We would acknowledge the existence of a particular Providence, such as
we mentioned above, if we thought that the world had had a beginning of
existence, and had not existed since all eternity. By this particular
Providence we mean a recognition, in the divinity, of a kind of
prevision and reasoning (similar to the reasoning and prevision of the
artist who, before carrying out a work, deliberates on each of the
parts that compose it[25]). We would suppose that this prevision and
reasoning were necessary to determine how the universe could have been
made, and on what conditions it should have been the best possible.
But as we hold that the world's existence had no beginning, and that
it has existed since all time, we can, in harmony with reason and our
own views, affirm that universal Providence consists in this that
the universe is conformed to Intelligence, and that Intelligence is
prior to the universe, not indeed in time--for the existence of the
Intelligence did not temporarily precede that of the universe--but (in
the order of things), because, by its nature, Intelligence precedes the
world that proceeds from it, of which it is the cause, type[26] and
model, and cause of unchanged perpetual persistence.