritatis
+Divinae ac Naturalis, adversus J.B. principia, Amsterdam_, 1684. M. Aubert
+de Verse also wrote in opposition to him the same year under the name of
+Latinus Serbattus Sartensis. Bredenburg protested that he was convinced of
+free will and of religion, and that he wished he might be shown a
+possibility of refuting his own demonstration.
+
+374. I would desire to see this alleged demonstration, and to know whether
+it tended to prove that primitive Nature, which produces all, acts without
+choice and without knowledge. In this case, I admit that his proof was
+Spinozistic and dangerous. But if he meant perhaps that the divine nature
+is determined toward that which it produces, by its choice and through the
+motive of the best, there was no need for him to grieve about this
+so-called immutable, inevitable, irrevocable necessity. It is only moral,
+it is a happy necessity; and instead of destroying religion it shows divine
+perfection to the best advantage.
+
+375. I take this opportunity to add that M. Bayle quotes (p. 2773) the
+opinion of those who believe that the book entitled _Lucii Antistii
+Constantis de Jure Ecclesiasticorum Liber Singularis_, published in 1665,
+is by Spinoza. But I have reason for doubting this, despite that M.
+Colerus, who has passed on to me an account he wrote of the life of that
+famous Jew, is also of that opinion. The initial letters L.A.C. lead me to
+believe that the author of this book was M. de la Cour or Van den Hoof,
+famous for works on the _Interest of Holland, Political Equipoise_, and
+numerous other books that he published (some of them under the signature
+V.D.H.) attacking the power of the Governor of Holland, which was at that
+time considered a danger to the Republic; for the memory of Prince William
+the Second's attempt upon the city of Amsterdam was still quite fresh.[351]
+Most of the ecclesiastics of Holland were on the side of this prince's son,
+who was then a minor, and they suspected M. de Witt and what was called the
+Lowenstein faction of favouring the Arminians, the Cartesians, and other
+sects that were feared still more, endeavouring to rouse the populace
+against them, and not without success, as the event proved. It was thus
+very natural that M. de la Cour should publish this book. It is true that
+people seldom keep to the happy mean in works published to further party
+interests. I will say in passing that a French version of the _Interest of
+Holland_ by M. de la Cour has just been published, under the deceptive
+title of _Memoires de M. le Grand-Pensionnaire de Witt_; as if the thoughts
+of a private individual, who was, to be sure, of de Witt's party, and a man
+of talent, but who had not enough acquaintance with public affairs or
+enough ability to write as that great Minister of State might have written,
+could pass for the production of one of the first men of his time.
+
+376. I saw M. de la Cour as well as Spinoza on my return from France by way
+of England and Holland, and I learnt from them a few good anecdotes on the
+affairs of that time. M. Bayle says, p. 2770, that Spinoza studied Latin
+under a physician named Franz van den Ende. He tells at the same time, on
+the authority of Sebastian Kortholt (who refers to it in the preface to the
+second edition of the book by his late father, _De Tribus Impostoribus,
+Herberto L. B. de Cherbury, Hobbio et Spinoza_) that a girl instructed
+Spinoza in Latin, and that she afterwards married M. Kerkering, who was her
+pupil at the same time as Spinoza. In connexion with that I note that this
+young lady was a daughter of M. van den Ende, and that she assisted her
+father in the work of teaching. Van den Ende, who was also called A.
+Finibus, later went to Paris, and there kept a boarding-school in the
+Faubourg St. Antoine. He was considered excellent as an instructor, and he
+told me, when I called upon him there, that he would wager that his
+audiences would always pay attention to his words. He had with him as well
+at that time a young girl who also spoke Latin, and worked upon geometrical
+demonstrations. He had insinuated himself into M. Arnauld's good graces,
+and the Jesuits began to be jealous of his reputation. But he disappeared
+shortly afterwards, having been mixed up in the Chevalier de Rohan's
+conspiracy.
+
+377. I think I have sufficiently proved that neither the foreknowledge nor
+the providence of God can impair either his justice or his goodness,  [352]
+or our freedom. There remains only the difficulty arising from God's
+co-operation with the actions of the creature, which seems to concern more
+closely both his goodness, in relation to our evil actions, and our
+freedom, in relation to good actions as well as to others. M. Bayle has
+brought out this also with his usual acuteness. I will endeavour to throw
+light upon the difficulties he puts forward, and then I shall be in a
+position to conclude this work. I have already proved that the co-operation
+of God consists in giving us continually all that is real in us and in our
+actions, in so far as it involves perfection; but that all that is limited
+and imperfect therein is a consequence of the previous limitations which
+are originally in the creature. Since, moreover, every action of the
+creature is a change of its modifications, it is obvious that action arises
+in the creature in relation to the limitations or negations which it has
+within itself, and which are diversified by this change.
+
+378. I have already pointed out more than once in this work that evil is a
+consequence of privation, and I think that I have explained that
+intelligibly enough. St. Augustine has already put forward this idea, and
+St. Basil said something of the same kind in his _Hexaemeron_, Homil. 2,
+'that vice is not a living and animate substance, but an affection of the
+soul contrary to virtue, which arises from one's abandoning the good; and
+there is therefore no need to look for an original evil'. M. Bayle, quoting
+this passage in his _Dictionary_ (art. 'Paulicians', lit. D, p. 2325)
+commends a remark by Herr Pfanner (whom he calls a German theologian, but
+he is a jurist by profession, Counsellor to the Dukes of Saxony), who
+censures St. Basil for not being willing to admit that God is the author of
+physical evil. Doubtless God is its author, when the moral evil is assumed
+to be already in existence; but speaking generally, one might assert that
+God permitted physical evil by implication, in permitting moral evil which
+is its source. It appears that the Stoics knew also how slender is the
+entity of evil. These words of Epictetus are an indication: 'Sicut
+aberrandi causa meta non ponitur, sic nec natura mali in mundo existit.'
+
+379. There was therefore no need to have recourse to a principle of evil,
+as St. Basil aptly observes. Nor is it necessary either to seek the origin
+of evil in matter. Those who believed that there was a chaos before God
+laid his hand upon it sought therein the source of disorder. It was an
+opinion which Plato introduced into his _Timaeus_. Aristotle found fault
+with him for that (in his third book on Heaven, ch. 2) because,       [353]
+according to this doctrine, disorder would be original and natural, and
+order would have been introduced against nature. This Anaxagoras avoided by
+making matter remain at rest until it was stirred by God; and Aristotle in
+the same passage commends him for it. According to Plutarch (_De Iside et
+Osiride_, and _Tr. de Animae Procreatione ex Timaeo_) Plato recognized in
+matter a certain maleficent soul or force, rebellious against God: it was
+an actual blemish, an obstacle to God's plans. The Stoics also believed
+that matter was the source of defects, as Justus Lipsius showed in the
+first book of the Physiology of the Stoics.
+
+380. Aristotle was right in rejecting chaos: but it is not always easy to
+disentangle the conceptions of Plato, and such a task would be still less
+easy in respect of some ancient authors whose works are lost. Kepler, one
+of the most excellent of modern mathematicians, recognized a species of
+imperfection in matter, even when there is no irregular motion: he calls it
+its 'natural inertia', which gives it a resistance to motion, whereby a
+greater mass receives less speed from one and the same force. There is
+soundness in this observation, and I have used it to advantage in this
+work, in order to have a comparison such as should illustrate how the
+original imperfection of the creatures sets bounds to the action of the
+Creator, which tends towards good. But as matter is itself of God's
+creation, it only furnishes a comparison and an example, and cannot be the
+very source of evil and of imperfection. I have already shown that this
+source lies in the forms or ideas of the possibles, for it must be eternal,
+and matter is not so. Now since God made all positive reality that is not
+eternal, he would have made the source of evil, if that did not rather lie
+in the possibility of things or forms, that which alone God did not make,
+since he is not the author of his own understanding.
+
+381. Yet even though the source of evil lies in the possible forms,
+anterior to the acts of God's will, it is nevertheless true that God
+co-operates in evil in the actual performance of introducing these forms
+into matter: and this is what causes the difficulty in question here.
+Durand de Saint-Pourcain, Cardinal Aureolus, Nicolas Taurel, Father Louis
+de Dole, M. Bernier and some others, speaking of this co-operation, would
+have it only general, for fear of impairing the freedom of man and the
+holiness of God. They seem to maintain that God, having given to creatures
+the power to act, contents himself with conserving this power. On the [354]
+other hand, M. Bayle, according to some modern writers, carries the
+cooperation of God too far: he seems to fear lest the creature be not
+sufficiently dependent upon God. He goes so far as to deny action to
+creatures; he does not even acknowledge any real distinction between
+accident and substance.
+
+382. He places great reliance especially on that doctrine accepted of the
+Schoolmen, that conservation is a continued creation. The conclusion to be
+drawn from this doctrine would seem to be that the creature never exists,
+that it is ever newborn and ever dying, like time, movement and other
+transient beings. Plato believed this of material and tangible things,
+saying that they are in a perpetual flux, _semper fluunt, nunquam sunt_.
+But of immaterial substances he judged quite differently, regarding them
+alone as real: nor was he in that altogether mistaken. Yet continued
+creation applies to all creatures without distinction. Sundry good
+philosophers have been opposed to this dogma, and M. Bayle tells that David
+de Rodon, a philosopher renowned among those of the French who have adhered
+to Geneva, deliberately refuted it. The Arminians also do not approve of
+it; they are not much in favour of these metaphysical subtleties. I will
+say nothing of the Socinians, who relish them even less.
+
+383. For a proper enquiry as to _whether conservation is a continued
+creation,_ it would be necessary to consider the reasons whereon this dogma
+is founded. The Cartesians, after the example of their master, employ in
+order to prove it a principle which is not conclusive enough. They say that
+'the moments of time having no necessary connexion with one another, it
+does not follow that because I am at this moment I shall exist at the
+moment which shall follow, if the same cause which gives me being for this
+moment does not also give it to me for the instant following.' The author
+of the _Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism_ has made use of this
+argument, and M. Bayle (perhaps the author of this same _Reflexion_) quotes
+it (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 141, p. 771).
+One may answer that in fact it does not follow _of necessity_ that, because
+I am, I shall be; but this follows _naturally_, nevertheless, that is, of
+itself, _per se_, if nothing prevents it. It is the distinction that can be
+drawn between the essential and the natural. For the same movement endures
+naturally unless some new cause prevents it or changes it, because the
+reason which makes it cease at this instant, if it is no new reason,  [355]
+would have already made it cease sooner.
+
+384. The late Herr Erhard Weigel, a celebrated mathematician and
+philosopher at Jena, well known for his _Analysis Euclidea_, his
+mathematical philosophy, some neat mechanical inventions, and finally the
+trouble he took to induce the Protestant princes of the Empire to undertake
+the last reform of the Almanac, whose success, notwithstanding, he did not
+witness; Herr Weigel, I say, communicated to his friends a certain
+demonstration of the existence of God, which indeed amounted to this idea
+of continued creation. As he was wont to draw parallels between reckoning
+and reasoning--witness his Arithmetical Ethics (_rechenschaftliche
+Sittenlehre_)--he said that the foundation of the demonstration was this
+beginning of the Pythagorean Table, _once one is one_. These repeated
+unities were the moments of the existence of things, each one of them
+depending upon God, who resuscitates, as it were, all things outside
+himself at each moment: falling away as they do at each moment, they must
+ever have one who shall resuscitate them, and that cannot be any other than
+God. But there would be need of a more exact proof if that is to be called
+a demonstration. It would be necessary to prove that the creature always
+emerges from nothingness and relapses thither forthwith. In particular it
+must be shown that the privilege of enduring more than a moment by its
+nature belongs to the necessary being alone. The difficulties on the
+composition of the _continuum_ enter also into this matter. This dogma
+appears to resolve time into moments, whereas others regard moments and
+points as mere modalities of the _continuum_, that is, as extremities of
+the parts that can be assigned to it, and not as constituent parts. But
+this is not the place for entering into that labyrinth.
+
+385. What can be said for certain on the present subject is that the
+creature depends continually upon divine operation, and that it depends
+upon that no less after the time of its beginning than when it first
+begins. This dependence implies that it would not continue to exist if God
+did not continue to act; in short, that this action of God is free. For if
+it were a necessary emanation, like that of the properties of the circle,
+which issue from its essence, it must then be said that God in the
+beginning produced the creature by necessity; or else it must be shown how,
+in creating it once, he imposed upon himself the necessity of conserving
+it. Now there is no reason why this conserving action should not be   [356]
+called production, and even creation, if one will: for the dependence being
+as great afterwards as at the beginning, the extrinsic designation of being
+new or not does not change the nature of that action.
+
+386. Let us then admit in such a sense that conservation is a continued
+creation, and let us see what M. Bayle seems to infer thence (p. 771) after
+the author of the _Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism_, in opposition
+to M. Jurieu. 'It seems to me', this writer says, 'that one must conclude
+that God does all, and that in all creation there are no first or second or
+even occasional causes, as can be easily proved. At this moment when I
+speak, I am such as I am, with all my circumstances, with such thought,
+such action, whether I sit or stand, that if God creates me in this moment
+such as I am, as one must of necessity say in this system, he creates me
+with such thought, such action, such movement and such determination. One
+cannot say that God creates me in the first place, and that once I am
+created he produces with me my movements and my determinations. That is
+indefensible for two reasons. The first is, that when God creates me or
+conserves me at this instant, he does not conserve me as a being without
+form, like a species, or another of the Universals of Logic. I am an
+individual; he creates me and conserves me as such, and as being all that I
+am in this instant, with all my attendant circumstances. The second reason
+is that if God creates me in this instant, and one says that afterwards he
+produces with me my actions, it will be necessary to imagine another
+instant for action: for before acting one must exist. Now that would be two
+instants where we only assume one. It is therefore certain in this
+hypothesis that creatures have neither more connexion nor more relation
+with their actions than they had with their production at the first moment
+of the first creation.' The author of this _Reflexion_ draws thence very
+harsh conclusions which one can picture to oneself; and he testifies at the
+end that one would be deeply indebted to any man that should teach those
+who approve this system how to extricate themselves from these frightful
+absurdities.
+
+387. M. Bayle carries this still further. 'You know', he says (p. 775),
+'that it is demonstrated in the Scholastic writings' (he cites Arriaga,
+_Disp_. 9, Phys., sect. 6 et praesertim, sub-sect. 3) 'that the creature
+cannot be either the total cause or the partial cause of its conservation:
+for if it were, it would exist before existing, which is              [357]
+contradictory. You know that the argument proceeds like this: that which
+conserves itself acts; now that which acts exists, and nothing can act
+before it has attained complete existence; therefore, if a creature
+conserved itself, it would act before being. This argument is not founded
+upon probabilities, but upon the first principles of Metaphysics, _non
+entis nulla sunt accidentia, operari sequitur esse_, axioms as clear as
+daylight. Let us go further. If creatures co-operated with God (here is
+meant an active cooperation, and not co-operation by a passive instrument)
+to conserve themselves they would act before being: that has been
+demonstrated. Now if they co-operated with God for the production of any
+other thing, they would also act before being; it is therefore as
+impossible for them to co-operate with God for the production of any other
+thing (such as local movement, an affirmation, volition, entities actually
+distinct from their substance, so it is asserted) as for their own
+conservation. Since their conservation is a continued creation, and since
+all human creatures in the world must confess that they cannot co-operate
+with God at the first moment of their existence, either to produce
+themselves or to give themselves any modality, since that would be to act
+before being (observe that Thomas Aquinas and sundry other Schoolmen teach
+that if the angels had sinned at the first moment of their creation God
+would be the author of the sin: see the Feuillant Pierre de St. Joseph, p.
+318, _et seqq_., of the _Suavis Concordia Humanae Libertatis_; it is a sign
+that they acknowledge that at the first instant the creature cannot act in
+anything whatsoever), it follows manifestly that they cannot co-operate
+with God in any one of the subsequent moments, either to produce themselves
+or to produce any other thing. If they could co-operate therein at the
+second moment of their existence, nothing would prevent their being able to
+cooperate at the first moment.'
+
+388. This is the way it will be necessary to answer these arguments. Let us
+assume that the creature is produced anew at each instant; let us grant
+also that the instant excludes all priority of time, being indivisible; but
+let us point out that it does not exclude priority of nature, or what is
+called anteriority _in signo rationis,_ and that this is sufficient. The
+production, or action whereby God produces, is anterior by nature to the
+existence of the creature that is produced; the creature taken in itself,
+with its nature and its necessary properties, is anterior to its accidental
+affections and to its actions; and yet all these things are in being  [358]
+in the same moment. God produces the creature in conformity with the
+exigency of the preceding instants, according to the laws of his wisdom;
+and the creature operates in conformity with that nature which God conveys
+to it in creating it always. The limitations and imperfections arise
+therein through the nature of the subject, which sets bounds to God's
+production; this is the consequence of the original imperfection of
+creatures. Vice and crime, on the other hand, arise there through the free
+inward operation of the creature, in so far as this can occur within the
+instant, repetition afterwards rendering it discernible.
+
+389. This anteriority of nature is a commonplace in philosophy: thus one
+says that the decrees of God have an order among themselves. When one
+ascribes to God (and rightly so) understanding of the arguments and
+conclusions of creatures, in such sort that all their demonstrations and
+syllogisms are known to him, and are found in him in a transcendent way,
+one sees that there is in the propositions or truths a natural order; but
+there is no order of time or interval, to cause him to advance in knowledge
+and pass from the premisses to the conclusion.
+
+390. I find in the arguments that have just been quoted nothing which these
+reflexions fail to satisfy. When God produces the thing he produces it as
+an individual and not as a universal of logic (I admit); but he produces
+its essence before its accidents, its nature before its operations,
+following the priority of their nature, and _in signo anteriore rationis_.
+Thus one sees how the creature can be the true cause of the sin, while
+conservation by God does not prevent the sin; God disposes in accordance
+with the preceding state of the same creature, in order to follow the laws
+of his wisdom notwithstanding the sin, which in the first place will be
+produced by the creature. But it is true that God would not in the
+beginning have created the soul in a state wherein it would have sinned
+from the first moment, as the Schoolmen have justly observed: for there is
+nothing in the laws of his wisdom that could have induced him so to do.
+
+391. This law of wisdom brings it about also that God reproduces the same
+substance, the same soul. Such was the answer that could have been given by
+the Abbe whom M. Bayle introduces in his _Dictionary_ (art. 'Pyrrhon.' lit.
+B, p. 2432). This wisdom effects the connexion of things. I concede
+therefore that the creature does not co-operate with God to conserve  [359]
+himself (in the sense in which I have just explained conservation). But I
+see nothing to prevent the creature's co-operation with God for the
+production of any other thing: and especially might this concern its inward
+operation, as in the case of a thought or a volition, things really
+distinct from the substance.
+
+392. But there I am once more at grips with M. Bayle. He maintains that
+there are no such accidents distinct from the substance. 'The reasons', he
+says, 'which our modern philosophers have employed to demonstrate that the
+accidents are not beings in reality distinct from the substance are not
+mere difficulties; they are arguments which overwhelm one, and which cannot
+be refuted. Take the trouble', he adds, 'to look for them in the writings
+of Father Maignan, or Father Malebranche or M. Calli' (Professor of
+Philosophy at Caen) 'or in the _Accidentia profligata_ of Father Saguens,
+disciple of Father Maignan, the extract from which is to be found in the
+_Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres_, June 1702. Or if you wish one
+author only to suffice you, choose Dom Francois Lami, a Benedictine monk,
+and one of the strongest Cartesians to be found in France. You will find
+among his _Philosophical Letters_, printed at Trevoux in 1703, that one
+wherein by the geometricians' method he demonstrates "that God is the sole
+true cause of all that which is real." I would wish to see all these books;
+and as for this last proposition, it may be true in a very good sense: God
+is the one principal cause of pure and absolute realities, or of
+perfections. _Causae secundae agunt in virtute primae._ But when one
+comprises limitations and privations under the term realities one may say
+that the second causes co-operate in the production of that which is
+limited; otherwise God would be the cause of sin, and even the sole cause.
+
+393. It is well to beware, moreover, lest in confusing substances with
+accidents, in depriving created substances of action, one fall into
+Spinozism, which is an exaggerated Cartesianism. That which does not act
+does not merit the name of substance. If the accidents are not distinct
+from the substances; if the created substance is a successive being, like
+movement; if it does not endure beyond a moment, and does not remain the
+same (during some stated portion of time) any more than its accidents; if
+it does not operate any more than a mathematical figure or a number: why
+shall one not say, with Spinoza, that God is the only substance, and  [360]
+that creatures are only accidents or modifications? Hitherto it has been
+supposed that the substance remains, and that the accidents change; and I
+think one ought still to abide by this ancient doctrine, for the arguments
+I remember having read do not prove the contrary, and prove more than is
+needed.
+
+394. 'One of the absurdities', says M. Bayle (p. 779), 'that arise from the
+so-called distinction which is alleged to exist between substances and
+their accidents is that creatures, if they produce the accidents, would
+possess a power of creation and annihilation. Accordingly one could not
+perform the slightest action without creating an innumerable number of real
+beings, and without reducing to nothingness an endless multitude of them.
+Merely by moving the tongue to cry out or to eat, one creates as many
+accidents as there are movements of the parts of the tongue, and one
+destroys as many accidents as there are parts of that which one eats, which
+lose their form, which become chyle, blood, etc.' This argument is only a
+kind of bugbear. What harm would be done, supposing that an infinity of
+movements, an infinity of figures spring up and disappear at every moment
+in the universe, and even in each part of the universe? It can be
+demonstrated, moreover, that that must be so.
+
+395. As for the so-called creation of the accidents, who does not see that
+one needs no creative power in order to change place or shape, to form a
+square or a column, or some other parade-ground figure, by the movement of
+the soldiers who are drilling; or again to fashion a statue by removing a
+few pieces from a block of marble; or to make some figure in relief, by
+changing, decreasing or increasing a piece of wax? The production of
+modifications has never been called _creation_, and it is an abuse of terms
+to scare the world thus. God produces substances from nothing, and the
+substances produce accidents by the changes of their limits.
+
+396. As for the souls or substantial forms, M. Bayle is right in adding:
+'that there is nothing more inconvenient for those who admit substantial
+forms than the objection which is made that they could not be produced save
+by an actual creation, and that the Schoolmen are pitiable in their
+endeavours to answer this.' But there is nothing more convenient for me and
+for my system than this same objection. For I maintain that all the Souls,
+Entelechies or primitive forces, substantial forms, simple substances, or
+Monads, whatever name one may apply to them, can neither spring up    [361]
+naturally nor perish. And the qualities or derivative forces, or what are
+called accidental forms, I take to be modifications of the primitive
+Entelechy, even as shapes are modifications of matter. That is why these
+modifications are perpetually changing, while the simple substance remains.
+
+397. I have shown already (part I, 86 _seqq._) that souls cannot spring up
+naturally, or be derived from one another, and that it is necessary that
+ours either be created or be pre-existent. I have even pointed out a
+certain middle way between a creation and an entire pre-existence. I find
+it appropriate to say that the soul preexisting in the seeds from the
+beginning of things was only sentient, but that it was elevated to the
+superior degree, which is that of reason, when the man to whom this soul
+should belong was conceived, and when the organic body, always accompanying
+this soul from the beginning, but under many changes, was determined for
+forming the human body. I considered also that one might attribute this
+elevation of the sentient soul (which makes it reach a more sublime degree
+of being, namely reason) to the extraordinary operation of God.
+Nevertheless it will be well to add that I would dispense with miracles in
+the generating of man, as in that of the other animals. It will be possible
+to explain that, if one imagines that in this great number of souls and of
+animals, or at least of living organic bodies which are in the seeds, those
+souls alone which are destined to attain one day to human nature contain
+the reason that shall appear therein one day, and the organic bodies of
+these souls alone are preformed and predisposed to assume one day the human
+shape, while the other small animals or seminal living beings, in which no
+such thing is pre-established, are essentially different from them and
+possessed only of an inferior nature. This production is a kind of
+_traduction_, but more manageable than that kind which is commonly taught:
+it does not derive the soul from a soul, but only the animate from an
+animate, and it avoids the repeated miracles of a new creation, which would
+cause a new and pure soul to enter a body that must corrupt it.
+
+398. I am, however, of the same opinion as Father Malebranche, that, in
+general, creation properly understood is not so difficult to admit as might
+be supposed, and that it is in a sense involved in the notion of the
+dependence of creatures. 'How stupid and ridiculous are the Philosophers!'
+(he exclaims, in his _Christian Meditations_, 9, No. 3). 'They assume that
+Creation is impossible, because they cannot conceive how God's power  [362]
+is great enough to make something from nothing. But can they any better
+conceive how the power of God is capable of stirring a straw?' He adds,
+again with great truth (No. 5), 'If matter were uncreate, God could not
+move it or form anything from it. For God cannot move matter, or arrange it
+wisely, if he does not know it. Now God cannot know it, if he does not give
+it being: he can derive his knowledge only from himself. Nothing can act on
+him or enlighten him.'
+
+399. M. Bayle, not content with saying that we are created continually,
+insists also on this other doctrine which he would fain derive thence: that
+our soul cannot act. This is the way he speaks on that matter (ch. 141, p.
+765): 'He has too much acquaintance with Cartesianism' (it is of an able
+opponent he is speaking) 'not to know with what force it has been
+maintained in our day that there is no creature capable of producing
+motion, and that our soul is a purely passive subject in relation to
+sensations and ideas, and feelings of pain and of pleasure, etc. If this
+has not been carried as far as the volitions, that is on account of the
+existence of revealed truths; otherwise the acts of the will would have
+been found as passive as those of the understanding. The same reasons which
+prove that our soul does not form our ideas, and does not stir our organs,
+would prove also that it cannot form our acts of love and our volitions,
+etc' He might add: our vicious actions, our crimes.
+
+400. The force of these proofs, which he praises, must not be so great as
+he thinks, for if it were they would prove too much. They would make God
+the author of sin. I admit that the soul cannot stir the organs by a
+physical influence; for I think that the body must have been so formed
+beforehand that it would do in time and place that which responds to the
+volitions of the soul, although it be true nevertheless that the soul is
+the principle of the operation. But if it be said that the soul does not
+produce its thoughts, its sensations, its feelings of pain and of pleasure,
+that is something for which I see no reason. In my system every simple
+substance (that is, every true substance) must be the true immediate cause
+of all its actions and inward passions; and, speaking strictly in a
+metaphysical sense, it has none other than those which it produces. Those
+who hold a different opinion, and who make God the sole agent, are
+needlessly becoming involved in expressions whence they will only with
+difficulty extricate themselves without offence against religion;     [363]
+moreover, they unquestionably offend against reason.
+
+401. Here is, however, the foundation of M. Bayle's argument. He says that
+we do not do that of which we know not the way it is done. But it is a
+principle which I do not concede to him. Let us listen to his dissertation
+(p. 767 seqq.): 'It is an astonishing thing that almost all philosophers
+(with the exception of those who expounded Aristotle, and who admitted a
+universal intelligence distinct from our soul, and cause of our
+perceptions: see in the _Historical and Critical Dictionary_, Note E of the
+article "Averroes") have shared the popular belief that we form our ideas
+actively. Yet where is the man who knows not on the one hand that he is in
+absolute ignorance as to how ideas are made, and on the other hand, that he
+could not sew two stitches if he were ignorant of how to sew? Is the sewing
+of two stitches in itself a work more difficult than the painting in one's
+mind of a rose, the very first time one's eyes rest upon it, and although
+one has never learnt this kind of painting? Does it not appear on the
+contrary that this mental portrait is in itself a work more difficult than
+tracing on canvas the shape of a flower, a thing we cannot do without
+having learnt it? We are all convinced that a key would be of no use to us
+for opening a chest if we were ignorant as to how to use the key, and yet
+we imagine that our soul is the efficient cause of the movement of our
+arms, despite that it knows neither where the nerves are which must be used
+for this movement, nor whence to obtain the animal spirits that are to flow
+into these nerves. We have the experience every day that the ideas we would
+fain recall do not come, and that they appear of themselves when we are no
+longer thinking of them. If that does not prevent us from thinking that we
+are their efficient cause, what reliance shall one place on the proof of
+feeling, which to M. Jacquelot appears so conclusive? Does our authority
+over our ideas more often fall short than our authority over our volitions?
+If we were to count up carefully, we should find in the course of our life
+more velleities than volitions, that is, more evidences of the servitude of
+our will than of its dominion. How many times does one and the same man not
+experience an inability to do a certain act of will (for example, an act of
+love for a man who had just injured him; an act of scorn for a fine sonnet
+that he had composed; an act of hatred for a mistress; an act of approval
+of an absurd epigram. Take note that I speak only of inward acts,     [364]
+expressed by an "I will", such as "I will scorn", "approve", etc.) even if
+there were a hundred pistoles to be gained forthwith, and he ardently
+desired to gain these hundred pistoles, and he were fired with the ambition
+to convince himself by an experimental proof that he is master in his own
+domain?
+
+402. 'To put together in few words the whole force of what I have just said
+to you, I will observe that it is evident to all those who go deeply into
+things, that the true efficient cause of an effect must know the effect,
+and be aware also of the way in which it must be produced. That is not
+necessary when one is only the instrument of the cause, or only the passive
+subject of its action; but one cannot conceive of it as not necessary to a
+true agent. Now if we examine ourselves well we shall be strongly
+convinced, (1) that, independently of experience, our soul is just as
+little aware of what a volition is as of what an idea is; (2) that after a
+long experience it is no more fully aware of how volitions are formed than
+it was before having willed anything. What is one to conclude from that,
+save that the soul cannot be the efficient cause of its volitions, any more
+than of its ideas, and of the motion of the spirits which cause our arms to
+move? (Take note that no pretence is made of deciding the point here
+absolutely, it is only being considered in relation to the principles of
+the objection.)'
+
+403. That is indeed a strange way of reasoning! What necessity is there for
+one always to be aware how that which is done is done? Are salts, metals,
+plants, animals and a thousand other animate or inanimate bodies aware how
+that which they do is done, and need they be aware? Must a drop of oil or
+of fat understand geometry in order to become round on the surface of
+water? Sewing stitches is another matter: one acts for an end, one must be
+aware of the means. But we do not form our ideas because we will to do so,
+they form themselves within us, they form themselves through us, not in
+consequence of our will, but in accordance with our nature and that of
+things. The foetus forms itself in the animal, and a thousand other wonders
+of nature are produced by a certain _instinct_ that God has placed there,
+that is by virtue of _divine preformation_, which has made these admirable
+automata, adapted to produce mechanically such beautiful effects. Even so
+it is easy to believe that the soul is a spiritual automaton still more
+admirable, and that it is through divine preformation that it produces
+these beautiful ideas, wherein our will has no part and to which our  [365]
+art cannot attain. The operation of spiritual automata, that is of souls,
+is not mechanical, but it contains in the highest degree all that is
+beautiful in mechanism. The movements which are developed in bodies are
+concentrated in the soul by representation as in an ideal world, which
+expresses the laws of the actual world and their consequences, but with
+this difference from the perfect ideal world which is in God, that most of
+the perceptions in the other substances are only confused. For it is plain
+that every simple substance embraces the whole universe in its confused
+perceptions or sensations, and that the succession of these perceptions is
+regulated by the particular nature of this substance, but in a manner which
+always expresses all the nature in the universe; and every present
+perception leads to a new perception, just as every movement that it
+represents leads to another movement. But it is impossible that the soul
+can know clearly its whole nature, and perceive how this innumerable number
+of small perceptions, piled up or rather concentrated together, shapes
+itself there: to that end it must needs know completely the whole universe
+which is embraced by them, that is, it must needs be a God.
+
+404. As regards _velleities_, they are only a very imperfect kind of
+conditional will. I would, if I could: _liberet si liceret_; and in the
+case of a velleity, we do not will, properly speaking, to will, but to be
+able. That explains why there are none in God; and they must not be
+confused with antecedent will. I have explained sufficiently elsewhere that
+our control over volitions can be exercised only indirectly, and that one
+would be unhappy if one were sufficiently master in one's own domain to be
+able to will without cause, without rhyme or reason. To complain of not
+having such a control would be to argue like Pliny, who carps at the power
+of God because God cannot destroy himself.
+
+405. I intended to finish here after having met (as it seems to me) all the
+objections of M. Bayle on this matter that I could find in his works. But
+remembering Laurentius Valla's _Dialogue on Free Will,_ in opposition to
+Boethius, which I have already mentioned, I thought it would be opportune
+to quote it in abstract, retaining the dialogue form, and then to continue
+from where it ends, keeping up the fiction it initiated; and that less with
+the purpose of enlivening the subject, than in order to explain myself
+towards the end of my dissertation as clearly as I can, and in a way  [366]
+most likely to be generally understood. This Dialogue of Valla and his
+books on Pleasure and the True Good make it plain that he was no less a
+philosopher than a humanist. These four books were opposed to the four
+books on the _Consolation of Philosophy_ by Boethius, and the Dialogue to
+the fifth book. A certain Spaniard named Antonio Glarea requests of him
+elucidation on the difficulty of free will, whereof little is known as it
+is worthy to be known, for upon it depend justice and injustice, punishment
+and reward in this life and in the life to come. Laurentius Valla answers
+him that we must console ourselves for an ignorance which we share with the
+whole world, just as one consoles oneself for not having the wings of
+birds.
+
+406. ANTONIO--I know that you can give me those wings, like another
+Daedalus, so that I may emerge from the prison of ignorance, and rise to
+the very region of truth, which is the homeland of souls. The books that I
+have seen have not satisfied me, not even the famous Boethius, who meets
+with general approval. I know not whether he fully understood himself what
+he says of God's understanding, and of eternity superior to time; and I ask
+for your opinion on his way of reconciling foreknowledge with freedom.
+LAURENT--I am fearful of giving offence to many people, if I confute this
+great man; yet I will give preference over this fear to the consideration I
+have for the entreaties of a friend, provided that you make me a promise.
+ANT.--What? LAUR.--It is, that when you have dined with me you do not ask
+me to give you supper, that is to say, I desire that you be content with
+the answer to the question you have put to me, and do not put a further
+question.
+
+407. ANT.--I promise you. Here is the heart of the difficulty. If God
+foresaw the treason of Judas, it was necessary that he should betray, it
+was impossible for him not to betray. There is no obligation to do the
+impossible. He therefore did not sin, he did not deserve to be punished.
+That destroys justice and religion, and the fear of God. LAUR.--God foresaw
+sin; but he did not compel man to commit it; sin is voluntary. ANT.--That
+will was necessary, since it was foreseen. LAUR.--If my knowledge does not
+cause things past or present to exist, neither will my foreknowledge cause
+future things to exist.
+
+408. ANT.--That comparison is deceptive: neither the present nor the past
+can be changed, they are already necessary; but the future, movable in
+itself, becomes fixed and necessary through foreknowledge. Let us     [367]
+pretend that a god of the heathen boasts of knowing the future: I will ask
+him if he knows which foot I shall put foremost, then I will do the
+opposite of that which he shall have foretold. LAUR.--This God knows what
+you are about to do. ANT.--How does he know it, since I will do the
+opposite of what he shall have said, and I suppose that he will say what he
+thinks? LAUR.--Your supposition is false: God will not answer you; or
+again, if he were to answer you, the veneration you would have for him
+would make you hasten to do what he had said; his prediction would be to
+you an order. But we have changed the question. We are not concerned with
+what God will foretell but with what he foresees. Let us therefore return
+to foreknowledge, and distinguish between the necessary and the certain. It
+is not impossible for what is foreseen not to happen; but it is infallibly
+sure that it will happen. I can become a Soldier or Priest, but I shall not
+become one.
+
+409. ANT.--Here I have you firmly held. The philosophers' rule maintains
+that all that which is possible can be considered as existing. But if that
+which you affirm to be possible, namely an event different from what has
+been foreseen, actually happened, God would have been mistaken. LAUR.--The
+rules of the philosophers are not oracles for me. This one in particular is
+not correct. Two contradictories are often both possible. Can they also
+both exist? But, for your further enlightenment, let us pretend that Sextus
+Tarquinius, coming to Delphi to consult the Oracle of Apollo, receives the
+answer:
+
+  _Exul inopsque cades irata pulsus ab urbe._
+  A beggared outcast of the city's rage,
+  Beside a foreign shore cut short thy age.
+
+The young man will complain: I have brought you a royal gift, O Apollo, and
+you proclaim for me a lot so unhappy? Apollo will say to him: Your gift is
+pleasing to me, and I will do that which you ask of me, I will tell you
+what will happen. I know the future, but I do not bring it about. Go make
+your complaint to Jupiter and the Parcae. Sextus would be ridiculous if he
+continued thereafter to complain about Apollo. Is not that true? ANT.--He
+will say: I thank you, O holy Apollo, for not having repaid me with
+silence, for having revealed to me the Truth. But whence comes it that
+Jupiter is so cruel towards me, that he prepares so hard a fate for an[368]
+innocent man, for a devout worshipper of the Gods? LAUR.--You innocent?
+Apollo will say. Know that you will be proud, that you will commit
+adulteries, that you will be a traitor to your country. Could Sextus reply:
+It is you who are the cause, O Apollo; you compel me to do it, by
+foreseeing it? ANT.--I admit that he would have taken leave of his senses
+if he were to make this reply. LAUR.--Therefore neither can the traitor
+Judas complain of God's foreknowledge. And there is the answer to your
+question.
+
+410. ANT.--You have satisfied me beyond my hopes, you have done what
+Boethius was not able to do: I shall be beholden to you all my life long.
+LAUR.--Yet let us carry our tale a little further. Sextus will say: No,
+Apollo, I will not do what you say. ANT.--What! the God will say, do you
+mean then that I am a liar? I repeat to you once more, you will do all that
+I have just said. LAUR.--Sextus, mayhap, would pray the Gods to alter fate,
+to give him a better heart. ANT.--He would receive the answer:
+
+  _Desine fata Deum flecti sperare precando_.
+
+He cannot cause divine foreknowledge to lie. But what then will Sextus say?
+Will he not break forth into complaints against the Gods? Will he not say?
+What? I am then not free? It is not in my power to follow virtue?
+LAUR.--Apollo will say to him perhaps: Know, my poor Sextus, that the Gods
+make each one as he is. Jupiter made the wolf ravening, the hare timid, the
+ass stupid, and the lion courageous. He gave you a soul that is wicked and
+irreclaimable; you will act in conformity with your natural disposition,
+and Jupiter will treat you as your actions shall deserve; he has sworn it
+by the Styx.
+
+411. ANT.--I confess to you, it seems to me that Apollo in excusing himself
+accuses Jupiter more than he accuses Sextus, and Sextus would answer him:
+Jupiter therefore condemns in me his own crime; it is he who is the only
+guilty one. He could have made me altogether different: but, made as I am,
+I must act as he has willed. Why then does he punish me? Could I have
+resisted his will? LAUR.--I confess that I am brought to a pause here as
+you are. I have made the Gods appear on the scene, Apollo and Jupiter, to
+make you distinguish between divine foreknowledge and providence. I have
+shown that Apollo and foreknowledge do not impair freedom; but I cannot
+satisfy you on the decrees of Jupiter's will, that is to say, on the orders
+of providence. ANT.--You have dragged me out of one abyss, and you    [369]
+plunge me back into another and greater abyss. LAUR.--Remember our
+contract: I have given you dinner, and you ask me to give you supper also.
+
+412. ANT.--Now I discover your cunning: You have caught me, this is not an
+honest contract. LAUR.--What would you have me do? I have given you wine
+and meats from my home produce, such as my small estate can provide; as for
+nectar and ambrosia, you will ask the Gods for them: that divine nurture is
+not found among men. Let us hearken to St. Paul, that chosen vessel who was
+carried even to the third heaven, who heard there unutterable words: he
+will answer you with the comparison of the potter, with the
+incomprehensibility of the ways of God, and wonder at the depth of his
+wisdom. Nevertheless it is well to observe that one does not ask why God
+foresees the thing, for that is understood, it is because it will be: but
+one asks why he ordains thus, why he hardens such an one, why he has
+compassion on another. We do not know the reasons which he may have for
+this; but _since he is very good and very wise that is enough to make us
+deem that his reasons are good_. As he is just also, it follows that his
+decrees and his operation do not destroy our freedom. Some men have sought
+some reason therein. They have said that we are made from a corrupt and
+impure mass, indeed of mud. But Adam and the Angels were made of silver and
+gold, and they sinned notwithstanding. One sometimes becomes hardened again
+after regeneration. We must therefore seek another cause for evil, and I
+doubt whether even the Angels are aware of it; yet they cease not to be
+happy and to praise God. Boethius hearkened more to the answer of
+philosophy than to that of St. Paul; that was the cause of his failure. Let
+us believe in Jesus Christ, he is the virtue and the wisdom of God: he
+teaches us that God willeth the salvation of all, that he willeth not the
+death of the sinner. Let us therefore put our trust in the divine mercy,
+and let us not by our vanity and our malice disqualify ourselves to receive
+it.
+
+413. This dialogue of Valla's is excellent, even though one must take
+exception to some points in it: but its chief defect is that it cuts the
+knot and that it seems to condemn providence under the name of Jupiter,
+making him almost the author of sin. Let us therefore carry the little
+fable still further. Sextus, quitting Apollo and Delphi, seeks out Jupiter
+at Dodona. He makes sacrifices and then he exhibits his complaints. Why
+have you condemned me, O great God, to be wicked and unhappy? Change  [370]
+my lot and my heart, or acknowledge your error. Jupiter answers him: If you
+will renounce Rome, the Parcae shall spin for you different fates, you
+shall become wise, you shall be happy. SEXTUS--Why must I renounce the hope
+of a crown? Can I not come to be a good king? JUPITER--No, Sextus; I know
+better what is needful for you. If you go to Rome, you are lost. Sextus,
+not being able to resolve upon so great a sacrifice, went forth from the
+temple, and abandoned himself to his fate. Theodorus, the High Priest, who
+had been present at the dialogue between God and Sextus, addressed these
+words to Jupiter: Your wisdom is to be revered, O great Ruler of the Gods.
+You have convinced this man of his error; he must henceforth impute his
+unhappiness to his evil will; he has not a word to say. But your faithful
+worshippers are astonished; they would fain wonder at your goodness as well
+as at your greatness: it rested with you to give him a different will.
+JUPITER--Go to my daughter Pallas, she will inform you what I was bound to
+do.
+
+414. Theodorus journeyed to Athens: he was bidden to lie down to sleep in
+the temple of the Goddess. Dreaming, he found himself transported into an
+unknown country. There stood a palace of unimaginable splendour and
+prodigious size. The Goddess Pallas appeared at the gate, surrounded by
+rays of dazzling majesty.
+
+          _Qualisque videri_
+  _Coelicolis et quanta solet._
+
+She touched the face of Theodorus with an olive-branch, which she was
+holding in her hand. And lo! he had become able to confront the divine
+radiancy of the daughter of Jupiter, and of all that she should show him.
+Jupiter who loves you (she said to him) has commended you to me to be
+instructed. You see here the palace of the fates, where I keep watch and
+ward. Here are representations not only of that which happens but also of
+all that which is possible. Jupiter, having surveyed them before the
+beginning of the existing world, classified the possibilities into worlds,
+and chose the best of all. He comes sometimes to visit these places, to
+enjoy the pleasure of recapitulating things and of renewing his own choice,
+which cannot fail to please him. I have only to speak, and we shall see a
+whole world that my father might have produced, wherein will be represented
+anything that can be asked of him; and in this way one may know also what
+would happen if any particular possibility should attain unto         [371]
+existence. And whenever the conditions are not determinate enough, there
+will be as many such worlds differing from one another as one shall wish,
+which will answer differently the same question, in as many ways as
+possible. You learnt geometry in your youth, like all well-instructed
+Greeks. You know therefore that when the conditions of a required point do
+not sufficiently determine it, and there is an infinite number of them,
+they all fall into what the geometricians call a locus, and this locus at
+least (which is often a line) will be determinate. Thus you can picture to
+yourself an ordered succession of worlds, which shall contain each and
+every one the case that is in question, and shall vary its circumstances
+and its consequences. But if you put a case that differs from the actual
+world only in one single definite thing and in its results, a certain one
+of those determinate worlds will answer you. These worlds are all here,
+that is, in ideas. I will show you some, wherein shall be found, not
+absolutely the same Sextus as you have seen (that is not possible, he
+carries with him always that which he shall be) but several Sextuses
+resembling him, possessing all that you know already of the true Sextus,
+but not all that is already in him imperceptibly, nor in consequence all
+that shall yet happen to him. You will find in one world a very happy and
+noble Sextus, in another a Sextus content with a mediocre state, a Sextus,
+indeed, of every kind and endless diversity of forms.
+
+415. Thereupon the Goddess led Theodorus into one of the halls of the
+palace: when he was within, it was no longer a hall, it was a world,
+
+  _Solemque suum, sua sidera norat_.
+
+At the command of Pallas there came within view Dodona with the temple of
+Jupiter, and Sextus issuing thence; he could be heard saying that he would
+obey the God. And lo! he goes to a city lying between two seas, resembling
+Corinth. He buys there a small garden; cultivating it, he finds a treasure;
+he becomes a rich man, enjoying affection and esteem; he dies at a great
+age, beloved of the whole city. Theodorus saw the whole life of Sextus as
+at one glance, and as in a stage presentation. There was a great volume of
+writings in this hall: Theodorus could not refrain from asking what that
+meant. It is the history of this world which we are now visiting, the
+Goddess told him; it is the book of its fates. You have seen a number [372]
+on the forehead of Sextus. Look in this book for the place which it
+indicates. Theodorus looked for it, and found there the history of Sextus
+in a form more ample than the outline he had seen. Put your finger on any
+line you please, Pallas said to him, and you will see represented actually
+in all its detail that which the line broadly indicates. He obeyed, and he
+saw coming into view all the characteristics of a portion of the life of
+that Sextus. They passed into another hall, and lo! another world, another
+Sextus. who, issuing from the temple, and having resolved to obey Jupiter,
+goes to Thrace. There he marries the daughter of the king, who had no other
+children; he succeeds him, and he is adored by his subjects. They went into
+other rooms, and always they saw new scenes.
+
+416. The halls rose in a pyramid, becoming even more beautiful as one
+mounted towards the apex, and representing more beautiful worlds. Finally
+they reached the highest one which completed the pyramid, and which was the
+most beautiful of all: for the pyramid had a beginning, but one could not
+see its end; it had an apex, but no base; it went on increasing to
+infinity. That is (as the Goddess explained) because amongst an endless
+number of possible worlds there is the best of all, else would God not have
+determined to create any; but there is not any one which has not also less
+perfect worlds below it: that is why the pyramid goes on descending to
+infinity. Theodorus, entering this highest hall, became entranced in
+ecstasy; he had to receive succour from the Goddess, a drop of a divine
+liquid placed on his tongue restored him; he was beside himself for joy. We
+are in the real true world (said the Goddess) and you are at the source of
+happiness. Behold what Jupiter makes ready for you, if you continue to
+serve him faithfully. Here is Sextus as he is, and as he will be in
+reality. He issues from the temple in a rage, he scorns the counsel of the
+Gods. You see him going to Rome, bringing confusion everywhere, violating
+the wife of his friend. There he is driven out with his father, beaten,
+unhappy. If Jupiter had placed here a Sextus happy at Corinth or King in
+Thrace, it would be no longer this world. And nevertheless he could not
+have failed to choose this world, which surpasses in perfection all the
+others, and which forms the apex of the pyramid. Else would Jupiter have
+renounced his wisdom, he would have banished me, me his daughter. You see
+that my father did not make Sextus wicked; he was so from all         [373]
+eternity, he was so always and freely. My father only granted him the
+existence which his wisdom could not refuse to the world where he is
+included: he made him pass from the region of the possible to that of the
+actual beings. The crime of Sextus serves for great things: it renders Rome
+free; thence will arise a great empire, which will show noble examples to
+mankind. But that is nothing in comparison with the worth of this whole
+world, at whose beauty you will marvel, when, after a happy passage from
+this mortal state to another and better one, the Gods shall have fitted you
+to know it.
+
+417. At this moment Theodorus wakes up, he gives thanks to the Goddess, he
+owns the justice of Jupiter. His spirit pervaded by what he has seen and
+heard, he carries on the office of High Priest, with all the zeal of a true
+servant of his God, and with all the joy whereof a mortal is capable. It
+seems to me that this continuation of the tale may elucidate the difficulty
+which Valla did not wish to treat. If Apollo has represented aright God's
+knowledge of vision (that which concerns beings in existence), I hope that
+Pallas will have not discreditably filled the role of what is called
+knowledge of simple intelligence (that which embraces all that is
+possible), wherein at last the source of things must be sought.
+
+                                                                      [377]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+APPENDICES
+
+SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some persons of discernment have wished me to make this addition. I have
+the more readily deferred to their opinion, because of the opportunity
+thereby gained for meeting certain difficulties, and for making
+observations on certain matters which were not treated in sufficient detail
+in the work itself.
+
+OBJECTION I
+
+Whoever does not choose the best course is lacking either in power, or
+knowledge, or goodness.
+
+God did not choose the best course in creating this world.
+
+Therefore God was lacking in power, or knowledge, or goodness.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the minor, that is to say, the second premiss of this syllogism, and
+the opponent proves it by this
+
+PROSYLLOGISM
+
+Whoever makes things in which there is evil, and which could have been made
+without any evil, or need not have been made at all, does not choose the
+best course.
+
+God made a world wherein there is evil; a world, I say, which could have
+been made without any evil or which need not have been made at all.
+
+                                                                      [378]
+Therefore God did not choose the best course.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I admit the minor of this prosyllogism: for one must confess that there is
+evil in this world which God has made, and that it would have been possible
+to make a world without evil or even not to create any world, since its
+creation depended upon the free will of God. But I deny the major, that is,
+the first of the two premisses of the prosyllogism, and I might content
+myself with asking for its proof. In order, however, to give a clearer
+exposition of the matter, I would justify this denial by pointing out that
+the best course is not always that one which tends towards avoiding evil,
+since it is possible that the evil may be accompanied by a greater good.
+For example, the general of an army will prefer a great victory with a
+slight wound to a state of affairs without wound and without victory. I
+have proved this in further detail in this work by pointing out, through
+instances taken from mathematics and elsewhere, that an imperfection in the
+part may be required for a greater perfection in the whole. I have followed
+therein the opinion of St. Augustine, who said a hundred times that God
+permitted evil in order to derive from it a good, that is to say, a greater
+good; and Thomas Aquinas says (in libr. 2, _Sent. Dist._ 32, qu. 1, art. 1)
+that the permission of evil tends towards the good of the universe. I have
+shown that among older writers the fall of Adam was termed _felix culpa_, a
+fortunate sin, because it had been expiated with immense benefit by the
+incarnation of the Son of God: for he gave to the universe something more
+noble than anything there would otherwise have been amongst created beings.
+For the better understanding of the matter I added, following the example
+of many good authors, that it was consistent with order and the general
+good for God to grant to certain of his creatures the opportunity to
+exercise their freedom, even when he foresaw that they would turn to evil:
+for God could easily correct the evil, and it was not fitting that in order
+to prevent sin he should always act in an extraordinary way. It will
+therefore sufficiently refute the objection to show that a world with evil
+may be better than a world without evil. But I have gone still further in
+the work, and have even shown that this universe must be indeed better than
+every other possible universe.
+
+                                                                      [379]
+OBJECTION II
+
+If there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures, there is more
+evil than good in all God's work.
+
+Now there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures.
+
+Therefore there is more evil than good in all God's work.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the major and the minor of this conditional syllogism. As for the
+major, I do not admit it because this supposed inference from the part to
+the whole, from intelligent creatures to all creatures, assumes tacitly and
+without proof that creatures devoid of reason cannot be compared or taken
+into account with those that have reason. But why might not the surplus of
+good in the non-intelligent creatures that fill the world compensate for
+and even exceed incomparably the surplus of evil in rational creatures? It
+is true that the value of the latter is greater; but by way of compensation
+the others are incomparably greater in number; and it may be that the
+proportion of number and quantity surpasses that of value and quality.
+
+The minor also I cannot admit, namely, that there is more evil than good in
+intelligent creatures. One need not even agree that there is more evil than
+good in the human kind. For it is possible, and even a very reasonable
+thing, that the glory and the perfection of the blessed may be incomparably
+greater than the misery and imperfection of the damned, and that here the
+excellence of the total good in the smaller number may exceed the total
+evil which is in the greater number. The blessed draw near to divinity
+through a divine Mediator, so far as can belong to these created beings,
+and make such progress in good as is impossible for the damned to make in
+evil, even though they should approach as nearly as may be the nature of
+demons. God is infinite, and the Devil is finite; good can and does go on
+_ad infinitum_, whereas evil has its bounds. It may be therefore, and it is
+probable, that there happens in the comparison between the blessed and the
+damned the opposite of what I said could happen in the comparison between
+the happy and the unhappy, namely that in the latter the proportion of
+degrees surpasses that of numbers, while in the comparison between
+intelligent and non-intelligent the proportion of numbers is greater than
+that of values. One is justified in assuming that a thing may be so as long
+as one does not prove that it is impossible, and indeed what is here  [380]
+put forward goes beyond assumption.
+
+But secondly, even should one admit that there is more evil than good in
+the human kind, one still has every reason for not admitting that there is
+more evil than good in all intelligent creatures. For there is an
+inconceivable number of Spirits, and perhaps of other rational creatures
+besides: and an opponent cannot prove that in the whole City of God,
+composed as much of Spirits as of rational animals without number and of
+endless different kinds, the evil exceeds the good. Although one need not,
+in order to answer an objection, prove that a thing is, when its mere
+possibility suffices, I have nevertheless shown in this present work that
+it is a result of the supreme perfection of the Sovereign of the Universe
+that the kingdom of God should be the most perfect of all states or
+governments possible, and that in consequence what little evil there is
+should be required to provide the full measure of the vast good existing
+there.
+
+OBJECTION III
+
+If it is always impossible not to sin, it is always unjust to punish.
+
+Now it is always impossible not to sin, or rather all sin is necessary.
+
+Therefore it is always unjust to punish.
+
+The minor of this is proved as follows.
+
+FIRST PROSYLLOGISM
+
+Everything predetermined is necessary.
+
+Every event is predetermined.
+
+Therefore every event (and consequently sin also) is necessary.
+
+Again this second minor is proved thus.
+
+SECOND PROSYLLOGISM
+
+That which is future, that which is foreseen, that which is involved in
+causes is predetermined.
+
+Every event is of this kind.
+
+Therefore every event is predetermined.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I admit in a certain sense the conclusion of the second prosyllogism, which
+is the minor of the first; but I shall deny the major of the first    [381]
+prosyllogism, namely that everything predetermined is necessary; taking
+'necessity', say the necessity to sin, or the impossibility of not sinning,
+or of not doing some action, in the sense relevant to the argument, that
+is, as a necessity essential and absolute, which destroys the morality of
+action and the justice of punishment. If anyone meant a different necessity
+or impossibility (that is, a necessity only moral or hypothetical, which
+will be explained presently) it is plain that we would deny him the major
+stated in the objection. We might content ourselves with this answer, and
+demand the proof of the proposition denied: but I am well pleased to
+justify my manner of procedure in the present work, in order to make the
+matter clear and to throw more light on this whole subject, by explaining
+the necessity that must be rejected and the determination that must be
+allowed. The truth is that the necessity contrary to morality, which must
+be avoided and which would render punishment unjust, is an insuperable
+necessity, which would render all opposition unavailing, even though one
+should wish with all one's heart to avoid the necessary action, and though
+one should make all possible efforts to that end. Now it is plain that this
+is not applicable to voluntary actions, since one would not do them if one
+did not so desire. Thus their prevision and predetermination is not
+absolute, but it presupposes will: if it is certain that one will do them,
+it is no less certain that one will will to do them. These voluntary
+actions and their results will not happen whatever one may do and whether
+one will them or not; but they will happen because one will do, and because
+one will will to do, that which leads to them. That is involved in
+prevision and predetermination, and forms the reason thereof. The necessity
+of such events is called conditional or hypothetical, or again necessity of
+consequence, because it presupposes the will and the other requisites. But
+the necessity which destroys morality, and renders punishment unjust and
+reward unavailing, is found in the things that will be whatever one may do
+and whatever one may will to do: in a word, it exists in that which is
+essential. This it is which is called an absolute necessity. Thus it avails
+nothing with regard to what is necessary absolutely to ordain interdicts or
+commandments, to propose penalties or prizes, to blame or to praise; it
+will come to pass no more and no less. In voluntary actions, on the
+contrary, and in what depends upon them, precepts, armed with power to[382]
+punish and to reward, very often serve, and are included in the order of
+causes that make action exist. Thus it comes about that not only pains and
+effort but also prayers are effective, God having had even these prayers in
+mind before he ordered things, and having made due allowance for them. That
+is why the precept _Ora et labora_ (Pray and work) remains intact. Thus not
+only those who (under the empty pretext of the necessity of events)
+maintain that one can spare oneself the pains demanded by affairs, but also
+those who argue against prayers, fall into that which the ancients even in
+their time called 'the Lazy Sophism'. So the predetermination of events by
+their causes is precisely what contributes to morality instead of
+destroying it, and the causes incline the will without necessitating it.
+For this reason the determination we are concerned with is not a
+necessitation. It is certain (to him who knows all) that the effect will
+follow this inclination; but this effect does not follow thence by a
+consequence which is necessary, that is, whose contrary implies
+contradiction; and it is also by such an inward inclination that the will
+is determined, without the presence of necessity. Suppose that one has the
+greatest possible passion (for example, a great thirst), you will admit
+that the soul can find some reason for resisting it, even if it were only
+that of displaying its power. Thus though one may never have complete
+indifference of equipoise, and there is always a predominance of
+inclination for the course adopted, that predominance does not render
+absolutely necessary the resolution taken.
+
+OBJECTION IV
+
+Whoever can prevent the sin of others and does not so, but rather
+contributes to it, although he be fully apprised of it, is accessary
+thereto.
+
+God can prevent the sin of intelligent creatures; but he does not so, and
+he rather contributes to it by his co-operation and by the opportunities he
+causes, although he is fully cognizant of it.
+
+Therefore, etc.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the major of this syllogism. It may be that one can prevent the sin,
+but that one ought not to do so, because one could not do so without
+committing a sin oneself, or (when God is concerned) without acting
+unreasonably. I have given instances of that, and have applied them to[383]
+God himself. It may be also that one contributes to the evil, and that one
+even opens the way to it sometimes, in doing things one is bound to do. And
+when one does one's duty, or (speaking of God) when, after full
+consideration, one does that which reason demands, one is not responsible
+for events, even when one foresees them. One does not will these evils; but
+one is willing to permit them for a greater good, which one cannot in
+reason help preferring to other considerations. This is a _consequent_
+will, resulting from acts of _antecedent_ will, in which one wills the
+good. I know that some persons, in speaking of the antecedent and
+consequent will of God, have meant by the antecedent that which wills that
+all men be saved, and by the consequent that which wills, in consequence of
+persistent sin, that there be some damned, damnation being a result of sin.
+But these are only examples of a more general notion, and one may say with
+the same reason, that God wills by his antecedent will that men sin not,
+and that by his consequent or final and decretory will (which is always
+followed by its effect) he wills to permit that they sin, this permission
+being a result of superior reasons. One has indeed justification for
+saying, in general, that the antecedent will of God tends towards the
+production of good and the prevention of evil, each taken in itself, and as
+it were detached (_particulariter et secundum quid_: Thom., I, qu. 19, art.
+6) according to the measure of the degree of each good or of each evil.
+Likewise one may say that the consequent, or final and total, divine will
+tends towards the production of as many goods as can be put together, whose
+combination thereby becomes determined, and involves also the permission of
+some evils and the exclusion of some goods, as the best possible plan of
+the universe demands. Arminius, in his _Antiperkinsus,_ explained very well
+that the will of God can be called consequent not only in relation to the
+action of the creature considered beforehand in the divine understanding,
+but also in relation to other anterior acts of divine will. But it is
+enough to consider the passage cited from Thomas Aquinas, and that from
+Scotus (I, dist. 46, qu. 11), to see that they make this distinction as I
+have made it here. Nevertheless if anyone will not suffer this use of the
+terms, let him put 'previous' in place of 'antecedent' will, and 'final' or
+'decretory' in place of 'consequent' will. For I do not wish to wrangle
+about words.
+
+                                                                      [384]
+OBJECTION V
+
+Whoever produces all that is real in a thing is its cause.
+
+God produces all that is real in sin.
+
+Therefore God is the cause of sin.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I might content myself with denying the major or the minor, because the
+term 'real' admits of interpretations capable of rendering these
+propositions false. But in order to give a better explanation I will make a
+distinction. 'Real' either signifies that which is positive only, or else
+it includes also privative beings: in the first case, I deny the major and
+I admit the minor; in the second case, I do the opposite. I might have
+confined myself to that; but I was willing to go further, in order to
+account for this distinction. I have therefore been well pleased to point
+out that every purely positive or absolute reality is a perfection, and
+that every imperfection comes from limitation, that is, from the privative:
+for to limit is to withhold extension, or the more beyond. Now God is the
+cause of all perfections, and consequently of all realities, when they are
+regarded as purely positive. But limitations or privations result from the
+original imperfection of creatures which restricts their receptivity. It is
+as with a laden boat, which the river carries along more slowly or less
+slowly in proportion to the weight that it bears: thus the speed comes from
+the river, but the retardation which restricts this speed comes from the
+load. Also I have shown in the present work how the creature, in causing
+sin, is a deficient cause; how errors and evil inclinations spring from
+privation; and how privation is efficacious accidentally. And I have
+justified the opinion of St. Augustine (lib. I, _Ad. Simpl._, qu. 2) who
+explains (for example) how God hardens the soul, not in giving it something
+evil, but because the effect of the good he imprints is restricted by the
+resistance of the soul, and by the circumstances contributing to this
+resistance, so that he does not give it all the good that would overcome
+its evil. 'Nec _(inquit)_ ab illo erogatur aliquid quo homo fit deterior,
+sed tantum quo fit melior non erogatur.' But if God had willed to do more
+here he must needs have produced either fresh natures in his creatures or
+fresh miracles to change their natures, and this the best plan did not
+allow. It is just as if the current of the river must needs be more rapid
+than its slope permits or the boats themselves be less laden, if they [385]
+had to be impelled at a greater speed. So the limitation or original
+imperfection of creatures brings it about that even the best plan of the
+universe cannot admit more good, and cannot be exempted from certain evils,
+these, however, being only of such a kind as may tend towards a greater
+good. There are some disorders in the parts which wonderfully enhance the
+beauty of the whole, just as certain dissonances, appropriately used,
+render harmony more beautiful. But that depends upon the answer which I
+have already given to the first objection.
+
+OBJECTION VI
+
+Whoever punishes those who have done as well as it was in their power to do
+is unjust.
+
+God does so.
+
+Therefore, etc.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the minor of this argument. And I believe that God always gives
+sufficient aid and grace to those who have good will, that is to say, who
+do not reject this grace by a fresh sin. Thus I do not admit the damnation
+of children dying unbaptized or outside the Church, or the damnation of
+adult persons who have acted according to the light that God has given
+them. And I believe that, _if anyone has followed the light he had_, he
+will undoubtedly receive thereof in greater measure as he has need, even as
+the late Herr Hulsemann, who was celebrated as a profound theologian at
+Leipzig, has somewhere observed; and if such a man had failed to receive
+light during his life, he would receive it at least in the hour of death.
+
+OBJECTION VII
+
+Whoever gives only to some, and not to all, the means of producing
+effectively in them good will and final saving faith has not enough
+goodness.
+
+God does so.
+
+Therefore, etc.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the major. It is true that God could overcome the greatest
+resistance of the human heart, and indeed he sometimes does so,       [386]
+whether by an inward grace or by the outward circumstances that can greatly
+influence souls; but he does not always do so. Whence comes this
+distinction, someone will say, and wherefore does his goodness appear to be
+restricted? The truth is that it would not have been in order always to act
+in an extraordinary way and to derange the connexion of things, as I have
+observed already in answering the first objection. The reasons for this
+connexion, whereby the one is placed in more favourable circumstances than
+the other, are hidden in the depths of God's wisdom: they depend upon the
+universal harmony. The best plan of the universe, which God could not fail
+to choose, required this. One concludes thus from the event itself; since
+God made the universe, it was not possible to do better. Such management,
+far from being contrary to goodness, has rather been prompted by supreme
+goodness itself. This objection with its solution might have been inferred
+from what was said with regard to the first objection; but it seemed
+advisable to touch upon it separately.
+
+OBJECTION VIII
+
+Whoever cannot fail to choose the best is not free.
+
+God cannot fail to choose the best.
+
+Therefore God is not free.
+
+ANSWER
+
+I deny the major of this argument. Rather is it true freedom, and the most
+perfect, to be able to make the best use of one's free will, and always to
+exercise this power, without being turned aside either by outward force or
+by inward passions, whereof the one enslaves our bodies and the other our
+souls. There is nothing less servile and more befitting the highest degree
+of freedom than to be always led towards the good, and always by one's own
+inclination, without any constraint and without any displeasure. And to
+object that God therefore had need of external things is only a sophism. He
+creates them freely: but when he had set before him an end, that of
+exercising his goodness, his wisdom determined him to choose the means most
+appropriate for obtaining this end. To call that a _need_ is to take the
+term in a sense not usual, which clears it of all imperfection, somewhat as
+one does when speaking of the wrath of God.
+
+Seneca says somewhere, that God commanded only once, but that he obeys[387]
+always, because he obeys the laws that he willed to ordain for himself:
+_semel jussit, semper paret_. But he had better have said, that God always
+commands and that he is always obeyed: for in willing he always follows the
+tendency of his own nature, and all other things always follow his will.
+And as this will is always the same one cannot say that he obeys that will
+only which he formerly had. Nevertheless, although his will is always
+indefectible and always tends towards the best, the evil or the lesser good
+which he rejects will still be possible in itself. Otherwise the necessity
+of good would be geometrical (so to speak) or metaphysical, and altogether
+absolute; the contingency of things would be destroyed, and there would be
+no choice. But necessity of this kind, which does not destroy the
+possibility of the contrary, has the name by analogy only: it becomes
+effective not through the mere essence of things, but through that which is
+outside them and above them, that is, through the will of God. This
+necessity is called moral, because for the wise what is necessary and what
+is owing are equivalent things; and when it is always followed by its
+effect, as it indeed is in the perfectly wise, that is, in God, one can say
+that it is a happy necessity. The more nearly creatures approach this, the
+closer do they come to perfect felicity. Moreover, necessity of this kind
+is not the necessity one endeavours to avoid, and which destroys morality,
+reward and commendation. For that which it brings to pass does not happen
+whatever one may do and whatever one may will, but because one desires it.
+A will to which it is natural to choose well deserves most to be commended;
+and it carries with it its own reward, which is supreme happiness. And as
+this constitution of the divine nature gives an entire satisfaction to him
+who possesses it, it is also the best and the most desirable from the point
+of view of the creatures who are all dependent upon God. If the will of God
+had not as its rule the principle of the best, it would tend towards evil,
+which would be worst of all; or else it would be indifferent somehow to
+good and to evil, and guided by chance. But a will that would always drift
+along at random would scarcely be any better for the government of the
+universe than the fortuitous concourse of corpuscles, without the existence
+of divinity. And even though God should abandon himself to chance only in
+some cases, and in a certain way (as he would if he did not always tend
+entirely towards the best, and if he were capable of preferring a lesser
+good to a greater good, that is, an evil to a good, since that which  [388]
+prevents a greater good is an evil) he would be no less imperfect than the
+object of his choice. Then he would not deserve absolute trust; he would
+act without reason in such a case, and the government of the universe would
+be like certain games equally divided between reason and luck. This all
+proves that this objection which is made against the choice of the best
+perverts the notions of free and necessary, and represents the best to us
+actually as evil: but that is either malicious or absurd.
+
+                                                                      [389]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EXCURSUS ON THEODICY
+
+ 392
+
+published by the author in Memoires de Trevoux
+
+July 1712
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_February_ 1712
+
+I said in my essays, 392, that I wished to see the demonstrations mentioned
+by M. Bayle and contained in the sixth letter printed at Trevoux in 1703.
+Father des Bosses has shown me this letter, in which the writer essays to
+demonstrate by the geometrical method that God is the sole true cause of
+all that is real. My perusal of it has confirmed me in the opinion which I
+indicated in the same passage, namely, that this proposition can be true in
+a very good sense, God being the only cause of pure and absolute realities,
+or perfections; but when one includes limitations or privations under the
+name of realities one can say that second causes co-operate in the
+production of what is limited, and that otherwise God would be the cause of
+sin, and even its sole cause. And I am somewhat inclined to think that the
+gifted author of the letter does not greatly differ in opinion from me,
+although he seems to include all modalities among the realities of which he
+declares God to be the sole cause. For in actual fact I think he will not
+admit that God is the cause and the author of sin. Indeed, he explains
+himself in a manner which seems to overthrow his thesis and to grant real
+action to creatures. For in the proof of the eighth corollary of his second
+proposition these words occur: 'The natural motion of the soul, although
+determinate in itself, is indeterminate in respect of its objects. For it
+is love of good in general. It is through the ideas of good appearing [390]
+in individual objects that this motion becomes individual and determinate
+in relation to those objects. And thus as the mind has the power of varying
+its own ideas it can also change the determinations of its love. And for
+that purpose it is not necessary that it overcome the power of God or
+oppose his action. These determinations of motion towards individual
+objects are not invincible. It is this noninvincibility which causes the
+mind to be free and capable of changing them; but after all the mind makes
+these changes only through the motion which God gives to it and conserves
+for it.' In my own style I would have said that the perfection which is in
+the action of the creature comes from God, but that the limitations to be
+found there are a consequence of the original limitation and the preceding
+limitations that occurred in the creature. Further, this is so not only in
+minds but also in all other substances, which thereby are causes
+co-operating in the change which comes to pass in themselves; for this
+determination of which the author speaks is nothing but a limitation.
+
+Now if after that one reviews all the demonstrations or corollaries of the
+letter, one will be able to admit or reject the majority of its assertions,
+in accordance with the interpretation one may make of them. If by 'reality'
+one means only perfections or positive realities, God is the only true
+cause; but if that which involves limitations is included under the
+realities, one will deny a considerable portion of the theses, and the
+author himself will have shown us the example. It is in order to render the
+matter more comprehensible that I used in the Essays the example of a laden
+boat, which, the more laden it is, is the more slowly carried along by the
+stream. There one sees clearly that the stream is the cause of what is
+positive in this motion, of the perfection, the force, the speed of the
+boat, but that the load is the cause of the restriction of this force, and
+that it brings about the retardation.
+
+It is praiseworthy in anyone to attempt to apply the geometrical method to
+metaphysical matters. But it must be admitted that hitherto success has
+seldom been attained: and M. Descartes himself, with all that very great
+skill which one cannot deny in him, never perhaps had less success than
+when he essayed to do this in one of his answers to objections. For in
+mathematics it is easier to succeed, because numbers, figures and
+calculations make good the defects concealed in words; but in metaphysics,
+where one is deprived of this aid (at least in ordinary               [391]
+argumentation), the strictness employed in the form of the argument and in
+the exact definitions of the terms must needs supply this lack. But in
+neither argument nor definition is that strictness here to be seen.
+
+The author of the letter, who undoubtedly displays much ardour and
+penetration, sometimes goes a little too far, as when he claims to prove
+that there is as much reality and force in rest as in motion, according to
+the fifth corollary of the second proposition. He asserts that the will of
+God is no less positive in rest than in motion, and that it is not less
+invincible. Be it so, but does it follow that there is as much reality and
+force in each of the two? I do not see this conclusion, and with the same
+argument one would prove that there is as much force in a strong motion as
+in a weak motion. God in willing rest wills that the body be at the place
+A, where it was immediately before, and for that it suffices that there be
+no reason to prompt God to the change. But when God wills that afterwards
+the body be at the place B, there must needs be a new reason, of such a
+kind as to determine God to will that it be in B and not in C or in any
+other place, and that it be there more or less promptly. It is upon these
+reasons, the volitions of God, that we must assess the force and the
+reality existent in things. The author speaks much of the will of God, but
+he does not speak much in this letter of the reasons which prompt God to
+will, and upon which all depends. And these reasons are taken from the
+objects.
+
+I observe first, indeed, with regard to the second corollary of the first
+proposition, that it is very true, but that it is not very well proven. The
+writer affirms that if God only ceased to will the existence of a being,
+that being would no longer exist; and here is the proof given word for
+word:
+
+'Demonstration. That which exists only by the will of God no longer exists
+once that will has ceased.' (But that is what must be proved. The writer
+endeavours to prove it by adding:) 'Remove the cause, you remove the
+effect.' (This maxim ought to have been placed among the axioms which are
+stated at the beginning. But unhappily this axiom may be reckoned among
+those rules of philosophy which are subject to many exceptions.) 'Now by
+the preceding proposition and by its first corollary no being exists save
+by the will of God. Therefore, etc.' There is ambiguity in this expression,
+that nothing exists save by the will of God. If one means that things [392]
+begin to exist only through this will, one is justified in referring to the
+preceding propositions; but if one means that the existence of things is at
+all times a consequence of the will of God, one assumes more or less what
+is in question. Therefore it was necessary to prove first that the
+existence of things depends upon the will of God, and that it is not only a
+mere effect of that will, but a dependence, in proportion to the perfection
+which things contain; and once that is assumed, they will depend upon God's
+will no less afterwards than at the beginning. That is the way I have taken
+the matter in my Essays.
+
+Nevertheless I recognize that the letter upon which I have just made
+observations is admirable and well deserving of perusal, and that it
+contains noble and true sentiments, provided it be taken in the sense I
+have just indicated. And arguments in this form may serve as an
+introduction to meditations somewhat more advanced.
+
+                                                                      [393]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM,
+NECESSITY AND CHANCE'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1. As the question of Necessity and Freedom, with other questions depending
+thereon, was at one time debated between the famous Mr. Hobbes and Dr. John
+Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, in books published by each of them, I have
+deemed it appropriate to give a clear account of them (although I have
+already mentioned them more than once); and this all the more since these
+writings of Mr. Hobbes have hitherto only appeared in English, and since
+the works of this author usually contain something good and ingenious. The
+Bishop of Derry and Mr. Hobbes, having met in Paris at the house of the
+Marquis, afterwards Duke, of Newcastle in the year 1646, entered into a
+discussion on this subject. The dispute was conducted with extreme
+restraint; but the bishop shortly afterwards sent a note to My Lord
+Newcastle, desiring him to induce Mr. Hobbes to answer it. He answered; but
+at the same time he expressed a wish that his answer should not be
+published, because he believed it possible for ill-instructed persons to
+abuse dogmas such as his, however true they might be. It so happened,
+however, that Mr. Hobbes himself passed it to a French friend, and allowed
+a young Englishman to translate it into French for the benefit of this
+friend. This young man kept a copy of the English original, and published
+it later in England without the author's knowledge. Thus the bishop was
+obliged to reply to it, and Mr. Hobbes to make a rejoinder, and to    [394]
+publish all the pieces together in a book of 348 pages printed in London in
+the year 1656, in 4to., entitled, _Questions concerning Freedom, Necessity
+and Chance, elucidated and discussed between Doctor Bramhall, Bishop of
+Derry, and Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury_. There is a later edition, of the
+year 1684, in a work entitled _Hobbes's Tripos_, where are to be found his
+book on human nature, his treatise on the body politic and his treatise on
+freedom and necessity; but the latter does not contain the bishop's reply,
+nor the author's rejoinder. Mr. Hobbes argues on this subject with his
+usual wit and subtlety; but it is a pity that in both the one and the other
+we stumble upon petty tricks, such as arise in excitement over the game.
+The bishop speaks with much vehemence and behaves somewhat arrogantly. Mr.
+Hobbes for his part is not disposed to spare the other, and manifests
+rather too much scorn for theology, and for the terminology of the
+Schoolmen, which is apparently favoured by the bishop.
+
+2. One must confess that there is something strange and indefensible in the
+opinions of Mr. Hobbes. He maintains that doctrines touching the divinity
+depend entirely upon the determination of the sovereign, and that God is no
+more the cause of the good than of the bad actions of creatures. He
+maintains that all that which God does is just, because there is none above
+him with power to punish and constrain him. Yet he speaks sometimes as if
+what is said about God were only compliments, that is to say expressions
+proper for paying him honour, but not for knowing him. He testifies also
+that it seems to him that the pains of the wicked must end in their
+destruction: this opinion closely approaches that of the Socinians, but it
+seems that Mr. Hobbes goes much further. His philosophy, which asserts that
+bodies alone are substances, hardly appears favourable to the providence of
+God and the immortality of the soul. On other subjects nevertheless he says
+very reasonable things. He shows clearly that nothing comes about by
+chance, or rather that chance only signifies the ignorance of causes that
+produce the effect, and that for each effect there must be a concurrence of
+all the sufficient conditions anterior to the event, not one of which,
+manifestly, can be lacking when the event is to follow, because they are
+conditions: the event, moreover, does not fail to follow when these
+conditions exist all together, because they are sufficient conditions. All
+which amounts to the same as I have said so many times, that everything
+comes to pass as a result of determining reasons, the knowledge       [395]
+whereof, if we had it, would make us know at the same time why the thing
+has happened and why it did not go otherwise.
+
+3. But this author's humour, which prompts him to paradoxes and makes him
+seek to contradict others, has made him draw out exaggerated and odious
+conclusions and expressions, as if everything happened through an absolute
+necessity. The Bishop of Derry, on the other hand, has aptly observed in
+the answer to article 35, page 327, that there results only a hypothetical
+necessity, such as we all grant to events in relation to the foreknowledge
+of God, while Mr. Hobbes maintains that even divine foreknowledge alone
+would be sufficient to establish an absolute necessity of events. This was
+also the opinion of Wyclif, and even of Luther, when he wrote _De Servo
+Arbitrio_; or at least they spoke so. But it is sufficiently acknowledged
+to-day that this kind of necessity which is termed hypothetical, and
+springs from foreknowledge or from other anterior reasons, has nothing in
+it to arouse one's alarm: whereas it would be quite otherwise if the thing
+were necessary of itself, in such a way that the contrary implied
+contradiction. Mr. Hobbes refuses to listen to anything about a moral
+necessity either, on the ground that everything really happens through
+physical causes. But one is nevertheless justified in making a great
+difference between the necessity which constrains the wise to do good, and
+which is termed moral, existing even in relation to God, and that blind
+necessity whereby according to Epicurus, Strato, Spinoza, and perhaps Mr.
+Hobbes, things exist without intelligence and without choice, and
+consequently without God. Indeed, there would according to them be no need
+of God, since in consequence of this necessity all would have existence
+through its own essence, just as necessarily as two and three make five.
+And this necessity is absolute, because everything it carries with it must
+happen, whatever one may do; whereas what happens by a hypothetical
+necessity happens as a result of the supposition that this or that has been
+foreseen or resolved, or done beforehand; and moral necessity contains an
+obligation imposed by reason, which is always followed by its effect in the
+wise. This kind of necessity is happy and desirable, when one is prompted
+by good reasons to act as one does; but necessity blind and absolute would
+subvert piety and morality.
+
+4. There is more reason in Mr. Hobbes's discourse when he admits that [396]
+our actions are in our power, so that we do that which we will when we have
+the power to do it, and when there is no hindrance. He asserts
+notwithstanding that our volitions themselves are not so within our power
+that we can give ourselves, without difficulty and according to our good
+pleasure, inclinations and wills which we might desire. The bishop does not
+appear to have taken notice of this reflexion, which Mr. Hobbes also does
+not develop enough. The truth is that we have some power also over our
+volitions, but obliquely, and not absolutely and indifferently. This has
+been explained in some passages of this work. Finally Mr. Hobbes shows,
+like others before him, that the certainty of events, and necessity itself,
+if there were any in the way our actions depend upon causes, would not
+prevent us from employing deliberations, exhortations, blame and praise,
+punishments and rewards: for these are of service and prompt men to produce
+actions or to refrain from them. Thus, if human actions were necessary,
+they would be so through these means. But the truth is, that since these
+actions are not necessary absolutely whatever one may do, these means
+contribute only to render the actions determinate and certain, as they are
+indeed; for their nature shows that they are not subject to an absolute
+necessity. He gives also a good enough notion of _freedom_, in so far as it
+is taken in a general sense, common to intelligent and non-intelligent
+substances: he states that a thing is deemed free when the power which it
+has is not impeded by an external thing. Thus the water that is dammed by a
+dyke has the power to spread, but not the freedom. On the other hand, it
+has not the power to rise above the dyke, although nothing would prevent it
+then from spreading, and although nothing from outside prevents it from
+rising so high. To that end it would be necessary that the water itself
+should come from a higher point or that the water-level should be raised by
+an increased flow. Thus a prisoner lacks the freedom, while a sick man
+lacks the power, to go his way.
+
+5. There is in Mr. Hobbes's preface an abstract of the disputed points,
+which I will give here, adding some expression of opinion. _On one side_
+(he says) the assertion is made, (1) 'that it is not in the present power
+of man to choose for himself the will that he should have'. That is _well_
+said, especially in relation to present will: men choose the objects
+through will, but they do not choose their present wills, which spring from
+reasons and dispositions. It is true, however, that one can seek new  [397]
+reasons for oneself, and with time give oneself new dispositions; and by
+this means one can also obtain for oneself a will which one had not and
+could not have given oneself forthwith. It is (to use the comparison Mr.
+Hobbes himself uses) as with hunger or with thirst. At the present it does
+not rest with my will to be hungry or not; but it rests with my will to eat
+or not to eat; yet, for the time to come, it rests with me to be hungry, or
+to prevent myself from being so at such and such an hour of day, by eating
+beforehand. In this way it is possible often to avoid an evil will. Even
+though Mr. Hobbes states in his reply (No. 14, p. 138) that it is the
+manner of laws to say, you must do or you must not do this, but that there
+is no law saying, you must will, or you must not will it, yet it is clear
+that he is mistaken in regard to the Law of God, which says _non
+concupisces_, thou shalt not covet; it is true that this prohibition does
+not concern the first motions, which are involuntary. It is asserted (2)
+'That hazard' (_chance_ in English, _casus_ in Latin) 'produces nothing',
+that is, that nothing is produced without cause or reason. Very _right_, I
+admit it, if one thereby intends a real hazard. For fortune and hazard are
+only appearances, which spring from ignorance of causes or from disregard
+of them. (3) 'That all events have their necessary causes.' _Wrong_: they
+have their determining causes, whereby one can account for them; but these
+are not necessary causes. The contrary might have happened, without
+implying contradiction. (4) 'That the will of God makes the necessity of
+all things.' _Wrong_: the will of God produces only contingent things,
+which could have gone differently, since time, space and matter are
+indifferent with regard to all kinds of shape and movement.
+
+6. _On the other side_ (according to Mr. Hobbes) it is asserted, (1) 'That
+man is free' (absolutely) not only 'to choose what he wills to do, but also
+to choose what he wills to will.' That is _ill_ said: one is not absolute
+master of one's will, to change it forthwith, without making use of some
+means or skill for that purpose. (2) 'When man wills a good action, the
+will of God co-operates with his, otherwise not.' That is _well_ said,
+provided one means that God does not will evil actions, although he wills
+to permit them, to prevent the occurrence of something which would be worse
+than these sins. (3) 'That the will can choose whether it wills to will or
+not.' _Wrong_, with regard to present volition. (4) 'That things happen
+without necessity by chance.' _Wrong_: what happens without necessity [398]
+does not because of that happen by chance, that is to say, without causes
+and reasons. (5) 'Notwithstanding that God may foresee that an event will
+happen, it is not necessary that it happen, since God foresees things, not
+as futurities and as in their causes, but as present.' That begins _well_,
+and finishes _ill_. One is justified in admitting the necessity of the
+consequence, but one has no reason to resort to the question how the future
+is present to God: for the necessity of the consequence does not prevent
+the event or consequent from being contingent in itself.
+
+7. Our author thinks that since the doctrine revived by Arminius had been
+favoured in England by Archbishop Laud and by the Court, and important
+ecclesiastical promotions had been only for those of that party, this
+contributed to the revolt which caused the bishop and him to meet in their
+exile in Paris at the house of Lord Newcastle, and to enter into a
+discussion. I would not approve all the measures of Archbishop Laud, who
+had merit and perhaps also good will, but who appears to have goaded the
+Presbyterians excessively. Nevertheless one may say that the revolutions,
+as much in the Low Countries as in Great Britain, in part arose from the
+extreme intolerance of the strict party. One may say also that the
+defenders of the absolute decree were at least as strict as the others,
+having oppressed their opponents in Holland with the authority of Prince
+Maurice and having fomented the revolts in England against King Charles I.
+But these are the faults of men, and not of dogmas. Their opponents do not
+spare them either, witness the severity used in Saxony against Nicolas
+Krell and the proceedings of the Jesuits against the Bishop of Ypres's
+party.
+
+8. Mr. Hobbes observes, after Aristotle, that there are two sources for
+proofs: reason and authority. As for reason, he says that he admits the
+reasons derived from the attributes of God, which he calls argumentative,
+and the notions whereof are conceivable; but he maintains that there are
+others wherein one conceives nothing, and which are only expressions by
+which we aspire to honour God. But I do not see how one can honour God by
+expressions that have no meaning. It may be that with Mr. Hobbes, as with
+Spinoza, wisdom, goodness, justice are only fictions in relation to God and
+the universe, since the prime cause, according to them, acts through the
+necessity of its power, and not by the choice of its wisdom. That is  [399]
+an opinion whose falsity I have sufficiently proved. It appears that Mr.
+Hobbes did not wish to declare himself enough, for fear of causing offence
+to people; on which point he is to be commended. It was also on that
+account, as he says himself, that he had desired that what had passed
+between the bishop and him in Paris should not be published. He adds that
+it is not good to say that an action which God does not will happens, since
+that is to say in effect that God is lacking in power. But he adds also at
+the same time that it is not good either to say the opposite, and to
+attribute to God that he wills the evil; because that is not seemly, and
+would appear to accuse God of lack of goodness. He believes, therefore,
+that in these matters telling the truth is not advisable. He would be right
+if the truth were in the paradoxical opinions that he maintains. For indeed
+it appears that according to the opinion of this writer God has no
+goodness, or rather that that which he calls God is nothing but the blind
+nature of the mass of material things, which acts according to mathematical
+laws, following an absolute necessity, as the atoms do in the system of
+Epicurus. If God were as the great are sometimes here on earth, it would
+not be fitting to utter all the truths concerning him. But God is not as a
+man, whose designs and actions often must be concealed; rather it is always
+permissible and reasonable to publish the counsels and the actions of God,
+because they are always glorious and worthy of praise. Thus it is always
+right to utter truths concerning the divinity; one need not anyhow refrain
+from fear of giving offence. And I have explained, so it seems to me, in a
+way which satisfies reason, and does not wound piety, how it is to be
+understood that God's will takes effect, and concurs with sin, without
+compromising his wisdom and his goodness.
+
+9. As to the authorities derived from Holy Scripture, Mr. Hobbes divides
+them into three kinds; some, he says, are for me, the second kind are
+neutral, and the third seem to be for my opponent. The passages which he
+thinks favourable to his opinion are those which ascribe to God the cause
+of our will. Thus Gen. xlv. 5, where Joseph says to his brethren, 'Be not
+grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me hither: for God did
+send me before you to preserve life'; and verse 8, 'it was not you that
+sent me hither, but God.' And God said (Exod. vii. 3), 'I will harden
+Pharaoh's heart.' And Moses said (Deut. ii. 30), 'But Sihon King of   [400]
+Heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the Lord thy God hardened his
+spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy
+hand.' And David said of Shimei (2 Sam. xvi. 10), 'Let him curse, because
+the Lord hath said unto him: Curse David. Who shall then say, wherefore
+hast thou done so?' And (1 Kings xii. 15), 'The King [Rehoboam] hearkened
+not unto the people; for the cause was from the Lord.' Job xii. 16: 'The
+deceived and the deceiver are his.' v. 17: 'He maketh the judges fools'; v.
+24: 'He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and
+causeth them to wander in a wilderness'; v. 25: 'He maketh them to stagger
+like a drunken man.' God said of the King of Assyria (Isa. x. 6), 'Against
+the people will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the
+prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.' And Jeremiah
+said (Jer. x. 23), 'O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself:
+it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' And God said (Ezek.
+iii. 20), 'When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and
+commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die.' And
+the Saviour said (John vi. 44), 'No man can come to me, except the Father
+which hath sent me draw him.' And St. Peter (Acts ii. 23), 'Jesus having
+been delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have
+taken.' And Acts iv. 27, 28, 'Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the
+Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do
+whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.' And St.
+Paul (Rom. ix. 16), 'It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
+runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.' And v. 18: 'Therefore hath he
+mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth'; v. 19:
+'Thou wilt say then unto me, why doth he yet find fault? For who hath
+resisted his will?'; v. 20: 'Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest
+against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast
+thou made me thus?' And 1 Cor. iv. 7: 'For who maketh thee to differ from
+another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?' And 1 Cor. xii.
+6: 'There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which
+worketh all in all.' And Eph. ii. 10: 'We are his workmanship, created in
+Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should
+walk in them.' And Phil. ii. 13: 'It is God which worketh in you both to
+will and to do of his good pleasure.' One may add to these passages all
+those which make God the author of all grace and of all good          [401]
+inclinations, and all those which say that we are as dead in sin.
+
+10. Here now are the neutral passages, according to Mr. Hobbes. These are
+those where Holy Scripture says that man has the choice to act if he wills,
+or not to act if he wills not. For example Deut. xxx. 19: 'I call heaven
+and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life
+and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and
+thy seed may live.' And Joshua xxiv. 15: 'Choose you this day whom ye will
+serve.' And God said to Gad the prophet (2 Sam. xxiv. 12), 'Go and say unto
+David: Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three things; choose thee one of
+them, that I may do it unto thee.' And Isa. vii. 16: 'Until the child shall
+know to refuse the evil and choose the good.' Finally the passages which
+Mr. Hobbes acknowledges to be apparently contrary to his opinion are all
+those where it is indicated that the will of man is not in conformity with
+that of God. Thus Isa. v. 4: 'What could have been done more to my
+vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it
+should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?' And Jer. xix. 5:
+'They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire
+for burnt offerings unto Baal; which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither
+came it into my mind.' And Hos. xiii. 9: 'O Israel, thou hast destroyed
+thyself; but in me is thine help.' And I Tim. ii. 4: 'God will have all men
+to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.' He avows that he
+could quote very many other passages, such as those which indicate that God
+willeth not iniquity, that he willeth the salvation of the sinner, and
+generally all those which declare that God commands good and forbids evil.
+
+11. Mr. Hobbes makes answer to these passages that God does not always will
+that which he commands, as for example when he commanded Abraham to
+sacrifice his son, and that God's revealed will is not always his full will
+or his decree, as when he revealed to Jonah that Nineveh would perish in
+forty days. He adds also, that when it is said that God wills the salvation
+of all, that means simply that God commands that all do that which is
+necessary for salvation; when, moreover, the Scripture says that God wills
+not sin, that means that he wills to punish it. And as for the rest, Mr.
+Hobbes ascribes it to the forms of expression used among men. But one will
+answer him that it would be to God's discredit that his revealed will [402]
+should be opposed to his real will: that what he bade Jonah say to the
+Ninevites was rather a threat than a prediction, and that thus the
+condition of impenitence was implied therein; moreover the Ninevites took
+it in this sense. One will say also, that it is quite true that God in
+commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son willed obedience, but did not will
+action, which he prevented after having obtained obedience; for that was
+not an action deserving in itself to be willed. And it is not the same in
+the case of actions where he exerts his will positively, and which are in
+fact worthy to be the object of his will. Of such are piety, charity and
+every virtuous action that God commands; of such is omission of sin, a
+thing more alien to divine perfection than any other. It is therefore
+incomparably better to explain the will of God as I have explained it in
+this work. Thus I shall say that God, by virtue of his supreme goodness,
+has in the beginning a serious inclination to produce, or to see and cause
+to be produced, all good and every laudable action, and to prevent, or to
+see and cause to fail, all evil and every bad action. But he is determined
+by this same goodness, united to an infinite wisdom, and by the very
+concourse of all the previous and particular inclinations towards each
+good, and towards the preventing of each evil, to produce the best possible
+design of things. This is his final and decretory will. And this design of
+the best being of such a nature that the good must be enhanced therein, as
+light is enhanced by shade, by some evil which is incomparably less than
+this good, God could not have excluded this evil, nor introduced certain
+goods that were excluded from this plan, without wronging his supreme
+perfection. So for that reason one must say that he permitted the sins of
+others, because otherwise he would have himself performed an action worse
+than all the sin of creatures.
+
+12. I find that the Bishop of Derry is at least justified in saying,
+article XV, in his Reply, p. 153, that the opinion of his opponents is
+contrary to piety, when they ascribe all to God's power only, and that Mr.
+Hobbes ought not to have said that honour or worship is only a sign of the
+power of him whom one honours: for one may also, and one must, acknowledge
+and honour wisdom, goodness, justice and other perfections. _Magnos facile
+laudamus, bonos libenter._ This opinion, which despoils God of all goodness
+and of all true justice, which represents him as a Tyrant, wielding an
+absolute power, independent of all right and of all equity, and       [403]
+creating millions of creatures to be eternally unhappy, and this without
+any other aim than that of displaying his power, this opinion, I say, is
+capable of rendering men very evil; and if it were accepted no other Devil
+would be needed in the world to set men at variance among themselves and
+with God; as the Serpent did in making Eve believe that God, when he
+forbade her the fruit of the tree, did not will her good. Mr. Hobbes
+endeavours to parry this thrust in his Rejoinder (p. 160) by saying that
+goodness is a part of the power of God, that is to say, the power of making
+himself worthy of love. But that is an abuse of terms by an evasion, and
+confounds things that must be kept distinct. After all, if God does not
+intend the good of intelligent creatures, if he has no other principles of
+justice than his power alone, which makes him produce either arbitrarily
+that which chance presents to him, or by necessity all that which is
+possible, without the intervention of choice founded on good, how can he
+make himself worthy of love? It is therefore the doctrine either of blind
+power or of arbitrary power, which destroys piety: for the one destroys the
+intelligent principle or the providence of God, the other attributes to him
+actions which are appropriate to the evil principle. Justice in God, says
+Mr. Hobbes (p. 161), is nothing but the power he has, which he exercises in
+distributing blessings and afflictions. This definition surprises me: it is
+not the power to distribute them, but the will to distribute them
+reasonably, that is, goodness guided by wisdom, which makes the justice of
+God. But, says he, justice is not in God as in a man, who is only just
+through the observance of laws made by his superior. Mr. Hobbes is mistaken
+also in that, as well as Herr Pufendorf, who followed him. Justice does not
+depend upon arbitrary laws of superiors, but on the eternal rules of wisdom
+and of goodness, in men as well as in God. Mr. Hobbes asserts in the same
+passage that the wisdom which is attributed to God does not lie in a
+logical consideration of the relation of means to ends, but in an
+incomprehensible attribute, attributed to an incomprehensible nature to
+honour it. It seems as if he means that it is an indescribable something
+attributed to an indescribable something, and even a chimerical quality
+given to a chimerical substance, to intimidate and to deceive the nations
+through the worship which they render to it. After all, it is difficult for
+Mr. Hobbes to have a different opinion of God and of wisdom, since he
+admits only material substances. If Mr. Hobbes were still alive, I would
+beware of ascribing to him opinions which might do him injury; but it [404]
+is difficult to exempt him from this. He may have changed his mind
+subsequently, for he attained to a great age; thus I hope that his errors
+may not have been deleterious to him. But as they might be so to others, it
+is expedient to give warnings to those who shall read the writings of one
+who otherwise is of great merit, and from whom one may profit in many ways.
+It is true that God does not reason, properly speaking, using time as we
+do, to pass from one truth to the other: but as he understands at one and
+the same time all the truths and all their connexions, he knows all the
+conclusions, and he contains in the highest degree within himself all the
+reasonings that we can develop. And just because of that his wisdom is
+perfect.
+
+                                                                      [405]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL' PUBLISHED RECENTLY
+IN LONDON
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1. It is a pity that M. Bayle should have seen only the reviews of this
+admirable work, which are to be found in the journals. If he had read it
+himself and examined it properly, he would have provided us with a good
+opportunity of throwing light on many difficulties, which spring again and
+again like the head of the hydra, in a matter where it is easy to become
+confused when one has not seen the whole system or does not take the
+trouble to reason according to a strict plan. For strictness of reasoning
+performs in subjects that transcend imagination the same function as
+figures do in geometry: there must always be something capable of fixing
+our attention and forming a connexion between our thoughts. That is why
+when this Latin book, so learned and so elegant of style, printed
+originally in London and then reprinted in Bremen, fell into my hands, I
+judged that the seriousness of the matter and the author's merit required
+an attention which readers might fairly expect of me, since we are agreed
+only in regard to half of the subject. Indeed, as the work contains five
+chapters, and the fifth with the appendix equals the rest in size, I have
+observed that the first four, where it is a question of evil in general and
+of physical evil in particular, are in harmony with my principles (save for
+a few individual passages), and that they sometimes even develop with force
+and eloquence some points I had treated but slightly because M. Bayle [406]
+had not placed emphasis upon them. But the fifth chapter, with its sections
+(of which some are equal to entire chapters) speaking of freedom and of the
+moral evil dependent upon it, is constructed upon principles opposed to
+mine, and often, indeed, to those of M. Bayle; that is, if it were possible
+to credit him with any fixed principles. For this fifth chapter tends to
+show (if that were possible) that true freedom depends upon an indifference
+of equipoise, vague, complete and absolute; so that, until the will has
+determined itself, there would be no reason for its determination, either
+in him who chooses or in the object; and one would not choose what pleases,
+but in choosing without reason one would cause what one chooses to be
+pleasing.
+
+2. This principle of choice without cause or reason, of a choice, I say,
+divested of the aim of wisdom and goodness, is regarded by many as the
+great privilege of God and of intelligent substances, and as the source of
+their freedom, their satisfaction, their morality and their good or evil.
+The fantasy of a power to declare one's independence, not only of
+inclination, but of reason itself within and of good and evil without, is
+sometimes painted in such fine colours that one might take it to be the
+most excellent thing in the world. Nevertheless it is only a hollow
+fantasy, a suppression of the reasons for the caprice of which one boasts.
+What is asserted is impossible, but if it came to pass it would be harmful.
+This fantastic character might be attributed to some Don Juan in a St.
+Peter's Feast, and a man of romantic disposition might even affect the
+outward appearances of it and persuade himself that he has it in reality.
+But in Nature there will never be any choice to which one is not prompted
+by the previous representation of good or evil, by inclinations or by
+reasons: and I have always challenged the supporters of this absolute
+indifference to show an example thereof. Nevertheless if I call fantastic
+this choice whereto one is determined by nothing, I am far from calling
+visionaries the supporters of that hypothesis, especially our gifted
+author. The Peripatetics teach some beliefs of this nature; but it would be
+the greatest injustice in the world to be ready to despise on that account
+an Occam, a Suisset, a Cesalpino, a Conringius, men who still advocated
+certain scholastic opinions which have been improved upon to-day.
+
+3. One of these opinions, revived, however, and introduced by         [407]
+degenerate scholasticism, and in the Age of Chimeras, is vague indifference
+of choice, or real chance, assumed in our souls; as if nothing gave us any
+inclination unless we perceived it distinctly, and as if an effect could be
+without causes, when these causes are imperceptible. It is much as some
+have denied the existence of insensible corpuscles because they do not see
+them. Modern philosophers have improved upon the opinions of the Schoolmen
+by showing that, according to the laws of corporeal nature, a body can only
+be set in motion by the movement of another body propelling it. Even so we
+must believe that our souls (by virtue of the laws of spiritual nature) can
+only be moved by some reason of good or evil: and this even when no
+distinct knowledge can be extracted from our mental state, on account of a
+concourse of innumerable little perceptions which make us now joyful and
+now sad, or again of some other humour, and cause us to like one thing more
+than another without its being possible to say why. Plato, Aristotle and
+even Thomas Aquinas, Durand and other Schoolmen of the sounder sort reason
+on that question like the generality of men, and as unprejudiced people
+always have reasoned. They assume that freedom lies in the use of reason
+and the inclinations, which cause the choice or rejection of objects. But
+finally some rather too subtle philosophers have extracted from their
+alembic an inexplicable notion of choice independent of anything
+whatsoever, which is said to do wonders in solving all difficulties. But
+the notion is caught up at the outset in one of the greatest difficulties,
+by offending against the grand principle of reasoning which makes us always
+assume that nothing is done without some sufficient cause or reason. As the
+Schoolmen often forgot to apply this great principle, admitting certain
+prime occult qualities, one need not wonder if this fiction of vague
+indifference met with applause amongst them, and if even most worthy men
+have been imbued therewith. Our author, who is otherwise rid of many of the
+errors of the ordinary Schoolmen, is still deluded by this fiction: but he
+is without doubt one of the most skilful of those who have supported it.
+
+              _Si Pergama dextra_
+  _Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent._
+
+He gives it the best possible turn, and only shows it on its good side. He
+knows how to strip spontaneity and reason of their advantages,        [408]
+transferring all these to vague indifference: only through this
+indifference is one active, resisting the passions, taking pleasure in
+one's choice, or being happy; it appears indeed that one would be miserable
+if some happy necessity should oblige us to choose aright. Our author had
+said admirable things on the origin and reasons of natural evils: he only
+had to apply the same principles to moral evil; indeed, he believes himself
+that moral evil becomes an evil through the physical evils that it causes
+or tends to cause. But somehow or other he thinks that it would be a
+degradation of God and men if they were to be made subject to reason; that
+thus they would all be rendered passive to it and would no longer be
+satisfied with themselves; in short that men would have nothing wherewith
+to oppose the misfortunes that come to them from without, if they had not
+within them this admirable privilege of rendering things good or tolerable
+by choosing them, and of changing all into gold by the touch of this
+wondrous faculty.
+
+4. We will examine it in closer detail presently; but it will be well to
+profit beforehand by the excellent ideas of our author on the nature of
+things and on natural evils, particularly since there are some points in
+which we shall be able to go a little further: by this means also we shall
+gain a better understanding of the whole arrangement of his system. The
+first chapter contains the principles. The writer calls substance a being
+the idea of which does not involve the existence of another. I do not know
+if there are any such among created beings, by reason of the connexion
+existing between all things; and the example of a wax torch is not the
+example of a substance, any more than that of a swarm of bees would be. But
+one may take the terms in an extended sense. He observes aptly that after
+all the changes of matter and after all the qualities of which it may be
+divested, there remain extension, mobility, divisibility and resistance. He
+explains also the nature of notions, and leaves it to be understood that
+_universals_ indicate only the resemblances which exist between
+_individuals_; that we understand by _ideas_ only that which is known
+through an immediate sensation, and that the rest is known to us only
+through relations with these ideas. But when he admits that we have no idea
+of God, of spirit, of substance, he does not appear to have observed
+sufficiently that we have immediate apperception of substance and of spirit
+in our apperception of ourselves, and that the idea of God is found in[409]
+the idea of ourselves through a suppression of the limits of our
+perfections, as extension taken in an absolute sense is comprised in the
+idea of a globe. He is right also in asserting that our simple ideas at
+least are innate, and in rejecting the _Tabula rasa_ of Aristotle and of
+Mr. Locke. But I cannot agree with him that our ideas have scarce any more
+relation to things than words uttered into the air or writings traced upon
+paper have to our ideas, and that the bearing of our sensations is
+arbitrary and _ex instituto_, like the signification of words. I have
+already indicated elsewhere why I am not in agreement with our Cartesians
+on that point.
+
+5. For the purpose of advancing to the first Cause, the author seeks a
+criterion, a distinguishing mark of truth; and he finds it in the force
+whereby our inward assertions, when they are evident, compel the
+understanding to give them its consent. It is by such a process, he says,
+that we credit the senses. He points out that the distinguishing mark in
+the Cartesian scheme, to wit, a clear and distinct perception, has need of
+a new mark to indicate what is clear and distinct, and that the congruity
+or non-congruity of ideas (or rather of terms, as one spoke formerly) may
+still be deceptive, because there are congruities real and apparent. He
+appears to recognize even that the inward force which constrains us to give
+our assent is still a matter for caution, and may come from deep-rooted
+prejudices. That is why he confesses that he who should furnish another
+criterion would have found something very advantageous to the human race. I
+have endeavoured to explain this criterion in a little _Discourse on Truth
+and Ideas_, published in 1684; and although I do not boast of having given
+therein a new discovery I hope that I have expounded things which were only
+confusedly recognized. I distinguish between truths of fact and truths of
+reason. Truths of fact can only be verified by confronting them with truths
+of reason, and by tracing them back to immediate perceptions within us,
+such as St. Augustine and M. Descartes very promptly acknowledged to be
+indubitable; that is to say, we cannot doubt that we think, nor indeed that
+we think this thing or that. But in order to judge whether our inward
+notions have any reality in things, and to pass from thoughts to objects,
+my opinion is that it is necessary to consider whether our perceptions are
+firmly connected among themselves and with others that we have had, in such
+fashion as to manifest the rules of mathematics and other truths of   [410]
+reason. In this case one must regard them as real; and I think that it is
+the only means of distinguishing them from imaginations, dreams and
+visions. Thus the truth of things outside us can be recognized only through
+the connexion of phenomena. The criterion of the truths of reason, or those
+which spring from conceptions, is found in an exact use of the rules of
+logic. As for ideas or notions, I call _real_ all those the possibility of
+which is certain; and the _definitions_ which do not mark this possibility
+are only _nominal_. Geometricians well versed in analysis are aware what
+difference there is in this respect between several properties by which
+some line or figure might be defined. Our gifted author has not gone so
+far, perhaps; one may see, however, from the account I have given of him
+already, and from what follows, that he is by no means lacking in
+profundity or reflexion.
+
+6. Thereafter he proceeds to examine whether motion, matter and space
+spring from themselves; and to that end he considers whether it is possible
+to conceive that they do not exist. He remarks upon this privilege of God,
+that as soon as it is assumed that he exists it must be admitted that he
+exists of necessity. This is a corollary to a remark which I made in the
+little discourse mentioned above, namely that as soon as one admits that
+God is possible, one must admit that he exists of necessity. Now, as soon
+as one admits that God exists, one admits that he is possible. Therefore as
+soon as one admits that God exists, one must admit that he exists of
+necessity. Now this privilege does not belong to the three things of which
+we have just spoken. The author believes also especially concerning motion,
+that it is not sufficient to say, with Mr. Hobbes, that the present
+movement comes from an anterior movement, and this one again from another,
+and so on to infinity. For, however far back you may go, you will not be
+one whit nearer to finding the reason which causes the presence of motion
+in matter. Therefore this reason must be outside the sequence; and even if
+there were an eternal motion, it would require an eternal motive power. So
+the rays of the sun, even though they were eternal with the sun, would
+nevertheless have their eternal cause in the sun. I am well pleased to
+recount these arguments of our gifted author, that it may be seen how
+important, according to him, is the principle of sufficient reason. For, if
+it is permitted to admit something for which it is acknowledged there is no
+reason, it will be easy for an atheist to overthrow this argument, by [411]
+saying that it is not necessary that there be a sufficient reason for the
+existence of motion. I will not enter into the discussion of the reality
+and the eternity of space, for fear of straying too far from our subject.
+It is enough to state that the author believes that space can be
+annihilated by the divine power, but in entirety and not in portions, and
+that we could exist alone with God even if there were neither space nor
+matter, since we do not contain within ourselves the notion of the
+existence of external things. He also puts forward the consideration that
+in the sensations of sounds, of odours and of savours the idea of space is
+not included. But whatever the opinion formed as to space, it suffices that
+there is a God, the cause of matter and of motion, and in short of all
+things. The author believes that we can reason about God, as one born blind
+would reason about light. But I hold that there is something more in us,
+for our light is a ray from God's light. After having spoken of some
+attributes of God, the author acknowledges that God acts for an end, which
+is the communication of his goodness, and that his works are ordered
+aright. Finally he concludes this chapter very properly, by saying that God
+in creating the world was at pains to give it the greatest harmony amongst
+things, the greatest comfort of beings endowed with reason, and the
+greatest compatibility in desires that an infinite power, wisdom and
+goodness combined could produce. He adds that, if some evil has remained
+notwithstanding, one must believe that these infinite divine perfections
+could not have (I would rather say ought not to have) taken it away.
+
+7. Chapter II anatomizes evil, dividing it as we do into metaphysical,
+physical and moral. Metaphysical evil consists in imperfections, physical
+evil in suffering and other like troubles, and moral evil in sin. All these
+evils exist in God's work; Lucretius thence inferred that there is no
+providence, and he denied that the world can be an effect of divinity:
+
+  _Naturam rerum divinitus esse creatam;_
+
+because there are so many faults in the nature of things,
+
+  _quoniam tanta stat praedita culpa._
+
+Others have admitted two principles, the one good, the other evil. There
+have also been people who thought the difficulty insurmountable, and among
+these our author appears to have had M. Bayle in mind. He hopes to    [412]
+show in his work that it is not a Gordian knot, which needs to be cut; and
+he says rightly that the power, the wisdom and the goodness of God would
+not be infinite and perfect in their exercise if these evils had been
+banished. He begins with the evil of imperfection in Chapter III and
+observes, as St. Augustine does, that creatures are imperfect, since they
+are derived from nothingness, whereas God producing a perfect substance
+from his own essence would have made thereof a God. This gives him occasion
+for making a little digression against the Socinians. But someone will say,
+why did not God refrain from producing things, rather than make imperfect
+things? The author answers appositely that the abundance of the goodness of
+God is the cause. He wished to communicate himself at the expense of a
+certain fastidiousness which we assume in God, imagining that imperfections
+offend him. Thus he preferred that there should be the imperfect rather
+than nothing. But one might have added that God has produced indeed the
+most perfect whole that was possible, one wherewith he had full cause for
+satisfaction, the imperfections of the parts serving a greater perfection
+in the whole. Also the observation is made soon afterwards, that certain
+things might have been made better, but not without other new and _perhaps_
+greater disadvantages. This _perhaps_ could have been omitted: for the
+author also states as a certainty, and rightly so, at the end of the
+chapter, _that it appertains to infinite goodness to choose the best_; and
+thus he was able to draw this conclusion a little earlier, that imperfect
+things will be added to those more perfect, so long as they do not preclude
+the existence of the more perfect in as great a number as possible. Thus
+bodies were created as well as spirits, since the one does not offer any
+obstacle to the other; and the creation of matter was not unworthy of the
+great God, as some heretics of old believed, attributing this work to a
+certain Demogorgon.
+
+8. Let us now proceed to physical evil, which is treated of in Chapter IV.
+Our famous author, having observed that metaphysical evil, or imperfection,
+springs from nothingness, concludes that physical evil, or discomfort,
+springs from matter, or rather from its movement; for without movement
+matter would be useless. Moreover there must be contrariety in these
+movements; otherwise, if all went together in the same direction, there
+would be neither variety nor generation. But the movements that cause [413]
+generations cause also corruptions, since from the variety of movements
+comes concussion between bodies, by which they are often dissipated and
+destroyed. The Author of Nature however, in order to render bodies more
+enduring, distributed them into _systems_, those which we know being
+composed of luminous and opaque balls, in a manner so excellent and so
+fitting for the display of that which they contain, and for arousing wonder
+thereat, that we can conceive of nothing more beautiful. But the crowning
+point of the work was the construction of animals, to the end that
+everywhere there should be creatures capable of cognition,
+
+  _Ne regio foret ulla suis animalibus orba._
+
+Our sagacious author believes that the air and even the purest aether have
+their denizens as well as the water and the earth. But supposing that there
+were places without animals, these places might have uses necessary for
+other places which are inhabited. So for example the mountains, which
+render the surface of our globe unequal and sometimes desert and barren,
+are of use for the production of rivers and of winds; and we have no cause
+to complain of sands and marshes, since there are so many places still
+remaining to be cultivated. Moreover, it must not be supposed that all is
+made for man alone: and the author is persuaded that there are not only
+pure spirits but also immortal animals of a nature akin to these spirits,
+that is, animals whose souls are united to an ethereal and incorruptible
+matter. But it is not the same with animals whose body is terrestrial,
+composed of tubes and fluids which circulate therein, and whose motion is
+terminated by the breaking of the vessels. Thence the author is led to
+believe that the immortality granted to Adam, if he had been obedient,
+would not have been an effect of his nature, but of the grace of God.
+
+9. Now it was necessary for the conservation of corruptible animals that
+they should have indications causing them to recognize a present danger,
+and giving them the inclination to avoid it. That is why what is about to
+cause a great injury must beforehand cause pain such as may force the
+animal to efforts capable of repulsing or shunning the cause of this
+discomfort, and of forestalling a greater evil. The dread of death helps
+also to cause its avoidance: for it if were not so ugly and if the
+dissolution of continuity were not so painful, very often animals would
+take no precautions against perishing, or allowing the parts of their [414]
+body to perish, and the strongest would have difficulty in subsisting for a
+whole day.
+
+God has also given hunger and thirst to animals, to compel them to feed and
+maintain themselves by replacing that which is used up and which disappears
+imperceptibly. These appetites are of use also to prompt them to work, in
+order to procure a nourishment meet for their constitution, and which may
+avail to invigorate them. It was even found necessary by the Author of
+things that one animal very often should serve as food for another. This
+hardly renders the victim more unhappy, since death caused by diseases is
+generally just as painful as a violent death, if not more so; and animals
+subject to being preyed upon by others, having neither foresight nor
+anxiety for the future, have a life no less tranquil when they are not in
+danger. It is the same with inundations, earthquakes, thunderbolts and
+other disorders, which brute beasts do not fear, and which men have
+ordinarily no cause to fear, since there are few that suffer thereby.
+
+10. The Author of Nature has compensated for these evils and others, which
+happen only seldom, with a thousand advantages that are ordinary and
+constant. Hunger and thirst augment the pleasure experienced in the taking
+of nourishment. Moderate work is an agreeable exercise of the animal's
+powers; and sleep is also agreeable in an altogether opposite way,
+restoring the forces through repose. But one of the pleasures most intense
+is that which prompts animals to propagation. God, having taken care to
+ensure that the species should be immortal, since the individual cannot be
+so here on earth, also willed that animals should have a great tenderness
+for their little ones, even to the point of endangering themselves for
+their preservation. From pain and from sensual pleasure spring fear,
+cupidity and the other passions that are ordinarily serviceable, although
+it may accidentally happen that they sometimes turn towards ill: one must
+say as much of poisons, epidemic diseases and other hurtful things, namely
+that these are indispensable consequences of a well-conceived system. As
+for ignorance and errors, it must be taken into account that the most
+perfect creatures are doubtless ignorant of much, and that knowledge is
+wont to be proportionate to needs. Nevertheless it is necessary that one be
+exposed to hazards which cannot be foreseen, and accidents of such kinds
+are inevitable. One must often be mistaken in one's judgement, because it
+is not always permitted to suspend it long enough for exact           [415]
+consideration. These disadvantages are inseparable from the system of
+things: for things must very often resemble one another in a certain
+situation, the one being taken for the other. But the inevitable errors are
+not the most usual, nor the most pernicious. Those which cause us the most
+harm are wont to arise through our fault; and consequently one would be
+wrong to make natural evils a pretext for taking one's own life, since one
+finds that those who have done so have generally been prompted to such
+action by voluntary evils.
+
+11. After all, one finds that all these evils of which we have spoken come
+accidentally from good causes; and there is reason to infer concerning all
+we do not know, from all we do know, that one could not have done away with
+them without falling into greater troubles. For the better understanding of
+this the author counsels us to picture the world as a great building. There
+must be not only apartments, halls, galleries, gardens, grottoes, but also
+the kitchen, the cellar, the poultry-yard, stables, drainage. Thus it would
+not have been proper to make only suns in the world, or to make an earth
+all of gold and of diamonds, but not habitable. If man had been all eye or
+all ear, he would not have been fitted for feeding himself. If God had made
+him without passions, he would have made him stupid; and if he had wished
+to make man free from error he would have had to deprive him of senses, or
+give him powers of sensation through some other means than organs, that is
+to say, there would not have been any man. Our learned author remarks here
+upon an idea which histories both sacred and profane appear to inculcate,
+namely that wild beasts, poisonous plants and other natures that are
+injurious to us have been armed against us by sin. But as he argues here
+only in accordance with the principles of reason he sets aside what
+Revelation can teach. He believes, however, that Adam would have been
+exempted from natural evils (if he had been obedient) only by virtue of
+divine grace and of a covenant made with God, and that Moses expressly
+indicates only about seven effects of the first sin. These effects are:
+
+1. The revocation of the gracious gift of immortality.
+
+2. The sterility of the earth, which was no longer to be fertile of itself,
+save in evil or useless herbs.
+
+3. The rude toil one must exercise in order to gain sustenance.
+
+4. The subjection of the woman to the will of the husband.
+
+                                                                      [416]
+5. The pains of childbirth.
+
+6. The enmity between man and the serpent.
+
+7. The banishment of man from the place of delight wherein God had placed
+him.
+
+But our author thinks that many of our evils spring from the necessity of
+matter, especially since the withdrawal of grace. Moreover, it seems to him
+that after our banishment immortality would be only a burden to us, and
+that it is perhaps more for our good than to punish us that the tree of
+life has become inaccessible to us. On one point or another one might have
+something to say in objection, but the body of the discourse by our author
+on the origin of evils is full of good and sound reflexions, which I have
+judged it advisable to turn to advantage. Now I must pass on to the subject
+of our controversy, that is, the explanation of the nature of freedom.
+
+12. The learned author of this work on the origin of evil, proposing to
+explain the origin of moral evil in the fifth chapter, which makes up half
+of the whole book, considers that it is altogether different from that of
+physical evil, which lies in the inevitable imperfection of creatures. For,
+as we shall see presently, it appears to him that moral evil comes rather
+from that which he calls a perfection, which the creature has in common,
+according to him, with the Creator, that is to say, in the power of
+choosing without any motive and without any final or impelling cause. It is
+a very great paradox to assert that the greatest imperfection, namely sin,
+springs from perfection itself. But it is no less a paradox to present as a
+perfection the thing which is the least reasonable in the world, the
+advantage whereof would consist in being privileged against reason. And
+that, after all, rather than pointing out the source of the evil, would be
+to contend that it has none. For if the will makes its resolve without the
+existence of anything, either in the person who chooses or in the object
+which is chosen, to prompt it to the choice, there will be neither cause
+nor reason for this election; and as moral evil consists in the wrong
+choice, that is admitting that moral evil has no source at all. Thus in the
+rules of good metaphysics there would have to be no moral evil in Nature;
+and also for the same reason there would be no moral good either, and all
+morality would be destroyed. But we must listen to our gifted author, from
+whom the subtlety of an opinion maintained by famous philosophers among the
+Schoolmen, and the adornments that he has added thereto himself by his[417]
+wit and his eloquence, have hidden the great disadvantages contained
+therein. In setting forth the position reached in the controversy, he
+divides the writers into two parties. The one sort, he says, are content to
+say that the freedom of the will is exempt from outward constraint; and the
+other sort maintain that it is also exempt from inward necessity. But this
+exposition does not suffice, unless one distinguish the necessity that is
+absolute and contrary to morality from hypothetical necessity and moral
+necessity, as I have already explained in many places.
+
+13. The first section of this chapter is to indicate the nature of choice.
+The author sets forth in the first place the opinion of those who believe
+that the will is prompted by the judgement of the understanding, or by
+anterior inclinations of the desires, to resolve upon the course that it
+adopts. But he confuses these authors with those who assert that the will
+is prompted to its resolution by an absolute necessity, and who maintain
+that the person who wills has no power over his volitions: that is, he
+confuses a Thomist with a Spinozist. He makes use of the admissions and the
+odious declarations of Mr. Hobbes and his like, to lay them to the charge
+of those who are infinitely far removed from them, and who take great care
+to refute them. He lays these things to their charge because they believe,
+as Mr. Hobbes believes, like everyone else (save for some doctors who are
+enveloped in their own subtleties), that the will is moved by the
+representation of good and evil. Thence he imputes to them the opinion that
+there is therefore no such thing as contingency, and that all is connected
+by an absolute necessity. That is a very speedy manner of reasoning; yet he
+adds also, that properly speaking there will be no evil will, since if
+there were, all one could object to therein would be the evil which it can
+cause. That, he says, is different from the common notion, since the world
+censures the wicked not because they do harm, but because they do harm
+without necessity. He holds also that the wicked would be only unfortunate
+and by no means culpable; that there would be no difference between
+physical evil and moral evil, since man himself would not be the true cause
+of an action which he could not avoid; that evil-doers would not be either
+blamed or maltreated because they deserve it, but because that action may
+serve to turn people away from evil; again, for this reason only one would
+find fault with a rogue, but not with a sick man, that reproaches and [418]
+threats can correct the one, and cannot cure the other. And further,
+according to this doctrine, chastisements would have no object save the
+prevention of future evil, without which the mere consideration of the evil
+already done would not be sufficient for punishment. Likewise gratitude
+would have as its sole aim that of procuring a fresh benefit, without which
+the mere consideration of the past benefit would not furnish a sufficient
+reason. Finally the author thinks that if this doctrine, which derives the
+resolution of the will from the representation of good and evil, were true,
+one must despair of human felicity, since it would not be in our power, and
+would depend upon things which are outside us. Now as there is no ground
+for hoping that things from outside will order themselves and agree
+together in accordance with our wishes, there will always lack something to
+us, and there will always be something too much. All these conclusions
+hold, according to him, against those also who think that the will makes
+its resolve in accordance with the final judgement of the understanding, an
+opinion which, as he considers, strips the will of its right and renders
+the soul quite passive. This accusation is also directed against countless
+serious writers, of accepted authority, who are here placed in the same
+class with Mr. Hobbes and Spinoza, and with some other discredited authors,
+whose doctrine is considered odious and insupportable. As for me, I do not
+require the will always to follow the judgement of the understanding,
+because I distinguish this judgement from the motives that spring from
+insensible perceptions and inclinations. But I hold that the will always
+follows the most advantageous representation, whether distinct or confused,
+of the good or the evil resulting from reasons, passions and inclinations,
+although it may also find motives for suspending its judgement. But it is
+always upon motives that it acts.
+
+14. It will be necessary to answer these objections to my opinion before
+proceeding to establish that of our author. The misapprehension of my
+opponents originates in their confusing a consequence which is necessary
+absolutely, whose contrary implies contradiction, with a consequence which
+is founded only upon truths of fitness, and nevertheless has its effect. To
+put it otherwise, there is a confusion between what depends upon the
+principle of contradiction, which makes necessary and indispensable truths,
+and what depends upon the principle of the sufficient reason, which   [419]
+applies also to contingent truths. I have already elsewhere stated this
+proposition, which is one of the most important in philosophy, pointing out
+that there are two great principles, namely, _that of identicals or of
+contradiction_, which states that of two contradictory enunciations the one
+is true and the other false, and _that of the sufficient reason_, which
+states that there is no true enunciation whose reason could not be seen by
+one possessing all the knowledge necessary for its complete understanding.
+Both principles must hold not only in necessary but also in contingent
+truths; and it is even necessary that that which has no sufficient reason
+should not exist. For one may say in a sense that these two principles are
+contained in the definition of the true and the false. Nevertheless, when
+in making the analysis of the truth submitted one sees it depending upon
+truths whose contrary implies contradiction, one may say that it is
+absolutely necessary. But when, while pressing the analysis to the furthest
+extent, one can never attain to such elements of the given truth, one must
+say that it is contingent, and that it originates from a prevailing reason
+which inclines without necessitating. Once that is granted, it is seen how
+we can say with sundry famous philosophers and theologians, that the
+thinking substance is prompted to its resolution by the prevailing
+representation of good or of evil, and this certainly and infallibly, but
+not necessarily, that is, by reasons which incline it without necessitating
+it. That is why contingent futurities, foreseen both in themselves and
+through their reasons, remain contingent. God was led infallibly by his
+wisdom and by his goodness to create the world through his power, and to
+give it the best possible form; but he was not led thereto of necessity,
+and the whole took place without any diminution of his perfect and supreme
+wisdom. And I do not know if it would be easy, apart from the reflexions we
+have just entertained, to untie the Gordian knot of contingency and
+freedom.
+
+15. This explanation dismisses all the objections of our gifted opponent.
+In the first place, it is seen that contingency exists together with
+freedom. Secondly, evil wills are evil not only because they do harm, but
+also because they are a source of harmful things, or of physical evils, a
+wicked spirit being, in the sphere of its activity, what the evil principle
+of the Manichaeans would be in the universe. Moreover, the author has
+observed (ch. 4, sect. 4, Sec. 8) that divine wisdom has usually forbidden
+actions which would cause discomforts, that is to say, physical evils.[420]
+It is agreed that he who causes evil by necessity is not culpable. But
+there is neither legislator nor lawyer who by this necessity means the
+force of the considerations of good or evil, real or apparent, that have
+prompted man to do ill: else anyone stealing a great sum of money or
+killing a powerful man in order to attain to high office would be less
+deserving of punishment than one who should steal a few halfpence for a mug
+of beer or wantonly kill his neighbour's dog, since these latter were
+tempted less. But it is quite the opposite in the administration of justice
+which is authorized in the world: for the greater is the temptation to sin,
+the more does it need to be repressed by the fear of a great chastisement.
+Besides, the greater the calculation evident in the design of an evil-doer,
+the more will it be found that the wickedness has been deliberate, and the
+more readily will one decide that it is great and deserving of punishment.
+Thus a too artful fraud causes the aggravating crime called _stellionate_,
+and a cheat becomes a forger when he has the cunning to sap the very
+foundations of our security in written documents. But one will have greater
+indulgence for a great passion, because it is nearer to madness. The Romans
+punished with the utmost severity the priests of the God Apis, when these
+had prostituted the chastity of a noble lady to a knight who loved her to
+distraction, making him pass as their god; while it was found enough to
+send the lover into exile. But if someone had done evil deeds without
+apparent reason and without appearance of passion the judge would be
+tempted to take him for a madman, especially if it proved that he was given
+to committing such extravagances often: this might tend towards reduction
+of the penalty, rather than supplying the true grounds of wickedness and
+punishment. So far removed are the principles of our opponents from the
+practice of the tribunals and from the general opinion of men.
+
+16. Thirdly, the distinction between physical evil and moral evil will
+still remain, although there be this in common between them, that they have
+their reasons and causes. And why manufacture new difficulties for oneself
+concerning the origin of moral evil, since the principle followed in the
+solution of those which natural evils have raised suffices also to account
+for voluntary evils? That is to say, it suffices to show that one could not
+have prevented men from being prone to errors, without changing the   [421]
+constitution of the best of systems or without employing miracles at every
+turn. It is true that sin makes up a large portion of human wretchedness,
+and even the largest; but that does not prevent one from being able to say
+that men are wicked and deserving of punishment: else one must needs say
+that the actual sins of the non-regenerate are excusable, because they
+spring from the first cause of our wretchedness, which is original sin.
+Fourthly, to say that the soul becomes passive and that man is not the true
+cause of sin, if he is prompted to his voluntary actions by their objects,
+as our author asserts in many passages, and particularly ch. 5, sect. 1,
+sub-sect. 3, Sec. 18, is to create for oneself new senses for terms. When the
+ancients spoke of that which is [Greek: eph' hemin], or when we speak of
+that which depends upon us, of spontaneity, of the inward principle of our
+actions, we do not exclude the representation of external things; for these
+representations are in our souls, they are a portion of the modifications
+of this active principle which is within us. No agent is capable of acting
+without being _predisposed_ to what the action demands; and the reasons or
+inclinations derived from good or evil are the dispositions that enable the
+soul to decide between various courses. One will have it that the will is
+alone active and supreme, and one is wont to imagine it to be like a queen
+seated on her throne, whose minister of state is the understanding, while
+the passions are her courtiers or favourite ladies, who by their influence
+often prevail over the counsel of her ministers. One will have it that the
+understanding speaks only at this queen's order; that she can vacillate
+between the arguments of the minister and the suggestions of the
+favourites, even rejecting both, making them keep silence or speak, and
+giving them audience or not as seems good to her. But it is a
+personification or mythology somewhat ill-conceived. If the will is to
+judge, or take cognizance of the reasons and inclinations which the
+understanding or the senses offer it, it will need another understanding in
+itself, to understand what it is offered. The truth is that the soul, or
+the thinking substance, understands the reasons and feels the inclinations,
+and decides according to the predominance of the representations modifying
+its active force, in order to shape the action. I have no need here to
+apply my system of Pre-established Harmony, which shows our independence to
+the best advantage and frees us from the physical influence of objects. For
+what I have just said is sufficient to answer the objection. Our      [422]
+author, even though he admits with people in general this physical
+influence of objects upon us, observes nevertheless with much perspicacity
+that the body or the objects of the senses do not even give us our ideas,
+much less the active force of our soul, and that they serve only to draw
+out that which is within us. This is much in the spirit of M. Descartes'
+belief that the soul, not being able to give force to the body, gives it at
+least some direction. It is a mean between one side and the other, between
+physical influence and Pre-established Harmony.
+
+17. Fifthly, the objection is made that, according to my opinion, sin would
+neither be censured nor punished because of its deserts, but because the
+censure and the chastisement serve to prevent it another time; whereas men
+demand something more, namely, satisfaction for the crime, even though it
+should serve neither for amendment nor for example. So do men with reason
+demand that true gratitude should come from a true recognition of the past
+benefit, and not from the interested aim of extorting a fresh benefit. This
+objection contains noble and sound considerations, but it does not strike
+at me. I require a man to be virtuous, grateful, just, not only from the
+motive of interest, of hope or of fear, but also of the pleasure that he
+should find in good actions: else one has not yet reached the degree of
+virtue that one must endeavour to attain. That is what one means by saying
+that justice and virtue must be loved for their own sake; and it is also
+what I explained in justifying 'disinterested love', shortly before the
+opening of the controversy which caused so much stir. Likewise I consider
+that wickedness is all the greater when its practice becomes a pleasure, as
+when a highwayman, after having killed men because they resist, or because
+he fears their vengeance, finally grows cruel and takes pleasure in killing
+them, and even in making them suffer beforehand. Such a degree of
+wickedness is taken to be diabolical, even though the man affected with it
+finds in this execrable indulgence a stronger reason for his homicides than
+he had when he killed simply under the influence of hope or of fear. I have
+also observed in answering the difficulties of M. Bayle that, according to
+the celebrated Conringius, justice which punishes by means of _medicinal_
+penalties, so to speak, that is, in order to correct the criminal or at
+least to provide an example for others, might exist in the opinion of those
+who do away with the freedom that is exempt from necessity. True      [423]
+retributive justice, on the other hand, going beyond the medicinal, assumes
+something more, namely, intelligence and freedom in him who sins, because
+the harmony of things demands a satisfaction, or evil in the form of
+suffering, to make the mind feel its error after the voluntary active evil
+whereto it has consented. Mr. Hobbes also, who does away with freedom, has
+rejected retributive justice, as do the Socinians, drawing on themselves
+the condemnation of our theologians; although the writers of the Socinian
+party are wont to exaggerate the idea of freedom.
+
+18. Sixthly, the objection is finally made that men cannot hope for
+felicity if the will can only be actuated by the representation of good and
+evil. But this objection seems to me completely null and void, and I think
+it would be hard to guess how any tolerable interpretation was ever put
+upon it. Moreover, the line of reasoning adopted to prove it is of a most
+astounding nature: it is that our felicity depends upon external things, if
+it is true that it depends upon the representation of good or evil. It is
+therefore not in our own power, so it is said, for we have no ground for
+hoping that outward things will arrange themselves for our pleasure. This
+argument is halting from every aspect. _There is no force in the inference:
+one might grant the conclusion: the argument may be retorted upon the
+author_. Let us begin with the retort, which is easy. For are men any
+happier or more independent of the accidents of fortune upon this argument,
+or because they are credited with the advantage of choosing without reason?
+Have they less bodily suffering? Have they less tendency toward true or
+apparent goods, less fear of true or imaginary evils? Are they any less
+enslaved by sensual pleasure, by ambition, by avarice? less apprehensive?
+less envious? Yes, our gifted author will say; I will prove it by a method
+of counting or assessment. I would rather he had proved it by experience;
+but let us see this proof by counting. Suppose that by my choice, which
+enables me to give goodness-for-me to that which I choose, I give to the
+object chosen six degrees of goodness, when previously there were two
+degrees of evil in my condition; I shall become happy all at once, and with
+perfect ease, for I should have four degrees surplus, or net good.
+Doubtless that is all very well; but unfortunately it is impossible. For
+what possibility is there of giving these six degrees of goodness to the
+object? To that end we must needs have the power to change our taste, or
+the things, as we please. That would be almost as if I could say to   [424]
+lead, Thou shalt be gold, and make it so; to the pebble, Thou shalt be
+diamond; or at the least, Thou shalt look like it. Or it would be like the
+common explanation of the Mosaical passage which seems to say that the
+desert manna assumed any taste the Israelites desired to give to it. They
+only had to say to their homerful, Thou shalt be a capon, thou shalt be a
+partridge. But if I am free to give these six degrees of goodness to the
+object, am I not permitted to give it more goodness? I think that I am. But
+if that is so, why shall we not give to the object all the goodness
+conceivable? Why shall we not even go as far as twenty-four carats of
+goodness? By this means behold us completely happy, despite the accidents
+of fortune; it may blow, hail or snow, and we shall not mind: by means of
+this splendid secret we shall be always shielded against fortuitous events.
+The author agrees (in this first section of the fifth chapter, sub-sect. 3,
+Sec. 12) that this power overcomes all the natural appetites and cannot be
+overcome by any of them; and he regards it (Sec.Sec. 20, 21, 22) as the soundest
+foundation for happiness. Indeed, since there is nothing capable of
+limiting a power so indeterminate as that of choosing without any reason,
+and of giving goodness to the object through the choice, either this
+goodness must exceed infinitely that which the natural appetites seek in
+objects, these appetites and objects being limited while this power is
+independent or at the least this goodness, given by the will to the chosen
+object, must be arbitrary and of such a kind as the will desires. For
+whence would one derive the reason for limits if the object is possible, if
+it is within reach of him who wills, and if the will can give it the
+goodness it desires to give, independently of reality and of appearances?
+It seems to me that may suffice to overthrow a hypothesis so precarious,
+which contains something of a fairy-tale kind, _optantis ista sunt, non
+invenientis_. It therefore remains only too true that this handsome fiction
+cannot render us more immune from evils. And we shall see presently that
+when men place themselves above certain desires or certain aversions they
+do so through other desires, which always have their foundation in the
+representation of good and evil. I said also 'that one might grant the
+conclusion of the argument', which states that our happiness does not
+depend absolutely upon ourselves, at least in the present state of human
+life: for who would question the fact that we are liable to meet a thousand
+accidents which human prudence cannot evade? How, for example, can I  [425]
+avoid being swallowed up, together with a town where I take up my abode, by
+an earthquake, if such is the order of things? But finally I can also deny
+the inference in the argument, which states that if the will is only
+actuated by the representation of good and evil our happiness does not
+depend upon ourselves. The inference would be valid if there were no God,
+if everything were ruled by brute causes; but God's ordinance is that for
+the attainment of happiness it suffices that one be virtuous. Thus, if the
+soul follows reason and the orders that God has given it, it is assured of
+its happiness, even though one may not find a sufficiency thereof in this
+life.
+
+19. Having thus endeavoured to point out the disadvantages of my
+hypothesis, our gifted author sets forth the advantages of his own. He
+believes that it alone is capable of saving our freedom, that all our
+felicity rests therein, that it increases our goods and lessens our evils,
+and that an agent possessing this power is so much the more complete. These
+advantages have almost all been already disproved. We have shown that for
+the securing of our freedom it is enough that the representations of goods
+and of evils, and other inward or outward dispositions, should incline us
+without constraining us. Moreover one does not see how pure indifference
+can contribute to felicity; on the contrary, the more indifferent one is,
+the more insensitive and the less capable of enjoying what is good will one
+prove to be. Besides the hypothesis proves too much. For if an indifferent
+power could give itself the consciousness of good it could also give itself
+the most perfect happiness, as has been already shown. And it is manifest
+that there is nothing which would set limits to that power, since limits
+would withdraw it from its pure indifference, whence, so our author
+alleges, it only emerges of itself, or rather wherein it has never been.
+Finally one does not see wherein the perfection of pure indifference lies:
+on the contrary, there is nothing more imperfect; it would render knowledge
+and goodness futile, and would reduce everything to chance, with no rules,
+and no measures that could be taken. There are, however, still some
+advantages adduced by our author which have not been discussed. He
+considers then that by this power alone are we the true cause to which our
+actions can be imputed, since otherwise we should be under the compulsion
+of external objects; likewise that by this power alone can one ascribe to
+oneself the merit of one's own felicity, and feel pleased with        [426]
+oneself. But the exact opposite is the case: for when one happens upon the
+action through an absolutely indifferent movement, and not as a result of
+one's good or bad qualities, is it not just as though one were to happen
+upon it blindly by chance or hazard? Why then should one boast of a good
+action, or why should one be censured for an evil one, if the thanks or
+blame redounds to fortune or hazard? I think that one is more worthy of
+praise when one owes the action to one's good qualities, and the more
+culpable in proportion as one has been impelled to it by one's evil
+qualities. To attempt to assess actions without weighing the qualities
+whence they spring is to talk at random and to put an imaginary indefinable
+something in the place of causes. Thus, if this chance or this indefinable
+something were the cause of our actions, to the exclusion of our natural or
+acquired qualities, of our inclinations, of our habits, it would not be
+possible to set one's hopes upon anything depending upon the resolve of
+others, since it would not be possible to fix something indefinite, or to
+conjecture into what roadstead the uncertain weather of an extravagant
+indifference will drive the vessel of the will.
+
+20. But setting aside advantages and disadvantages, let us see how our
+learned author will justify the hypothesis from which he promises us so
+much good. He imagines that it is only God and the free creatures who are
+active in the true sense, and that in order to be active one must be
+determined by oneself only. Now that which is determined by itself must not
+be determined by objects, and consequently the free substance, in so far as
+it is free, must be indifferent with regard to objects, and emerge from
+this indifference only by its own choice, which shall render the object
+pleasing to it. But almost all the stages of this argument have their
+stumbling-blocks. Not only the free creatures, but also all the other
+substances and natures composed of substances, are active. Beasts are not
+free, and yet all the same they have active souls, unless one assume, with
+the Cartesians, that they are mere machines. Moreover, it is not necessary
+that in order to be active one should be determined only by oneself, since
+a thing may receive direction without receiving force. So it is that the
+horse is controlled by the rider and the vessel is steered by the helm; and
+M. Descartes' belief was that our body, having force in itself, receives
+only some direction from the soul. Thus an active thing may receive from
+outside some determination or direction, capable of changing that     [427]
+direction which it would take of itself. Finally, even though an active
+substance is determined only by itself, it does not follow that it is not
+moved by objects: for it is the representation of the object within it
+which contributes towards the determination. Now the representation does
+not come from without, and consequently there is complete spontaneity.
+Objects do not act upon intelligent substances as efficient and physical
+causes, but as final and moral causes. When God acts in accordance with his
+wisdom, he is guided by the ideas of the possibles which are his objects,
+but which have no reality outside him before their actual creation. Thus
+this kind of spiritual and moral motion is not contrary to the activity of
+the substance, nor to the spontaneity of its action. Finally, even though
+free power were not determined by the objects, it can never be indifferent
+to the action when it is on the point of acting, since the action must have
+its origin in a disposition to act: otherwise one will do anything from
+anything, _quidvis ex quovis_, and there will be nothing too absurd for us
+to imagine. But this disposition will have already broken the charm of mere
+indifference, and if the soul gives itself this disposition there must
+needs be another predisposition for this act of giving it. Consequently,
+however far back one may go, one will never meet with a mere indifference
+in the soul towards the actions which it is to perform. It is true that
+these dispositions incline it without constraining it. They relate usually
+to the objects; but there are some, notwithstanding, which arise variously
+_a subjecto_ or from the soul itself, and which bring it about that one
+object is more acceptable than the other, or that the same is more
+acceptable at one time than at another.
+
+21. Our author continually assures us that his hypothesis is true, and he
+undertakes to show that this indifferent power is indeed found in God, and
+even that it must be attributed to him of necessity. For (he says) nothing
+is to God either good or bad in creatures. He has no natural appetite, to
+be satisfied by the enjoyment of anything outside him. He is therefore
+absolutely indifferent to all external things, since by them he can neither
+be helped nor hindered; and he must determine himself and create as it were
+an appetite in making his choice. And having once chosen, he will wish to
+abide by his choice, just as if he had been prompted thereto by a natural
+inclination. Thus will the divine will be the cause of goodness in beings.
+That is to say, there will be goodness in the objects, not by their   [428]
+nature, but by the will of God: whereas if that will be excluded neither
+good nor evil can exist in things. It is difficult to imagine how writers
+of merit could have been misled by so strange an opinion, for the reason
+which appears to be advanced here has not the slightest force. It seems to
+me as though an attempt is being made to justify this opinion by the
+consideration that all creatures have their whole being from God, so that
+they cannot act upon him or determine him. But this is clearly an instance
+of self-deception. When we say that an intelligent substance is actuated by
+the goodness of its object, we do not assert that this object is
+necessarily a being existing outside the substance, and it is enough for us
+that it be conceivable: for its representation acts in the substance, or
+rather the substance acts upon itself, in so far as it is disposed and
+influenced by this representation. With God, it is plain that his
+understanding contains the ideas of all possible things, and that is how
+everything is in him in a transcendent manner. These ideas represent to him
+the good and evil, the perfection and imperfection, the order and disorder,
+the congruity and incongruity of possibles; and his superabundant goodness
+makes him choose the most advantageous. God therefore determines himself by
+himself; his will acts by virtue of his goodness, but it is particularized
+and directed in action by understanding filled with wisdom. And since his
+understanding is perfect, since his thoughts are always clear, his
+inclinations always good, he never fails to do the best; whereas we may be
+deceived by the mere semblances of truth and goodness. But how is it
+possible for it to be said that there is no good or evil in the ideas
+before the operation of God's will? Does the will of God form the ideas
+which are in his understanding? I dare not ascribe to our learned author so
+strange a sentiment, which would confuse understanding and will, and would
+subvert the current use of our notions. Now if ideas are independent of
+will, the perfection or imperfection which is represented in them will be
+independent also. Indeed, is it by the will of God, for example, or is it
+not rather by the nature of numbers, that certain numbers allow more than
+others of various exact divisions? that some are more fitted than others
+for forming battalions, composing polygons and other regular figures? that
+the number six has the advantage of being the least of all the numbers that
+are called perfect? that in a plane six equal circles may touch a seventh?
+that of all equal bodies, the sphere has the least surface? that      [429]
+certain lines are incommensurable, and consequently ill-adapted for
+harmony? Do we not see that all these advantages or disadvantages spring
+from the idea of the thing, and that the contrary would imply
+contradiction? Can it be thought that the pain and discomfort of sentient
+creatures, and above all the happiness and unhappiness of intelligent
+substances, are a matter of indifference to God? And what shall be said of
+his justice? Is it also something arbitrary, and would he have acted wisely
+and justly if he had resolved to condemn the innocent? I know that there
+have been writers so ill-advised as to maintain an opinion so dangerous and
+so liable to overthrow religion. But I am assured that our illustrious
+author is far from holding it. Nevertheless, it seems as though this
+hypothesis tends in that direction, if there is nothing in objects save
+what is indifferent to the divine will before its choice. It is true that
+God has need of nothing; but the author has himself shown clearly that
+God's goodness, and not his need, prompted him to produce creatures. There
+was therefore in him a reason anterior to the resolution; and, as I have
+said so many times, it was neither by chance nor without cause, nor even by
+necessity, that God created this world, but rather as a result of his
+inclination, which always prompts him to the best. Thus it is surprising
+that our author should assert here (ch. 5, sect. 1, sub-sect. 4, Sec. 5) that
+there is no reason which could have induced God, absolutely perfect and
+happy in himself, to create anything outside him, although, according to
+the author's previous declarations (ch. 1, sect. 3, Sec.Sec. 8, 9), God acts for
+an end, and his aim is to communicate his goodness. It was therefore not
+altogether a matter of indifference to him whether he should create or not
+create, and creation is notwithstanding a free act. Nor was it a matter of
+indifference to him either, whether he should create one world rather than
+another; a perpetual chaos, or a completely ordered system. Thus the
+qualities of objects, included in their ideas, formed the reason for God's
+choice.
+
+22. Our author, having already spoken so admirably about the beauty and
+fittingness of the works of God, has tried to search out phrases that would
+reconcile them with his hypothesis, which appears to deprive God of all
+consideration for the good or the advantage of creatures. The indifference
+of God prevails (he says) only in his first elections, but as soon as God
+has chosen something he has virtually chosen, at the same time, all   [430]
+that which is of necessity connected therewith. There were innumerable
+possible men equally perfect: the election of some from among them is
+purely arbitrary (in the judgement of our author). But God, once having
+chosen them, could not have willed in them anything contrary to human
+nature. Up to this point the author's words are consistent with his
+hypothesis; but those that follow go further. He advances the proposition
+that when God resolved to produce certain creatures he resolved at the same
+time, by virtue of his infinite goodness, to give them every possible
+advantage. Nothing, indeed, could be so reasonable, but also nothing could
+be so contrary to the hypothesis he has put forward, and he does right to
+overthrow it, rather than prolong the existence of anything so charged with
+incongruities incompatible with the goodness and wisdom of God. Here is the
+way to see plainly that this hypothesis cannot harmonize with what has just
+been said. The first question will be: Will God create something or not,
+and wherefore? The author has answered that he will create something in
+order to communicate his goodness. It is therefore no matter of
+indifference to him whether he shall create or not. Next the question is
+asked: Will God create such and such a thing, and wherefore? One must needs
+answer (to speak consistently) that the same goodness makes him choose the
+best, and indeed the author falls back on that subsequently. But, following
+his own hypothesis, he answers that God will create such a thing, but that
+there is no _wherefore_, because God is absolutely indifferent towards
+creatures, who have their goodness only from his choice. It is true that
+our author varies somewhat on this point, for he says here (ch. 5, sect. 5,
+sub-sect. 4, Sec. 12) that God is indifferent to the choice between men of
+equal perfection, or between equally perfect kinds of rational creatures.
+Thus, according to this form of expression, he would choose rather the more
+perfect kind: and as kinds that are of equal perfection harmonize more or
+less with others, God will choose those that agree best together; there
+will therefore be no pure and absolute indifference, and the author thus
+comes back to my principles. But let us speak, as he speaks, in accordance
+with his hypothesis, and let us assume with him that God chooses certain
+creatures even though he be absolutely indifferent towards them. He will
+then just as soon choose creatures that are irregular, ill-shapen,
+mischievous, unhappy, chaos everlasting, monsters everywhere,         [431]
+scoundrels as sole inhabitants of the earth, devils filling the whole
+universe, all this rather than excellent systems, shapely forms, upright
+persons, good angels! No, the author will say, God, when once he had
+resolved to create men, resolved at the same time to give them all the
+advantages possible in the world, and it is the same with regard to
+creatures of other kinds. I answer, that if this advantage were connected
+of necessity with their nature, the author would be speaking in accordance
+with his hypothesis. That not being so, however, he must admit that God's
+resolve to give every possible advantage to men arises from a new election
+independent of that one which prompted God to make men. But whence comes
+this new election? Does it also come from mere indifference? If such is the
+case, nothing prompts God to seek the good of men, and if he sometimes
+comes to do it, it will be merely by accident. But the author maintains
+that God was prompted to the choice by his goodness; therefore the good and
+ill of creatures is no matter of indifference to him, and there are in him
+primary choices to which the goodness of the object prompts him. He chooses
+not only to create men, but also to create men as happy as it is possible
+to be in this system. After that not the least vestige of mere indifference
+will be left, for we can reason concerning the entire world just as we have
+reasoned concerning the human race. God resolved to create a world, but he
+was bound by his goodness at the same time to make choice of such a world
+as should contain the greatest possible amount of order, regularity,
+virtue, happiness. For I can see no excuse for saying that whereas God was
+prompted by his goodness to make the men he has resolved to create as
+perfect as is possible within this system, he had not the same good
+intention towards the whole universe. There we have come back again to the
+goodness of the objects; and pure indifference, where God would act without
+cause, is altogether destroyed by the very procedure of our gifted author,
+with whom the force of truth, once the heart of the matter was reached,
+prevailed over a speculative hypothesis, which cannot admit of any
+application to the reality of things.
+
+23. Since, therefore, nothing is altogether indifferent to God, who knows
+all degrees, all effects, all relations of things, and who penetrates at
+one and the same time all their possible connexions, let us see whether at
+least the ignorance and insensibility of man can make him absolutely
+indifferent in his choice. The author regales us with this pure       [432]
+indifference as with a handsome present. Here are the proofs of it which he
+gives: (1) We feel it within us. (2) We have experience within ourselves of
+its marks and its properties. (3) We can show that other causes which might
+determine our will are insufficient. As for the first point, he asserts
+that in feeling freedom within us we feel within us at the same time pure
+indifference. But I do not agree that we feel such indifference, or that
+this alleged feeling follows upon that of freedom. We feel usually within
+us something which inclines us to our choice. At times it happens, however,
+that we cannot account for all our dispositions. If we give our mind to the
+question, we shall recognize that the constitution of our body and of
+bodies in our environment, the present or previous temper of our soul,
+together with countless small things included under these comprehensive
+headings, may contribute towards our greater or lesser predilection for
+certain objects, and the variation of our opinions from one time to
+another. At the same time we shall recognize that none would attribute this
+to mere indifference, or to some indefinable force of the soul which has
+the same effect upon objects as colours are said to have upon the
+chameleon. Thus the author has no cause here to appeal to the judgement of
+the people: he does so, saying that in many things the people reason better
+than the philosophers. It is true that certain philosophers have been
+misled by chimeras, and it would seem that mere indifference is numbered
+among chimerical notions. But when someone maintains that a thing does not
+exist because the common herd does not perceive it, here the populace
+cannot be regarded as a good judge, being, as it is, only guided by the
+senses. Many people think that air is nothing when it is not stirred by the
+wind. The majority do not know of imperceptible bodies, the fluid which
+causes weight or elasticity, magnetic matter, to say nothing of atoms and
+other indivisible substances. Do we say then that these things are not
+because the common herd does not know of them? If so, we shall be able to
+say also that the soul acts sometimes without any disposition or
+inclination contributing towards the production of its act, because there
+are many dispositions and inclinations which are not sufficiently perceived
+by the common herd, for lack of attention and thought. Secondly, as to the
+marks of the power in question, I have already refuted the claim advanced
+for it, that it possesses the advantage of making one active, the real
+cause of one's action, and subject to responsibility and morality:    [433]
+these are not genuine marks of its existence. Here is one the author
+adduces, which is not genuine either, namely, that we have within us a
+power of resisting natural appetites, that is to say of resisting not only
+the senses, but also the reason. But I have already stated this fact: one
+resists natural appetites through other natural appetites. One sometimes
+endures inconveniences, and is happy to do so; but that is on account of
+some hope or of some satisfaction which is combined with the ill and
+exceeds it: either one anticipates good from it, or one finds good in it.
+The author asserts that it is through that power to transform appearances
+which he has introduced on the scene, that we render agreeable what at
+first displeased us. But who cannot see that the true reason is, that
+application and attention to the object and custom change our disposition
+and consequently our natural appetites? Once we become used to a rather
+high degree of cold or heat, it no longer incommodes us as it formerly did,
+and yet no one would ascribe this effect to our power of choice. Time is
+needed, for instance, to bring about that hardening, or rather that
+callosity, which enables the hands of certain workmen to resist a degree of
+heat that would burn our hands. The populace, whom the author invokes,
+guess correctly the cause of this effect, although they sometimes apply it
+in a laughable manner. Two serving-maids being close to the fire in the
+kitchen, one who has burnt herself says to the other: Oh, my dear, who will
+be able to endure the fire of purgatory? The other answers: Don't be
+absurd, my good woman, one grows used to everything.
+
+24. But (the author will say) this wonderful power which causes us to be
+indifferent to everything, or inclined towards everything, simply at our
+own free will, prevails over reason itself. And this is his third proof,
+namely, that one cannot sufficiently explain our actions without having
+recourse to this power. One sees numbers of people despising the entreaties
+of their friends, the counsels of their neighbours, the reproaches of their
+conscience, discomforts, tortures, death, the wrath of God, hell itself,
+for the sake of running after follies which have no claim to be good or
+tolerable, save as being freely chosen by such people. All is well in this
+argument, with the exception of the last words only. For when one takes an
+actual instance one will find that there were reasons or causes which led
+the man to his choice, and that there are very strong bonds to fasten [434]
+him thereto. A love-affair, for example, will never have arisen from mere
+indifference: inclination or passion will have played its part; but habit
+and stubbornness will cause certain natures to face ruin rather than
+separation from the beloved. Here is another example cited by the author:
+an atheist, a man like Lucilio Vanini (that is what many people call him,
+whereas he himself adopts the magnificent name of Giulio Cesare Vanini in
+his works), will suffer a preposterous martyrdom for his chimera rather
+than renounce his impiety. The author does not name Vanini; and the truth
+is that this man repudiated his wrong opinions, until he was convicted of
+having published atheistical dogmas and acted as an apostle of atheism.
+When he was asked whether there was a God, he plucked some grass, saying:
+
+  _Et levis est cespes qui probet esse Deum._
+
+But since the Attorney General to the Parliament of Toulouse desired to
+cause annoyance to the First President (so it is said), to whom Vanini was
+granted considerable access, teaching his children philosophy, if indeed he
+was not altogether in the service of that magistrate, the inquisition was
+carried through rigorously. Vanini, seeing that there was no chance of
+pardon, declared himself, when at the point of death, for what he was, an
+atheist; and there was nothing very extraordinary in that. But supposing
+there were an atheist who gave himself up for torture, vanity might be in
+his case a strong enough motive, as in that of the Gymnosophist, Calanus,
+and of the Sophist who, according to Lucian's account, was burnt to death
+of his own will. But the author thinks that that very vanity, that
+stubbornness, those other wild intentions of persons who otherwise seem to
+have quite good sense, cannot be explained by the appetites that arise from
+the representation of good and evil, and that they compel us to have
+recourse to that transcendent power which transforms good into evil, and
+evil into good, and the indifferent into good or into evil. But we do not
+need to go so far, and the causes of our errors are only too visible.
+Indeed, we can make these transformations, but it is not as with the
+Fairies, by a mere act of this magic power, but by obscuring and
+suppressing in one's mind the representations of good or bad qualities
+which are naturally attached to certain objects, and by contemplating only
+such representations as conform to our taste or our prejudices; or    [435]
+again, because one attaches to the objects, by dint of thinking of them,
+certain qualities which are connected with them only accidentally or
+through our habitual contemplation of them. For example, all my life long I
+detest a certain kind of good food, because in my childhood I found in it
+something distasteful, which made a strong impression upon me. On the other
+hand, a certain natural defect will be pleasing to me, because it will
+revive within me to some extent the thought of a person I used to esteem or
+love. A young man will have been delighted by the applause which has been
+showered upon him after some successful public action; the impression of
+this great pleasure will have made him remarkably sensitive to reputation;
+he will think day and night of nothing save what nourishes this passion,
+and that will cause him to scorn death itself in order to attain his end.
+For although he may know very well that he will not feel what is said of
+him after his death, the representation he makes of it for himself
+beforehand creates a strong impression on his mind. And there are always
+motives of the same kind in actions which appear most useless and absurd to
+those who do not enter into these motives. In a word, a strong or
+oft-repeated impression may alter considerably our organs, our imagination,
+our memory, and even our reasoning. It happens that a man, by dint of
+having often related something untrue, which he has perhaps invented,
+finally comes to believe in it himself. And as one often represents to
+oneself something pleasing, one makes it easy to imagine, and one thinks it
+also easy to put into effect, whence it comes that one persuades oneself
+easily of what one wishes.
+
+  _Et qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt._
+
+25. Errors are therefore, absolutely speaking, never voluntary, although
+the will very often contributes towards them indirectly, owing to the
+pleasure one takes in giving oneself up to certain thoughts, or owing to
+the aversion one feels for others. Beautiful print in a book will help
+towards making it persuasive to the reader. The air and manner of a speaker
+will win the audience for him. One will be inclined to despise doctrines
+coming from a man one despises or hates, or from another who resembles him
+in some point that strikes us. I have already said why one is readily
+disposed to believe what is advantageous or agreeable, and I have known
+people who at first had changed their religion for worldly            [436]
+considerations, but who have been persuaded (and well persuaded) afterwards
+that they had taken the right course. One sees also that stubbornness is
+not simply wrong choice persevering, but also a disposition to persevere
+therein, which is due to some good supposed to be inherent in the choice,
+or some evil imagined as arising from a change. The first choice has
+perchance been made in mere levity, but the intention to abide by it
+springs from certain stronger reasons or impressions. There are even some
+writers on ethics who lay it down that one ought to abide by one's choice
+so as not to be inconstant or appear so. Yet perseverance is wrong when one
+despises the warnings of reason, especially when the subject is important
+enough to be examined carefully; but when the thought of change is
+unpleasant, one readily averts one's attention from it, and that is the way
+which most frequently leads one to stubbornness. The author wished to
+connect stubbornness with his so-called pure indifference. He might then
+have taken into account that to make us cling to a choice there would be
+need of more than the mere choice itself or a pure indifference, especially
+if this choice has been made lightly, and all the more lightly in
+proportion to the indifference shown. In such a case we shall be readily
+inclined to reverse the choice, unless vanity, habit, interest or some
+other motive makes us persevere therein. It must not be supposed either
+that vengeance pleases without cause. Persons of intense feeling ponder
+upon it day and night, and it is hard for them to efface the impression of
+the wrong or the affront they have sustained. They picture for themselves a
+very great pleasure in being freed from the thought of scorn which comes
+upon them every moment, and which causes some to find vengeance sweeter
+than life itself.
+
+  _Quis vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa._
+
+The author would wish to persuade us that usually, when our desire or our
+aversion is for some object which does not sufficiently deserve it, we have
+given to it the surplus of good or evil which has affected us, through the
+alleged power of choice which makes things appear good or evil as we wish.
+One has had two degrees of natural evil, one gives oneself six degrees of
+artificial good through the power that can choose without cause. Thus one
+will have four degrees of net good (ch. 5, sect. 2, Sec. 7). If that could be
+carried out it would take us far, as I have already said here. The    [437]
+author even thinks that ambition, avarice, the gambling mania and other
+frivolous passions derive all their force from this power (ch. 5, sect. 5,
+sub-sect. 6). But there are besides so many false appearances in things, so
+many imaginations capable of enlarging or diminishing objects, so many
+unjustified connexions in our arguments, that there is no need of this
+little Fairy, that is, of this inward power operating as it were by
+enchantment, to whom the author attributes all these disorders. Indeed, I
+have already said repeatedly that when we resolve upon some course contrary
+to acknowledged reason, we are prompted to it by another reason stronger to
+outward appearance, such as, for instance, is the pleasure of appearing
+independent and of performing an extraordinary action. There was in days
+past at the Court of Osnabrueck a tutor to the pages, who, like a second
+Mucius Scaevola, held out his arm into the flame and looked like getting a
+gangrene, in order to show that the strength of his mind was greater than a
+very acute pain. Few people will follow his example; and I do not even know
+if a writer could easily be found who, having once affirmed the existence
+of a power capable of choosing without cause, or even contrary to reason,
+would be willing to prove his case by his own example, in renouncing some
+good benefice or some high office, simply in order to display this
+superiority of will over reason. But I am sure at the least that an
+intelligent man would not do so. He would be presently aware that someone
+would nullify his sacrifice by pointing out to him that he had simply
+imitated Heliodorus, Bishop of Larissa. That man (so it is said) held his
+book on Theagenes and Chariclea dearer than his bishopric; and such a thing
+may easily happen when a man has resources enabling him to dispense with
+his office and when he is sensitive to reputation. Thus every day people
+are found ready to sacrifice their advantages to their caprices, that is to
+say, actual goods to the mere semblance of them.
+
+26. If I wished to follow step by step the arguments of our gifted author,
+which often come back to matters previously considered in our inquiry,
+usually however with some elegant and well-phrased addition, I should be
+obliged to proceed too far; but I hope that I shall be able to avoid doing
+so, having, as I think, sufficiently met all his reasons. The best thing is
+that with him practice usually corrects and amends theory. After having
+advanced the hypothesis, in the second section of this fifth chapter, [438]
+that we approach God through the capacity to choose without reason, and
+that this power being of the noblest kind its exercise is the most capable
+of making one happy, things in the highest degree paradoxical, since it is
+reason which leads us to imitate God and our happiness lies in following
+reason: after that, I say, the author provides an excellent corrective, for
+he says rightly (Sec. 5) that in order to be happy we must adapt our choice to
+things, since things are scarcely prone to adapt themselves to us, and that
+this is in effect adapting oneself to the divine will. Doubtless that is
+well said, but it implies besides that our will must be guided as far as
+possible by the reality of the objects, and by true representations of good
+and evil. Consequently also the motives of good and evil are not opposed to
+freedom, and the power of choosing without cause, far from ministering to
+our happiness, will be useless and even highly prejudicial. Thus it is
+happily the case that this power nowhere exists, and that it is 'a being of
+reasoning reason', as some Schoolmen call the fictions that are not even
+possible. As for me, I should have preferred to call them 'beings of
+non-reasoning reason'. Also I think that the third section (on wrong
+elections) may pass, since it says that one must not choose things that are
+impossible, inconsistent, harmful, contrary to the divine will, or already
+taken by others. Moreover, the author remarks appositely that by
+prejudicing the happiness of others needlessly one offends the divine will,
+which desires that all be happy as far as it is possible. I will say as
+much of the fourth section, where there is mention of the source of wrong
+elections, which are error or ignorance, negligence, fickleness in changing
+too readily, stubbornness in not changing in time, and bad habits; finally
+there is the importunity of the appetites, which often drive us
+inopportunely towards external things. The fifth section is designed to
+reconcile evil elections or sins with the power and goodness of God; and
+this section, as it is diffuse, is divided into sub-sections. The author
+has cumbered himself needlessly with a great objection: for he asserts that
+without a power to choose that is altogether indifferent in the choice
+there would be no sin. Now it was very easy for God to refuse to creatures
+a power so irrational. It was sufficient for them to be actuated by the
+representations of goods and evils; it was therefore easy, according to the
+author's hypothesis, for God to prevent sin. To extricate himself from this
+difficulty, he has no other resource than to state that if this power [439]
+were removed from things the world would be nothing but a purely passive
+machine. But that is the very thing which I have disproved. If this power
+were missing in the world (as in fact it is), one would hardly complain of
+the fact. Souls will be well content with the representations of goods and
+evils for the making of their choice, and the world will remain as
+beautiful as it is. The author comes back to what he had already put
+forward here, that without this power there would be no happiness. But I
+have given a sufficient answer to that, and there is not the slightest
+probability in this assertion and in certain other paradoxes he puts
+forward here to support his principal paradox.
+
+27. He makes a small digression on prayer (sub-sect. 4), saying that those
+who pray to God hope for some change in the order of nature; but it seems
+as though, according to his opinion, they are mistaken. In reality, men
+will be content if their prayers are heard, without troubling themselves as
+to whether the course of nature is changed in their favour, or not. Indeed,
+if they receive succour from good angels there will be no change in the
+general order of things. Also this opinion of our author is a very
+reasonable one, that there is a system of spiritual substances, just as
+there is of corporeal substances, and that the spiritual have communication
+with one another, even as bodies do. God employs the ministry of angels in
+his rule of mankind, without any detriment to the order of nature.
+Nevertheless, it is easier to put forward theories on these matters than to
+explain them, unless one have recourse to my system of Harmony. But the
+author goes somewhat further. He believes that the mission of the Holy
+Spirit was a great miracle in the beginning, but that now his operations
+within us are natural. I leave it to him to explain his opinion, and to
+settle the matter with other theologians. Yet I observe that he finds the
+natural efficacy of prayer in the power it has of making the soul better,
+of overcoming the passions, and of winning for oneself a certain degree of
+new grace. I can say almost the same things on my hypothesis, which
+represents the will as acting only in accordance with motives; and I am
+immune from the difficulties in which the author has become involved over
+his power of choosing without cause. He is in great embarrassment also with
+regard to the foreknowledge of God. For if the soul is perfectly
+indifferent in its choice how is it possible to foresee this choice? and
+what sufficient reason will one be able to find for the knowledge of a[440]
+thing, if there is no reason for its existence? The author puts off to some
+other occasion the solution of this difficulty, which would require
+(according to him) an entire work. For the rest, he sometimes speaks
+pertinently, and in conformity with my principles, on the subject of moral
+evil. He says, for example (sub-sect. 6), that vices and crimes do not
+detract from the beauty of the universe, but rather add to it, just as
+certain dissonances would offend the ear by their harshness if they were
+heard quite alone, and yet in combination they render the harmony more
+pleasing. He also points out divers goods involved in evils, for instance,
+the usefulness of prodigality in the rich and avarice in the poor; indeed
+it serves to make the arts flourish. We must also bear in mind that we are
+not to judge the universe by the small size of our globe and of all that is
+known to us. For the stains and defects in it may be found as useful for
+enhancing the beauty of the rest as patches, which have nothing beautiful
+in themselves, are by the fair sex found adapted to embellish the whole
+face, although they disfigure the part they cover. Cotta, in Cicero's book,
+had compared providence, in its granting of reason to men, to a physician
+who allows wine to a patient, notwithstanding that he foresees the misuse
+which will be made thereof by the patient, at the expense of his life. The
+author replies that providence does what wisdom and goodness require, and
+that the good which accrues is greater than the evil. If God had not given
+reason to man there would have been no man at all, and God would be like a
+physician who killed someone in order to prevent his falling ill. One may
+add that it is not reason which is harmful in itself, but the absence of
+reason; and when reason is ill employed we reason well about means, but not
+adequately about an end, or about that bad end we have proposed to
+ourselves. Thus it is always for lack of reason that one does an evil deed.
+The author also puts forward the objection made by Epicurus in the book by
+Lactantius on the wrath of God. The terms of the objection are more or less
+as follows. Either God wishes to banish evils and cannot contrive to do so,
+in which case he would be weak; or he can abolish them, and will not, which
+would be a sign of malignity in him; or again he lacks power and also will,
+which would make him appear both weak and jealous; or finally he can and
+will, but in this case it will be asked why he then does not banish evil,
+if he exists? The author replies that God cannot banish evil, that he does
+not wish to either, and that notwithstanding he is neither malicious  [441]
+nor weak. I should have preferred to say that he can banish evil, but that
+he does not wish to do so absolutely, and rightly so, because he would then
+banish good at the same time, and he would banish more good than evil.
+Finally our author, having finished his learned work, adds an Appendix, in
+which he speaks of the Divine Laws. He fittingly divides these laws into
+natural and positive. He observes that the particular laws of the nature of
+animals must give way to the general laws of bodies, that God is not in
+reality angered when his laws are violated, but that order demanded that he
+who sins should bring an evil upon himself, and that he who does violence
+to others should suffer violence in his turn. But he believes that the
+positive laws of God rather indicate and forecast the evil than cause its
+infliction. And that gives him occasion to speak of the eternal damnation
+of the wicked, which no longer serves either for correction or example, and
+which nevertheless satisfies the retributive justice of God, although the
+wicked bring their unhappiness upon themselves. He suspects, however, that
+these punishments of the wicked bring some advantage to virtuous people. He
+is doubtful also whether it is not better to be damned than to be nothing:
+for it might be that the damned are fools, capable of clinging to their
+state of misery owing to a certain perversity of mind which, he maintains,
+makes them congratulate themselves on their false judgements in the midst
+of their misery, and take pleasure in finding fault with the will of God.
+For every day one sees peevish, malicious, envious people who enjoy the
+thought of their ills, and seek to bring affliction upon themselves. These
+ideas are not worthy of contempt, and I have sometimes had the like myself,
+but I am far from passing final judgement on them. I related, in 271 of the
+essays written to oppose M. Bayle, the fable of the Devil's refusal of the
+pardon a hermit offers him on God's behalf. Baron Andre Taifel, an Austrian
+nobleman, Knight of the Court of Ferdinand Archduke of Austria who became
+the second emperor of that name, alluding to his name (which appears to
+mean Devil in German) assumed as his emblem a devil or satyr, with this
+Spanish motto, _Mas perdido, y menos arrepentido_, the more lost, the less
+repentant, which indicates a hopeless passion from which one cannot free
+oneself. This motto was afterwards repeated by the Spanish Count of
+Villamediana when he was said to be in love with the Queen. Coming to the
+question why evil often happens to the good and good to the wicked,   [442]
+our illustrious author thinks that it has been sufficiently answered, and
+that hardly any doubt remains on that point. He observes nevertheless that
+one may often doubt whether good people who endure affliction have not been
+made good by their very misfortune, and whether the fortunate wicked have
+not perhaps been spoilt by prosperity. He adds that we are often bad
+judges, when it is a question of recognizing not only a virtuous man, but
+also a happy man. One often honours a hypocrite, and one despises another
+whose solid virtue is without pretence. We are poor judges of happiness
+also, and often felicity is hidden from sight under the rags of a contented
+poor man, while it is sought in vain in the palaces of certain of the
+great. Finally the author observes, that the greatest felicity here on
+earth lies in the hope of future happiness, and thus it may be said that to
+the wicked nothing happens save what is of service for correction or
+chastisement, and to the good nothing save what ministers to their greater
+good. These conclusions entirely correspond to my opinion, and one can say
+nothing more appropriate for the conclusion of this work.
+
+                                                                      [443]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CAUSA DEI ASSERTA
+PER JUSTITIAM EJUS
+
+_cum caeteris ejus perfectionibus cunctisque actionibus conciliatam._
+
+The original edition of the Theodicy contained a fourth appendix under this
+title. It presented in scholastic Latin a formal summary of the positive
+doctrine expressed by the French treatise. It satisfied the academic
+requirements of its day, but would not, presumably, be of interest to many
+modern readers, and is consequently omitted here.
+
+                                                                      [445]
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+INDEX
+
+  Abelard, 122, 232-4, 272
+  Abraham, 209
+  Adam, 222, 270-2, 346-7
+  Adam Kadmon, 133
+  Albius, Thomas, 122
+  Alcuin, 77
+  Alfonso, King of Castile, 247-8
+  Aloysius Novarinus, 191
+  Alrasi, 288
+  Alvarez, 149
+  Ambrose, St., 153, 194
+  Amyraut, 238
+  Anaxagoras, 353
+  Andradius, Jacques Payva, 176
+  Andreas Cisalpinus, 81
+  Angelus Silesius, Johann, 79
+  Annat, 344-5
+  Anselm, St., 77
+  Antipater, 232
+  Aquinas, Thomas, _see_ Thomas
+  Arcesilaus, 337
+  Archidemus, 232
+  Aristotelians, 27-8
+  Aristotle, 13, 76-8, 81, 148, 170, 195, 203, 229, 241, 243-4, 265, 269,
+      283, 304, 309-10, 324, 352, 353, 409
+  Arminius, _see_ Irminius
+  Arminius (Jacob Harmensen), 383, 398
+  Arnauld, 67, 89, 225, 254, 260, 264-6, 351
+  Arriaga, 112, 356
+  Arrian, 232
+  Assassins, 284
+  Athanasius, St., 87
+  Augustine (of Hippo), St., 60, 100, 122, 134, 148, 166, 173, 187, 226,
+      274, 285, 294, 296-7, 300-3, 347, 352-3, 378, 384, 409, 412
+  ----, his disciples, 145, 297, 300, 324, 330, 348
+  Augustus (Emperor), 287
+  Aulus Gellius, 258-9, 325, 327
+  Aureolus, Cardinal, 139, 353
+  Averroes, Averroists, 77 ff.
+
+  Bacon, Francis, 306
+  Banez, 149
+  Barbaro, Ermolao, 170
+  Baron, Vincent, 121
+  Baronius, Robert, 84
+  Barton, Thomas, 122
+  Basil, St., 221, 352
+  Bayle, P., 34 ff. _et passim_
+  Becher, Johann Joachim, 334-5
+  Becker, 221
+  Bede, 77
+  Bellarmine, St. Robert, 107, 313, 323
+  Berigardus, Claudius, 81
+  Berkeley, Bp., 11
+  Bernard, St., 277
+  Bernier, 139, 353
+  Bertius, 227
+  de Beze, Theodore, 274
+  _Birgitta, Revelations of St._, 173
+  Boethius, 76, 365-6
+  Bonartes, Thomas, 58, 121-2
+  Bonaventura, St., 294
+  des Bosses, Fr., 121, 389
+  Bossuet, 10
+  Bradwardine, Abp., 159, 176
+  Bramhall, Bp. John, 161, 393
+  Bredenburg, Johan, 349-50
+  Brunswick, Duke of, 8, 82
+  Buckingham, Duke of, 142
+  Buridan's ass, 150, 311, 312
+  Burnet, Thomas, 278
+
+  Cabalists, 79, 133, 347
+  Caesar Cremoninus, 81
+  Cajetan, Cardinal, 100, 243
+  Calanus, 284, 434
+  Caligula, 227
+  Calixtus, 108
+  Calli, 359
+  Callimachus, 213
+  Calovius, 84
+  Calvin, 84-5, 101, 165, 222, 238, 240, 328
+  Cameron, 313
+  Campanella, 217
+  Capella, Martianus, 264
+  Cardan, Jerome, 282, 286
+  Carneades, 312, 320-1, 337
+  Caroli, Andreas, 227
+  Casaubon, Meric, 285
+  Caselius, 82
+  Cassiodorus, 76
+  [Page 446]
+  Casuists, 194, 222, 241
+  Catharin, Ambrose, 173
+  Catherine de Medicis, 227
+  Cato, 263, 318
+  Celsus, 102-3
+  Chardin, 209
+  de la Charmoye, Abbe, 213
+  Chemnitz, Martin, 111, 176
+  Christine, Queen of Sweden, 96, 104
+  Chrysippus, 229-32, 258-9, 324-7
+  Cicero, 99, 194, 229-32, 241, 286, 297, 312, 321, 324-5, 342
+  Claudian, 132, 191, 215
+  Cleanthes, 233, 324
+  Coelius Secundus Curio, 134
+  Coimbra, Fathers of, 325
+  Colerus, 350
+  Conringius, 161, 422
+  Constance, Council of, 234
+  de la Cour, 350-1
+  Crellius, 161
+  Cudworth, Ralph, 64, 245
+  Cuper, Franz, 350
+  Cyrano de Bergerac, 331
+
+  Dacier, 337
+  Daille, 70, 107
+  Davidius, John, 179
+  _De Auxiliis_, 168
+  Democritus, 324
+  Descartes, 12-13, 19-21, 107, 111-12, 140, 150, 156, 224 ff., 239, 244,
+      265, 281, 304, 331, 333, 334, 343, 390, 409, 426
+  Desmarests, Samuel, 241
+  Diodorus, 230-2
+  Diogenianus, 325
+  Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 232
+  Diphilus, 285
+  Diroys, 249-53, 329
+  Dominicans, 348
+  Dreier, 244
+  Drexler, 291
+  Dualists, 251
+  du Plessis-Mornay, 91
+  Durand de Saint-Pourcain, 139, 324, 341, 353
+
+  Empedocles, 324
+  Epictetus, 352
+  Epicureans, 282-3
+  Epicurus, 229-30, 310-11, 319, 320, 324, 395
+  Esprit, Abbe, 131
+  Euclid, 261
+  Euripides, 284, 285
+  Eusebius, 326
+  Eutrapelus, 191
+
+  Fabricius, Johann Ludwig, 67
+  Fabry, 333
+  Fecht, 290, 291, 293
+  Fenelon, 287
+  Fludde, 184
+  Fonseca, 145
+  Foucher, 34, 89, 337
+  Francis I of France, 204
+  Francis of Sales, St., 176
+  Francis Xavier, St., 176
+  Freitag, Johann, 171
+  Fromondus, Libertus, 89
+  Fulgentius, 167
+  _Fur praedestinatus_, 227
+
+  della Galla, Julius Caesar, 171
+  Gassendi, 12, 337
+  Gatacre, Thomas, 262
+  Gerhard, Johann, 291
+  Gerson, 79
+  Gibieuf, 344-5
+  Glarea, Antonio, 366
+  Godescalc, 167, 294
+  Gomarists, 227
+  Gregory, St., the Great, 100, 291, 293, 294
+  Gregory, St., of Nazianzus, 173
+  Gregory, St., of Nyssa, 132
+  Gregory of Rimini, 173
+  Grotius, 77, 91, 161, 194, 241, 243, 276
+  Guerre, Martin, 97-8
+  Gymnosophists, 284
+
+  Hartsoeker, 172
+  Heliodorus of Larissa, 437
+  Heraclitus, 324
+  Herminius, _see_ Irminius
+  Hermippus, 209
+  Herodotus, 196, 208, 210
+  Heshusius, Tilemann, 82
+  Hobbes, Thomas, 67, 89, 159, 161, 234, 265, 348, 393 ff., 410
+  Hoffmann, Daniel, 82
+  Horace, 131, 318
+  Homer, 284
+  Hyde, 209
+
+  Innocent III, Pope, 131
+  Irminius, 209
+  Isbrand, 238
+
+  Jansenists, 145, 346-7
+  Jansenius, 344
+  Jacquelot, 157, 223, 259, 265, 278, 341
+  Jerome, St., 132
+  John of Damascus, St., 77
+  [Page 447]
+  John Scot, 171
+  Jung, 261
+  Jupiter, 213
+  Jurieu, 174, 187, 290-2, 356
+  Justin, 208
+
+  Keckermann, Bartholomaeus, 106
+  Keilah, siege of, 145-6
+  Kendal, George, 228
+  Kepler, 140, 353
+  Kerkering, 351
+  Kessler, Andreas, 83
+  Kortholt, Sebastian, 351
+  Krell, Nicolas, 398
+
+  de Labadie, Jean, 82
+  Lactantius, 221, 285, 286, 440
+  Lami, Francois, 89, 359
+  Lateran Council, 80
+  Laud, Abp., 398
+  de Launoy, 100
+  Lazarus, 294
+  le Clerc, 64, 121, 132, 245, 292
+  Leeuwenhoek, 172
+  Limbourg, 350
+  Lipsius, Justus, 325, 337, 353
+  Livy, 263
+  Locke, John, 8, 9, 33-4, 86, 409
+  Loescher, 298
+  Louis of Dole, 149, 353
+  Lucan, 122, 212
+  Lucian, 265, 434
+  Lucretius, 320
+  Lully, Raymond, 106
+  Luther, 67, 81, 99, 101, 110-11, 122, 298, 328, 395
+
+  Machiavelli, 216
+  Maignan, 359
+  Maimonides, 287-8
+  Malebranche, 172, 244, 254 ff., 276, 280, 333, 359, 361
+  Manichaeans, 59, 98, 113, 124, 208, 274, 419
+  Marchetti, 320
+  Marcion, 213
+  Marcus Aurelius, 263
+  Mary, Blessed Virgin, 193
+  Matthieu, Pierre, 204
+  Maurice, Prince, 398
+  Melanchthon, 81
+  Melissus, 218, 220
+  Menage, 232
+  Meyer, Louis, 82
+  Mithras, 209
+  Molina, 145, 173, 207
+  Molinists, 145, 317, 324, 342
+  More, Henry, 169
+  Moses Germanus, 79
+  de la Motte le Vayer, 282
+  Musaeus, Johann, 86, 111
+
+  Naude, Gabriel, 81
+  Newcastle, Duke of, 393 ff.
+  Newton, Isaac, 34, 85-6
+  Nicole, 96-7, 174, 291, 299
+  Nominalists, 203
+  Novarini, 286
+
+  Ochino, Bernardino, 89
+  Onomaus, 325
+  Opalenius, 194
+  Origen, 102-3, 132, 235, 294
+  Origenists, 260, 292
+  Orobio, 350
+  Ovid, 209, 220, 306
+
+  Pardies, 333
+  Pascal, 35
+  Paul, St., 129-30, 238, 260
+  Paulicians, _see_ Manichaeans
+  Pelagius, 139
+  Pelisson, 176
+  Pereir, Louis, 139
+  Peter Lombard, 290
+  Pfanner, 352
+  Pierre de Saint-Joseph, 342, 357
+  Pietists, Leipzig, 83
+  Piscator, 207
+  Pitcairne, 172
+  Plato, 59, 76, 135, 148, 209, 241, 286, 297, 321, 352-4
+  Pliny the Younger, 204, 209, 284, 287, 365
+  Plutarch, 208, 231, 326, 353
+  Pomponazzi, 80, 161
+  de la Porree, Gilbert, 122
+  de Preissac, 80
+  Prudentius, 132, 218
+  Ptolomei, Fr., 70
+  Pufendorf, 194, 241, 403
+  Pythagoras, 172
+
+  Quenel, Fr., 70
+  Quietists, 79
+
+  Rachelius, 194
+  de la Ramee, Pierre, 81
+  Ravaillac, 204
+  Regis, 305, 330, 340
+  Remonstrants, 226
+  Reynaud, Theophile, 348
+  [Page 448]
+  Rodon, David de, 354
+  Rorarius, 160
+  Rutherford, Samuel, 236, 238, 269
+  Ruysbroek, 79
+
+  Saguens, 359
+  Salmeron, 173
+  Saurin, 106
+  Scaliger, Joseph, 89, 104-5
+  Scaliger, Julius, 170
+  Scherzer, 84
+  Schoolmen, 75, 77, 100, 241, 290, 310, 354, 407
+  Scioppius, 337
+  Scotists, 243, 324
+  Scotus, Duns, 203, 271, 328, 383
+  Seneca, 226, 285
+  Sennert, Daniel, 171
+  Sentences, Master of the, _see_ Peter Lombard
+  Servetus, Michael, 81
+  Sfondrati, Cardinal, 129, 173
+  Sharrok, 194
+  Silenus, 286
+  Slevogt, Paul, 82
+  Socinians, 58, 83-4, 161-2, 307, 343, 394, 412, 423
+  Sonner, Ernst, 290
+  Spee, Friedrich, 176-7
+  Sperling, Johann, 171
+  Sperling, Otto, 212
+  Spinoza, 67, 68, 79, 82, 159, 234-6, 331, 348-51, 359, 418
+  Stahl, Daniel, 243
+  Stegman, Josua, 107
+  Stegmann, Christopher, 84
+  Steno, 178
+  Steuchus, Augustinus, 91
+  Stoics, 79, 232, 263, 282-3, 324 ff., 342
+  Strato, 67, 245-6, 331, 335, 336, 349, 395
+  Strinesius, 241
+  Sturm, 69, 261
+  Suarez, 314
+  Suetonius, 287
+  Supralapsarians, 166, 228, 236, 238, 269, 273-4, 289
+  Swammerdam, 172
+
+  Tacitus, 210, 211, 265, 287
+  Taifel, Baron Andre, 441
+  Taurel, Nicolas, 81, 353
+  Tertullian, 101
+  Thomas Aquinas, St., 174, 176, 241, 243, 262, 324, 357, 378, 383
+  Thomasius, Jacob, 243, 265
+  Thomists, 145, 149, 241, 311, 324, 344, 347
+  Tiberius, 227
+  Timon, 265
+  Tiresias, 230
+  Toland, John, 106
+  de Tournemine, Fr., 69
+  Trajan, 293
+  Trogus, 208
+  Turretin, 240
+  Twiss, 238
+
+  Ursinus, Zacharias, 291
+  Usserius, 70
+
+  Valla, Laurentius, 67, 344, 365 ff.
+  van Beverwyck, Johan, 153-4
+  van den Ende, Franz, 351
+  van den Hoof, 350
+  van der Weye, 82
+  van Helmont, 169
+  Vanini, Lucilio, 434
+  Vedelius, Nicolaus, 86, 111
+  Velleius Paterculus, 318
+  Vergil, 78-9, 122, 287, 293, 306, 315
+  Veron, Francois, 107
+  Verse, Aubert de, 350
+  Voetius, Gisbertus, 86
+  Vorstius, Conrad, 58
+  Vogelsang, 82
+
+  von Wallenberg, Bp. Peter, 67
+  Wander, William, 169
+  Weigel, Erhard, 261, 355
+  Weigel, Valentine, 79
+  de Witt, 351
+  Wittich, 187, 306-7, 309
+  von Wollzogen, 82
+  Wyclif, John, 122, 159, 234, 272, 395
+
+  Xanthus, 209
+
+  Zeisold, Johann, 171
+  Zoroaster, 71, 208-10, 218
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Theodicy, by G. W. Leibniz
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