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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

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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 t