08

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 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.

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. Besides it is very usual for one part of a nation to give the name to the whole: so all the Germani were called Alemanni by the French, and yet this, according to the old nomenclature, only applied to the Suabians and the Swiss. Although Tacitus did not actually know the origin of the name of the Germani, he said something which supports my opinion, when he observed that it was a name which inspired terror, taken or given _ob metum_. In fact it signifies a warrior: _Heer_, _Hari_ is army, whence comes _Hariban_, or ’call to Haro’, that is, a general order to be with the army, since corrupted into _Arrièreban_. Thus Hariman or Ariman, German _Guerre-man_, is a soldier. For as _Hari_, _Heer_ means army, so _Wehr_ signifies arms, _Wehren_ to fight, to make war, the word _Guerre_, _Guerra_ coming doubtless from the same source. I have already spoken of the _feudum Arimandiae_: not only did Herminones or Germani signify the same, but also that ancient Herman, so-called son of Mannus, appears to have been given this name as being pre-eminently a warrior.

141. Now it is not the passage in Tacitus only which indicates for us this god or hero: we cannot doubt the existence of one of this name among these peoples, since Charlemagne found and destroyed near the Weser the column called _Irminsäule_, erected in honour of this god. And that combined with the passage in Tacitus leaves us with the conclusion that it was not that famous Arminius who was an enemy of the Romans, but a much greater and more ancient hero, that this cult concerned. Arminius bore the same name as those who are called Hermann to-day. Arminius was not great enough, nor fortunate enough, nor well enough known throughout Germania to attain to the honour of a public cult, even at the hands of remote tribes, like the Saxons, who came long after him into the country of the Cherusci. And our Arminius, taken by the Asiatics for the evil God, provides ample confirmation of my opinion. For in these matters conjectures confirm one another without any logical circle, when their foundations tend towards one and the same end.

142. It is not beyond belief that the Hermes (that is, Mercury) of the Greeks is the same Herminius or Arimanius. He may have been an inventor or promoter of the arts and of a slightly more civilized life among his own people and in the countries where he held supremacy, while amongst his enemies he was looked upon as the author of confusion. Who knows but that he may have penetrated even into Egypt, like the Scythians who in 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 or Celtic princes made themselves masters of Greece, of Egypt and a good part of Asia, and that their cult remained in those countries. When one considers with what rapidity the Huns, the Saracens and the Tartars gained possession of a great part of our continent one will be the less surprised at this; and it is confirmed by the great number of words in the Greek and German tongues which correspond so closely. Callimachus, in a hymn in honour of Apollo, seems to imply that the Celts who attacked the Temple at Delphi, under their Brennus, or chief, were descendants of the ancient Titans and Giants who made war on Jupiter and the other gods, that is to say, on the Princes of Asia and of Greece. It may be that Jupiter is himself descended from the Titans or Theodons, that is, from the earlier Celto-Scythian princes; and the material collected by the late Abbé de la Charmoye in his _Celtic Origins_ conforms to that possibility. Yet there are opinions on other matters in this work by this learned writer which to me do not appear probable, especially when he excludes the Germani from the number of the Celts, not having recalled sufficiently the facts given by ancient writers and not being sufficiently aware of the relation between the ancient Gallic and Germanic tongues. Now the so-called Giants, who wished to scale the heavens, were new Celts who followed the path of their ancestors; and Jupiter, although of their kindred, as it were, was constrained to resist them. Just so did the Visigoths established in Gallic territory resist, together with the Romans, other peoples of Germania and Scythia, who succeeded them under Attila their leader, he being at that time in control of the Scythian, Sarmatic and Germanic tribes from the frontiers of Persia up to the Rhine. But the pleasure one feels when one thinks to find in the mythologies of the gods some trace of the old history of fabulous times has perhaps carried me too far, and I know not whether I shall have been any more successful than Goropius Becanus, Schrieckius, Herr Rudbeck and the Abbe de la Charmoye.

144. Let us return to Zoroaster, who led us to Oromasdes and Arimanius, the sources of good and evil, and let us assume that he looked upon them as two eternal principles opposed to each other, although there is reason to doubt this assumption. It is thought that Marcion, disciple of Cerdon, was of this opinion before Manes. M. Bayle acknowledges that these men used lamentable arguments; but he thinks that they did not sufficiently recognize their advantages or know how to apply their principal instrument, which was the difficulty over the origin of evil. He believes that an able man on their side would have thoroughly embarrassed the orthodox, and it seems as though he himself, failing any other, wished to undertake a task so unnecessary in the opinion of many people. ’All the hypotheses’ (he says, _Dictionary_, v., ’Marcion’, p. 2039) ’that Christians have established parry but poorly the blows aimed at them: they all triumph when they act on the offensive; but they lose their whole advantage when they have to sustain the attack.’ He confesses that the ’Dualists’ (as with Mr. Hyde he calls them), that is, the champions of two principles, would soon have been routed by _a priori_ reasons, taken from the nature of God; but he thinks that they triumph in their turn when one comes to the _a posteriori_ reasons, which are taken from the existence of evil.

145. He treats of the matter with abundant detail in his _Dictionary_, article ’Manichaeans’, p. 2025, which we must examine a little, in order to throw greater light upon this subject: ’The surest and clearest ideas of order teach us’, he says, ’that a Being who exists through himself, who is necessary, who is eternal, must be single, infinite, all powerful, and endowed with all kinds of perfections.’ This argument deserves to have been developed more completely. ’Now it is necessary to see’, he goes on, ’if the phenomena of nature can be conveniently explained by the hypothesis of one single principle.’ I have explained it sufficiently by showing that there are cases where some disorder in the part is necessary for producing the greatest order in the whole. But it appears that M. Bayle asks a little too much: he wishes for a detailed exposition of how evil is connected with the best possible scheme for the universe. That would be a complete explanation of the phenomena: but I do not undertake to give it; nor am I bound to do so, for there is no obligation to do that which is impossible for us in our existing state. It is sufficient for me to point out that there is nothing to prevent the connexion of a certain individual evil with what is the best on the whole. This incomplete explanation, leaving something to be discovered in the life to come, is sufficient for answering the objections, though not for a comprehension of the matter.

146. ’The heavens and all the rest of the universe’, adds M. Bayle, ’preach the glory, the power, the oneness of God.’ Thence the conclusion should have been drawn that this is the case (as I have already observed above) because there is seen in these objects something entire and isolated, so to speak. Every time we see such a work of God, we find it so perfect that we must wonder at the contrivance and the beauty thereof: but when we do not see an entire work, when we only look upon scraps and fragments, it is no wonder if the good order is not evident there. Our planetary system composes such an isolated work, which is complete also when it is taken by itself; each plant, each animal, each man furnishes one such work, to a certain point of perfection: one recognizes therein the wonderful contrivance of the author. But the human kind, so far as it is known to us, is only a fragment, only a small portion of the City of God or of the republic of Spirits, which has an extent too great for us, and whereof we know too little, to be able to observe the wonderful order therein. ’Man alone,’ says M. Bayle, ’that masterpiece of his Creator among things visible, man alone, I say, gives rise to great objections with regard to the oneness of God.’ Claudian made the same observation, unburdening his heart in these well-known lines:

_Saepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem_, etc. But the harmony existing in all the rest allows of a strong presumption that it would exist also in the government of men, and generally in that of Spirits, if the whole were known to us. One must judge the works of God as wisely as Socrates judged those of Heraclitus in these words: What I have understood thereof pleases me; I think that the rest would please me no less if I understood it.

147. Here is another particular reason for the disorder apparent in that which concerns man. It is that God, in giving him intelligence, has presented him with an image of the Divinity. He leaves him to himself, in a sense, in his small department, _ut Spartam quam nactus est ornet_. He enters there only in a secret way, for he supplies being, force, life, reason, without showing himself. It is there that free will plays its game: and God makes game (so to speak) of these little Gods that he has thought good to produce, as we make game of children who follow pursuits which we secretly encourage or hinder according as it pleases us. Thus man is there like a little god in his own world or _Microcosm_, which he governs after his own fashion: he sometimes performs wonders therein, and his art often imitates nature.

_Jupiter in parvo cum cerneret aethera vitro,_ _Risit et ad Superos talia dicta dedit:_ _Huccine mortalis progressa potentia, Divi?_ _Jam meus in fragili luditur orbe labor._ _Jura poli rerumque fidem legesque Deorum_ _Cuncta Syracusius transtulit arte Senex._ _Quid falso insontem tonitru Salmonea miror?_ _Aemula Naturae est parva reperta manus._ But he also commits great errors, because he abandons himself to the passions, and because God abandons him to his own way. God punishes him also for such errors, now like a father or tutor, training or chastising children, now like a just judge, punishing those who forsake him: and evil comes to pass most frequently when these intelligences or their small worlds come into collision. Man finds himself the worse for this, in proportion to his fault; but God, by a wonderful art, turns all the errors of these little worlds to the greater adornment of his great world. It is as in those devices of perspective, where certain beautiful designs look like mere confusion until one restores them to the right angle of vision or one views them by means of a certain glass or mirror. It is by placing and using them properly that one makes them serve as adornment for a room. Thus the apparent deformities of our little worlds combine to become beauties in the great world, and have nothing in them which is opposed to the oneness of an infinitely perfect universal principle: on the contrary, they increase our wonder at the wisdom of him who makes evil serve the greater good.

148. M. Bayle continues: ’that man is wicked and miserable; that there are everywhere prisons and hospitals; that history is simply a collection of the crimes and calamities of the human race.’ I think that there is exaggeration in that: there is incomparably more good than evil in the life of men, as there are incomparably more houses than prisons. With regard to virtue and vice, a certain mediocrity prevails. Machiavelli has already observed that there are few very wicked and very good men, and that this causes the failure of many great enterprises. I find it a great fault in historians that they keep their mind on the evil more than on the good. The chief end of history, as also of poetry, should be to teach prudence and virtue by examples, and then to display vice in such a way as to create aversion to it and to prompt men to avoid it, or serve towards that end.

149. M. Bayle avows: ’that one finds everywhere both moral good and physical good, some examples of virtue, some examples of happiness, and that this is what makes the difficulty. For if there were only wicked and unhappy people’, he says, ’there would be no need to resort to the hypothesis of the two principles.’ I wonder that this admirable man could have evinced so great an inclination towards this opinion of the two principles; and I am surprised at his not having taken into account that this romance of human life, which makes the universal history of the human race, lay fully devised in the divine understanding, with innumerable others, and that the will of God only decreed its existence because this sequence of events was to be most in keeping with the rest of things, to bring forth the best result. And these apparent faults in the whole world, these spots on a Sun whereof ours is but a ray, rather enhance its beauty than diminish it, contributing towards that end by obtaining a greater good. There are in truth two principles, but they are both in God, to wit, his understanding and his will. The understanding furnishes the principle of evil, without being sullied by it, without being evil; it represents natures as they exist in the eternal verities; it contains within it the reason wherefore evil is permitted: but the will tends only towards good. Let us add a third principle, namely power; it precedes even understanding and will, but it operates as the one displays it and as the other requires it.

150. Some (like Campanella) have called these three perfections of God the three primordialities. Many have even believed that there was therein a secret connexion with the Holy Trinity: that power relates to the Father, that is, to the source of Divinity, wisdom to the Eternal Word, which is called _logos_ by the most sublime of the Evangelists, and will or Love to the Holy Spirit. Well-nigh all the expressions or comparisons derived from the nature of the intelligent substance tend that way.

151. It seems to me that if M. Bayle had taken into account what I have just said of the principles of things, he would have answered his own questions, or at the least he would not have continued to ask, as he does in these which follow: ’If man is the work of a single principle supremely good, supremely holy, supremely powerful, can he be subject to diseases, to cold, heat, hunger, thirst, pain, grief? Can he have so many evil tendencies? Can he commit so many crimes? Can supreme goodness produce an unhappy creature? Shall not supreme power, united to an infinite goodness, shower blessings upon its work, and shall it not banish all that might offend or grieve?’ Prudentius in his _Hamartigenia_ presented the same difficulty:

_Si non vult Deus esse malum, cur non vetat? inquit._ _Non refert auctor fuerit, factorve malorum._ _Anne opera in vitium sceleris pulcherrima verti,_ _Cum possit prohibere, sinat; quod si velit omnes_ _Innocuos agere Omnipotens, ne sancta voluntas_ _Degeneret, facto nec se manus inquinet ullo?_ _Condidit ergo malum Dominus, quod spectat ab alto,_ _Et patitur fierique probat, tanquam ipse crearit._ _Ipse creavit enim, quod si discludere possit,_ _Non abolet, longoque sinit grassarier usu._ But I have already answered that sufficiently. Man is himself the source of his evils: just as he is, he was in the divine idea. God, prompted by essential reasons of wisdom, decreed that he should pass into existence just as he is. M. Bayle would perchance have perceived this origin of evil in the form in which I demonstrate it here, if he had herein combined the wisdom of God with his power, his goodness and his holiness. I will add, in passing, that his _holiness_ is nothing other than the highest degree of goodness, just as the crime which is its opposite is the worst of all evil.

152. M. Bayle places the Greek philosopher Melissus, champion of the oneness of the first principle (and perhaps even of the oneness of substance) in conflict with Zoroaster, as with the first originator of duality. Zoroaster admits that the hypothesis of Melissus is more consistent with order and _a priori_ reasons, but he denies its conformity with experience and _a posteriori_ reasons. ’I surpass you’, he said, ’in the explanation of phenomena, which is the principal mark of a good system.’ But, in my opinion, it is not a very good explanation of a phenomenon to assign to it an _ad hoc_ principle: to evil, a _principium maleficum_, to cold, a _primum frigidum_; there is nothing so easy and nothing so dull. It is well-nigh as if someone were to say that the Peripatetics surpass the new mathematicians in the explanation of the phenomena of the stars, by giving them _ad hoc_ intelligences to guide them. According to that, it is quite easy to conceive why the planets make their way with such precision; whereas there is need of much geometry and reflexion to understand how from the gravity of the planets, which bears them towards the sun, combined with some whirlwind which carries them along, or with their own motive force, can spring the elliptic movement of Kepler, which satisfies appearances so well. A man incapable of relishing deep speculations will at first applaud the Peripatetics and will treat our mathematicians as dreamers. Some old Galenist will do the same with regard to the faculties of the Schoolmen: he will admit a chylific, a chymific and a sanguific, and he will assign one of these _ad hoc_ to each operation; he will think he has worked wonders, and will laugh at what he will call the chimeras of the moderns, who claim to explain through mechanical structure what passes in the body of an animal.

153. The explanation of the cause of evil by a particular principle, _per principium maleficum_, is of the same nature. Evil needs no such explanation, any more than do cold and darkness: there is neither _primum frigidum_ nor principle of darkness. Evil itself comes only from privation; the positive enters therein only by concomitance, as the active enters by concomitance into cold. We see that water in freezing is capable of breaking a gun-barrel wherein it is confined; and yet cold is a certain privation of force, it only comes from the diminution of a movement which separates the particles of fluids. When this separating motion becomes weakened in the water by the cold, the particles of compressed air concealed in the water collect; and, becoming larger, they become more capable of acting outwards through their buoyancy. The resistance which the surfaces of the proportions of air meet in the water, and which opposes the force exerted by these portions towards dilation, is far less, and consequently the effect of the air greater, in large air-bubbles than in small, even though these small bubbles combined should form as great a mass as the large. For the resistances, that is, the surfaces, increase by the _square_, and the forces, that is, the contents or the volumes of the spheres of compressed air, increase by the _cube_, of their diameters. Thus it is _by accident_ that privation involves action and force. I have already shown how privation is enough to cause error and malice, and how God is prompted to permit them, despite that there be no malignity in him. Evil comes from privation; the positive and action spring from it by accident, as force springs from cold.

154. The statement that M. Bayle attributes to the Paulicians, p. 2323, is not conclusive, to wit, that free will must come from two principles, to the end that it may have power to turn towards good and towards evil: for, being simple in itself, it should rather have come from a neutral principle if this argument held good. But free will tends towards good, and if it meets with evil it is by accident, for the reason that this evil is concealed beneath the good, and masked, as it were. These words which Ovid ascribes to Medea, _Video meliora proboque,_ _Deteriora sequor_, imply that the morally good is mastered by the agreeably good, which makes more impression on souls when they are disturbed by the passions.

155. Furthermore, M. Bayle himself supplies Melissus with a good answer; but a little later he disputes it. Here are his words, p. 2025: ’If Melissus consults the notions of order, he will answer that man was not wicked when God made him; he will say that man received from God a happy state, but that not having followed the light of conscience, which in accordance with the intention of its author should have guided him along the path of virtue, he has become wicked, and has deserved that God the supremely good should make him feel the effects of his anger. It is therefore not God who is the cause of moral evil: but he is the cause of physical evil, that is, of the punishment of moral evil. And this punishment, far from being incompatible with the supremely good principle, of necessity emanates from that one of its attributes, I mean its justice, which is not less essential to it than its goodness. This answer, the most reasonable that Melissus can give, is fundamentally good and sound, but it may be disputed by something more specious and more dazzling. For indeed Zoroaster objects that the infinitely good principle ought to have created man not only without actual evil, but also without the inclination towards evil; that God, having foreseen sin with all its consequences, ought to have prevented it; that he ought to have impelled man to moral good, and not to have allowed him any force for tending towards crime.’ That is quite easy to say, but it is not practicable if one follows the principles of order: it could not have been accomplished without perpetual miracles. Ignorance, error and malice follow one another naturally in animals made as we are: should this species, then, have been missing in the universe? I have no doubt but that it is too important there, despite all its weaknesses, for God to have consented to its abolition.

156. M. Bayle, in the article entitled ’Paulicians’ inserted by him in his _Dictionary_, follows up the pronouncements he made in the article on the Manichaeans. According to him (p. 2330, lit. H) the orthodox seem to admit two first principles, in making the devil the originator of sin. M. Becker, a former minister of Amsterdam, author of the book entitled _The World Bewitched_, has made use of this idea in order to demonstrate that one should not assign such power and authority to the Devil as would allow of his comparison with God. Therein he is right: but he pushes the conclusions too far. And the author of the book entitled [Greek: Apokatastasis Pantôn] believes that if the Devil had never been vanquished and despoiled, if he had always kept his prey, if the title of invincible had belonged to him, that would have done injury to the glory of God. But it is a poor advantage to keep those whom one has led astray in order to share their punishment for ever. And as for the cause of evil, it is true that the Devil is the author of sin. But the origin of sin comes from farther away, its source is in the original imperfection of creatures: that renders them capable of sinning, and there are circumstances in the sequence of things which cause this power to evince itself in action.

157. The devils were angels like the rest before their fall, and it is thought that their leader was one of the chief among angels; but Scripture is not explicit enough on that point. The passage of the Apocalypse that speaks of the struggle with the Dragon, as of a vision, leaves much in doubt, and does not sufficiently develop a subject which by the other sacred writers is hardly mentioned. It is not in place here to enter into this discussion, and one must still admit that the common opinion agrees best with the sacred text. M. Bayle examines some replies of St. Basil, of Lactantius and others on the origin of evil. As, however, they are concerned with physical evil, I postpone discussion thereof, and I will proceed with the examination of the difficulties over the moral cause of moral evil, which arise in several passages of the works of our gifted author.

158. He disputes the _permission_ of this evil, he would wish one to admit that God _wills_ it. He quotes these words of Calvin (on Genesis, ch. 3): ’The ears of some are offended when one says that God willed it. But I ask you, what else is the permission of him who is entitled to forbid, or rather who has the thing in his own hands, but an act of will?’ M. Bayle explains these words of Calvin, and those which precede them, as if he admitted that God willed the fall of Adam, not in so far as it was a crime, but under some other conception that is unknown to us. He quotes casuists who are somewhat lax, who say that a son can desire the death of his father, not in so far as it is an evil for himself but in so far as it is a good for his heirs _(Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 147, p.

850). It seems to me that Calvin only says that God willed man’s fall for some reason unknown to us. In the main, when it is a question of a decisive will, that is, of a decree, these distinctions are useless: one wills the action with all its qualities, if it is true that one wills it. But when it is a crime, God can only will the permission of it: the crime is neither an end nor a means, it is only a _conditio sine qua non_; thus it is not the object of a direct will, as I have already demonstrated above. God cannot prevent it without acting against what he owes to himself, without doing something that would be worse than the crime of man, without violating the rule of the best; and that would be to destroy divinity, as I have already observed. God is therefore bound by a moral necessity, which is in himself, to permit moral evil in creatures. There is precisely the case wherein the will of a wise mind is only permissive. I have already said this: he is bound to permit the crime of others when he cannot prevent it without himself failing in that which he owes to himself.

159. ’But among all these infinite combinations’, says M. Bayle (p. 853), ’it pleased God to choose one wherein Adam was to sin, and by his decree he made it, in preference to all the others, the plan that should come to pass.’ Very good; that is speaking my language; so long as one applies it to the combinations which compose the whole universe. ’You will therefore never make us understand’, he adds, ’how God did not will that Eve and Adam should sin, since he rejected all the combinations wherein they would not have sinned.’ But the thing is in general very easy to understand, from all that I have just said. This combination that makes the whole universe is the best; God therefore could not refrain from choosing it without incurring a lapse, and rather than incur such, a thing altogether inappropriate to him, he permits the lapse or the sin of man which is involved in this combination.

160. M. Jacquelot, with other able men, does not differ in opinion from me, when for example he says, p. 186 of his treatise on the _Conformity of Faith with Reason_: ’Those who are puzzled by these difficulties seem to be too limited in their outlook, and to wish to reduce all God’s designs to their own interests. When God formed the universe, his whole prospect was himself and his own glory, so that if we had knowledge of all creatures, of their diverse combinations and of their different relations, we should understand without difficulty that the universe corresponds perfectly to the infinite wisdom of the Almighty.’ He says elsewhere (p. 232): ’Supposing the impossible, that God could not prevent the wrong use of free will without destroying it, it will be agreed that since his wisdom and his glory determined him to form free creatures this powerful reason must have prevailed over the grievous consequences which their freedom might have.’ I have endeavoured to develop this still further through _the reason of the best and the moral necessity_ which led God to make this choice, despite the sin of some creatures which is involved therein. I think that I have cut down to the root of the difficulty; nevertheless I am well pleased, for the sake of throwing more light on the matter, to apply my principle of solution to the peculiar difficulties of M. Bayle.

161. Here is one, set forth in these terms (ch. 148, p. 856): ’Would it in a prince be a mark of his kindness: 1. To give to a hundred messengers as much money as is needed for a journey of two hundred leagues? 2. To promise a recompense to all those who should finish the journey without having borrowed anything, and to threaten with imprisonment all those whom their money should not have sufficed? 3. To make choice of a hundred persons, of whom he would know for certain that there were but two who should earn the recompense, the ninety-eight others being destined to find on the way either a mistress or a gamester or some other thing which would make them incur expenses, and which he would himself have been at pains to dispose in certain places along their path? 4. To imprison actually ninety-eight of these messengers on the moment of their return? Is it not abundantly evident that he would have no kindness for them, and that on the contrary he would intend for them, not the proposed recompense, but prison? They would deserve it, certainly; but he who had wished them to deserve it and placed them in the sure way towards deserving it, should he be worthy of being called kind, on the pretext that he had recompensed the two others?’ It would doubtless not be on that account that he earned the title of ’kind’. Yet other circumstances may contribute, which would avail to render him worthy of praise for having employed this artifice in order to know those people, and to make trial of them; just as Gideon made use of some extraordinary means of choosing the most valiant and the least squeamish among his soldiers. And even if the prince were to know already the disposition of all these messengers, may he not put them to this test in order to make them known also to the others? Even though these reasons be not applicable to God, they make it clear, nevertheless, that an action like that of this prince may appear preposterous when it is detached from the circumstances indicating its cause. All the more must one deem that God has acted well, and that we should see this if we fully knew of all that he has done.

162. M. Descartes, in a letter to the Princess Elizabeth (vol. 1, letter 10) has made use of another comparison to reconcile human freedom with the omnipotence of God. ’He imagines a monarch who has forbidden duels, and who, knowing for certain that two noblemen, if they meet, will fight, takes sure steps to bring about their meeting. They meet indeed, they fight: their disobedience of the law is an effect of their free will, they are punishable. What a king can do in such a case (he adds) concerning some free actions of his subjects, God, who has infinite foreknowledge and power, certainly does concerning all those of men. Before he sent us into this world he knew exactly what all the tendencies of our will would be: he has endued us therewith, he also has disposed all other things that are outside us, to cause such and such objects to present themselves to our senses at such and such a time. He knew that as a result of this our free will would determine us toward some particular thing, and he has willed it thus; but he has not for that willed to constrain our free will thereto. In this king one may distinguish two different degrees of will, the one whereby he willed that these noblemen should fight, since he brought about their meeting, and the other whereby he did not will it, since he forbade duels. Even so theologians distinguish in God an absolute and independent will, whereby he wills that all things be done just as they are done, and another which is relative, and which concerns the merit or demerit of men, whereby he wills that his Laws be obeyed’ (Descartes, letter 10 of vol. 1, pp. 51, 52. Compare with that the quotation made by M. Arnauld, vol. 2, p. 288 _et seqq_. of his _Reflexions on the System of Malebranche_, from Thomas Aquinas, on the antecedent and consequent will of God).

163. Here is M. Bayle’s reply to that (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 154, p. 943): ’This great philosopher is much mistaken, it seems to me. There would not be in this monarch any degree of will, either small or great, that these two noblemen should obey the law, and not fight. He would will entirely and solely that they should fight. That would not exculpate them, they would only follow their passion, they would be unaware that they conformed to the will of their sovereign: but he would be in truth the moral cause of their encounter, and he would not more entirely wish it supposing he were to inspire them with the desire or to give them the order for it. Imagine to yourself two princes each of whom wishes his eldest son to poison himself. One employs constraint, the other contents himself with secretly causing a grief that he knows will be sufficient to induce his son to poison himself. Will you be doubtful whether the will of the latter is less complete than the will of the former? M. Descartes is therefore assuming an unreal fact and does not at all solve the difficulty.’

164. One must confess that M. Descartes speaks somewhat crudely of the will of God in regard to evil in saying not only that God knew that our free will would determine us toward some particular thing, but also _that he also wished it_, albeit he did not will to constrain the will thereto. He speaks no less harshly in the eighth letter of the same volume, saying that not the slightest thought enters into the mind of a man which God does not _will_, and has not willed from all eternity, to enter there. Calvin never said anything harsher; and all that can only be excused if it is to be understood of a permissive will. M. Descartes’ solution amounts to the distinction between the will expressed in the sign and the will expressive of the good pleasure (_inter voluntatem signi et beneplaciti_) which the moderns have taken from the Schoolmen as regards the terms, but to which they have given a meaning not usual among the ancients. It is true that God may command something and yet not will that it be done, as when he commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son: he willed the obedience, and he did not will the action. But when God commands the virtuous action and forbids the sin, he wills indeed that which he ordains, but it is only by an antecedent will, as I have explained more than once.

165. M. Descartes’ comparison is therefore not satisfactory; but it may be made so. One must make some change in the facts, inventing some reason to oblige the prince to cause or permit the two enemies to meet. They must, for instance, be together in the army or in other obligatory functions, a circumstance the prince himself cannot hinder without endangering his State. For example, the absence of either of them might be responsible for the disappearance of innumerable persons of his party from the army or cause grumbling among the soldiers and give rise to some great disturbance. In this case, therefore, one may say that the prince does not will the duel: he knows of it, but he permits it notwithstanding, for he prefers permitting the sin of others to committing one himself. Thus this corrected comparison may serve, provided that one observe the difference between God and the prince. The prince is forced into this permission by his powerlessness; a more powerful monarch would have no need of all these considerations; but God, who has power to do all that is possible, only permits sin because it is absolutely impossible to anyone at all to do better. The prince’s action is peradventure not free from sorrow and regret. This regret is due to his imperfection, of which he is sensible; therein lies displeasure. God is incapable of such a feeling and finds, moreover, no cause therefor; he is infinitely conscious of his own perfection, and it may even be said that the imperfection in creatures taken individually changes for him into perfection in relation to the whole, and that it is an added glory for the Creator. What more can one wish, when one possesses a boundless wisdom and when one is as powerful as one is wise; when one can do all and when one has the best?

166. Having once understood these things, we are hardened sufficiently, so it seems to me, against the strongest and most spirited objections. I have not concealed them: but there are some we shall merely touch upon, because they are too odious. The Remonstrants and M. Bayle (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 152, end page 919) quote St. Augustine, saying, ’_crudelem esse misericordiam velle aliquem miserum esse ut eius miserearis_’: in the same sense is cited Seneca _De Benef._, L. 6, c. 36, 37. I confess that one would have some reason to urge that against those who believed that God has no other cause for permitting sin than the design to have something wherewith to exercise punitive justice against the majority of men, and his mercy towards a small number of elect. But it must be considered that God had reasons for his permission of sin, more worthy of him and more profound in relation to us. Someone has dared to compare God’s course of action with that of a Caligula, who has his edicts written in so small a hand and has them placarded in so high a place that it is not possible to read them; with that of a mother who neglects her daughter’s honour in order to attain her own selfish ends; with that of Queen Catherine de Medicis, who is said to have abetted the love-affairs of her ladies in order to learn of the intrigues of the great; and even with that of Tiberius, who arranged, through the extraordinary services of the executioner, that the law forbidding the subjection of a virgin to capital punishment should no longer apply to the case of Sejanus’s daughter. This last comparison was proposed by Peter Bertius, then an Armenian, but finally a member of the Roman communion. And a scandalous comparison has been made between God and Tiberius, which is related at length by Andreas Caroli in his _Memorabilia Ecclesiastica_ of the last century, as M. Bayle observes. Bertius used it against the Gomarists. I think that arguments of this kind are only valid against those who maintain that justice is an arbitrary thing in relation to God; or that he has a despotic power which can go so far as being able to condemn innocents; or, in short, that good is not the motive of his actions.

167. At that same time an ingenious satire was composed against the Gomarists, entitled _Fur praedestinatus, de gepredestineerdedief_, wherein there is introduced a thief condemned to be hanged, who attributes to God all the evil he has done; who believes himself predestined to salvation notwithstanding his wicked actions; who imagines that this belief is sufficient for him, and who defeats by arguments _ad hominem_ a Counter-remonstrant minister called to prepare him for death: but this thief is finally converted by an old pastor who had been dismissed for his

Arminianism, whom the gaoler, in pity for the criminal and for the weakness of the minister, had brought to him secretly. Replies were made to this lampoon, but replies to satires never please as much as the satires themselves. M. Bayle (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 154, p. 938) says that this book was printed in England in the time of Cromwell, and he appears not to have been informed that it was only a translation of the much older original Flemish. He adds that Dr. George Kendal wrote a confutation of it at Oxford in the year 1657, under the title of _Fur pro Tribunali_, and that the dialogue is there inserted. This dialogue presupposes, contrary to the truth, that the Counter-remonstrants make God the cause of evil, and teach a kind of predestination in the Mahometan manner according to which it does not matter whether one does good or evil, and the assumption that one is predestined assures the fact. They by no means go so far. Nevertheless it is true that there are among them some Supralapsarians and others who find it hard to declare themselves in clear terms upon the justice of God and the principles of piety and morals in man. For they imagine despotism in God, and demand that man be convinced, without reason, of the absolute certainty of his election, a course that is liable to have dangerous consequences. But all those who acknowledge that God produces the best plan, having chosen it from among all possible ideas of the universe; that he there finds man inclined by the original imperfection of creatures to misuse his free will and to plunge into misery; that God prevents the sin and the misery in so far as the perfection of the universe, which is an emanation from his, may permit it: those, I say, show forth more clearly that God’s intention is the one most right and holy in the world; that the creature alone is guilty, that his original limitation or imperfection is the source of his wickedness, that his evil will is the sole cause of his misery; that one cannot be destined to salvation without also being destined to the holiness of the children of God, and that all hope of election one can have can only be founded upon the good will infused into one’s heart by the grace of God.

168. _Metaphysical considerations_ also are brought up against my explanation of the moral cause of moral evil; but they will trouble me less since I have dismissed the objections derived from moral reasons, which were more impressive. These metaphysical considerations concern the nature of the _possible_ and of the _necessary_; they go against my fundamental assumption that God has chosen the best of all possible worlds. There are philosophers who have maintained that there is nothing possible except that which actually happens. These are those same people who thought or could have thought that all is necessary unconditionally. Some were of this opinion because they admitted a brute and blind necessity in the cause of the existence of things: and it is these I have most reason for opposing. But there are others who are mistaken only because they misuse terms. They confuse moral necessity with metaphysical necessity: they imagine that since God cannot help acting for the best he is thus deprived of freedom, and things are endued with that necessity which philosophers and theologians endeavour to avoid. With these writers my dispute is only one of words, provided they admit in very deed that God chooses and does the best. But there are others who go further, they think that God could have done better. This is an opinion which must be rejected: for although it does not altogether deprive God of wisdom and goodness, as do the advocates of blind necessity, it sets bounds thereto, thus derogating from God’s supreme perfection.

169. The question of the _possibility of things that do not happen_ has already been examined by the ancients. It appears that Epicurus, to preserve freedom and to avoid an absolute necessity, maintained, after Aristotle, that contingent futurities were not susceptible of determinate truth. For if it was true yesterday that I should write to-day, it could therefore not fail to happen, it was already necessary; and, for the same reason, it was from all eternity. Thus all that which happens is necessary, and it is impossible for anything different to come to pass. But since that is not so it would follow, according to him, that contingent futurities have no determinate truth. To uphold this opinion, Epicurus went so far as to deny the first and the greatest principle of the truths of reason, he denied that every assertion was either true or false. Here is the way they confounded him: ’You deny that it was true yesterday that I should write to-day; it was therefore false.’ The good man, not being able to admit this conclusion, was obliged to say that it was neither true nor false. After that, he needs no refutation, and Chrysippus might have spared himself the trouble he took to prove the great principle of contradictories, following the account by Cicero in his book _De Fato_: ’Contendit omnes nervos Chrysippus ut persuadeat omne [Greek: Axiôma] aut verum esse aut falsum. Ut enim Epicurus veretur ne si hoc concesserit, concedendum sit, fato fieri quaecunque fiant; si enim alterum ex aeternitate verum sit, esse id etiam certum; si certum, etiam necessarium; ita et necessitatem et fatum confirmari putat; sic Chrysippus metuit ne non, si non obtinuerit omne quod enuncietur aut verum esse aut falsum, omnia fato fieri possint ex causis aeternis rerum futurarum.’ M. Bayle observes (_Dictionary_, article ’Epicurus’, let. T, p. 1141) ’that neither of these two great philosophers [Epicurus and Chrysippus] understood that the truth of this maxim, every proposition is true or false, is independent of what is called _fatum_: it could not therefore serve as proof of the existence of the _fatum_, as Chrysippus maintained and as Epicurus feared. Chrysippus could not have conceded, without damaging his own position, that there are propositions which are neither true nor false. But he gained nothing by asserting the contrary: for, whether there be free causes or not, it is equally true that this proposition, The Grand Mogul will go hunting to-morrow, is true or false. Men rightly regarded as ridiculous this speech of Tiresias: All that I shall say will happen or not, for great Apollo confers on me the faculty of prophesying. If, assuming the impossible, there were no God, it would yet be certain that everything the greatest fool in the world should predict would happen or would not happen. That is what neither Chrysippus nor Epicurus has taken into consideration.’ Cicero, lib. I, _De Nat. Deorum_, with regard to the evasions of the Epicureans expressed the sound opinion (as M. Bayle observes towards the end of the same page) that it would be much less shameful to admit that one cannot answer one’s opponent, than to have recourse to such answers. Yet we shall see that M. Bayle himself confused the certain with the necessary, when he maintained that the choice of the best rendered things necessary.

170. Let us come now to the possibility of things that do not happen, and I will give the very words of M. Bayle, albeit they are somewhat discursive. This is what he says on the matter in his _Dictionary_ (article ’Chrysippus’, let. S, p. 929): ’The celebrated dispute on things possible and things impossible owed its origin to the doctrine of the Stoics concerning fate. The question was to know whether, among the things which have never been and never will be, there are some possible; or whether all that is not, all that has never been, all that will never be, was impossible. A famous dialectician of the Megaric Sect, named Diodorus, gave a negative answer to the first of these two questions and an affirmative to the second; but Chrysippus vehemently opposed him. Here are two passages of Cicero (epist. 4, lib. 9, _Ad Familiar._): "[Greek: peri dynatôn] me scito [Greek: kata Diodôron krinein]. Quapropter si venturus es, scito necesse esse te venire. Sin autem non es, [Greek: tôn adynatôn] est te venire. Nunc vide utra te [Greek: krisis] magis delectet, [Greek: Chrysippeia] ne, an haec; quam noster Diodorus [a Stoic who for a long time had lived in Cicero’s house] non concoquebat." This is quoted from a letter that Cicero wrote to Varro. He sets forth more comprehensively the whole state of the question, in the little book _De Fato_. I am going to quote a few pieces (Cic., _De Fato_, p. m. 65): "Vigila, Chrysippe, ne tuam causam, in qua tibi cum Diodoro valente Dialectico magna luctatio est, deseras ... omne ergo quod falsum dicitur in futuro, id fieri non potest. At hoc, Chrysippe, minime vis, maximeque tibi de hoc ipso cum Diodoro certamen est. Ille enim id solum fieri posse dicit, quod aut sit verum, aut futurum sit verum; et quicquid futurum sit, id dicit fieri necesse esse; et quicquid non sit futurum, id negat fieri posse. Tu etiam quae non sint futura, posse fieri dicis, ut frangi hanc gemmam, etiamsi id nunquam futurum sit: neque necesse fuisse Cypselum regnare Corinthi, quamquam id millesimo ante anno Apollinis Oraculo editum esset.... Placet Diodoro, id solum fieri posse, quod aut verum sit, aut verum futurum sit: qui locus attingit hanc quaestionem, nihil fieri, quod non necesse fuerit; et quicquid fieri possit, id aut esse jam, aut futurum esse: nec magis commutari ex veris in falsa ea posse quae futura sunt, quam ea quae facta sunt: sed in factis immutabilitatem apparere; in futuris quibusdam, quia non apparent, ne inesse quidem videri: ut in eo qui mortifero morbo urgeatur, verum sit, hic morietur hoc morbo: at hoc idem si vere dicatur in eo, in quo tanta vis morbi non appareat, nihilominus futurum sit. Ita fit ut commutatio ex vero in falsum, ne in futuro quidem ulla fieri possit." Cicero makes it clear enough that Chrysippus often found himself in difficulties in this dispute, and that is no matter for astonishment: for the course he had chosen was not bound up with his dogma of fate, and, if he had known how, or had dared, to reason consistently, he would readily have adopted the whole hypothesis of Diodorus. We have seen already that the freedom he assigned to the soul, and his comparison of the cylinder, did not preclude the possibility that in reality all the acts of the human will were unavoidable consequences of fate. Hence it follows that everything which does not happen is impossible, and that there is nothing possible but that which actually comes to pass. Plutarch (_De Stoicor. Repugn._, pp. 1053, 1054) discomfits him completely, on that point as well as on the dispute with Diodorus, and maintains that his opinion on possibility is altogether contrary to the doctrine of _fatum_. Observe that the most eminent Stoics had written on this matter without following the same path. Arrian (in _Epict._, lib. 2, c. 29, p. m. 166) named four of them, who are Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Archidemus and Antipater. He evinces great scorn for this dispute; and M. Menage need not have cited him as a writer who had spoken in commendation of the work of Chrysippus [Greek: peri dynatôn] ("citatur honorifice apud Arrianum", Menag. in _Laert._, I, 7, 341) for assuredly these words, "[Greek: gegraphe de kai Chrysippos thaumastôs], etc., de his rebus mira scripsit Chrysippus", etc., are not in that connexion a eulogy. That is shown by the passages immediately before and after it. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (_De Collocat. Verbor._, c. 17, p. m. 11) mentions two treatises by Chrysippus, wherein, under a title that promised something different, much of the logicians’ territory had been explored. The work was entitled "[Greek: peri tês syntaxeôs tôn tou logou merôn], de partium orationis collocatione", and treated only of propositions true and false, possible and impossible, contingent and equivocal, etc., matter that our Schoolmen have pounded down and reduced to its essence. Take note that Chrysippus recognized that past things were necessarily true, which Cleanthes had not been willing to admit. (Arrian, _ubi supra_, p. m. 165.) "[Greek: Ou pan de parelêlythos alêthes anankaion esti, kathaper hoi peri Kleanthên pheresthai dokousi]. Non omne praeteritum ex necessitate verum est, ut illi qui Cleanthem sequuntur sentiunt." We have already seen (p. 562, Colossians 2:1-23) that Abélard is alleged to have taught a doctrine which resembles that of Diodorus. I think that the Stoics pledged themselves to give a wider range to possible things than to future things, for the purpose of mitigating the odious and frightful conclusions which were drawn from their dogma of fatality.’

It is sufficiently evident that Cicero when writing to Varro the words that have just been quoted (lib. 9, Ephesians 4:1-32, _Ad Familiar._) had not enough comprehension of the effect of Diodorus’s opinion, since he found it preferable. He presents tolerably well in his book _De Fato_ the opinions of those writers, but it is a pity that he has not always added the reasons which they employed. Plutarch in his treatise on the contradictions of the Stoics and M. Bayle are both surprised that Chrysippus was not of the same opinion as Diodorus, since he favours fatality. But Chrysippus and even his master Cleanthes were on that point more reasonable than is supposed. That will be seen as we proceed. It is open to question whether the past is more necessary than the future. Cleanthes held the opinion that it is. The objection is raised that it is necessary _ex hypothesi_ for the future to happen, as it is necessary _ex hypothesi_ for the past to have happened. But there is this difference, that it is not possible to act on the past state, that would be a contradiction; but it is possible to produce some effect on the future. Yet the hypothetical necessity of both is the same: the one cannot be changed, the other will not be; and once that is past, it will not be possible for it to be changed either.

171. The famous Pierre Abélard expressed an opinion resembling that of Diodorus in the statement that God can do only that which he does. It was the third of the fourteen propositions taken from his works which were censured at the Council of Sens. It had been taken from the third book of his _Introduction to Theology_, where he treats especially of the power of God. The reason he gave for his statement was that God can do only that which he wills. Now God cannot will to do anything other than that which he does, because, of necessity, he must will whatever is fitting. Hence it follows that all that which he does not, is not fitting, that he cannot will to do it, and consequently that he cannot do it. Abélard admits himself that this opinion is peculiar to him, that hardly anyone shares in it, that it seems contrary to the doctrine of the saints and to reason and derogatory to the greatness of God. It appears that this author was a little too much inclined to speak and to think differently from others: for in reality this was only a dispute about words: he was changing the use of terms. Power and will are different faculties, whose objects also are different; it is confusing them to say that God can do only that which he wills. On the contrary, among various possibles, he wills only that which he finds the best. For all possibles are regarded as objects of power, but actual and existing things are regarded as the objects of his decretory will. Abélard himself acknowledged it. He raises this objection for himself: a reprobate can be saved; but he can only be saved if God saves him. God can therefore save him, and consequently do something that he does not. Abélard answers that it may indeed be said that this man can be saved in respect of the possibility of human nature, which is capable of salvation: but that it may not be said that God can save him in respect of

God himself, because it is impossible that God should do that which he must not do. But Abélard admits that it may very well be said in a sense, speaking absolutely and setting aside the assumption of reprobation, that such an one who is reprobate can be saved, and that thus often that which God does not can be done. He could therefore have spoken like the rest, who mean nothing different when they say that God can save this man, and that he can do that which he does not.

172. The so-called necessity of Wyclif, which was condemned by the Council of Constance, seems to arise simply from this same misunderstanding. I think that men of talent do wrong to truth and to themselves when, without reason, they bring into use new and displeasing expressions. In our own time the celebrated Mr. Hobbes supported this same opinion, that what does not happen is impossible. He proves it by the statement that all the conditions requisite for a thing that shall not exist (_omnia rei non futurae requisita_) are never found together, and that the thing cannot exist otherwise. But who does not see that that only proves a hypothetical impossibility? It is true that a thing cannot exist when a requisite condition for it is lacking. But as we claim to be able to say that the thing can exist although it does not exist, we claim in the same way to be able to say that the requisite conditions can exist although they do not exist. Thus Mr. Hobbes’s argument leaves the matter where it is. The opinion which was held concerning Mr. Hobbes, that he taught an absolute necessity of all things, brought upon him much discredit, and would have done him harm even had it been his only error.

173. Spinoza went further: he appears to have explicitly taught a blind necessity, having denied to the Author of Things understanding and will, and assuming that good and perfection relate to us only, and not to him. It is true that Spinoza’s opinion on this subject is somewhat obscure: for he grants God thought, after having divested him of understanding, _cogitationem, non intellectum concedit Deo_. There are even passages where he relents on the question of necessity. Nevertheless, as far as one can understand him, he acknowledges no goodness in God, properly speaking, and he teaches that all things exist through the necessity of the divine nature, without any act of choice by God. We will not waste time here in refuting an opinion so bad, and indeed so inexplicable. My own opinion is founded on the nature of the possibles, that is, of things that imply no contradiction. I do not think that a Spinozist will say that all the romances one can imagine exist actually now, or have existed, or will still exist in some place in the universe. Yet one cannot deny that romances such as those of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, or as _Octavia_, are possible. Let us therefore bring up against him these words of M. Bayle, which please me well, on page 390, ’It is to-day’, he says, ’a great embarrassment for the Spinozists to see that, according to their hypothesis, it was as impossible from all eternity that Spinoza, for instance, should not die at The Hague, as it is impossible for two and two to make six. They are well aware that it is a necessary conclusion from their doctrine, and a conclusion which disheartens, affrights, and stirs the mind to revolt, because of the absurdity it involves, diametrically opposed to common sense. They are not well pleased that one should know they are subverting a maxim so universal and so evident as this one: All that which implies contradiction is impossible, and all that which implies no contradiction is possible.’

174. One may say of M. Bayle, ’ubi bene, nemo melius’, although one cannot say of him what was said of Origen, ’ubi male, nemo pejus’. I will only add that what has just been indicated as a maxim is in fact the definition of the _possible_ and the _impossible_. M. Bayle, however, adds here towards the end a remark which somewhat spoils his eminently reasonable statement. ’Now what contradiction would there be if Spinoza had died in Leyden? Would Nature then have been less perfect, less wise, less powerful?’ He confuses here what is impossible because it implies contradiction with what cannot happen because it is not meet to be chosen. It is true that there would have been no contradiction in the supposition that Spinoza died in Leyden and not at The Hague; there would have been nothing so possible: the matter was therefore indifferent in respect of the power of God. But one must not suppose that any event, however small it be, can be regarded as indifferent in respect of his wisdom and his goodness. Jesus Christ has said divinely well that everything is numbered, even to the hairs of our head. Thus the wisdom of God did not permit that this event whereof M. Bayle speaks should happen otherwise than it happened, not as if by itself it would have been more deserving of choice, but on account of its connexion with that entire sequence of the universe which deserved to be given preference. To say that what has already happened was of no interest to the wisdom of God, and thence to infer that it is therefore not necessary, is to make a false assumption and argue incorrectly to a true conclusion. It is confusing what is necessary by moral necessity, that is, according to the principle of Wisdom and Goodness, with what is so by metaphysical and brute necessity, which occurs when the contrary implies contradiction. Spinoza, moreover, sought a metaphysical necessity in events. He did not think that God was determined by his goodness and by his perfection (which this author treated as chimeras in relation to the universe), but by the necessity of his nature; just as the semicircle is bound to enclose only right angles, without either knowing or willing this. For Euclid demonstrated that all angles enclosed between two straight lines drawn from the extremities of the diameter towards a point on the circumference of the circle are of necessity right angles, and that the contrary implies contradiction.

175. There are people who have gone to the other extreme: under the pretext of freeing the divine nature from the yoke of necessity they wished to regard it as altogether indifferent, with an indifference of equipoise. They did not take into account that just as metaphysical necessity is preposterous in relation to God’s actions _ad extra_, so moral necessity is worthy of him. It is a happy necessity which obliges wisdom to do good, whereas indifference with regard to good and evil would indicate a lack of goodness or of wisdom. And besides, the indifference which would keep the will in a perfect equipoise would itself be a chimera, as has been already shown: it would offend against the great principle of the determinant reason.

176. Those who believe that God established good and evil by an arbitrary decree are adopting that strange idea of mere indifference, and other absurdities still stranger. They deprive God of the designation _good_: for what cause could one have to praise him for what he does, if in doing something quite different he would have done equally well? And I have very often been surprised that divers Supralapsarian theologians, as for instance Samuel Rutherford, a Professor of Theology in Scotland, who wrote when the controversies with the Remonstrants were at their height, could have been deluded by so strange an idea. Rutherford (in his _Exercitationes Apologeticae pro Gratia_) says positively that nothing is unjust or morally bad in God’s eyes before he has forbidden it: thus without this prohibition it would be a matter of indifference whether one murdered or saved a man, loved God or hated him, praised or blasphemed him. Nothing is so unreasonable as that. One may teach that God established good and evil by a positive law, or one may assert that there was something good and just before his decree, but that he is not required to conform to it, and that nothing prevents him from acting unjustly and from perhaps condemning innocence: but it all comes to the same thing, offering almost equal dishonour to God. For if justice was established arbitrarily and without any cause, if God came upon it by a kind of hazard, as when one draws lots, his goodness and his wisdom are not manifested in it, and there is nothing at all to attach him to it. If it is by a purely arbitrary decree, without any reason, that he has established or created what we call justice and goodness, then he can annul them or change their nature. Thus one would have no reason to assume that he will observe them always, as it would be possible to say he will observe them on the assumption that they are founded on reasons. The same would hold good more or less if his justice were different from ours, if (for example) it were written in his code that it is just to make the innocent eternally unhappy. According to these principles also, nothing would compel God to keep his word or would assure us of its fulfilment. For why should the law of justice, which states that reasonable promises must be kept, be more inviolable for him than any other laws?

177. All these three dogmas, albeit a little different from one another, namely, (1) that the nature of justice is arbitrary, (2) that it is fixed, but it is not certain that God will observe it, and finally (3) that the justice we know is not that which he observes, destroy the confidence in God that gives us tranquillity, and the love of God that makes our happiness. There is nothing to prevent such a God from behaving as a tyrant and an enemy of honest folk, and from taking pleasure in that which we call evil. Why should he not, then, just as well be the evil principle of the Manichaeans as the single good principle of the orthodox? At least he would be neutral and, as it were, suspended between the two, or even sometimes the one and sometimes the other. That would be as if someone were to say that Oromasdes and Arimanius reign in turns, according to which of the two is the stronger or the more adroit. It is like the saying of a certain Moghul woman. She, so it seems, having heard it said that formerly under Genghis Khan and his successors her nation had had dominion over most of the North and East, told the Muscovites recently, when M. Isbrand went to China on behalf of the Czar, through the country of those Tartars, that the god of the Moghuls had been driven from Heaven, but that one day he would take his own place again. The true God is always the same: natural religion itself demands that he be essentially as good and wise as he is powerful. It is scarcely more contrary to reason and piety to say that God acts without cognition, than to maintain that he has cognition which does not find the eternal rules of goodness and of justice among its objects, or again to say that he has a will such as heeds not these rules.

178. Some theologians who have written of God’s right over creatures appear to have conceded to him an unrestricted right, an arbitrary and despotic power. They thought that would be placing divinity on the most exalted level that may be imagined for it, and that it would abase the creature before the Creator to such an extent that the Creator is bound by no laws of any kind with respect to the creature. There are passages from Twiss, Rutherford and some other Supralapsarians which imply that God cannot sin whatever he may do, because he is subject to no law. M. Bayle himself considers that this doctrine is monstrous and contrary to the holiness of God (_Dictionary_, v. ’Paulicians’, p. 2332 _in initio_); but I suppose that the intention of some of these writers was less bad than it seems to be. Apparently they meant by the term right, [Greek: anypeuthynian], a state wherein one is responsible to none for one’s actions. But they will not have denied that God owes to himself what goodness and justice demand of him. On that matter one may see M. Amyraut’s _Apology for Calvin_: it is true that Calvin appears orthodox on this subject, and that he is by no means one of the extreme Supralapsarians.

179. Thus, when M. Bayle says somewhere that St. Paul extricates himself from predestination only through the consideration of God’s absolute right, and the incomprehensibility of his ways, it is implied that, if one understood them, one would find them consistent with justice, God not being able to use his power otherwise. St. Paul himself says that it is a _depth_, but a depth of wisdom (_altitudo sapientiae_), and _justice_ is included in _the goodness of the All-wise_. I find that M. Bayle speaks very well elsewhere on the application of our notions of goodness to the actions of God (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 81, p. 139): ’One must not assert here’, he says, ’that the goodness of the infinite Being is not subject to the same rules as the goodness of the creature. For if there is in God an attribute that can be called goodness, the marks of goodness in general must apply to him. Now when we reduce goodness to the most general abstraction, we find therein the will to do good. Divide and subdivide into as many kinds as you shall please this general goodness, into infinite goodness, finite goodness, kingly goodness, goodness of a father, goodness of a husband, goodness of a master, you will find in each, as an inseparable attribute, the will to do good.’

180. I find also that M. Bayle combats admirably the opinion of those who assert that goodness and justice depend solely upon the arbitrary choice of God; who suppose, moreover, that if God had been determined by the goodness of things themselves to act, he would be entirely subjected to necessity in his actions, a state incompatible with freedom. That is confusing metaphysical necessity with moral necessity. Here is what M. Bayle says in objection to this error (_Reply_, ch. 89, p. 203): ’The consequence of this doctrine will be, that before God resolved upon creating the world he saw nothing better in virtue than in vice, and that his ideas did not show him that virtue was more worthy of his love than vice. That leaves no distinction between natural right and positive right; there will no longer be anything unalterable or inevitable in morals; it will have been just as possible for God to command people to be vicious as to command them to be virtuous; and one will have no certainty that the moral laws will not one day be abrogated, as the ceremonial laws of the Jews were. This, in a word, leads us straight to the belief that God was the free author, not only of goodness and of virtue, but also of truth and of the essence of things. That is what certain of the Cartesians assert, and I confess that their opinion (see the Continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, p. 554) might be of some avail in certain circumstances. Yet it is open to dispute for so many reasons, and subject to consequences so troublesome (see chapter 152 of the same Continuation) that there are scarcely any extremes it were not better to suffer rather than plunge into that one. It opens the door to the most exaggerated Pyrrhonism: for it leads to the assertion that this proposition, three and three make six, is only true where and during the time when it pleases God; that it is perhaps false in some parts of the universe; and that perhaps it will be so among men in the coming year. All that depends on the free will of God could have been limited to certain places and certain times, like the Judaic ceremonies. This conclusion will be extended to all the laws of the Decalogue, if the actions they command are in their nature divested of all goodness to the same degree as the actions they forbid.’

181. To say that God, having resolved to create man just as he is, could not but have required of him piety, sobriety, justice and chastity, because it is impossible that the disorders capable of overthrowing or disturbing his work can please him, that is to revert in effect to the common opinion. Virtues are virtues only because they serve perfection or prevent the imperfection of those who are virtuous, or even of those who have to do with them. And they have that power by their nature and by the nature of rational creatures, before God decrees to create them. To hold a different opinion would be as if someone were to say that the rules of proportion and harmony are arbitrary with regard to musicians because they occur in music only when one has resolved to sing or to play some instrument. But that is exactly what is meant by being essential to good music: for those rules belong to it already in the ideal state, even when none yet thinks of singing, since it is known that they must of necessity belong to it as soon as one shall sing. In the same way virtues belong to the ideal state of the rational creature before God decrees to create it; and it is for that very reason we maintain that virtues are good by their nature.

182. M. Bayle has inserted a special chapter in his Continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_ (it is chapter 152) where he shows ’that the Christian Doctors teach that there are things which are just antecedently to God’s decrees’. Some theologians of the Augsburg Confession censured some of the Reformed who appeared to be of a different opinion; and this error was regarded as if it were a consequence of the absolute decree, which doctrine seems to exempt the will of God from any kind of reason, _ubi stat pro ratione voluntas_. But, as I have observed already on various occasions, Calvin himself acknowledged that the decrees of God are in conformity with justice and wisdom, although the reasons that might prove this conformity in detail are unknown to us. Thus, according to him, the rules of goodness and of justice are anterior to the decrees of God. M. Bayle, in the same place, quotes a passage from the celebrated M. Turretin which draws a distinction between natural divine laws and positive divine laws. Moral laws are of the first kind and ceremonial of the second. Samuel Desmarests, a celebrated theologian formerly at Groningen, and Herr Strinesius, who is still at Frankfort on the Oder, advocated this same distinction; and I think that it is the opinion most widely accepted even among the Reformed. Thomas Aquinas and all the Thomists were of the same opinion, with the bulk of the Schoolmen and the theologians of the Roman Church. The Casuists also held to that idea: I count Grotius among the most eminent of them, and he was followed in this point by his commentators. Herr Pufendorf appeared to be of a different opinion, which he insisted on maintaining in the face of censure from some theologians; but he need not be taken into account, not having advanced far enough in subjects of this kind. He makes a vigorous protest against the absolute decree, in his _Fecialis divinus_, and yet he approves what is worst in the opinions of the champions of this decree, and without which this decree (as others of the Reformed explain) becomes endurable. Aristotle was very orthodox on this matter of justice, and the Schoolmen followed him: they distinguish, just as Cicero and the Jurists do, between perpetual right, which is binding on all and everywhere, and positive right, which is only for certain times and certain peoples. I once read with enjoyment the _Euthyphro_ of Plato, who makes Socrates uphold the truth on that point, and M. Bayle has called attention to the same passage.

183. M. Bayle himself upholds this truth with considerable force in a certain passage, which it will be well to quote here in its entirety, long as it is (vol. II of the Continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, ch. 152, p. 771 _seqq._): ’According to the teaching of countless writers of importance’, he says, ’there is in nature and in the essence of certain things a moral good or evil that precedes the divine decree. They prove this doctrine principally through the frightful consequences that attend the opposite dogma. Thus from the proposition that to do wrong to no man would be a good action, not in itself but by an arbitrary dispensation of God’s will, it would follow that God could have given to man a law directly opposed at all points to the commandments of the Decalogue. That is horrifying. But here is a more direct proof, one derived from metaphysics. One thing is certain, that the existence of God is not an effect of his will. He exists not because he wills his existence, but through the necessity of his infinite nature. His power and his knowledge exist through the same necessity. He is all-powerful, he knows all things, not because he wills it thus, but because these are attributes necessarily identified with him. The dominion of his will relates only to the exercise of his power, he gives effect outside himself only to that which he wills, and he leaves all the rest in the state of mere possibility. Thence it comes that this dominion extends only over the existence of creatures, and not over their essential being. God was able to create matter, a man, a circle, or leave them in nothingness, but he was not able to produce them without giving them their essential properties. He had of necessity to make man a rational animal and to give the round shape to a circle, since, according to his eternal ideas, independent of the free decrees of his will, the essence of man lay in the properties of being animal and rational, and since the essence of the circle lay in having a circumference equally distant from the centre as to all its parts. This is what has caused the Christian philosophers to acknowledge that the essences of things are eternal, and that there are propositions of eternal truth; consequently that the essences of things and the truth of the first principles are immutable. That is to be understood not only of theoretical but also of practical first principles, and of all the propositions that contain the true definition of creatures. These essences and these truths emanate from the same necessity of nature as the knowledge of God. Since therefore it is by the nature of things that God exists, that he is all-powerful, and that he has perfect knowledge of all things, it is also by the nature of things that matter, the triangle, man and certain actions of man, etc., have such and such properties essentially. God saw from all eternity and in all necessity the essential relations of numbers, and the identity of the subject and predicate in the propositions that contain the essence of each thing. He saw likewise that the term just is included in these propositions: to esteem what is estimable, be grateful to one’s benefactor, fulfil the conditions of a contract, and so on, with many others relating to morals. One is therefore justified in saying that the precepts of natural law assume the reasonableness and justice of that which is enjoined, and that it would be man’s duty to practise what they contain even though God should have been so indulgent as to ordain nothing in that respect. Pray observe that in going back with our visionary thoughts to that ideal moment when God has yet decreed nothing, we find in the ideas of God the principles of morals under terms that imply an obligation. We understand these maxims as certain, and derived from the eternal and immutable order: it beseems the rational creature to conform to reason; a rational creature conforming to reason is to be commended, but not conforming thereto is blameworthy. You would not dare to deny that these truths impose upon man a duty in relation to all acts which are in conformity with strict reason, such as these: one must esteem all that is estimable; render good for good; do wrong to no man; honour one’s father; render to every man that which is his due, etc. Now since by the very nature of things, and before the divine laws, the truths of morality impose upon man certain duties, Thomas Aquinas and Grotius were justified in saying that if there were no God we should nevertheless be obliged to conform to natural law. Others have said that even supposing all rational beings in existence were to perish, true propositions would remain true. Cajetan maintained that if he remained alone in the universe, all other things without any exception having been destroyed, the knowledge that he had of the nature of a rose would nevertheless subsist.’

184. The late Jacob Thomasius, a celebrated Professor at Leipzig, made the apt observation in his elucidations of the philosophic rules of Daniel Stahl, a Jena professor, that it is not advisable to go altogether beyond God, and that one must not say, with some Scotists, that the eternal verities would exist even though there were no understanding, not even that of God. For it is, in my judgement, the divine understanding which gives reality to the eternal verities, albeit God’s will have no part therein. All reality must be founded on something existent. It is true that an atheist may be a geometrician: but if there were no God, geometry would have no object. And without God, not only would there be nothing existent, but there would be nothing possible. That, however, does not hinder those who do not see the connexion of all things one with another and with God from being able to understand certain sciences, without knowing their first source, which is in God. Aristotle, although he also scarcely knew that source, nevertheless said something of the same kind which was very apposite. He acknowledged that the principles of individual forms of knowledge depend on a superior knowledge which gives the reason for them; and this superior knowledge must have being, and consequently God, the source of being, for its object. Herr Dreier of Königsberg has aptly observed that the true metaphysics which Aristotle sought, and which he called [Greek: tên zêtoumenên], his _desideratum_, was theology.

185. Yet the same M. Bayle, who says so much that is admirable in order to prove that the rules of goodness and justice, and the eternal verities in general, exist by their nature, and not by an arbitrary choice of God, has spoken very hesitatingly about them in another passage (Continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, vol. II, ch. 114, towards the end). After having given an account of the opinion of M. Descartes and a section of his followers, who maintain that God is the free cause of truths and of essences, he adds (p. 554): ’I have done all that I could to gain true understanding of this dogma and to find the solution of the difficulties surrounding it. I confess to you quite simply that I still cannot properly fathom it. That does not discourage me; I suppose, as other philosophers in other cases have supposed, that time will unfold the meaning of this noble paradox. I wish that Father Malebranche had thought fit to defend it, but he took other measures.’ Is it possible that the enjoyment of doubt can have such influence upon a gifted man as to make him wish and hope for the power to believe that two contradictories never exist together for the sole reason that God forbade them to, and, moreover, that God could have issued them an order to ensure that they always walked together? There is indeed a noble paradox! Father Malebranche showed great wisdom in taking other measures.

186. I cannot even imagine that M. Descartes can have been quite seriously of this opinion, although he had adherents who found this easy to believe, and would in all simplicity follow him where he only made pretence to go. It was apparently one of his tricks, one of his philosophic feints: he prepared for himself some loophole, as when for instance he discovered a trick for denying the movement of the earth, while he was a Copernican in the strictest sense. I suspect that he had in mind here another extraordinary manner of speaking, of his own invention, which was to say that affirmations and negations, and acts of inner judgement in general, are operations of the will. Through this artifice the eternal verities, which until the time of Descartes had been named an object of the divine understanding, suddenly became an object of God’s will. Now the acts of his will are free, therefore God is the free cause of the verities. That is the outcome of the matter. _Spectatum admissi._ A slight change in the meaning of terms has caused all this commotion. But if the affirmations of necessary truths were actions of the will of the most perfect mind, these actions would be anything but free, for there is nothing to choose. It seems that M. Descartes did not declare himself sufficiently on the nature of freedom, and that his conception of it was somewhat unusual: for he extended it so far that he even held the affirmations of necessary truths to be free in God. That was preserving only the name of freedom.

187. M. Bayle, who with others conceives this to be a freedom of indifference, that God had had to establish (for instance) the truths of numbers, and to ordain that three times three made nine, whereas he could have commanded them to make ten, imagines in this strange opinion, supposing it were possible to defend it, some kind of advantage gained against the Stratonists. Strato was one of the leaders of the School of Aristotle, and the successor of Theophrastus; he maintained (according to Cicero’s account) that this world had been formed such as it is by Nature or by a necessary cause devoid of cognition. I admit that that might be so, if God had so preformed matter as to cause such an effect by the laws of motion alone. But without God there would not even have been any reason for existence, and still less for any particular existence of things: thus Strato’s system is not to be feared.

188. Nevertheless M. Bayle is in difficulties over this: he will not admit plastic natures devoid of cognition, which Mr. Cudworth and others had introduced, for fear that the modern Stratonists, that is, the Spinozists, take advantage of it. This has involved him in disputes with M. le Clerc. Under the influence of this error, that a non-intelligent cause can produce nothing where contrivance appears, he is far from conceding to me that _preformation_ which produces naturally the organs of animals, and _the system of a harmony pre-established by God_ in bodies, to make them respond in accordance with their own laws to the thoughts and the wills of souls. But it ought to have been taken into account that this non-intelligent cause, which produces such beautiful things in the grains and seeds of plants and animals, and effects the actions of bodies as the will ordains them, was formed by the hand of God: and God is infinitely more skilful than a watchmaker, who himself makes machines and automata that are capable of producing as wonderful effects as if they possessed intelligence.

189. Now to come to M. Bayle’s apprehensions concerning the Stratonists, in case one should admit truths that are not dependent upon the will of God: he seems to fear lest they may take advantage against us of the perfect regularity of the eternal verities. Since this regularity springs only from the nature and necessity of things, without being directed by any cognition, M. Bayle fears that one might with Strato thence infer that the world also could have become regular through a blind necessity. But it is easy to answer that. In the region of the eternal verities are found all the possibles, and consequently the regular as well as the irregular: there must be a reason accounting for the preference for order and regularity, and this reason can only be found in understanding. Moreover these very truths can have no existence without an understanding to take cognizance of them; for they would not exist if there were no divine understanding wherein they are realized, so to speak. Hence Strato does not attain his end, which is to exclude cognition from that which enters into the origin of things.

190. The difficulty that M. Bayle has imagined in connexion with Strato seems a little too subtle and far-fetched. That is termed: _timere, ubi non est timor_. He makes another difficulty, which has just as slight a foundation, namely, that God would be subjected to a kind of _fatum_. Here are his words (p. 555): ’If they are propositions of eternal truth, which are such by their nature and not by God’s institution, if they are not true by a free decree of his will, but if on the contrary he has recognized them as true of necessity, because such was their nature, there is a kind of _fatum_ to which he is subjected; there is an absolutely insurmountable natural necessity. Thence comes also the result that the divine understanding in the infinity of its ideas has always and at the outset hit upon their perfect conformity with their objects, without the guidance of any cognition; for it would be a contradiction to say that any exemplary cause had served as a plan for the acts of God’s understanding. One would never that way find eternal ideas or any first intelligence. One must say, then, that a nature which exists of necessity always finds its way, without any need for it to be shown. How then shall we overcome the obstinacy of a Stratonist?’

191. But again it is easy to answer. This so-called _fatum_, which binds even the Divinity, is nothing but God’s own nature, his own understanding, which furnishes the rules for his wisdom and his goodness; it is a happy necessity, without which he would be neither good nor wise. Is it to be desired that God should not be bound to be perfect and happy? Is our condition, which renders us liable to fail, worth envying? And should we not be well pleased to exchange it for sinlessness, if that depended upon us? One must be indeed weary of life to desire the freedom to destroy oneself and to pity the Divinity for not having that freedom. M. Bayle himself reasons thus elsewhere against those who laud to the skies an extravagant freedom which they assume in the will, when they would make the will independent of reason.

192. Moreover, M. Bayle wonders ’that the divine understanding in the infinity of its ideas always and at the outset hits upon their perfect conformity with their objects, without the guidance of any cognition’. This objection is null and void. Every distinct idea is, through its distinctness, in conformity with its object, and in God there are distinct ideas only. At first, moreover, the object exists nowhere; but when it comes into existence, it will be formed according to this idea. Besides, M. Bayle knows very well that the divine understanding has no need of time for seeing the connexion of things. All trains of reasoning are in God in a transcendent form, and they preserve an order amongst them in his understanding, as well as in ours: but with him it is only an order and a

_priority of nature_, whereas with us there is a _priority of time_. It is therefore not to be wondered at that he who penetrates all things at one stroke should always strike true at the outset; and it must not be said that he succeeds without the guidance of any cognition. On the contrary, it is because his knowledge is perfect that his voluntary actions are also perfect.